Friedrich August von Hayek: Review of Can We Afford It? (1944)

Hayek’s brief review praises Oscar R. Hobson’s economic journalism for combining openness to new ideas with sound judgment and concise explanation. His assessment links attention to contemporary policy with awareness of its intellectual foundations:

Though immediately concerned with the problems of the day, he is acutely alive to the current of ideas.

This responsiveness does not imply acceptance of fashionable arguments. Hayek values Hobson’s ability to present an idea fairly before explaining why it fails to convince him. Critical independence and accessible exposition emerge as complementary virtues: lucid presentation makes economic claims available for scrutiny.

The review also establishes the range and provenance of Hobson’s collected journalism:

Apart from articles reprinted from the city columns of the News Chronicle the present volume also contains three articles reprinted from The Spectator and two which have not appeared before.

Seven thematic sections cover saving and spending, competition and monopoly, banking, industrial reconstruction, trade, international money, and freedom from want. Hayek sketches this breadth without offering separate evaluations of each policy area.

The governing intellectual standard is resistance to treating either yesterday’s provocative ideas or today’s accepted propositions as final wisdom. Hayek’s near-complete agreement with Hobson supports his favorable judgment, but the recommendation reaches beyond shared conclusions: the book’s value lies in teaching readers to reason clearly about economic policy. The review thus presents journalism as a form of economic education, joining immediate relevance to disciplined criticism of the ideas behind public debate.