F. A. Hayek, Preface

Hayek’s preface, dated June 1981 and published in the supplied 2022 edition, introduces a collection of newspaper correspondence spanning fifty years. Its purpose is to establish the collection’s provenance, explain its inclusions and omissions, and distinguish Hayek’s authorship from his participation in collective statements. Moving from the history of an unpublished letter to the exclusion of a famous jointly signed intervention, it then clarifies the range of publications represented and the reasons for a chronological gap. Its central concern is how these public interventions should be read as a record of his own writing.

The opening locates the correspondence at the beginning of Hayek’s appointment at the London School of Economics:

The first of this series of letters to The Times extending over a period of fifty years was written on November 25, 1931, a few weeks after taking up my professorship at the London School of Economics.

That first letter is exceptional: although included in the collection, it never appeared in the newspaper. Hayek recalls receiving proofs in April 1932 and asking that publication retain the original date. The editor refused, invoking both the newspaper’s rule against retaining an old date and the possibility that the letter’s timeliness had passed. Hayek’s description of his request as naive gives the episode a lightly self-critical tone. More substantively, the anecdote distinguishes the date of composition from the date of public intervention: a newspaper’s publication conventions could alter, or prevent, the appearance of an argument written for a particular moment. Hayek adds that the other letters appeared on the dates indicated, except for the second, which was printed only in part under “Points from Letters”.

The next paragraph makes authorship, rather than prominence, the decisive criterion for inclusion. Hayek deliberately omits the letter of October 19, 1932, signed by Theodore A. G. Gregory, Arnold Plant, Lionel Robbins, and himself, despite its being discussed more frequently than any of the letters reproduced. He explains:

That letter was wholly drafted by these colleagues and though, when I was invited to sign it I at first suggested some modifications (not intended to soften its argument!) my colleagues rightly persuaded me that fine theoretical points were not suitable for a letter to the press.

The exclusion does not signal a repudiation of the letter’s position. His parenthetical qualification expressly denies that his proposed changes were intended to weaken its argument. Instead, he distinguishes endorsing a collective intervention from composing it. His acceptance of his colleagues’ advice also acknowledges the demands of newspaper communication: theoretical precision must sometimes yield to the limited scope of a public letter.

The accompanying editorial note supplies the economic context without making it the preface’s own sustained argument. The omitted letter favoured reviving investment, protecting private saving, and avoiding public expenditure that might raise interest rates and discourage private investment. It answered a letter signed by Keynes and other economists warning that reduced private and local-government spending would worsen unemployment. This annotation explains the omitted intervention’s significance, while Hayek’s account explains why historical prominence alone did not secure its place in his collection.

The final paragraph broadens the collection’s practical scope. Alongside letters to The Times, Hayek includes contributions to The Times Literary Supplement and The Sunday Times, together with pieces that became long enough to appear as articles. He also identifies an important limit on treating their presentation as wholly authorial:

The headings are those given by the editors and the date given is that of publication.

Titles therefore reflect editorial framing, while dates ordinarily locate the texts’ public appearance. The long gap in the 1950s has a similarly concrete explanation: Hayek was living in the United States and rarely saw English newspapers. It should not automatically be interpreted as intellectual withdrawal or a change in conviction. His closing observation that the letters are not all about economics further establishes the breadth of the collection without specifying subjects absent from this short text. The preface’s relevance lies in these restrained reading instructions: authorship, publication circumstances, editorial mediation, and geographical access all shape the surviving record of Hayek’s public correspondence.