The archive.

Organizing economic history by problems rather than chronology promises clarity—but what happens to the connections between an economist’s ideas, or to the sequence in which those ideas emerged? In this brief 1941 review of Edmund Whittaker’s A History of Economic Ideas, Hayek weighs that teaching problem against the textbook’s careful exposition and unusual selection of authors. His example is precise: describing Malthus’s account of rent as superior to Ricardo’s can obscure the fact that Malthus published first. Yet Hayek praises Whittaker’s handling of methodological disputes and recommends chronological supplementation rather than rejecting the book. The review offers a compact view of his standards for historical explanation: understanding separate doctrines requires more than collecting their treatments under common headings.

Clarity and popularization are not the same achievement in Hayek’s 1941 joint review of studies of early Marx and Feuerbach. Newly available writings by Marx and Engels provide the occasion; the question is what scholars make of them. Hayek praises H. P. Adams for combining careful source study with a readable account of Marx before the Communist Manifesto. His response to Konrad Bekker is more revealingly hesitant: he admits uncertainty about understanding the argument while recognizing the value of its comparisons between Marx and Hegel. Chamberlain’s Feuerbach, by contrast, earns sharp criticism for journalistic embellishment without added understanding. This brief review offers a concrete glimpse of Hayek’s critical standards—and of his willingness to distinguish specialist usefulness from successful exposition.

Can the desire to put science and industry at the service of human welfare justify directing them from a centre? In this 1941 paired review, Hayek welcomes Michael Polanyi’s challenge to scientific and economic planning, emphasizing the gap between benevolent intentions and the specialized knowledge on which discovery and practical judgment depend. Colin Clark’s reconstruction of Soviet economic statistics gives that institutional criticism a concrete test. Hayek draws attention to depressed food consumption and deteriorating housing, but also acknowledges later improvements and industrial gains. Read together, his assessments show why increased production cannot alone settle questions about freedom or material welfare—and how a critic of planning weighs evidence that complicates his own position.

Written in 1941 and reprinted here in 1997, Hayek’s wartime essay asks how Britain can act intelligently towards Germany without mistaking understanding for forgiveness. He traces a practical weakness in British policy to alternating admiration and hostility, reinforced by travel impressions rather than sustained study of German intellectual life. His distinctive concern is that German ideas already circulate within Britain and among its allies: refusing to study them does not prevent their influence, but makes it harder to judge. The essay connects this problem to concrete institutional remedies—university training for specialists and controlled scholarly access to current German publications. It offers a pointed account of why foreign knowledge requires interpreters able to notice developments beyond a government’s immediate wartime needs.

A machine may remain physically sound long after it ceases to earn its owner anything. In this reply to Professor Pigou, Hayek uses that gap to challenge a definition of capital maintenance based on replacing wear and tear while excluding obsolescence. Three investments with identical physical lifetimes but sharply different commercial prospects show why depreciation allowances must depend on expectations, not merely on durable equipment. The distinction matters for taxation as well as accounting: treating foreseeable replacement costs as disposable income would, Hayek argues, penalise industries undergoing rapid technological change. His concise reply separates provision for anticipated losses from saving after unforeseen losses, and asks when a familiar accounting convention serves—or defeats—its practical purpose of preserving future earning capacity.

Admiration does not erase disagreement in Hayek’s 1941 review of Ludwig von Mises’s Nationalökonomie. He welcomes its integration of economic theory, social cooperation, and liberal policy, yet questions its treatment of interest and the intellectual isolation that limits its engagement with contemporary economics. His strongest allegiance concerns method: Mises’s account of human action, Hayek argues, offers a more persuasive foundation for social inquiry than prevailing attempts to borrow methods from the natural sciences. This short review lets readers locate both the shared ground and the friction between two economists often grouped together. It also shows what Hayek values in a systematic treatise: not merely consistency, but the capacity to connect technical arguments with questions of social cooperation and policy.

Understanding Nazi Germany’s appeal need not mean excusing it. In this 1941 joint review, republished in 1997, Hayek welcomes two contrasting corrections to wartime perceptions: Paul Einzig’s exposure of Germany’s promised European order and C. W. Guillebaud’s account of social policies that helped secure German workers’ support. His sharper objection concerns what the reviewers’ subjects share: an apparent willingness to approve Nazi methods while condemning their purposes. Hayek asks whether comprehensive planning itself demands coercion, imposed hierarchies and leaders ruthless enough to enforce them. This brief review lets readers encounter that question in a concrete dispute over how to describe an enemy accurately—and how to judge seemingly desirable policies by the power required to carry them out.

Scientific expertise can explain general laws—but can it supply the changing, local knowledge needed to direct an economy? In this 1941 article, republished here in 1997, Friedrich August von Hayek addresses scientists and engineers drawn to centralized planning. He contrasts their ideal of deliberate construction with the coordination achieved through competitive prices, then asks what happens to intellectual freedom when one authority controls the resources needed to pursue competing purposes. His contention is that comprehensive planning concentrates power over ends, not merely economic means. The article offers a compact encounter with the connection between Hayek’s account of dispersed knowledge and his defence of liberty, while distinguishing policies that sustain competition or supplement its results from those that replace it with a single plan.

Whoever controls the means must decide which ends they are to serve.

An economy’s complexity seems to call for comprehensive direction; Hayek argues that it makes such direction impracticable. In this 1941 article, reprinted in 1997, he shifts attention from the planner’s objectives to the changing, local knowledge needed to use scarce resources well. A shortage of tin makes the problem concrete: how can users decide what to conserve, replace or recover without knowing why supplies have tightened? Hayek’s answer is that competitive prices coordinate adjustments without assembling everyone’s knowledge in one place. His argument depends on genuine competition, not simply the existence of markets, and his acceptance of wartime planning qualifies rather than abandons it. The article offers a compact account of why economic coordination involves discovering possibilities, not merely executing a known design.

What happens when a demand for scientific objectivity excludes the expectations that guide human choice? In this sharply critical 1942 review of Joseph Mayer’s Social Science Principles, Hayek argues that Mayer’s proposed reconstruction of economics misunderstands the theories it seeks to replace. His most concrete objections concern utility—the benefit an individual expects at the moment of acting—and opportunity cost—the alternative forgone, not the cost of that alternative. These distinctions give the brief review its interest beyond Hayek’s severe verdict on the book: they show why, for him, explaining economic action requires attention to subjective expectations. Readers encounter a methodological dispute tested against specific concepts, rather than a general opposition between economics and natural science.

What makes a catalogue useful to a historian of economics: the breadth of its holdings or the precision of its entries? In this short 1942 review, Hayek judges Harvard’s Kress Library catalogue by its practical service to scholarship rather than its ambition or lavishness. He praises reliable descriptions of 7,279 titles, concise annotations drawn from Foxwell’s notes, and explicit acknowledgment of disputed authorship in anonymous publications. His comparison with Higgs’s bibliography distinguishes the scope of a library collection from that of a broader bibliographical undertaking. A closing objection to capitalization adds a lightly humorous qualification. The review offers a concrete glimpse of Hayek as a reader attentive to the editorial details on which historical research depends.

A convincing portrait of a possible future is not proof that it must arrive. In this 1942 review of James Burnham’s The Managerial Revolution, Hayek grants the realism of Burnham’s account of managerial power while challenging its claim to historical inevitability. He finds revealing evidence in Burnham’s portrait of New Deal administrators who both believe they can run society and enjoy doing so; he also questions the supposed detachment of an analysis sympathetic to the emerging order in Germany and Russia. The review offers a compact encounter with Hayek’s distinction between recognizing a danger and accepting its necessity—and with his concern that persuasive predictions can encourage the very developments they describe.