Why F.A. Hayek Was A Conservative*

*in the American sense. And What it Means For the Conservative Movement

If you deign to read progressive and post-liberal commentary, you have already been exposed to lengthy criticisms of the Austrian economist, F.A. Hayek. Among the frequent charges:

• Hayek advocated atomic individualism (categorically false).

• Hayek reduced economics and human well-being to GDP figures and other economic statistics (categorically false).

• Hayek reduced human nature to “homo economicus”, asserting that humans are, or should be, solely motivated by material self-interest (categorically false).

• Hayek was an anarcho-capitalist, who saw no legitimate role for state authority, social programs, or government regulation (categorically false).

• Hayek was an advocate of meritocracy, which is to blame for our current social disunity and the collapse of the common good. (categorically false)

The progressive and post-liberal misconception of Hayek has several apparent causes. The critiques focus on Hayek’s more polemical work (The Road to Serfdom), and ignore his essays and more complex social thought. Additionally, they often lump Hayek in with Chicago School economists such as Milton Friedman and politicians such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. This is legitimate to some degree, they were arguably pursuing similar ends (the defense of private property, markets and the West against Soviet and Maoist collectivism). Yet it overlooks the extent to which Hayek explicitly rejected the Chicago school’s positivist methodology. And Hayek surely would have objected to many later practices of right-wing politicians, even those avowedly committed to “free markets.”

This progressive and post-liberal misrepresentation of Hayek is then often leveraged to criticize American post-war conservatism as an illogical fusion of free market libertarianism and social conservatism. How could atomistic, anti-religious, anti-tradition libertarians ever make common cause with the reactionary tradition of American conservatives? Without a common existential enemy, such a coalition was bound to fail. But what if Hayek was not this caricature?

The evidence against Hayek’s critics abounds. In his 1947 address to the Mont Pelerin Society, he warned of “intolerant” branches of modern liberalism that pitted rationalism against religion. Hayek predicted that “unless this breach between true liberal and religious convictions can be healed there is no hope for a revival of liberal forces.” In his 1960 book The Constitution of Liberty, Hayek explained:

"There probably never has existed a genuine belief in freedom, and there has certainly been no successful attempt to operate a free society, without a genuine reverence for grown institutions, for customs and habits and ‘all those securities of liberty which arise from regulation of long prescription and ancient ways.’ Paradoxical as it may appear, it is probably true that a successful free society will always in a large measure be a tradition-bound society.”

This is about as far from the caricature of Hayek found in post-liberal screeds as you can get. Edward Feser is a notable exception: a post-liberal critic who actually engages with Hayek’s thought. As Feser wrote in 2003, “Where fundamental moral institutions are concerned, Hayek was very much in line with the Burkean conservative tradition, a tradition wary of tampering with those institutions.”

The sole seemingly compelling argument Hayek’s superficial right-wing critics retain is his piece, “Why I am Not a Conservative.” This piece must be read carefully, however. And by read carefully, I mean that critics of Hayek should progress past the title and the first paragraph, and reach into the second paragraph. There Hayek explains that “the defender of the American tradition is a liberal in the European sense.” The corresponding footnote clarifies that normal American conservatives are, in fact, liberals in Hayek’s sense. The piece would perhaps be more accurately titled “Why I am an American Conservative.” (Perhaps, though, Hayek knew what he was doing).

What follows is an edited version of a Twitter article I posted earlier this year, intended to portray a more accurate genealogy of Hayek’s thought:

This morning, reading Edmund Burke's preface to the second edition of his first book, I chanced upon a familiar phrase: "the abuse of reason." Familiar, that is, from my study of Friedrich Hayek.

During the Second World War, Hayek launched an "Abuse of Reason" project. He intended this project as his contribution to the allies' war effort. It included Hayek's most famous book, "The Road to Serfdom." Hayek's intent was simultaneously grand and simple: to defend civilization against the abuse of reason. By this he meant the attempt to subject economics, law, morality, and other social fields to the methods of physical science, or abstract rationalistic speculation. Is it possible, then, that Hayek took the phrase, "the abuse of reason", from Burke? And, has anyone else noticed?

The young Edmund Burke employed this phrase, the abuse of reason, to criticise the recently deceased Lord Bolingbroke. Bolingbroke juxtaposed natural to artificial religion. He advocated deism over traditional Christianity, and wished to expose existing society to the light of reason. In its place, Bolingbroke would construct a new system of morality and religion.

Burke satirized Bolingbroke so slyly that many readers failed to note his sarcasm, among them Murray Rothbard. They thought Burke to sincerely advocating for anarchism. To correct the record, the following year Burke appended a preface to the second edition that clarified his true aim: "to show that ... the same engines which were employed for the destruction of religion, might be employed with equal success for the subversion of government." The abuse of reason would lead to the destruction of civilization. Burke wrote this in 1757, over three decades before the French Revolution, indicating a consistent theme throughout his life's work.

There are many clues suggesting that Hayek's Abuse of Reason project was Burkean in inspiration. His 1952 "The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on The Abuse of Reason," called Burke "one of the most important ... among the fathers" of the view that social institutions emerge "as the unintended result of the separate actions of many individuals." And not as the result of conscious individual design.

In his essay, “Individualism True and False,” Hayek referred to Burke as "one of the greatest representatives of true individualism" and cited a biography of Burke, a journal article linking Burke to his friend Adam Smith, and two separate volumes of the complete works of Burke. That is to say, Hayek was not a Burkean whose knowledge was confined to the latter's "Reflections on the Revolution in France". The next question is whether existing Hayek scholarship noticed Burke's use of "the abuse of reason", and linked it to Hayek. I begin with Bruce Caldwell 2004 intellectual biography, "Hayek's Challenge." Campbell does not list Edmund Burke in the index. In none of Caldwell mentions of the Abuse of Reason project does he link it to Burke.

Next I turn to Caldwell and Hansjorder Klausinger's 2022 jointly authored biography, "Hayek: A Life", which covers the years 1899 to 1950. Burke appears in the index twice. On page 593 the authors note that Hayek first considered naming what became the Mont Pelerin Society after Burke, but changed his mind. And on age 607 they cover how Hayek grouped Burke with Locke, Mandeville, Smith, Hume, Tocqueville, Acton and others as "true" individualists. Nowhere, however, do Caldwell and Klausinger attribute the phrase “The Abuse of Reason” to Burke. They are professors of economics, not political theorists. It seems likely they never read the preface to the second edition of one of Burke's lesser works.

Moreover, Hayek himself does not explicitly link the phrase to Burke. This could be an instance of simple forgetfulness. On the other hand, Hayek took extensive notes and often took care to attribute obscure ideas and phrases to their precise sources elsewhere. And, his Abuse of Reason project was, as Caldwell often notes, intended as Hayek's contribution to the allies' fight against the Axis powers. Indeed, Hayek began the project after his overtures to official British propaganda efforts were rejected. That is to say, Hayek's project had both a scientific and a political purpose. We cannot reject the idea that Hayek deliberately obscured his debt to Burke, and could only speculate as to his motivations for doing so.

If Burke is indeed Hayek's source for the project that defined his career, that suggests that existing Hayek scholarship may have underrated the role of Burke. And therefore this academic work on Hayek might have missed the extent to which Hayek's critique of John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte drew on Burke's thought. Like Burke, Hayek recognized that the abuse of reason does not just undermine religious dogma, or hoary tradition. The rationalist critique of tradition threatens the foundations of civilization itself.

Hayek’s support for liberty and markets was never artificially fused with the conservative’s concern for order and virtue. Neither William F. Buckley nor Frank Meyer is to blame for such an incoherent combination of classical liberalism and conservatism. Rather, Hayek’s thought, like Burke’s, already contained all the necessary elements for ordered liberty.