Henry Hazlitt
Encyclopedia
Henry Stuart Hazlitt was an American
economist
, philosopher, literary critic
and journalist
for such publications as The Wall Street Journal
, The Nation
, The American Mercury
, Newsweek
, and The New York Times
. He is best known for his attacks on the New Deal
as bad economics.
, Henry Hazlitt was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He grew up in relative poverty, his father having died when Hazlitt was an infant. His early heroes were Herbert Spencer
and William James
, and his first ambition was for an academic career in psychology
and philosophy
. He attended New York's tuition-free City College
, but left after only a short time in order to support his twice-widowed mother.
Hazlitt started his career at The Wall Street Journal
as secretary to the managing editor
when he was still a teenager, and his interest in the field of economics
began while working there. His studies led him to The Common Sense of Political Economy by Philip Wicksteed
which, he later said, was his first "tremendous influence" in the subject. Hazlitt published his first book, Thinking as a Science, at the age of 21. During World War I
, he served in the Army Air Service in Texas
, after which he returned to New York, residing at Washington Square Park
for many years.
In the early 1920s, he was financial editor of The New York Evening Mail
, and it was during this period, Hazlitt reported, that his understanding of economics was further refined by frequent discussions with former Harvard
economics professor Benjamin Anderson
who was then working for Chase National Bank in Manhattan
. Later, when the publisher W. W. Norton
suggested he write an official biography
of their author Bertrand Russell
, Hazlitt spent "a good deal of time," as he described it, with the famous philosopher both in New York City and London]. Lord Russell "so admired the young journalist's talent" that he had agreed with Norton's proposal, but the project ended after nearly two years of work when Russell declared his intention to write his own autobiography
.
During the interwar decades, a vibrant period in the history of American literature
, Hazlitt served as literary editor of The New York Sun (1925–1929), and as literary editor of the Left-leaning journal, The Nation
(1930–1933). In connection with his work for The Nation, Hazlitt also edited A Practical Program for America (1932), a compilation of Great Depression
policy considerations, but he was in the minority in calling for less government intervention in the economy. After a series of public debates with socialist Louis Fischer
, Hazlitt and The Nation parted ways.
In 1933, Hazlitt published The Anatomy of Criticism, an extended "trialogue" examining the nature of literary criticism
and appreciation, regarded by some to be an early refutation of literary deconstruction
. In the same year, he became H. L. Mencken
's chosen successor as editor of the literary magazine, The American Mercury
, which Mencken had founded with George Jean Nathan
. Due to increasing differences with the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, Sr., he served in that role for only a brief time, but Mencken wrote that Hazlitt was the "only competent critic of the arts that I have heard of who was at the same time a competent economist, of practical as well as theoretical training," adding that he "is one of the few economists in human history who could really write."
In 1936, he married Frances Kanes, the author of The Concise Bible, with whom he later collaborated to produce an anthology of the Stoic
philosophers, The Wisdom of the Stoics: Selections from Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius (1984). They were married until Frances' death in 1991.
From 1934 to 1946, Hazlitt was the principal editorial writer on finance and economics for The New York Times
, writing both a signed weekly column along with most of the unsigned editorials on economics, producing a considerable volume of work. Following World War II
, he came into conflict with Arthur Hays Sulzberger
, publisher of The New York Times, over the newly established Bretton Woods system
which created the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund
. Hazlitt opposed the Bretton Woods Agreement, primarily fearing the risk of inflation
. After agreeing not to write on the topic, he looked for another venue for his work, deciding on Newsweek
magazine, for which he wrote a signed column, "Business Tides," from 1946 to 1966.
According to Hazlitt, the greatest influence on his writing in economics was the work of Ludwig von Mises
, and he is credited with introducing the ideas of the Austrian School
of economics to the English-speaking layman. In 1938, for example, he reviewed the recently published English translation of Mises’s influential treatise Socialism
for The New York Times, declaring it "a classic" and “the most devastating analysis of socialism
yet penned." After the Jewish
economist's emigration to the United States from Nazi-dominated Europe in 1940, Hazlitt arranged for Mises to contribute editorials to The New York Times, and helped to secure for Mises a teaching position at New York University
. Along with the efforts of his friends, Max Eastman
and John Chamberlain
, Hazlitt also helped introduce F. A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom
to the American reading public. His 1944 review in The New York Times caused Reader's Digest
, where Eastman served as roving editor, to publish one of its trademark condensations, bringing the future Nobel
laureate's work to a vast audience.
Unlike many other writers of his generation from the political right
, Hazlitt never experienced a period when he was a socialist
or communist
, or a significant change in his classical liberal political views. He was the founding vice-president of the Foundation for Economic Education
. Established by Leonard Read
in 1946, FEE is considered to be the first "think tank" for free market ideas. He was also one of the original members of the classical liberal Mont Pelerin Society
in 1947.
With John Chamberlain
(and Suzanne La Follette
as managing editor
), Hazlitt served as editor of the early free market
publication The Freeman
from 1950 to 1952, and as sole editor-in-chief from 1952 to 1953, and its contributors during his tenure there included Hayek, Mises and Wilhelm Röpke
, as well as the writers James Burnham
, John Dos Passos
, Max Eastman
, John T. Flynn
, Frank Meyer, Raymond Moley
, Morrie Ryskind
and George Sokolsky
. Prior to his becoming editor, The Freeman had supported Senator Joseph McCarthy
in his conflict with President Harry Truman on the issue of communism
, "undiscriminatingly" according to some critics, but upon becoming editor, Hazlitt changed the magazine's policy to one of support for President Truman.
The Freeman is widely considered to be an important forerunner to the conservative
National Review
, founded by William F. Buckley, Jr.
, which from the start included many of the same contributing editors. Hazlitt himself was on the masthead of National Review, either as a Contributing Editor or, later, as Contributor, from its inception in 1955 until his death in 1993. There were differences between the journals: The Freeman under Hazlitt was more secular
and presented a wider range of foreign policy
opinion than the later National Review.
Even prior to her success with The Fountainhead
, the novelist Ayn Rand
was a friend of both Hazlitt and his wife, Frances, and it was Hazlitt who introduced Rand to Mises, bringing together the two figures who would become most associated with the defense of pure laissez-faire
capitalism. The two became admirers of Hazlitt and of one another.
Hazlitt became well known both through his articles and by frequently debating prominent politicians on the radio, including: Vice President Henry A. Wallace
, Secretary of State
Dean Acheson
, and U.S. Senators Paul Douglas
and Hubert H. Humphrey, the future Vice President. In the early 1950s, he also occasionally appeared on the New York television
current events program Longines Chronoscope, interviewing figures such as Senator Joseph McCarthy and Congressman Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., along with coeditor William Bradford Huie
. At the invitation of philosopher Sidney Hook
, he was also a participating member of the American Committee for Cultural Freedom
in the 1950s.
When he finally left Newsweek in 1966, the magazine replaced Hazlitt with three university professors: "free-market monetarist
Milton Friedman
of the University of Chicago
, middle-of-the-roader Henry Wallich
of Yale
, and Keynesian
Paul A. Samuelson of M.I.T.
" His last published scholarly article appeared in the first volume of The Review of Austrian Economics (now, The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics) in 1987.
Hazlitt died at the age of 98.
He was awarded an Honorary Doctoral Degree at Universidad Francisco Marroquín
in Guatemala
.
Economics in One Lesson
(1946) has been called Hazlitt's "most enduring contribution," with a million copies sold and available in ten languages, it is considered an "enduring classic" in conservative
, free market
and libertarian
circles. Ayn Rand
called it a "magnificent job of theoretical exposition," while Congressman Ron Paul
ranks it with the works of Frédéric Bastiat
and F. A. Hayek. Hayek himself praised the work, as did fellow Nobel Prize
laureate Milton Friedman
, who said that Hazlitt's description of the price system, for example, was "a true classic: timeless, correct, painlessly instructive." In his book Basic Economics, Thomas Sowell
also compliments Hazlitt, and Sowell's work has been cited as "following" in the "Bastiat-Hazlitt tradition" of economic exposition. In 1996, Laissez Faire Books
issued a 50th anniversary edition with an introduction by publisher and presidential candidate Steve Forbes
.
Another of his enduring works is The Failure of the New Economics
(1959), a detailed, chapter-by-chapter critique of John Maynard Keynes
's highly influential General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, about which he paraphrased a quote attributed to Samuel Johnson
, that he was "unable to find in it a single doctrine that is both true and original. What is original in the book is not true; and what is true is not original." Hazlitt also published three books on the subject of inflation
, including From Bretton Woods to World Inflation (1984), and two influential works on poverty
, Man vs. The Welfare State (1969), and The Conquest of Poverty (1973), thought by some to have anticipated the later work of Charles Murray
in Losing Ground.
His major work in philosophy
is The Foundations of Morality (1964), a treatise on ethics
defending utilitarianism
, which builds on the work of David Hume
and John Stuart Mill
. Hazlitt's 1922 work, The Way to Will-Power has been described as a defense of free will
or "individual initiative against the deterministic
claims of Freudian
psychoanalysis
." In contrast to many other thinkers on the political right, he was an agnostic
with regard to religious beliefs
.
In A New Constitution Now (1942), published during Franklin D. Roosevelt
's unprecedented third term as President of the United States
, Hazlitt called for the replacement of the existing fixed-term presidential tenure in the United States with a more Anglo-European system of "cabinet" government, under which a head of state who had lost the confidence of the legislature or cabinet might be removed from office after a no-confidence vote in as little as 30 days. (Shortly following FDR's death, presidential term limits
were enacted.) His 1951 novel
, The Great Idea (reissued in 1966 as Time Will Run Back) depicts rulers of a centrally-planned socialist dystopia
discovering, amid the resulting economic chaos, the need to restore market pricing system, private ownership of capital goods and competitive markets.
Hazlitt was a prolific writer, authoring 25 works in his lifetime.
Ludwig von Mises
said at a dinner honoring Hazlitt: "In this age of the great struggle in favor of freedom and the social system in which men can live as free men, you are our leader. You have indefatigably fought against the step-by-step advance of the powers anxious to destroy everything that human civilization has created over a long period of centuries... You are the economic conscience of our country and of our nation."
which actively promoted libertarian
networking online, especially through its website Free-Market.Net. This organization was named in honor of Hazlitt because he was known for introducing a wide range of people to libertarian ideas through his writing and for helping free-market advocates connect with each other. It is important to note that the foundation was started after Hazlitt's passing and had no official connection with his estate.
See Bibliography of Henry Hazlitt for complete list.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
economist
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, philosopher, literary critic
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
and journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
for such publications as The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
, The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
, The American Mercury
The American Mercury
The American Mercury was an American magazine published from 1924 to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild of H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan. The magazine featured writing by some of the most important writers in the United States through the 1920s and 1930s...
, Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
, and The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. He is best known for his attacks on the New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
as bad economics.
Biography
A great-great-great nephew of British essayist William HazlittWilliam Hazlitt
William Hazlitt was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. Yet his work is...
, Henry Hazlitt was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He grew up in relative poverty, his father having died when Hazlitt was an infant. His early heroes were Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
and William James
William James
William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...
, and his first ambition was for an academic career in psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
and philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
. He attended New York's tuition-free City College
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
, but left after only a short time in order to support his twice-widowed mother.
Hazlitt started his career at The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
as secretary to the managing editor
Managing editor
A managing editor is a senior member of a publication's management team.In the United States, a managing editor oversees and coordinates the publication's editorial activities...
when he was still a teenager, and his interest in the field of economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
began while working there. His studies led him to The Common Sense of Political Economy by Philip Wicksteed
Philip Wicksteed
Philip Henry Wicksteed is known primarily as an economist. He was also an English Unitarian theologian , classicist, medievalist, and literary critic....
which, he later said, was his first "tremendous influence" in the subject. Hazlitt published his first book, Thinking as a Science, at the age of 21. During World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, he served in the Army Air Service in Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, after which he returned to New York, residing at Washington Square Park
Washington Square Park
Washington Square Park is one of the best-known of New York City's 1,900 public parks. At 9.75 acres , it is a landmark in the Manhattan neighborhood of Greenwich Village, as well as a meeting place and center for cultural activity...
for many years.
In the early 1920s, he was financial editor of The New York Evening Mail
New York Evening Mail
The New York Evening Mail was an American daily newspaper published in New York City.The paper was made up of the New York Evening Express, which dated from 1836, and the Daily Advertiser. It was eventually merged with the Evening Telegram, which became the New York World-Telegram in 1927.From New...
, and it was during this period, Hazlitt reported, that his understanding of economics was further refined by frequent discussions with former Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
economics professor Benjamin Anderson
Benjamin Anderson
Benjamin McAlester Anderson, Jr. was an American economist in the Austrian tradition of Carl Menger.-Early life and education:...
who was then working for Chase National Bank in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
. Later, when the publisher W. W. Norton
W. W. Norton
W. W. Norton & Company is an independent American book publishing company based in New York City. It is well known for its "Norton Anthologies", particularly the Norton Anthology of English Literature and the "Norton Critical Editions" series of texts which are frequently assigned in university...
suggested he write an official biography
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
of their author Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
, Hazlitt spent "a good deal of time," as he described it, with the famous philosopher both in New York City and London]. Lord Russell "so admired the young journalist's talent" that he had agreed with Norton's proposal, but the project ended after nearly two years of work when Russell declared his intention to write his own autobiography
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
.
During the interwar decades, a vibrant period in the history of American literature
American literature
American literature is the written or literary work produced in the area of the United States and its preceding colonies. For more specific discussions of poetry and theater, see Poetry of the United States and Theater in the United States. During its early history, America was a series of British...
, Hazlitt served as literary editor of The New York Sun (1925–1929), and as literary editor of the Left-leaning journal, The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
(1930–1933). In connection with his work for The Nation, Hazlitt also edited A Practical Program for America (1932), a compilation of Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
policy considerations, but he was in the minority in calling for less government intervention in the economy. After a series of public debates with socialist Louis Fischer
Louis Fischer
Louis Fischer was a Jewish-American journalist. Among his works were a contribution to the ex-Communist treatise The God that Failed, The Life of Lenin, which won a 1965 National Book Award, as well as a biography of Mahatma Gandhi entitled The Life of Mahatma Gandhi...
, Hazlitt and The Nation parted ways.
In 1933, Hazlitt published The Anatomy of Criticism, an extended "trialogue" examining the nature of literary criticism
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
and appreciation, regarded by some to be an early refutation of literary deconstruction
Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading...
. In the same year, he became H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken
Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the...
's chosen successor as editor of the literary magazine, The American Mercury
The American Mercury
The American Mercury was an American magazine published from 1924 to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild of H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan. The magazine featured writing by some of the most important writers in the United States through the 1920s and 1930s...
, which Mencken had founded with George Jean Nathan
George Jean Nathan
George Jean Nathan was an American drama critic and editor.-Early life:Nathan was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana...
. Due to increasing differences with the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, Sr., he served in that role for only a brief time, but Mencken wrote that Hazlitt was the "only competent critic of the arts that I have heard of who was at the same time a competent economist, of practical as well as theoretical training," adding that he "is one of the few economists in human history who could really write."
In 1936, he married Frances Kanes, the author of The Concise Bible, with whom he later collaborated to produce an anthology of the Stoic
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...
philosophers, The Wisdom of the Stoics: Selections from Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius (1984). They were married until Frances' death in 1991.
From 1934 to 1946, Hazlitt was the principal editorial writer on finance and economics for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, writing both a signed weekly column along with most of the unsigned editorials on economics, producing a considerable volume of work. Following World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he came into conflict with Arthur Hays Sulzberger
Arthur Hays Sulzberger
Arthur Hays Sulzberger was the publisher of The New York Times from 1935 to 1961. During that time, daily circulation rose from 465,000 to 713,000 and Sunday circulation from 745,000 to 1.4 million; the staff more than doubled, reaching 5,200; advertising linage grew from 19 million to 62 million...
, publisher of The New York Times, over the newly established Bretton Woods system
Bretton Woods system
The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the world's major industrial states in the mid 20th century...
which created the World Bank
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
and the International Monetary Fund
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...
. Hazlitt opposed the Bretton Woods Agreement, primarily fearing the risk of inflation
Inflation
In economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time.When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services. Consequently, inflation also reflects an erosion in the purchasing power of money – a...
. After agreeing not to write on the topic, he looked for another venue for his work, deciding on Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
magazine, for which he wrote a signed column, "Business Tides," from 1946 to 1966.
According to Hazlitt, the greatest influence on his writing in economics was the work of Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was an Austrian economist, philosopher, and classical liberal who had a significant influence on the modern Libertarian movement and the "Austrian School" of economic thought.-Biography:-Early life:...
, and he is credited with introducing the ideas of the Austrian School
Austrian School
The Austrian School of economics is a heterodox school of economic thought. It advocates methodological individualism in interpreting economic developments , the theory that money is non-neutral, the theory that the capital structure of economies consists of heterogeneous goods that have...
of economics to the English-speaking layman. In 1938, for example, he reviewed the recently published English translation of Mises’s influential treatise Socialism
Socialism (book)
Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis is a book by Austrian School economist and libertarian thinker Ludwig von Mises, first published in German by Gustav Fischer Verlag in Jena in 1922 under the title Die Gemeinwirtschaft: Untersuchungen über den Sozialismus...
for The New York Times, declaring it "a classic" and “the most devastating analysis of socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
yet penned." After the Jewish
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
economist's emigration to the United States from Nazi-dominated Europe in 1940, Hazlitt arranged for Mises to contribute editorials to The New York Times, and helped to secure for Mises a teaching position at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
. Along with the efforts of his friends, Max Eastman
Max Eastman
Max Forrester Eastman was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet, and a prominent political activist. For many years, Eastman was a supporter of socialism, a leading patron of the Harlem Renaissance and an activist for a number of liberal and radical causes...
and John Chamberlain
John Chamberlain (journalist)
John Rensselaer Chamberlain was an American journalist, historian of business and the economy, and literary critic, dubbed "one of America’s most trusted book reviewers."-Early life:...
, Hazlitt also helped introduce F. A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom
The Road to Serfdom
The Road to Serfdom is a book written by the Austrian-born economist and philosopher Friedrich von Hayek between 1940–1943, in which he "warned of the danger of tyranny that inevitably results from government control of economic decision-making through central planning," and in which he argues...
to the American reading public. His 1944 review in The New York Times caused Reader's Digest
Reader's Digest
Reader's Digest is a general interest family magazine, published ten times annually. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, its headquarters is now in New York City. It was founded in 1922, by DeWitt Wallace and Lila Bell Wallace...
, where Eastman served as roving editor, to publish one of its trademark condensations, bringing the future Nobel
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
laureate's work to a vast audience.
Unlike many other writers of his generation from the political right
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
, Hazlitt never experienced a period when he was a socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
or communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
, or a significant change in his classical liberal political views. He was the founding vice-president of the Foundation for Economic Education
Foundation for Economic Education
The Foundation for Economic Education is one of the oldest free-market organizations established in the United States to study and advance the freedom philosophy. Murray Rothbard recognizes FEE for creating a "crucial open center" that he credits with launching the movement...
. Established by Leonard Read
Leonard Read
Leonard E. Read was an American economist and the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, which was the first modern free market think tank in the United States....
in 1946, FEE is considered to be the first "think tank" for free market ideas. He was also one of the original members of the classical liberal Mont Pelerin Society
Mont Pelerin Society
The Mont Pelerin Society is an international organization composed of economists , philosophers, historians, intellectuals, business leaders, and others who favour classical liberalism...
in 1947.
With John Chamberlain
John Chamberlain (journalist)
John Rensselaer Chamberlain was an American journalist, historian of business and the economy, and literary critic, dubbed "one of America’s most trusted book reviewers."-Early life:...
(and Suzanne La Follette
Suzanne La Follette
Suzanne Clara La Follette was an American journalist and author who advocated for libertarian feminism in the first half of the 20th century. As an editor she helped found several magazines. She was an early and ardent feminist and a vocal anti communist.-Family:She was born in Washington state...
as managing editor
Managing editor
A managing editor is a senior member of a publication's management team.In the United States, a managing editor oversees and coordinates the publication's editorial activities...
), Hazlitt served as editor of the early free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
publication The Freeman
The Freeman
The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty is one of the oldest and most respected libertarian journals in the United States. It is published by the Foundation for Economic Education . It started as a digest sized monthly study journal; it currently appears 10 times per year and is a larger-sized magazine. FEE...
from 1950 to 1952, and as sole editor-in-chief from 1952 to 1953, and its contributors during his tenure there included Hayek, Mises and Wilhelm Röpke
Wilhelm Röpke
Wilhelm Röpke was Professor of Economics, first in Jena, then in Graz, Marburg, Istanbul and finally in Geneva, and the main spiritual father of the German social market economy, theorising and collaborating to organise the post-World War II economic re-awakening of the then destroyed German...
, as well as the writers James Burnham
James Burnham
James Burnham was an American popular political theorist, best known for his influential work The Managerial Revolution, published in 1941. Burnham was a radical activist in the 1930s and an important factional leader of the American Trotskyist movement. In later years he left Marxism and produced...
, John Dos Passos
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...
, Max Eastman
Max Eastman
Max Forrester Eastman was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet, and a prominent political activist. For many years, Eastman was a supporter of socialism, a leading patron of the Harlem Renaissance and an activist for a number of liberal and radical causes...
, John T. Flynn
John T. Flynn
John Thomas Flynn was an American journalist best known for his opposition to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and to American entry into World War II.-Career:...
, Frank Meyer, Raymond Moley
Raymond Moley
Raymond Charles Moley was a leading New Dealer who became its bitter opponent before the end of the Great Depression....
, Morrie Ryskind
Morrie Ryskind
Morrie Ryskind was an American dramatist, lyricist and writer of theatrical productions and motion pictures, who became a conservative political activist later in life.-Biography:...
and George Sokolsky
George Sokolsky
George Ephraim Sokolsky was a weekly radio broadcaster for the National Association of Manufacturers and a columnist for The New York Herald Tribune, who later switched to The New York Sun and other Hearst newspapers.-Biography:...
. Prior to his becoming editor, The Freeman had supported Senator Joseph McCarthy
Joseph McCarthy
Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957...
in his conflict with President Harry Truman on the issue of communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
, "undiscriminatingly" according to some critics, but upon becoming editor, Hazlitt changed the magazine's policy to one of support for President Truman.
The Freeman is widely considered to be an important forerunner to the conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
, founded by William F. Buckley, Jr.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing was noted for...
, which from the start included many of the same contributing editors. Hazlitt himself was on the masthead of National Review, either as a Contributing Editor or, later, as Contributor, from its inception in 1955 until his death in 1993. There were differences between the journals: The Freeman under Hazlitt was more secular
Secularism
Secularism is the principle of separation between government institutions and the persons mandated to represent the State from religious institutions and religious dignitaries...
and presented a wider range of foreign policy
Foreign policy
A country's foreign policy, also called the foreign relations policy, consists of self-interest strategies chosen by the state to safeguard its national interests and to achieve its goals within international relations milieu. The approaches are strategically employed to interact with other countries...
opinion than the later National Review.
Even prior to her success with The Fountainhead
The Fountainhead
The Fountainhead is a 1943 novel by Ayn Rand. It was Rand's first major literary success and brought her fame and financial success. More than 6.5 million copies of the book have been sold worldwide....
, the novelist Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
was a friend of both Hazlitt and his wife, Frances, and it was Hazlitt who introduced Rand to Mises, bringing together the two figures who would become most associated with the defense of pure laissez-faire
Laissez-faire
In economics, laissez-faire describes an environment in which transactions between private parties are free from state intervention, including restrictive regulations, taxes, tariffs and enforced monopolies....
capitalism. The two became admirers of Hazlitt and of one another.
Hazlitt became well known both through his articles and by frequently debating prominent politicians on the radio, including: Vice President Henry A. Wallace
Henry A. Wallace
Henry Agard Wallace was the 33rd Vice President of the United States , the Secretary of Agriculture , and the Secretary of Commerce . In the 1948 presidential election, Wallace was the nominee of the Progressive Party.-Early life:Henry A...
, Secretary of State
United States Secretary of State
The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
Dean Acheson
Dean Acheson
Dean Gooderham Acheson was an American statesman and lawyer. As United States Secretary of State in the administration of President Harry S. Truman from 1949 to 1953, he played a central role in defining American foreign policy during the Cold War...
, and U.S. Senators Paul Douglas
Paul Douglas
Paul Howard Douglas was an liberal American politician and University of Chicago economist. A war hero, he was elected as a Democratic U.S. Senator from Illinois from in the 1948 landslide, serving until his defeat in 1966...
and Hubert H. Humphrey, the future Vice President. In the early 1950s, he also occasionally appeared on the New York television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
current events program Longines Chronoscope, interviewing figures such as Senator Joseph McCarthy and Congressman Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., along with coeditor William Bradford Huie
William Bradford Huie
William Bradford "Bill" Huie was an American journalist, editor, publisher, television interviewer, screenwriter, lecturer, and novelist.-Biography:...
. At the invitation of philosopher Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook was an American pragmatic philosopher known for his contributions to public debates.A student of John Dewey, Hook continued to examine the philosophy of history, of education, politics, and of ethics. After embracing Marxism in his youth, Hook was known for his criticisms of...
, he was also a participating member of the American Committee for Cultural Freedom
American Committee for Cultural Freedom
The American Committee for Cultural Freedom was the U.S. affiliate of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an organization that, during the Cold War, sought to encourage intellectuals to be critical of the Soviet Union and Communism, and to combat, according to a writer for the New York Times, "the...
in the 1950s.
When he finally left Newsweek in 1966, the magazine replaced Hazlitt with three university professors: "free-market monetarist
Monetarism
Monetarism is a tendency in economic thought that emphasizes the role of governments in controlling the amount of money in circulation. It is the view within monetary economics that variation in the money supply has major influences on national output in the short run and the price level over...
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman was an American economist, statistician, academic, and author who taught at the University of Chicago for more than three decades...
of the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, middle-of-the-roader Henry Wallich
Henry Wallich
Henry Christopher Wallich was an American economist and central banker. He was a professor of economics at Yale University and a member of the Council of Economic Advisors during the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration. He was an economic collumnist for Newsweek magazine, from 1965...
of Yale
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, and Keynesian
Keynesian economics
Keynesian economics is a school of macroeconomic thought based on the ideas of 20th-century English economist John Maynard Keynes.Keynesian economics argues that private sector decisions sometimes lead to inefficient macroeconomic outcomes and, therefore, advocates active policy responses by the...
Paul A. Samuelson of M.I.T.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
" His last published scholarly article appeared in the first volume of The Review of Austrian Economics (now, The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics) in 1987.
Hazlitt died at the age of 98.
He was awarded an Honorary Doctoral Degree at Universidad Francisco Marroquín
Universidad Francisco Marroquín
Universidad Francisco Marroquín is a private, secular, university in Guatemala City, Guatemala. According to the school's website, "the mission of Universidad Francisco Marroquín is to teach and disseminate the ethical, legal and economic principles of a sociey of free and responsible persons."...
in Guatemala
Guatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
.
Economics and Philosophy
"The times call for courage. The times call for hard work. But if the demands are high, it is because the stakes are even higher. They are nothing less than the future of liberty, which means the future of civilization."
Economics in One Lesson
Economics in One Lesson
Economics in One Lesson is an introduction to free market economics written by Henry Hazlitt and published in 1946, based on Frédéric Bastiat's essay .The "One Lesson" is stated in Part One of the book:...
(1946) has been called Hazlitt's "most enduring contribution," with a million copies sold and available in ten languages, it is considered an "enduring classic" in conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
, free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
and libertarian
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
circles. Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
called it a "magnificent job of theoretical exposition," while Congressman Ron Paul
Ron Paul
Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul is an American physician, author and United States Congressman who is seeking to be the Republican Party candidate in the 2012 presidential election. Paul represents Texas's 14th congressional district, which covers an area south and southwest of Houston that includes...
ranks it with the works of Frédéric Bastiat
Frédéric Bastiat
Claude Frédéric Bastiat was a French classical liberal theorist, political economist, and member of the French assembly. He was notable for developing the important economic concept of opportunity cost.-Biography:...
and F. A. Hayek. Hayek himself praised the work, as did fellow Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
laureate Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman was an American economist, statistician, academic, and author who taught at the University of Chicago for more than three decades...
, who said that Hazlitt's description of the price system, for example, was "a true classic: timeless, correct, painlessly instructive." In his book Basic Economics, Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell is an American economist, social theorist, political philosopher, and author. A National Humanities Medal winner, he advocates laissez-faire economics and writes from a libertarian perspective...
also compliments Hazlitt, and Sowell's work has been cited as "following" in the "Bastiat-Hazlitt tradition" of economic exposition. In 1996, Laissez Faire Books
Laissez Faire Books
Laissez Faire Books is an online bookseller that was originally based in New York City when it first opened in 1972. The bookstore's ownership was transferred to the International Society for Individual Liberty in November 2007...
issued a 50th anniversary edition with an introduction by publisher and presidential candidate Steve Forbes
Steve Forbes
Malcolm Stevenson "Steve" Forbes, Jr. is an American editor, publisher, and businessman. He is the editor-in-chief of business magazine Forbes as well as president and chief executive officer of its publisher, Forbes Inc. He was a Republican candidate in the U.S. Presidential primaries in 1996...
.
Another of his enduring works is The Failure of the New Economics
The Failure of the New Economics
The Failure of the "New Economics" is a book by Henry Hazlitt offering a detailed critique of John Maynard Keynes' work The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money .-Overview:...
(1959), a detailed, chapter-by-chapter critique of John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes of Tilton, CB FBA , was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments...
's highly influential General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, about which he paraphrased a quote attributed to Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
, that he was "unable to find in it a single doctrine that is both true and original. What is original in the book is not true; and what is true is not original." Hazlitt also published three books on the subject of inflation
Inflation
In economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time.When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services. Consequently, inflation also reflects an erosion in the purchasing power of money – a...
, including From Bretton Woods to World Inflation (1984), and two influential works on poverty
Poverty
Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...
, Man vs. The Welfare State (1969), and The Conquest of Poverty (1973), thought by some to have anticipated the later work of Charles Murray
Charles Murray (author)
Charles Alan Murray is an American libertarian political scientist, author, columnist, and pundit working as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, DC...
in Losing Ground.
His major work in philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
is The Foundations of Morality (1964), a treatise on ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
defending utilitarianism
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness", by whatever means necessary. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can...
, which builds on the work of David Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
and John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...
. Hazlitt's 1922 work, The Way to Will-Power has been described as a defense of free will
Free will
"To make my own decisions whether I am successful or not due to uncontrollable forces" -Troy MorrisonA pragmatic definition of free willFree will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints. The existence of free will and its exact nature and definition have long...
or "individual initiative against the deterministic
Determinism
Determinism is the general philosophical thesis that states that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could happen. There are many versions of this thesis. Each of them rests upon various alleged connections, and interdependencies of things and...
claims of Freudian
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
." In contrast to many other thinkers on the political right, he was an agnostic
Agnosticism
Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable....
with regard to religious beliefs
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
.
In A New Constitution Now (1942), published during Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
's unprecedented third term as President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
, Hazlitt called for the replacement of the existing fixed-term presidential tenure in the United States with a more Anglo-European system of "cabinet" government, under which a head of state who had lost the confidence of the legislature or cabinet might be removed from office after a no-confidence vote in as little as 30 days. (Shortly following FDR's death, presidential term limits
Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Twenty-second Amendment of the United States Constitution sets a term limit for the President of the United States. The Congress passed the amendment on March 21, 1947...
were enacted.) His 1951 novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
, The Great Idea (reissued in 1966 as Time Will Run Back) depicts rulers of a centrally-planned socialist dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
discovering, amid the resulting economic chaos, the need to restore market pricing system, private ownership of capital goods and competitive markets.
Hazlitt was a prolific writer, authoring 25 works in his lifetime.
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was an Austrian economist, philosopher, and classical liberal who had a significant influence on the modern Libertarian movement and the "Austrian School" of economic thought.-Biography:-Early life:...
said at a dinner honoring Hazlitt: "In this age of the great struggle in favor of freedom and the social system in which men can live as free men, you are our leader. You have indefatigably fought against the step-by-step advance of the powers anxious to destroy everything that human civilization has created over a long period of centuries... You are the economic conscience of our country and of our nation."
The Henry Hazlitt Foundation
From 1997 to 2002 there was an organization called The Henry Hazlitt FoundationHenry Hazlitt Foundation
The Henry Hazlitt Foundation was a public interest or advocacy organization founded in 1997 by Chris Whitten, who had been publishing Free-Market.com since 1995. The Foundation was named after free-market economist and writer Henry Hazlitt...
which actively promoted libertarian
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
networking online, especially through its website Free-Market.Net. This organization was named in honor of Hazlitt because he was known for introducing a wide range of people to libertarian ideas through his writing and for helping free-market advocates connect with each other. It is important to note that the foundation was started after Hazlitt's passing and had no official connection with his estate.
Books
- Thinking as a Science, 1916
- The Way to Will-Power, 1922
- A Practical Program for America, 1932
- The Anatomy of Criticism, 1933
- Instead of Dictatorship, 1933
- A New Constitution Now, 1942
- Freedom in America: The Freeman (with Virgil JordanVirgil JordanVirgil Jordan was an economist and author. He was a past president of the National Industrial Conference Board and editor with BusinessWeek.-Bibliography:* Freedom in America , 1945...
), 1945 - The Full Employment Bill: An Analysis, 1945
- Economics in One Lesson, 1946
- Economics in One Lesson (Spanish), 1946
- Will Dollars Save the World?, 1947
- Forum: Do Current Events Indicate Greater Government Regulation, Nationalization, or Socialization?, Proceedings from a Conference Sponsored by The Economic and Business Foundation, 1948
- The Illusions of Point Four, 1950
- The Great Idea, 1951 (titled Time Will Run Back in Great Britain, revised and rereleased with this title in 1966.)
- The Free Man's Library, 1956
- The Failure of the 'New Economics': An Analysis of the Keynesian Fallacies, 1959
- The Critics of Keynesian Economics (ed.), 1960
- What You Should Know About Inflation, 1960
- The Foundations of Morality, 1964
- Man vs. The Welfare State, 1969
- The Conquest of Poverty, 1973
- To Stop Inflation, Return to Gold, 1974
- The Inflation Crisis and How to Resolve It, 1978
- From Bretton Woods to World Inflation, 1984
- The Wisdom of the Stoics: Selections from Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, with Frances Hazlitt, 1984
- The Wisdom of Henry Hazlitt, 1993
- Is Politics Insoluble?, 1997
- Rules for Living: The Ethics of Social Cooperation, 1999 (an abridgment by Bettina Bien Greaves of Hazlitt's The Foundations of Morality.)
See also
- Classical liberalismClassical liberalismClassical liberalism is the philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets....
- Laissez Faire
- LibertarianismLibertarianismLibertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
- Mont Pelerin SocietyMont Pelerin SocietyThe Mont Pelerin Society is an international organization composed of economists , philosophers, historians, intellectuals, business leaders, and others who favour classical liberalism...
- UtilitarianismUtilitarianismUtilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness", by whatever means necessary. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can...
Articles
- Henry Hazlitt: A Giant of Liberty, Ludwig von Mises InstituteLudwig von Mises InstituteThe Ludwig von Mises Institute , based in Auburn, Alabama, is a libertarian academic organization engaged in research and scholarship in the fields of economics, philosophy and political economy. Its scholarship is inspired by the work of Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises...
, 1994. ISBN 978-0-945466-16-1. - Henry Hazlitt: an Appreciation, Foundation for Economic EducationFoundation for Economic EducationThe Foundation for Economic Education is one of the oldest free-market organizations established in the United States to study and advance the freedom philosophy. Murray Rothbard recognizes FEE for creating a "crucial open center" that he credits with launching the movement...
, 1989, pp. 8–9. - Interview with Henry Hazlitt
- "Henry Hazlitt: The People's Austrian" in Randall Holcombe, edit., The Great Austrian Economists (2009; originally published as 15 Great Austrian Economists, 1999), pp. 167–179.
- Richard M. Ebeling and Roy A. Childs, Jr., "Henry Hazlitt: An Appreciation," Laissez Faire BooksLaissez Faire BooksLaissez Faire Books is an online bookseller that was originally based in New York City when it first opened in 1972. The bookstore's ownership was transferred to the International Society for Individual Liberty in November 2007...
, November 1985. - Bettina Bien Greaves, "Henry Hazlitt: A Man for Many Seasons," The FreemanThe FreemanThe Freeman: Ideas on Liberty is one of the oldest and most respected libertarian journals in the United States. It is published by the Foundation for Economic Education . It started as a digest sized monthly study journal; it currently appears 10 times per year and is a larger-sized magazine. FEE...
, November, 1989. - Henry Hazlitt, "The Early History of FEE," The Freeman, March 1984 (article is excerpted from his remarks at the Leonard E. Read Memorial Conference on Freedom, November 18, 1983.)
- Llewellyn H. Rockwell, "Henry Hazlitt: Journalist of the Century," The Freeman, May, 1995.
- Murray N. Rothbard, "Henry Hazlitt Celebrates 80th Birthday," Human EventsHuman EventsHuman Events is a weekly American conservative magazine. It takes its name from the first sentence of the United States Declaration of Independence...
, November 20, 1974, reprinted in The Libertarian Forum, December 1974. - George SelginGeorge SelginGeorge A. Selgin is a professor of economics in the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington DC, and an associate editor of Econ Journal Watch...
, Don Boudreaux, and Sanford Ikeda:, "An Interview with Henry Hazlitt", Austrian Economics Newsletter, Spring, 1984. - "Reason Interview: Henry Hazlitt", ReasonReasonReason is a term that refers to the capacity human beings have to make sense of things, to establish and verify facts, and to change or justify practices, institutions, and beliefs. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, ...
, December, 1984 - Hans F. Sennholz, edit., The Wisdom of Henry Hazlitt, Foundation for Economic Education, 1993)
See Bibliography of Henry Hazlitt for complete list.