ABSTRACT
Friedrich A. von Hayek is today seen as an important precursor of the ‘new right’. Born in Vienna, he studied under Ludwig von Mises, who convinced him of the errors of socialism. Holding Chairs at the London School of Economics, and as Professor of Social and Moral Sciences at the University of Chicago, his major technical work in economics was in the fi elds of capital, trade-cycle and monetary theory. His major books, including The Road to Serfdom (1944), The Constitution of Liberty (1960) and the three volumes of Law, Legislation and Liberty (1973, 1976, 1979) represent the most complete and coherent statement of the liberal principles of individualism, of a limited, constitutionally specifi ed role for the state, of a faith in the market, and of the evils of all utopian conceptions and forms of planning. Hayek’s intellectual project was to develop the economic theory of liberalism as well as to de-legitimate the post-war theory of interventionism and oppose the extension of welfare rights throughout society.
