Serfdom is the status of peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to Manorialism. It was a condition of bondage or modified slavery which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe and lasted to the mid-19th century. Serfdom included the forced labor of serfs bound to a hereditary plot of land owned by a lord in return for protection and the right to work on fields they leased from their landlords to maintain their own subsistence. Serfdom involved not only work in owner's fields, but his mines, forests and roads. Manors formed the basic unit of society and the lord and his serfs were bound legally, economically, and socially. Serfs were laborers who were bound to the land; they formed the lowest social class of the feudal society. Serfs were also defined as people in whose labor landowners held property rights. Before the 1861 abolition of serfdom in Russia, a landowner's estate was often measured by the number of "souls" he owned. Feudalism in Europe evolved from agricultural slavery in the late Roman Empire and spread through Europe around the 10th century; it flourished in Europe during the Middle Ages but lasted until the 19th century in some countries. Although the decline of serfdom has sometimes been attributed to the Black Death, which reached Europe in 1347, the decline had begun before that date. For example, serfdom was ''de facto'' ended in France by Philip IV, Louis X (1315), and Philip V (1318). With the exception of a few isolated cases, serfdom had ceased to exist in France by the 15th century. In Early Modern France, French nobles nevertheless maintained a great number of seigneurial privileges over the free peasants that worked lands under their control. Serfdom was formally abolished in France in 1789.

After the Renaissance, serfdom became increasingly rare in most of Western Europe but grew strong in Central and Eastern Europe, where it had previously been less common (this phenomenon was known as "later serfdom"). In England, the end of serfdom began with Tyler’s Rebellion and was fully ended when Elizabeth I freed the last remaining serfs in 1574. There were native-born Scottish serfs until 1799, when coal miners previously kept in serfdom gained emancipation. However, most Scottish serfs had been freed before this time. In Eastern Europe the institution persisted until the mid-19th century. It persisted in Austria-Hungary till 1848 and was abolished in Russia in 1861. In Finland, Norway and Sweden feudalism was not established, and serfdom did not exist. But serfdom-like institutions did exist in both Denmark (the stavnsbånd, from 1733 to 1788) and its colony Iceland (the much more restrictive vistarband, from 1490 until the late 19th century).

According to the census of 1857 the number of private serfs in Russia was 23.1 million.

Feudalism, according to Joseph R. Strayer, can be applied to the societies of ancient Persia, ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt (Sixth to Twelfth dynasty), Muslim India, China (Zhou Dynasty, and end of Han Dynasty) and Japan during the Shogunate. James Lee and Cameron Campbell describe the Chinese Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) as also maintaining a form of serfdom. According to Pierre Bonnassie, feudalism could also be seen in Spain. Although serfdom is believed to exist in all these regions, it was not uniform throughout them. Tibet is described by Melvyn Goldstein to have had serfdom until 1959, but whether or not the Tibetan form of peasant tenancy qualified as serfdom was widespread is contested. Bhutan is described by Tashi Wangchuk, a Bhutanese civil servant, as abolishing serfdom officially by 1959, but Wangchuk believes less than or about 10% of poor peasants were in copyhold situations.

Etymology

The word "serf" originated from the Middle French "serf", and can be traced further back to the Latin ''servus'', meaning "slave". In Late Antiquity and most of the Middle Ages, what we now call serfs were usually designated in Latin as ''coloni'' (sing. ''colonus''). As slavery gradually disappeared and the legal status of these ''servi'' became nearly identical to that of ''coloni'', the term changed meaning into our modern concept of "serf". The term "serfdom" was coined in 1850.

Dependency and the lower orders

Serfs had a specific place in feudal society, as did barons and knights: in return for protection, a serf would reside upon and work a parcel of land held by his lord. There was thus a degree of reciprocity in the manorial system.

One rationale was that a serf "worked for all," while a knight or baron "fought for all" and a churchman "prayed for all"; thus everyone had a place. The serf worked harder than the others, and was the worst fed and paid, but at least he had his place and, unlike slaves, had his own land and property.

A manorial lord could not sell his serfs as a Roman might sell his slaves. On the other hand, if he chose to dispose of a parcel of land, the serf or serfs associated with that land went with it to serve their new lord. Further, a serf could not abandon his lands without permission, nor could he sell them.

Becoming a serf

A freeman became a serf usually through force or necessity. Sometimes freeholders or allodial owners were intimidated into dependency by the greater physical and legal force of a local baron. Often a few years of crop failure, a war or brigandage might leave a person unable to make his own way. In such a case a bargain was struck with the lord. In exchange for protection, service was required, in payment and/or with labour. These bargains were formalized in a ceremony known as "bondage" in which a serf placed his head in the seigneur's hands, parallel to the ceremony of "homage" where a vassal placed his hands between those of his lord. These oaths bound the seigneur to their new serf and outlined the terms of their agreement. Often these bargains were severe. A 7th century Anglo Saxon "Oath of Fealty" states "By the Lord before whom this sanctuary is holy, I will to N. be true and faithful, and love all which he loves and shun all which he shuns, according to the laws of God and the order of the world. Nor will I ever with will or action, through word or deed, do anything which is unpleasing to him, on condition that he will hold to me as I shall deserve it, and that he will perform everything as it was in our agreement when I submitted myself to him and chose his will." To become a serf was a commitment that invaded all aspects of the serf’s life.

Moreover, serfdom was inherited. By taking on the duties of serfdom, serfs bound not only themselves but all of their future heirs.

Serfdom's class system

The class of peasant was often broken down into smaller categories. These distinctions were often less clear than suggested by their different names. Most often, there were two types of peasants - freemen and villeins. Lower classes of peasants, generally taken from the second and third sons of villeins known as cottars or bordars in the British Isles, and slaves, made up the final percentage of workers.

Freemen

Freemen, or free tenants, were essentially rent-paying tenant farmers who owed little or no service to the lord. In parts of 11th century England freemen made up only 10% of the peasant population, and in the rest of Europe their numbers were small.

Villeins

A villein was the most common type of serf in the Middle Ages. Villeins had more rights and higher status than the lowest serf, but were under a number of legal restrictions that differentiated them from freemen. Villeins generally rented small homes, with or without land. As part of the contract with their landlord, they were expected to spend some of their time farming the lord's fields. The rest of their time was spent farming their own land. Like other types of serfs, they were required to provide other services, possibly in addition to paying rent of money or goods. These services could be very onerous. Villeins were tied to the land and could not move away without their lord's consent. However, in other regards, they were free men in the eyes of the law. Villeins were generally able to have their own property, unlike slaves. Villeinage, as opposed to other forms of serfdom, was most common in Western European feudalism, where land ownership had developed from roots in Roman law.

A variety of kinds of villeinage existed in Europe in the Middle Ages. Half-villeins received only half as many strips of land for their own use and owed a full complement of labor to the lord, often forcing them to rent out their services to other serfs to make up for this hardship. Villeinage was not, however, a purely exploitative relationship. In the Middle Ages, land guaranteed sustenance and survival, and being a villein guaranteed access to land. Landlords, even where legally entitled to do so, rarely evicted villeins because of the value of their labour. Villeinage was much preferable to being a vagabond, a slave, or an unlanded labourer.

In many medieval countries, a villein could gain freedom by escaping to a city and living there for more than a year; but this avenue involved the loss of land and agricultural livelihood, a prohibitive price unless the landlord was especially tyrannical or conditions in the village were unusually difficult. Villeins newly arrived in the city in some cases took to crime for survival, which gave the alternate spelling "villain" its modern meaning.

Bordars and cottagers

The status of bordar or cottager ranked below a serf in the social hierarchy of a manor, holding a cottage, garden and just enough land to feed a family (about 5 acres or 2 hectares). They were required to provide labour on the demesne on specified days of the week. The bordars and cottagers did not own their plow horses. In 1086 the Domesday Book showed that England comprised 12% freeholders; 35% serfs or villeins: 30% cotters and borders: and 9% slaves.

Slaves

The last type of serf was the slave. Slaves had the fewest rights and benefits from the manor. They owned no land, worked for the lord exclusively and survived on donations from the landlord. It was always in the interest of the lords to prove that a servile arrangement existed, as this provided them with greater rights to fees and taxes. The legal status of a man was a primary issue in determining a person's rights and obligations in many of the manorial court cases of the period. Also, runaway slaves could be beaten if caught.

The serf's duties

The usual serf (not including slaves or cottars) paid his fees and taxes in the form of seasonally appropriate labour. Usually a portion of the week was devoted to plowing his lord's fields (demesne), harvesting crops, digging ditches, repairing fences, and often working in the manor house. The lord’s demesne included more than just fields: it included all grazing rights, forest produce (nuts, fruits, timber, and forest animals) and fish from streams; the lord had exclusive rights to these things. The rest of the serf’s time was devoted to tending his or her own fields, crops and animals in order to provide for his or her family. Most manorial work was segregated by gender during the regular times of the year; however, during the harvest, the whole family was expected to work the fields.

A major difficulty of a serf's life was that his work for his lord coincided with, and took precedence over, the work he had to perform on his own lands: when the lord's crops were ready to be harvested, so were his own. On the other hand, the serf could look forward to being well fed during his service; it was a poor lord who did not provide a substantial meal for his serfs during the harvest and planting times. In exchange for this work on the lord's property, the serf had certain privileges and rights. They were allowed to gather deadwood from their lord’s forests.

In addition to service, a serf was required to pay certain taxes and fees. Taxes were based on the assessed value of his lands and holdings. Fees were usually paid in the form of foodstuffs rather than cash. The best ration of wheat from the serf’s harvest always went to the landlord. For the most part, hunting on the lord’s property was prohibited for the serfs. On Easter Sunday the peasant family owed an extra dozen eggs, and at Christmas a goose was expected as well. When a family member died, extra taxes were paid to the manor for the heir to keep the right to till what land he had. Any young woman who wished to marry a serf outside of her manor was forced to pay a fee for the right to leave her lord, and possibly the lost labour.

Often there were arbitrary tests to judge the worthiness of their tax payments. A chicken, for example, was required to be able to jump over a fence of a given height to be considered old enough or well enough to be valued for tax purposes. The restraints of serfdom on personal and economic choice were enforced through various forms of manorial common law and the manorial administration and court.

It was also a matter of discussion whether serfs could be required by law in times of war or conflict to fight for their lord's land and property.

Benefits of serfdom

Within his constraints, a serf had some freedom. Though the common wisdom is that a serf owned "only his belly" — even his clothes were the property, in law, of his lord — a serf might still accumulate personal property and wealth, and some serfs became wealthier than their free neighbors, although this was rather an exception to the general rule. A well-to-do serf might even be able to buy his freedom.

Serfs could raise what they saw fit on their lands (within reason — a serf's taxes often had to be paid in wheat, a notoriously difficult crop) and sell the surplus at market. Their heirs were usually guaranteed an inheritance.

The landlord could not dispossess his serfs without cause and was supposed to protect them from the depredations of outlaws or other lords, and he was expected to support them by charity in times of famine.

Variations

Specifics of serfdom varied greatly through time and region. In some places, serfdom was merged with or exchanged for various forms of taxation.

The amount of labour required varied. In Poland, for example, it was a few days per year per household in the 13th century; one day per week per household in the 14th century; four days per week per household in the 17th century and six days per week per household in the 18th century. Early serfdom in Poland was mostly limited on the royal territories (''królewszczyzny'').

"Per household" means that every farm had to give a worker for the required number of days. For example, in the 18th century, six people: a peasant, his wife, three children and a hired worker would be required to work for their lord one day a week, which would be counted as six days.

Sometimes, serfs served as soldiers in the event of conflict and could earn freedom or even ennoblement for valour in combat. In other cases, serfs could purchase their freedom, be manumitted by their enlightened or generous owners, or flee to towns or newly-settled land where few questions were asked. Laws varied from country to country: in England a serf who made his way to a chartered town and evaded recapture for a year and a day obtained his freedom.

History of serfdom

Social institutions similar to serfdom were known in ancient times. The status of the helots in the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta resembled that of the medieval serfs. By the 3rd century AD, the Roman Empire faced a labour shortage. Large Roman landowners increasingly relied on Roman freemen, acting as tenant farmers, instead of slaves to provide labour. These tenant farmers, eventually known as coloni, saw their condition steadily erode. Because the tax system implemented by Dioclecian assessed taxes based on both land and the inhabitants of that land, it became administratively inconvenient for peasants to leave the land where they were counted in the census. In 332 AD Constantine issued legislation that greatly restricted the rights of the coloni and tied them to the land. Some see these laws as the beginning of medieval serfdom in Europe.

However, medieval serfdom really began with the breakup of the Carolingian Empire around the 10th century. The demise of this empire, which had ruled much of western Europe for more than 200 years, was followed by a long period during which no strong central government existed in most of Europe.

During this period, powerful feudal lords encouraged the establishment of serfdom as a source of agricultural labor. Serfdom, indeed, was an institution that reflected a fairly common practice whereby great landlords were assured that others worked to feed them and were held down, legally and economically, while doing so.

This arrangement provided most of the agricultural labour throughout the Middle Ages. Slavery persisted right through the Middle Ages, but it was rare, diminishing and largely confined to the use of household slaves. Parts of Europe, including much of Scandinavia, never adopted many feudal institutions, including serfdom.

In the later Middle Ages serfdom began to disappear west of the Rhine even as it spread through eastern Europe. This was one important cause for the deep differences between the societies and economies of eastern and western Europe.

In Western Europe, the rise of powerful monarchs, towns, and an improving economy weakened the manorial system through the 13th and 14th centuries, and serfdom was rare following the Renaissance.

Serfdom in Western Europe came largely to an end in the 15th and 16th centuries, because of changes in the economy, population, and laws governing lord-tenant relations in Western European nations. The enclosure of manor fields for livestock grazing and for larger arable plots made the economy of serfs’ small strips of land in open fields less attractive to the landowners. Furthermore, the increasing use of money made tenant farming by serfs less profitable; for much less than it cost to support a serf, a lord could now hire workers who were more skilled and pay them in cash. Paid labour was also more flexible since workers could be hired only when they were needed.

At the same time, increasing unrest and uprisings by serfs and peasants, like Tyler’s Rebellion in England in 1381, put pressure on the nobility and the clergy to reform the system. As a result serf and peasant demands were accommodated to some extent by the gradual establishment of new forms of land leases and increased personal liberties.

Another important factor in the decline of serfdom was industrial development — especially the Industrial Revolution. With the growing profitability of industry, farmers wanted to move to towns to receive higher wages than those they could earn working in the fields, while landowners also invested in the more profitable industry. This also led to the growing process of urbanization.

Serfdom reached Eastern European countries later than Western Europe — it became dominant around the 15th century. Before that time, Eastern Europe had been much more sparsely populated than Western Europe, and the lords of Eastern Europe created a peasantry-friendly environment to encourage migration east. Serfdom developed in Eastern Europe after the Black Death epidemics, which not only stopped the migration but depopulated Western Europe.

The resulting large land-to-labour ratio combined with Eastern Europe's vast, sparsely populated areas gave the lords an incentive to bind the remaining peasantry to their land. With increased demand for agricultural produce in Western Europe during the later era when Western Europe limited and eventually abolished serfdom, serfdom remained in force throughout Eastern Europe during the 17th century so that nobility-owned estates could produce more agricultural products (especially grain) for the profitable export market.

Such Eastern European countries included Prussia (Prussian Ordinances of 1525), Austria, Hungary (laws of the late 15th and early 16th centuries), the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (szlachta privileges of the early 16th century) and the Russian Empire (laws of the late 16th and first half of the 17th century). This also led to the slower industrial development and urbanisation of those regions. Generally, this process, referred to as 'second serfdom' or 'export-led serfdom', which persisted until the mid-19th century, became very repressive and substantially limited serfs' rights.

In many of these countries serfdom was abolished during the Napoleonic invasions of the early 19th century. Serfdom remained in force in most of Russia until the Emancipation reform of 1861, enacted on February 19, 1861, though in Russian Baltic provinces it had been abolished at the beginning of the 19th century. Russian serfdom was perhaps the most notable Eastern European institution, as it was never influenced by German law and migrations, and serfdom and the manorial system were enforced by the crown (Tsar), not the nobility.

The decline of serfdom

Serfdom became progressively less common through the Middle Ages, particularly after the Black Death reduced the rural population and increased the bargaining power of workers. Furthermore, the lords of many manors were willing (for payment) to ''manumit'' ("release") their serfs. Serfdom had largely died out in England by 1500 as a personal status, but land held by serf tenure (unless enfranchised) continued to be held by what was thenceforth known as a copyhold tenancy, which was not completely abolished until 1925 (although it was whittled away during the 19th and early 20th centuries). During the Late Middle Ages, peasant unrest led to outbreaks of violence against landlords. In May 1381 the English peasants revolted because of the heavy tax placed upon them by Parliament. There were similar occurrences at around the same time in Castille, Germany, northern France, Portugal, and Sweden. Although these peasant revolts were often successful, it usually took a long time before legal systems were changed.

Era of the French Revolution

The era of the French Revolution (1790s to 1820s) saw serfdom abolished in most of Europe, except Russia and Austria. In France occurred on August 11, 1789 with the "Decree Abolishing the Feudal System". This decree abolished the manorial system completely. It abolished the authority of manorial courts, outlawed pigeon houses, eliminated and altered tithes (set taxes), and freed those who were enslaved. The majority of the population consisted of peasants. This social system was no longer viable.

In German history the emancipation of the serfs came in 1770-1830, beginning with Schleswig in 1780. Prussia abolished serfdom with the "October Edict" of 1807, which upgraded the personal legal status of the peasantry and gave them ownership of half or two thirds of the lands they were working. The edict apply to all peasants whose holdings were above a certain size, and included both Crown lands and noble estates. The peasants were freed from the obligation of personal services to the lord and annual dues; in return and land owners were given ownership of 1/3 to 1/2 of the land. The peasant owned and rented the lands that were deeded to the old owners. The other German states imitated Prussia after 1815. In sharp contrast to the violence that characterized land reform in the French Revolution, Germany handled it peacefully. In Schleswig the peasants, who had been influenced by the Enlightenment, played an active role; elsewhere they were largely passive. Indeed, for most peasants, customs and traditions continued largely unchanged, including the old habits of deference to the nobles whose legal authority remains quite strong over the villagers. The old paternalistic relationship in East Prussia lasted into the 20th century. what was new was that the peasant could now sell his land, enabling him to move to the city, or buy up the land of his neighbors.

The land reforms in northwestern Germany were driven by progressive governments and local elites. They abolished feudal obligations and divided collectively owned common land into private parcels and thus created a more efficient market-oriented rural economy. It produced increased productivity and population growth. It strengthened the traditional social order because wealthy peasants obtained most of the former common land, while the rural proletariat was left without land; many left for the cities or America. Meanwhile the division of the common land served as a buffer preserving social peace between nobles and peasants. East of the Elbe River, the Junker class maintained large estates and monopolized political power.

The eradication of the feudal system marks the beginning of an era of rapid change in Europe. The change in status following the enclosure movements beginning in the later 18th century, in which various lords abandoned the open field farming of previous centuries and, essentially, took all the best land for themselves in exchange for "freeing" their serfs, may well have made serfdom seem more desirable to many peasant families.

In his book ''Das Kapital'', in Chapter 26 entitled "The Secret of Primitive Accumulation" and Chapter 27, "Expropriation of the Agricultural Population from the Land", Marx claimed that the feudal relationships of serfdom were violently transformed into private property and free labour: free of possession and free to sell their labour force on the market. Being liberated from serfdom meant being able to sell one's land and work wherever one desired. "The so-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production. It appears as primitive, because it forms the pre-historic stage of capital and of the mode of production corresponding with it." In a case history of England, Marx described how the serfs became free peasant proprietors and small farmers, who were, over time, forcibly expropriated and driven off the land, forming a property-less proletariat. He also claimed that more and more legislation was enacted by the state to control and regiment this new class of wage workers. In the meantime, the remaining farmers became capitalist farmers operating more and more on a commercial basis; and gradually, legal monopolies preventing trade and investment by entrepreneurs were broken up.

Taxes levied by the state took the place of labour dues levied by the lord. Although serfdom began its decline in Europe in the Middle Ages, it took many hundreds of years to disappear completely. In addition, the struggles of the working class during the Industrial Revolution can often be compared with the struggles of the serfs during the Middle Ages. In parts of the world today, forced labour is still used. Serfdom is an institution that has always been commonplace for human society; however, it has not always been of the same nature.

Dates of emancipation from serfdom in various countries

Scotland: neyfs (serfs) disappeared by late 14th century, but heritable jurisdictions survived until 1747. England & Wales: obsolete by 15th-16th century,

Wallachia: Never widely practiced. Officially ended in 1746 (land reforms in 1864)

Moldavia: Never widely practiced. Officially ended in 1749 (land reforms in 1864)

Savoy: 19 December 1771

Austria: 1 November 1781 (first step; second step: 1848)

Bohemia: 1 November 1781 (first step; second step: 1848)

Baden: 23 July 1783

Denmark: 20 June 1788

Helvetic Republic: 4 May 1798

Batavian Republic (Netherlands): constitution of 12 June 1798 (in theory; in practice with the introduction of the French Code Napoléon in 1811)

Serbia: 1804 (''de facto'', ''de jure'' in 1830)

Schleswig-Holstein: 19 December 1804

Swedish Pomerania: 4 July 1806

Duchy of Warsaw (Poland): 22 July 1807

Prussia: 9 October 1807 (effectively 1811-1823)

Mecklenburg: October 1807 (effectively 1820)

Bavaria: 31 August 1808

Nassau: 1 September 1812

Governorate of Estonia: 23 March 1816

Governorate of Courland: 25 August 1817

Württemberg: 18 November 1817

Governorate of Livonia: 26 March 1819

Hanover: 1831

Saxony: 17 March 1832

Hungary: 11 April 1848

Croatia: 8 May 1848

Austrian Empire: 7 September 1848

Bulgaria: 1858 (''de jure'' by Ottoman Empire; ''de facto'' in 1880)

Russian Empire: 19 February 1861 (''see Emancipation reform of 1861'')

Tonga: 1862

Congress Poland: 1864

Georgia: 1864-1871

Kalmykia: 1892

Iceland: 1894 (completely)

Bosnia and Herzegovina: 1918

Afghanistan: 1923

Bhutan: officially abolished by 1959 Tibet, People's Republic of China: March 29, 1959, but use of "serf" for Tibet is controversial

See also

Birkarls

Colonus

Debt bondage

Farm

Feudalism

Fiefdom

Folwark

Freeholder

Hacienda

Helot

Indentured servant

Josephinism

Kholop

Kolhoz

Manorialism

Ministerialis

Peonage

Russian serfdom

Serfdom Patent

Serfdom in Tibet controversy

Serfs Emancipation Day

Sharecropping

Shoen - Japanese serfdom

slavery

Smerd

Thrall

Yeoman

References

Notes

Bibliography

Backman, Clifford R. ''The Worlds of Medieval Europe'' Oxford University Press, 2003.

Blum, Jerome. ''The End of the Old Order in Rural Europe'' (Princeton UP, 1978) * Coulborn, Rushton, ed. ''Feudalism in History''. Princeton University Press, 1956.

Bonnassie, Pierre. ''From Slavery to Feudalism in South-Western Europe'' Cambridge University Press, 1991 excerpt and text search

Freedman, Paul, and Monique Bourin, eds. ''Forms of Servitude in Northern and Central Europe. Decline, Resistance and Expansion'' Brepols, 2005.

Frantzen, Allen J., and Douglas Moffat, eds. ''The World of Work: Servitude, Slavery and Labor in Medieval England''. Glasgow: Cruithne P, 1994.

Gorshkov, Boris B. "Serfdom: Eastern Europe" in Peter N. Stearns, ed,, ''Encyclopedia of European Social History: from 1352-2000'' (2001) volume 2 pp 379–88

Kahan, Arcadius. "Notes on Serfdom in Western and Eastern Europe," ''Journal of Economic History'' March 1973 33:86-99 in JSTOR

Scott, Tom, ed. ''The Peasantries of Europe'' (1998)

Vadey, Liana. "Serfdom: Western Europe" in Peter N. Stearns, ed,, ''Encyclopedia of European Social History: from 1352-2000'' (2001) volume 2 pp 369–78

White, Stephen D. ''Re-Thinking Kinship and Feudalism in Early Medieval Europe'' (2nd ed. Ashgate Variorum, 2000

Wright, William E. ''Serf, Seigneur, and Sovereign: Agrarian Reform in Eighteenth-century Bohemia'' (U of Minnesota Press, 1966).

Wunder, Heide. "Serfdom in later medieval and early modern Germany" in T. H. Aston et al., ''Social Relations and Ideas: Essays in Honour of R. H. Hilton'' (Cambridge UP, 1983), 249-72

External links

Serfdom, ''Encyclopaedia Britannica''.

Peasantry (social class), ''Encyclopaedia Britannica''.

An excerpt from the book ''Serfdom to Self-Government: Memoirs of a Polish Village Mayor, 1842–1927''.

The Causes of Slavery or Serfdom: A Hypothesis, discussion and full online text of Evsey Domar (1970), "The Causes of Slavery or Serfdom: A Hypothesis", ''Economic History Review'' 30:1 (March), pp. 18–32.

Category:Agricultural labor Category:Feudalism

ar:قنانة an:Senyoría bg:Крепостно право ca:Serf cs:Nevolnictví cy:Taeog da:Livegenskab de:Leibeigenschaft et:Pärisorjus es:Siervo eo:Servuteco fa:رعیت‌داری fr:Servage gl:Servidume hy:Ճորտատիրություն hr:Kmetstvo it:Servitù della gleba he:צמיתות lv:Dzimtbūšana lb:Leifeegeschaft lt:Baudžiava hu:Jobbágy nl:Horigheid ja:農奴制 no:Livegenskap nn:Liveigenskap nds:Liefegenschop pl:Pańszczyzna pt:Servidão ro:Iobăgie ru:Крепостное право simple:Serfdom sk:Nevoľníctvo sl:Tlačanstvo sr:Кметство sh:Kmetstvo fi:Maaorjuus sv:Livegenskap vi:Nông nô th:ระบบมาเนอร์ tr:Serf uk:Кріпосне право zh:農奴制

name	Friedrich August Hayek
school tradition	Austrian School
color	firebrick
birth date	May 08, 1899
birth place	Vienna, Austria-Hungary
death date	March 23, 1992
death place	Freiburg, Germany
nationality	British (Naturalized in 1938; formerly was Austrian)
institution	University of Freiburg (1962–1968)University of Chicago (1950–1962)London School of Economics (1931–1950)
field	Economics, political science, law, philosophy, psychology
alma mater	University of Vienna (Dr. jur. 1921, Dr. rer. pol 1923)
influences	Wieser Menger Mach Böhm-Bawerk Mises Kant Mandeville Hume Ferguson Wittgenstein Locke Burke Mill Tocqueville Acton Popper Peters
opposed	John Maynard KeynesPiero SraffaNicholas KaldorMarx
influenced	FriedmanStiglerPopperCoaseHicksBuchananLeontiefNozickSmithKantorovichKuznetsThatcherH. SimonMaltsevKirznerReaganSowellKempHarrodLeoniSartoriJ. SimonYaylaGrayLernerAlchianRothbardPaulHurwiczCowenRobertsBoudreauxBoettkeLeesonCaplanTaleb
contributions	Economic calculation problem, catallaxy, extended order, dispersed knowledge, price signal, spontaneous order, Hebbian theory
awards	Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (1974)Presidential Medal of Freedom (1991)
signature	Friedrich von Hayek signature.gif
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Friedrich August Hayek CH () (8 May 189923 March 1992), born in Austria-Hungary as Friedrich August von Hayek, was an economist and philosopher best known for his defense of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought. He is considered to be one of the most important economists and political philosophers of the twentieth century, winning the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1974. Along with his mentor Ludwig von Mises, he was an important contributor to the Austrian school of political economy. Hayek's account of how changing prices communicate information which enable individuals to coordinate their plans is widely regarded as an important achievement in economics. Hayek also produced significant work in the fields of systems thinking, jurisprudence, neuroscience and the history of ideas.

Hayek served in World War I, and said that his experience in the war and his desire to help avoid the mistakes that had led to the war (see below) led him to his career. He took his first position in 1927, the same year that Joseph Stalin consolidated his power in the Soviet Union by expelling Leon Trotsky from the Communist Party. Fascism was at the same time rising in Germany and Italy. Additionally, the Great Depression began in 1929, at the very start of Hayek's career.

In 1974 Hayek shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics with Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal for his "pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and [his] penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena." He also received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991 from president George H. W. Bush.

Hayek lived in Austria, Great Britain, the United States and Germany, and became a British subject in 1938. He spent most of his academic life at the London School of Economics (LSE), the University of Chicago, and the University of Freiburg.

Early life

Hayek was born in Vienna (then a capital of Austria-Hungary), and was the son of a doctor in the municipal health service. Hayek's grandfathers were prominent academics working in the fields of statistics and biology. His paternal line had been raised to the ranks of the Austrian nobility for its services to the state. Similarly, a generation before his maternal forebears had also been raised to the lower noble rank. However, after 1919 titles of nobility were banned by law in Austria, and the "von Hayek" family became simply the Hayek family. Hence, after 1919 Hayek's legal name became "Friedrich Hayek", not "Friedrich von Hayek". Hayek's father turned his work on regional botany into a highly esteemed botanical treatise, continuing the family's scholarly traditions.

On his mother's side, Hayek was second-cousin to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. His mother often played with Wittgenstein's sisters, and had known Ludwig well. As a result of their family relationship, Hayek became one of the first to read Wittgenstein's ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'' when the book was published in its original German edition in 1921. Although Hayek only met Wittgenstein on a few occasions, Hayek said that Wittgenstein's philosophy and methods of analysis had a profound influence on his own life and thought. In later years, Hayek recalled a discussion of philosophy with Wittgenstein, when both were officers during WW1. After Wittgenstein's death, Hayek had intended to write a biography of Wittgenstein and worked on collecting family materials, and he later assisted biographers of Wittgenstein.

At his father's suggestion as a teenager, Hayek read the genetic and evolutionary works of Hugo de Vries and the philosophical works of Ludwig Feuerbach. In school Hayek was much taken by one instructor's lectures on Aristotle's ethics.

In 1917 he joined an artillery regiment in the Austro-Hungarian Army and fought on the Italian front. Much of Hayek's combat experience was spent as a spotter in an aeroplane. He survived the war without serious injury and was decorated for bravery.

Hayek then decided to pursue an academic career, determined to help avoid the mistakes that had led to World War I. Hayek said about his experience: "The decisive influence was really World War I. It's bound to draw your attention to the problems of political organization." He vowed to work for a better world.

Education and career

At the University of Vienna, he earned doctorates in law and political science in 1921 and 1923 respectively, and he also studied philosophy, psychology, and economics. For a short time, when the University of Vienna closed, Hayek studied in Constantin von Monakow's Institute of Brain Anatomy, where Hayek spent much of his time staining brain cells. Hayek's time in Monakow's lab, and his deep interest in the work of Ernst Mach, inspired Hayek's first intellectual project, eventually published as ''The Sensory Order'' (1952). It located connective learning at the physical and neurological levels, rejecting the "sense data" associationism of the empiricists and logical positivists. Hayek presented his work to the private seminar he had created with Herbert Furth called the Geistkreis.

During his years at the U. of Vienna Carl Menger's work on the explanatory strategy of social science and Friedrich von Wieser's commanding presence in the classroom left a lasting influence on Hayek. Upon the completion of his University exams, Hayek was hired by Ludwig von Mises on the recommendation of Wieser as a specialist for the Austrian government working on the legal and economic details of the Treaty of Saint Germain. Between 1923 and 1924 Hayek worked as a research assistant to Prof. Jeremiah Jenks of New York University, compiling macroeconomic data on the American economy and the operations of the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Initially sympathetic to Wieser's democratic socialism, Hayek's economic thinking shifted away from socialism and toward the classical liberalism of Carl Menger after reading Ludwig von Mises' book ''Socialism''. It was sometime after reading ''Socialism'' that Hayek began attending Ludwig von Mises' private seminars, joining several of his university friends—including Fritz Machlup, Alfred Schutz, Felix Kaufmann,and Gottfried Haberler—who were also participating in Hayek's own, more general private seminar. It was during this time that he also encountered and befriended noted political philosopher Eric Voegelin, with whom he retained a long-standing relationship.

With the help of Mises, in the late 1920s Hayek founded and served as director of the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research, before joining the faculty of the London School of Economics (LSE) in 1931 at the behest of Lionel Robbins. Upon his arrival in London, Hayek was quickly recognized as one of the leading economic theorists in the world, and his development of the economics of processes in time and the coordination function of prices inspired the ground-breaking work of John Hicks, Abba Lerner, and many others in the development of modern microeconomics.

Seven years after the onset of the British Great Depression, which began in 1925, Hayek suggested that private investment in the public markets was a better road to wealth and economic coordination in Britain than government spending programs, as argued in a letter he co-signed with Lionel Robbins and others in an exchange of letters with John Maynard Keynes in ''The Times''. The global Great Depression formed a crucial backdrop against which Hayek formulated his positions, especially in opposition to the views of Keynes.

Economists who studied with Hayek at the LSE in the 1930s and 1940s include Arthur Lewis, Ronald Coase, John Kenneth Galbraith, Abba Lerner, Nicholas Kaldor, George Shackle, Thomas Balogh, Vera Smith, L. K. Jha, Arthur Seldon, Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, and Oskar Lange. Hayek also taught or tutored all sorts of other L.S.E. students, including David Rockefeller.

Unwilling to return to Austria after the Anschluss brought it under the control of Nazi Germany in 1938, Hayek remained in Britain and became a British subject in 1938. He held this status for the remainder of his life, although he did not live in Great Britain after 1950. He lived in the United States from 1950 to 1962 and then mostly in Germany, although briefly in Austria as well.

''The Road to Serfdom''

Hayek was concerned about the general view in Britain's academia that fascism was a capitalist reaction against socialism and ''The Road to Serfdom'' arose from those concerns. It was written between 1940 and 1943. The title was inspired by the French classical liberal thinker Alexis de Tocqueville's writings on the "road to servitude". It was first published in Britain by Routledge in March 1944 and was quite popular, leading Hayek to call it "that unobtainable book," also due in part to wartime paper rationing. When it was published in the United States by the University of Chicago in September of that year, it achieved greater popularity than in Britain. At the arrangement of editor Max Eastman, the American magazine ''Reader's Digest'' also published an abridged version in April 1945, enabling ''The Road to Serfdom'' to reach a far wider audience than academics.

The libertarian economist Walter Block has observed critically that while ''The Road to Serfdom'' is "a war cry against central planning," it appears to include a lukewarm support for a free market system and ''laissez-faire'' capitalism, with Hayek even going so far as to say that "probably nothing has done so much harm to the liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some liberals on certain rules of thumb, above all of the principle of laissez-faire capitalism". In the book, Hayek writes that the government has a role to play in the economy through the monetary system, work-hours regulation, and institutions for the flow of proper information. These are contentions associated with the point of view of ordoliberalism. Through analysis of this and many other of Hayek's works, Block asserts that: "in making the case against socialism, Hayek was led into making all sort of compromises with what otherwise appeared to be his own philosophical perspective—so much so, that if a system was erected on the basis of them, it would not differ too sharply from what this author explicitly opposed."

Chicago

In 1950, Hayek left the London School of Economics for the University of Chicago, becoming a professor in the Committee on Social Thought. Hayek's first class at Chicago was a faculty seminar on the philosophy of science attended by many of the University's most notable scientists of the time, including Enrico Fermi, Sewall Wright and Leó Szilárd. During his time at Chicago, Hayek worked on the philosophy of science, economics, political philosophy, and the history of ideas. Hayek's economic notes from this period have yet to be published. He did not become part of the Chicago School of Economics, although his recognition of the impact that demand and velocity had on money were a fundamental influence on it. It can be noted that he never taught at the Economics Department which unwaveringly refused him access.

After editing a book on John Stuart Mill's letters he planned to publish two books on the liberal order, ''The Constitution of Liberty'' and "The Creative Powers of a Free Civilization" (eventually the title for the second chapter of ''The Constitution of Liberty''). He completed ''The Constitution of Liberty'' in May 1959, with publication in February 1960. Hayek was concerned "with that condition of men in which coercion of some by others is reduced as much as is possible in society". Hayek was disappointed that the book did not receive the same enthusiastic general reception as ''The Road to Serfdom'' had sixteen years before.

Freiburg and Salzburg

From 1962 until his retirement in 1968, he was a professor at the University of Freiburg, West Germany, where he began work on his next book, ''Law, Legislation and Liberty''. Hayek regarded his years at Freiburg as "very fruitful". Following his retirement, Hayek spent a year as a visiting professor of philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he continued work on ''Law, Legislation and Liberty'', teaching a graduate seminar by the same name and another on the philosophy of social science. Primary drafts of the book were completed by 1970, but Hayek chose to re-work his drafts and finally brought the book to publication in three volumes in 1973, 1976 and 1979.

He became professor at the University of Salzburg from 1969 to 1977; he then returned to Freiburg, where he spent the rest of his days. When Hayek left Salzburg in 1977, he wrote that, "I made a mistake in moving to Salzburg". The economics department was small and the library facilities were inadequate.

Nobel laureate

On 9 October 1974, it was announced that Hayek would be awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, along with Swedish socialist economist Gunnar Myrdal. The reasons for the two of them winning the prize are described in the Nobel committee's press release. He was surprised at being given the award and believed that he was given it with Myrdal in order to balance the award with someone from the opposite side of the political spectrum. During the Nobel ceremony in December 1974, Hayek met the Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Hayek later sent him a Russian translation of ''The Road to Serfdom''. Although he spoke at his award speech of apprehension about the danger the authority of the prize would lend to an economist, the prize brought much greater public awareness of Hayek and has been described by his biographer as "the great rejuvenating event in his life".

The Denationalization of Money

In 1976, in a paper on The Denationalization of Money, Hayek advocated that rather than re-instituting a government-mandated gold standard, a free market in money be allowed to develop, with issuers of money competing with each other to produce the best, most stable and healthy currency.

This sparked an entire school of thought within economics, Free Banking, with banks not being banned from having fractional reserves as Rothbard advocated, but instead being free to experiment and discover the best method of conducting business. Economists including Richard Timberlake, George Selgin, Lawrence White, and Steven Horwitz are part of this school of thought.

Later years; resurgence of liberalism

United Kingdom politics

In February 1975 Margaret Thatcher was elected leader of the British Conservative Party. The Institute of Economic Affairs arranged a meeting between Hayek and Thatcher in London soon after. During Thatcher's only visit to the Conservative Research Department in the summer of 1975, a speaker had prepared a paper on why the "middle way" was the pragmatic path the Conservative Party should take, avoiding the extremes of left and right. Before he had finished, Thatcher "reached into her briefcase and took out a book. It was Hayek's ''The Constitution of Liberty''. Interrupting our pragmatist, she held the book up for all of us to see. 'This', she said sternly, 'is what we believe', and banged Hayek down on the table".

In 1977 Hayek was critical of the Lib-Lab pact, in which the British Liberal Party agreed to keep the British Labour government in office. Writing to ''The Times'', Hayek said: "May one who has devoted a large part of his life to the study of the history and the principles of liberalism point out that a party that keeps a socialist government in power has lost all title to the name 'Liberal'. Certainly no liberal can in future vote 'Liberal'." Hayek was criticised by Liberal politicians Lord Gladwyn and Andrew Phillips, who both claimed that the purpose of the pact was to discourage socialist legislation. Lord Gladwyn pointed out that the German Free Democrats were in coalition with the German Social Democrats. Hayek was defended by Professor Antony Flew who stated that the German Social Democrats, unlike the British Labour Party, had since the late 1950s abandoned public ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange and had instead embraced the social market economy. In 1978 Hayek came into conflict with the Liberal Party leader David Steel who claimed that liberty was only possible with "social justice and an equitable distribution of wealth and power, which in turn require a degree of active government intervention" and that the Conservative Party were more concerned with the connection between liberty and private enterprise than between liberty and democracy. Hayek claimed that a limited democracy might be better than other forms of limited government at protecting liberty but that an unlimited democracy was worse than other forms of unlimited government because "its government loses the power even to do what it thinks right if any group on which its majority depends thinks otherwise". Hayek stated that if the Conservative leader had said "that free choice is to be exercised more in the market place than in the ballot box, she has merely uttered the truism that the first is indispensable for individual freedom while the second is not: free choice can at least exist under a dictatorship that can limit itself but not under the government of an unlimited democracy which cannot".

Influence on central European politics

Ronald Reagan at his time listed Hayek as among the 2 or 3 people who most influenced his philosophy, and welcomed Hayek to the White House as a special guest. In the 1970s and 1980s, the writings of Hayek were also a major influence on many of the leaders of the "velvet" revolution in Central Europe during the collapse of the old Soviet Empire. Here are some supporting examples:

There is no figure who had more of an influence, no person had more of an influence on the intellectuals behind the Iron Curtain than Friedrich Hayek. His books were translated and published by the underground and black market editions, read widely, and undoubtedly influenced the climate of opinion that ultimately brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union.

—Milton Friedman* (Hoover Institution)

The most interesting among the courageous dissenters of the 1980s were the classical liberals, disciples of F. A. Hayek, from whom they had learned about the crucial importance of economic freedom and about the often-ignored conceptual difference between liberalism and democracy.

—Andrzej Walicki* (History, Notre Dame)

Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar came to my office the other day to recount his country’s remarkable transformation. He described a nation of people who are harder-working, more virtuous — yes, more virtuous, because the market punishes immorality — and more hopeful about the future than they’ve ever been in their history. I asked Mr. Laar where his government got the idea for these reforms. Do you know what he replied? He said, "We read Milton Friedman and F. A. Hayek."

—U.S. Representative Dick Armey

I was 25 years old and pursuing my doctorate in economics when I was allowed to spend six months of post-graduate studies in Naples, Italy. I read the Western economic textbooks and also the more general work of people like Hayek. By the time I returned to Czechoslovakia, I had an understanding of the principles of the market. In 1968, I was glad at the political liberalism of the Dubcek Prague Spring, but was very critical of the Third Way they pursued in economics.

—Vaclav Klaus (President of the Czech Republic)

Chile

Hayek visited Chile a handful of times in the 1970s and 1980s during the government of general Augusto Pinochet and accepted being named Honorary Chairman of the "Centro de Estudios Públicos", the think tank formed by the economists who transformed Chile into a free market economy. Asked about liberal, non-democratic rule by a Chilean interviewer, Hayek is translated from German to Spanish to English as having said: "Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism. My personal impression — and this is valid for South America – is that in Chile, for example, we will witness a transition from a dictatorial government to a liberal government." Hayek, of course, had lived his early life under the mostly liberal, but mostly non-democratic rule of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor, and Hayek had seen democracy descend into illiberal tyranny in a host of Central and Eastern European countries. By 1990, Chile had fulfilled Hayek's prediction by transitioning to a democratic state as established in the 1980 Constitution approved during the Pinochet regime.

Hayek's comments about Chile have drawn criticism from NYU historian Greg Grandin, who brings attention to a letter Hayek published in the ''London Times'' in which Hayek reported that he had 'not been able to find a single person in much-maligned Chile who did not agree that personal freedom was much greater under Pinochet than it had been under Allende.' "of course," writes Grandin, "the thousands executed and tens of thousands tortured by Pinochet's regime weren't talking." Hayek recommended liberal economic reforms similar to Chile's for the Keynesian economy in the United Kingdom to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Recognition

In 1980, Hayek—who was formally Roman Catholic but did not practice—was one of twelve Nobel laureates to meet with Pope John Paul II, "to dialogue, discuss views in their fields, communicate regarding the relationship between Catholicism and science, and 'bring to the Pontiff's attention the problems which the Nobel Prize Winners, in their respective fields of study, consider to be the most urgent for contemporary man.'"

In 1984, he was appointed as a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom on the advice of the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for his "services to the study of economics". Hayek had hoped to receive a baronetcy, and after he was awarded the CH he sent a letter to his friends requesting that he be called the English version of Friedrich (Frederick) from now on. After his twenty-minute audience with the Queen, he was "absolutely besotted" with her according to his daughter-in-law, Esca Hayek. Hayek said a year later that he was "amazed by her. That ease and skill, as if she'd known me all my life". The audience with the Queen was followed by a dinner with family and friends at the Institute of Economic Affairs. When, later that evening, Hayek was dropped off at the Reform Club, he commented: "I've just had the happiest day of my life".

In 1991 President George H. W. Bush awarded Hayek the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the two highest civilian awards in the United States, for a "lifetime of looking beyond the horizon". Hayek died in 1992 in Freiburg, Germany, and was buried in the Hohenzollern Castle, south of Stuttgart, Germany.

Work

The business cycle

Hayek's principal investigations in economics concerned capital, money, and the business cycle. Mises had earlier applied the concept of marginal utility to the value of money in his ''Theory of Money and Credit'' (1912), in which he also proposed an explanation for "industrial fluctuations" based on the ideas of the old British Currency School and of Swedish economist Knut Wicksell. Hayek used this body of work as a starting point for his own interpretation of the business cycle, elaborating what later became known as the "Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle". In his ''Prices and Production'' (1931), Hayek argued that the business cycle resulted from the central bank's inflationary credit expansion and its transmission over time, leading to a capital misallocation caused by the artificially low interest rates. Hayek claimed that "the past instability of the market economy is the consequence of the exclusion of the most important regulator of the market mechanism, money, from itself being regulated by the market process." In accordance with arguments outlined in his essay ''The Use of Knowledge in Society'', he argued that a monopolistic governmental agency like a central bank can neither possess the relevant information which should govern supply of money, nor have the ability to use it correctly.

In 1929 Lionel Robbins assumed the helm of the London School of Economics (LSE). Eager to promote alternatives to what he regarded as the narrow approach of the school of economic thought that then dominated the English-speaking academic world (centered at the University of Cambridge and deriving largely from the work of Alfred Marshall), Robbins invited Hayek to join the faculty at LSE, which he did in 1931. According to Nicholas Kaldor, Hayek's theory of the time-structure of capital and of the business cycle initially "fascinated the academic world" and appeared to offer a less "facile and superficial" understanding of macroeconomics than the Cambridge school's.

Also in 1931, Hayek critiqued Keynes's ''Treatise on Money'' (1930) in his "Reflections on the pure theory of Mr. J. M. Keynes" and published his lectures at the LSE in book form as ''Prices and Production''. Unemployment and idle resources are, for Keynes, due to a lack of effective demand; for Hayek, they stem from a previous, unsustainable episode of easy money and artificially low interest rates. Hayek's argument is based on Böhm-Bawerk's concept of the "average period of production."

Criticism

Keynes asked his friend Piero Sraffa to respond publicly to Hayek's challenge; instead of formulating an alternative theory, Sraffa elaborated on the logical inconsistencies of Hayek's argument, especially concerning the effect of inflation-induced "forced savings" on the capital sector and about the definition of a "natural" interest rate in a growing economy. Others who responded negatively to Hayek's work on the business cycle included John Hicks, Frank Knight, and Gunnar Myrdal.

Hayek continued his research on monetary and capital theory, revising his theories of the relations between credit cycles and capital structure in ''Profits, Interest and Investment'' (1939) and ''The Pure Theory of Capital'' (1941), but his reputation as an economic theorist had by then fallen so much that those works were largely ignored, except for scathing critiques by Nicholas Kaldor. Lionel Robbins himself, who had embraced the Austrian theory of the business cycle in ''The Great Depression'' (1934), later regretted having written that book and accepted many of the Keynesian counter-arguments.

Hayek then abandoned his announced project to produce a companion volumen to the ''Pure Theory of Capital'', which would have dealt with the "dynamics of capital." After 1941, he continued to publish works on political philosophy, the theory of law, and psychology, but not on economics. At the University of Chicago, Hayek was not part of the economics department and did not influence the rebirth of neoclassical theory which took place there (see Chicago school of economics). When, in 1974, he shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics with Gunnar Myrdal, the latter complained about being paired with an "ideologue." Milton Friedman declared himself "an enormous admirer of Hayek, but not for his economics. I think ''Prices and Production'' is a very flawed book. I think his [''Pure Theory of Capital''] is unreadable. On the other hand, ''The Road to Serfdom'' is one of the great books of our time."

The economic calculation problem

Hayek was one of the leading academic critics of collectivism in the 20th century. Hayek argued that all forms of collectivism (even those theoretically based on voluntary cooperation) could only be maintained by a central authority of some kind. In his popular book, ''The Road to Serfdom'' (1944) and in subsequent works, Hayek argued that socialism required central economic planning and that such planning in turn leads towards totalitarianism. Hayek posited that a central planning authority would have to be endowed with powers that would impact and ultimately control social life, because the knowledge required for central planning an economy is inherently decentralized, and would need to be brought under control.

Building on the earlier work of Ludwig von Mises and others, Hayek also argued that while in centrally planned economies an individual or a select group of individuals must determine the distribution of resources, these planners will never have enough information to carry out this allocation reliably. This argument, first proposed by Max Weber, says that the efficient exchange and use of resources can be maintained only through the price mechanism in free markets (see economic calculation problem). In ''The Use of Knowledge in Society'' (1945), Hayek argued that the price mechanism serves to share and synchronize local and personal knowledge, allowing society's members to achieve diverse, complicated ends through a principle of spontaneous self-organization. He used the term catallaxy to describe a "self-organizing system of voluntary co-operation."

Hayek's research into this argument was specifically cited by the Nobel Committee in its press release awarding Hayek the Nobel prize.

In Hayek's view, the central role of the state should be to maintain the rule of law, with as little arbitrary intervention as possible.

However, the complete picture is not black and white. Hayek did write that the state has a role to play in the economy, and specifically, in creating a "safety net." He wrote: "There is no reason why, in a society which has reached the general level of wealth ours has, the first kind of security should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom; that is: some minimum of food, shelter and clothing, sufficient to preserve health. Nor is there any reason why the state should not help to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance in providing for those common hazards of life against which few can make adequate provision."

Spontaneous order

Hayek viewed the free price system, not as a conscious invention (that which is intentionally designed by man), but as spontaneous order, or what is referred to as "that which is the result of human action but not of human design". Thus, Hayek put the ''price mechanism'' on the same level as, for example, language.

Hayek attributed the birth of civilization to private property in his book ''The Fatal Conceit'' (1988). He explained that price signals are the only means of enabling each economic decision maker to communicate tacit knowledge or dispersed knowledge to each other, in order to solve the economic calculation problem.

Investment and choice

Perhaps more fully than any other economist, Hayek investigated the choice theory of investment. He examined the inter-relations between ''non-permanent'' production goods and "latent" or potentially economic ''permanent'' resources—building on the choice theoretical insight that, "processes that take more time will evidently not be adopted unless they yield a greater return than those that take less time." Hayek's work on the microeconomics of the choice theoretics of investment, non-permanent goods, ''potential'' permanent resources, and ''economically-adapted'' permanent resources mark a central dividing point between his work in areas of macroeconomics and that of most all other economists. Hayek's work on the macroeconomic subjects of central planning, trade cycle theory, the division of knowledge, and entrepreneurial adaptation especially, differ greatly from the opinions of macroeconomic "Marshallian" economists in the tradition of John Maynard Keynes and the microeconomic "Walrasian" economists in the tradition of Abba Lerner.

Social and political philosophy, philosophy of science, and psychology

In the latter half of his career Hayek made a number of contributions to social and political philosophy, which he based on his views on the limits of human knowledge, and the idea of ''spontaneous order'' in social institutions. He argues in favor of a society organized around a market order, in which the apparatus of state is employed almost (though not entirely) exclusively to enforce the legal order (consisting of abstract rules, and not particular commands) necessary for a market of free individuals to function. These ideas were informed by a moral philosophy derived from epistemological concerns regarding the inherent limits of human knowledge. Hayek argued that his ideal individualistic, free-market polity would be self-regulating to such a degree that it would be 'a society which does not depend for its functioning on our finding good men for running it'.

Hayek disapproved strongly of the notion of 'social justice'. He compared the market to a game in which 'there is no point in calling the outcome just or unjust' and argued that 'social justice is an empty phrase with no determinable content'; likewise 'the results of the individual's efforts are necessarily unpredictable, and the question as to whether the resulting distribution of incomes is just has no meaning.' He regarded any attempt by government to redistribute income or capital as an unacceptable intrusion upon individual freedom: 'the principle of distributive justice, once introduced, would not be fulfilled until the whole of society was organized in accordance with it. This would produce a kind of society which in all essential respects would be the opposite of a free society.

With regard to a safety net, Hayek's statements are mixed. On the one hand, he was prepared to tolerate 'some provision for those threatened by the extremes of indigence or starvation, be it only in the interest of those who require protection against acts of desperation on the part of the needy.' On the other hand, as referenced above in the section on "The economic calculation problem", Hayek wrote that "there is no reason why...the state should not help to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance."

In his philosophy of science, which has much in common with that of his good friend Karl Popper, Hayek was highly critical of what he termed ''scientism'': a false understanding of the methods of science that has been mistakenly forced upon the social sciences, but that is contrary to the practices of genuine science. Usually scientism involves combining the philosophers' ancient demand for demonstrative justification with the associationists' false view that all scientific explanations are simple two-variable linear relationships. Hayek points out that much of science involves the explanation of complex multi-variable and non-linear phenomena, and that the social science of economics and undesigned order compares favourably with such complex sciences as Darwinian biology. These ideas were developed in ''The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies in the Abuse of Reason'', 1952 and in some of Hayek's later essays in the philosophy of science such as "Degrees of Explanation" and "The Theory of Complex Phenomena".

In ''The Sensory Order: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Theoretical Psychology'' (1952), Hayek independently developed a "Hebbian learning" model of learning and memory an idea which he first conceived in 1920, prior to his study of economics. Hayek's expansion of the "Hebbian synapse" construction into a global brain theory has received continued attention in neuroscience, cognitive science, computer science, behavioural science, and evolutionary psychology, by scientists such as Edelman, and Fuster.

Influence and recognition

Hayek's influence on the development of economics is widely acknowledged. Hayek is the second-most frequently cited economist (after Kenneth Arrow) in the Nobel lectures of the prize winners in economics – particularly since his lecture was critical of the field of orthodox economics and neo-classical modelization. A number of Nobel Laureates in economics – such as Vernon Smith and Herbert Simon – recognize Hayek as the greatest economist of the modern period. Another Nobel winner, Paul Samuelson believes that Hayek was worthy of his award but nevertheless claims that "there were good historical reasons for fading memories of Hayek within the mainstream last half of the twentieth century economist fraternity. In 1931, Hayek's ''Prices and Production'' had enjoyed an ultra-short Byronic success." Samuelson spent the last 50 years of his life obsessed with the problems of capital theory identified by Hayek and Böhm-Bawerk, and Samuelson flatly judged Hayek to have been right and his own teacher Joseph Schumpeter to have been wrong on the central economic question of the 20th century—the feasibility of socialist economic planning in a production goods dominated economy.

Hayek is widely recognized for having introduced the time dimension to the equilibrium construction, and for his key role in helping inspire the fields of growth theory, information economics, and the theory of spontaneous order. The "informal" economics presented in Milton Friedman's massively influential popular work ''Free to Choose'' (1980), is explicitly Hayekian in its account of the price system as a system for transmitting and coordinating knowledge. This can be explained by the fact that Friedman taught Hayek's famous paper "The Use of Knowledge in Society" (1945) in his graduate seminars.

Harvard economist and former Harvard University President Lawrence Summers explains Hayek's place in modern economics this way : "What's the single most important thing to learn from an economics course today? What I tried to leave my students with is the view that the invisible hand is more powerful than the [un]hidden hand. Things will happen in well-organized efforts without direction, controls, plans. That's the consensus among economists. That's the Hayek legacy."

By 1947, Hayek was an organizer of the Mont Pelerin Society, a group of classical liberals who sought to oppose what they saw as socialism in various areas. He was also instrumental in the founding of the Institute of Economic Affairs, the free-market think tank that inspired Thatcherism.

Hayek had a long-standing and close friendship with philosopher of science Karl Popper, also from Vienna. In a letter to Hayek in 1944, Popper stated, "I think I have learnt more from you than from any other living thinker, except perhaps Alfred Tarski." (See Hacohen, 2000). Popper dedicated his ''Conjectures and Refutations'' to Hayek. For his part, Hayek dedicated a collection of papers, ''Studies in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics'', to Popper, and in 1982 said, "... ever since his ''Logik der Forschung'' first came out in 1934, I have been a complete adherent to his general theory of methodology." Popper also participated in the inaugural meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society. Their friendship and mutual admiration, however, do not change the fact that there are important differences between their ideas.

Hayek also played a central role in Milton Friedman's intellectual development: ”My interest in public policy and political philosophy was rather casual before I joined the faculty of the University of Chicago. Informal discussions with colleagues and friends stimulated a greater interest, which was reinforced by Friedrich Hayek’s powerful book The Road to Serfdom, by my attendance at the first meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947, and by discussions with Hayek after he joined the university faculty in 1950. In addition, Hayek attracted an exceptionally able group of students who were dedicated to a libertarian ideology. They started a student publication, The New Individualist Review, which was the outstanding libertarian journal of opinion for some years. I served as an adviser to the journal and published a number of articles in it...“

Hayek's greatest intellectual debt was to Carl Menger, who pioneered an approach to social explanation similar to that developed in Britain by Bernard Mandeville and the Scottish moral philosophers (cf. Scottish Enlightenment). He had a wide-reaching influence on contemporary economics, politics, philosophy, sociology, psychology and anthropology. For example, Hayek's discussion in ''The Road to Serfdom'' (1944) about truth, falsehood and the use of language influenced some later opponents of postmodernism.

Hayek's work on price theory has been central to the thinking of Jimmy Wales about how to manage the Wikipedia project.

Hayek and conservatism

Hayek received new attention in the 1980s and 1990s with the rise of conservative governments in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. After winning the 1979 election, Margaret Thatcher appointed Keith Joseph, the director of the Hayekian Centre for Policy Studies, as her secretary of state for industry in an effort to redirect parliament's economic strategies. Likewise, David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's most influential financial official in 1981 was an acknowledged follower of Hayek.

Hayek wrote an essay titled "Why I Am Not a Conservative" (included as an appendix to ''The Constitution of Liberty''), in which he disparaged conservatism for its inability to adapt to changing human realities or to offer a positive political program, remarking that "Conservatism is only as good as what it conserves". Although he noted that modern day conservatism shares many opinions on economics with classic liberals, particularly a belief in the free market, he believed it's because conservatism wants to "stand still," whereas liberalism embraces the free market because it "wants to go somewhere." Hayek identified himself as a classical liberal, but noted that in the United States it had become almost impossible to use "liberal" in its original definition, and the term "libertarian" has been used instead. However, for his part Hayek found this term "singularly unattractive" and offered the term "Old Whig" (a phrase borrowed from Edmund Burke) instead. In his later life he said: "I am becoming a Burkean Whig." However, Whiggery as a political doctrine had little affinity for classical political economy, the tabernacle of the Manchester School and William Gladstone.

A common term in much of the world for what Hayek espoused is "neoliberalism". British scholar Samuel Brittan concluded in 2010 that, "Hayek's book [''The Constitution of Liberty''] is still probably the most comprehensive statement of the underlying ideas of the moderate free market philosophy espoused by neoliberals." Brittan adds that although Plant (2009) comes out in the end against Hayek's doctrines, Plant gives ''The Constitution of Liberty'' a "more thorough and fair-minded analysis than it has received even from its professed adherents."

Personal life

In August 1926, Hayek married Helen Berta Maria von Fritsch, a secretary at the civil service office where Hayek worked. They had two children together. Friedrich and Helen divorced in July 1950 and he married Helene Bitterlich just a few weeks later, moving to Arkansas in order to take advantage of permissive divorce laws.

Legacy and honours

Even after his death, Hayek's intellectual presence is noticeable, especially in the universities where he had taught: the London School of Economics, the University of Chicago, and the University of Freiburg. A number of tributes have resulted, many posthumous.

A student-run group at the LSE Hayek Society, was established in 1996 in his honor.

At Oxford University, the Oxford Libertarian Society was previously known as the Hayek Society.

The Cato Institute named its lower level auditorium after Hayek, who had been a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Cato during his later years.

Also, the auditorium of the school of economics in Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala is named after him.

The Hayek Fund for Scholars of the Institute for Humane Studies provides financial awards for academic career activities of graduate students and untenured faculty members.

The Ludwig von Mises Institute holds a lecture named after Hayek every year at its Austrian Scholars Conference and invites notable academics to speak about subjects relating to Hayek's contributions to the Austrian School.

George Mason University has an economics essay award named in honor of Hayek.

Hayek was awarded honorary degrees from Rikkyo University, University of Vienna, and University of Salzburg.

A rap video was made featuring him on YouTube. Hayek has an investment portfolio named after him. The Hayek Fund invests in corporations who financially support free market public policy organizations

Selected bibliography

''Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle'', 1929.

''Prices and Production'', 1931.

''Profits, Interest and Investment: And other essays on the theory of industrial fluctuations'', 1939.

''The Road to Serfdom'', 1944.

''Individualism and Economic Order'', 1948.

''The Counter-revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason'', 1952.

''The Constitution of Liberty'', 1960.

''Law, Legislation and Liberty'' (3 volumes)

:1973. v. 1. ''Rules and Order''. Scroll down to chapter-preview :1976. v. 2. ''The Mirage of Social Justice''. :1979. v. 3. ''The Political Order of a Free People''.

''The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism'', 1988.

See also

Connectionism

Demarchy

Dispersed knowledge

Liberalism in Austria

Organised order

Notes

Bibliography

Birner, Jack, 2001, "The mind-body problem and social evolution," CEEL Working Paper 1-02.

Birner, Jack, and Rudy van Zijp, eds., ''Hayek: Co-ordination and Evolution: His legacy in philosophy, politics, economics and the history of ideas'' (1994)

Birner, Jack, 2009, "From group selection to ecological niches. Popper's rethinking of evolutionary theory in the light of Hayek's theory of culture", in S. Parusnikova & R.S. Cohen (eds.), Rethinking Popper, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science Vol. 272, Springer 2009

Brittan, Samuel "Hayek, Friedrich August (1899–1992)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,'' (2006) online

Caldwell, Bruce, 2005. ''Hayek's Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F.A. Hayek''.

Cohen, Avi J. "The Hayek/Knight Capital Controversy: the Irrelevance of Roundaboutness, or Purging Processes in Time?" ''History of Political Economy'' 2003 35(3): 469–490. Issn: 0018-2702 Fulltext: online in Project Muse, Swetswise and Ebsco

Doherty, Brian. 2007. ''Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement''

Ebeling, Richard M., "F. A. Hayek and ''The Road to Serfdom'': A Sixtieth Anniversary Appreciation" (''The Freeman'', March 2004)

Ebeling, Richard M., "F. A. Hayek: A Biography" (Ludwig von Mises Institute, March 26, 2001)

Ebeling, Richard M., "Friedrich A. Hayek: A Centenary Appreciation" (''The Freeman'', May 1999)

Ebenstein, Alan O., 2001. '' Friedrich Hayek: A Biography''.

Frowen, S. ed., (1997) ''Hayek: economist and social philosopher''

Gamble, Andrew. (1996) ''The Iron Cage of Liberty'', an analysis of Hayek's ideas

Goldsworthy, J D, "Hayek's Political and Legal Philosophy: An Introduction" [1986] SydLawRw 3; (1986) 11(1) Sydney Law Review 44

Gray, John, 1998. ''Hayek on Liberty''.

Hacohen, Malachi, 2000. ''Karl Popper: The Formative Years, 1902–1945''.

Horwitz, Steven. "Friedrich Hayek, Austrian Economist." ''Journal of the History of Economic Thought'' 2005 27(1): 71–85. Issn: 1042-7716 Fulltext: in Swetswise, Ingenta and Ebsco

Hayek, Friedrich August, 1948. ''Individualism and economic order''. University of Chicago Press, ISBN 978-0-226-32093-9.

Issing, O. (1999) ''Hayek, currency competition and European monetary union''

Kasper, Sherryl, 2002, ''The Revival of Laissez-Faire in American Macroeconomic Theory: A Case Study of Its Pioneers''. Chpt. 4.

Kley, Roland, 1994. ''Hayek's Social and Political Thought''. Oxford Univ. Press.

Muller, Jerry Z., 2002. ''The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Western Thought''. Anchor Books.

Pavlík, Ján. 2004 nb.vse.cz. ''F. A. von Hayek and The Theory of Spontaneous Order.'' Professional Publishing 2004, Prague, profespubl.cz.

Plant, Raymond. ''The Neo-liberal State'' (2009) Oxford University Press, 312 pages

Rosenof, Theodore. "Freedom, Planning, and Totalitarianism: The Reception of F. A. Hayek's Road to Serfdom," ''Canadian Review of American Studies'' (1974)

Samuelson, Paul A., 2009. "A Few Remembrances of Friedrich von Hayek (1899–1992)," ''Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization'', 69(1), pp. 1–4. Reprinted at J. Bradford DeLong

Samuelson, Richard A. "Reaction to the Road to Serfdom." ''Modern Age'' 1999 41(4): 309–317. Issn: 0026-7457 Fulltext: in Ebsco

Shearmur; Jeremy, 1996. ''Hayek and after: Hayekian Liberalism as a Research Programme''. Routledge.

Touchie, John, 2005. ''Hayek and Human Rights: Foundations for a Minimalist Approach to Law''. Edward Elgar.

Vanberg, V. (2001). "Hayek, Friedrich A von (1899–1992)," ''International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences'', pp. 6482–6486. sciencedirect.com

Vernon, Richard. "The 'Great Society' and the 'Open Society': Liberalism in Hayek and Popper." ''Canadian Journal of Political Science'' 1976 9(2): 261–276. Issn: 0008-4239 Fulltext: in Jstor

Weimer, W., and Palermo, D., eds., 1982. ''Cognition and the Symbolic Processes''. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Contains Hayek's essay, "''The Sensory Order'' after 25 Years" with "Discussion."

Wolin, R. 2004. ''The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism.'' Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Primary sources

Hayek, Friedrich. ''The collected works of F. A. Hayek,'' ed. W. W. Bartley and others (1988–)

Hayek, Friedrich. ''Studies on the Abuse and Decline of Reason: Text and Documents'' edited by Bruce Caldwell (University of Chicago Press; 2010) 331 pages; essays in opposition to positivism.

External links

Biography of F. A. Hayek (1899–1992) and papers at the Ludwig von Mises Institute

The Friedrich A. von Hayek Papers, 1906–1992 and incremental material at the Hoover Institution Archives.

The Mont Pèlerin Society Records at the Hoover Institution Archives.

UCLA Oral History 1983 Interviews with Friedrich Hayek, transcript

The Pretence of Knowledge 1974 lecture at NobelPrize.org

The Hayek Interviews

The Hayek Prophecies

Friedrich A. von Hayek-Gesellschaft e. V. (German language)

Profile and Papers at Research Papers in Economics/RePEc

Friedrich Hayek at Econlib

F A Hayek at the Adam Smith Institute

Taking Hayek Seriously

"The Road from Serfdom", Thomas W. Hazlett, ''Reason'', July 1992, includes his 1977 interview with Hayek

"Why I Am Not a Conservative", F.A. Hayek, in ''The Constitution of Liberty'' (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1960)

A Hayek vs Keynes rap music video

Mises.org The Road to Serfdom in cartoons – The cartoon-booklet version.

The Road to Serfdom in cartoons – The cartoon-booklet version as a video.

Category:1899 births Category:1992 deaths Category:People from Vienna Category:20th-century philosophers Category:Academics of the London School of Economics Category:Austrian economists Category:Austrian philosophers Category:Austrian nobility Category:Austrian School economists Category:Austrian libertarians Category:Austrian anti-communists Category:Austrian Nobel laureates Category:Austro-Hungarian military personnel of World War I Category:British economists Category:British libertarians Category:Classical liberals Category:British Nobel laureates Category:Minarchists Category:Libertarian historians Category:Libertarian economists Category:Heterodox economists Category:Historians of economic thought Category:Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour Category:Mont Pelerin Society members Category:Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom Category:Nobel laureates in Economics Category:New York University faculty Category:People associated with the London School of Economics Category:Philosophers of law Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) Category:20th-century Austrian people Category:University of Chicago faculty Category:University of Freiburg faculty Category:University of Vienna alumni Category:Austrian people of Moravian German descent

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name	John Stossel
birthname	John F. Stossel
birth date	March 06, 1947
birth place	Chicago Heights, Illinois
education	B.A. in Psychology, Princeton University (1969)
occupation	Journalist, author, columnist, reporter, TV presenter
status	Married
spouse	Ellen Abrams
religion	Agnostic
credits	''20/20'' ''Stossel''
url	http://www.johnstossel.com }}

John F. Stossel (born March 6, 1947) is an American consumer reporter, investigative journalist, author and libertarian columnist. In October 2009 Stossel left his long time home on ABC News to join the Fox Business Channel and Fox News Channel, both owned and operated by News Corp. He hosts a weekly news show entitled ''Stossel'', on Fox Business which debuted December 10, 2009, airing in prime time every Thursday repeating on both Saturdays and Sundays. Stossel also regularly provides signature analysis, appearing on various Fox News shows, including weekly appearances on ''The O'Reilly Factor'', in addition to writing the Fox News Blog, "John Stossel's Take".

Stossel practices advocacy journalism, often challenging conventional wisdom. His reporting style, which is a blend of commentary and reporting, reflects a libertarian political philosophy and his views on economics are largely supportive of the free market.

In his decades as a reporter, Stossel has received numerous honors and awards, including nineteen Emmy awards and has been honored five times for excellence in consumer reporting by the National Press Club. John Stossel is doctor ''honoris causa'' from Universidad Francisco Marroquín. Stossel has written two books recounting how his experiences in journalism shaped his socioeconomic views, ''Give Me a Break'' in 2004 and ''Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity'' in 2007.

Stossel began his journalism career as a researcher for KGW-TV and later became a consumer reporter at WCBS-TV in New York City, before joining ABC News as a consumer editor and reporter on ''Good Morning America''. Stossel went on to be an ABC News correspondent, joining the weekly news magazine program ''20/20'', going on to become co-anchor for the ABC News show ''20/20''.

ABC is reported to believe "his reporting goes against the grain of the established media and offers the network something fresh and different...[but] makes him a target of the groups he offends."

Early life

John Stossel was born in Chicago Heights, Illinois, the younger of two sons, to a prominent Jewish family, and graduated from New Trier High School in Winnetka. He overcame a stuttering problem so he could become a reporter, and is now a supporter and advocate for The Stuttering Foundation. Stossel graduated from Princeton University with a BA in Psychology in 1969 and was a member of Princeton Tower Club while there. He began his journalism career as a researcher for KGW-TV in Portland, Oregon. Stossel later became a consumer reporter at WCBS-TV in New York City before joining ABC News in 1981 as consumer editor and reporter on ''Good Morning America''.

Career

''20/20''

Stossel was named co-anchor of ABC News' ''20/20'' in May 2003. He joined the weekly news magazine program in 1981, initially as a correspondent. His "Give Me a Break" segments featured a skeptical look at subjects from government regulations and pop culture to censorship and unfounded fear. The series was spun off into a series of one-hour specials (which, Stossel stated in an interview with ReasonTV, cost ABC half a million dollars per Special), beginning in 1994, with titles including:

"Give Me a Break" – regular segment

''You Can't Even Talk About It'' – 2009

''Bailouts and Bull'' (in association with ReasonTV) – 2009

''John Stossel's Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics'' – 2008

''Sex in America'' – 2008

''Sick in America, Whose Body Is It Anyway?'' – 2007

''Cheap In America'' – 2007

''Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity'' – 2007

''Cheap in America'' – 2006

''Stupid in America: How We Cheat Our Kids'' – 2006

''Privilege in America: Who's Shutting You Out?'' – 2006

''War on Drugs: A War on Ourselves'' – 2002

''Freeloaders'' – 2001

''John Stossel Goes to Washington'' – Spring 2001

''Is America #1?'' – 1999

''Greed'' – 1999

''Common Sense'' – 1995

''Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?''

''Junk Science: What You Know That May Not Be So''

''Boys and Girls Are Different''

''You Can't Say That!''

''The Power of Belief''

Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network

In September 2009, it was announced that Stossel was leaving ABC News and joining Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network. In addition to appearing on ''The O'Reilly Factor'' every Tuesday night, he now hosts a one-hour weekly program for Fox Business Network and a series of one-hour specials for Fox News Channel, as well as making regular guest appearances on Fox News programs.

The program, entitled ''Stossel'', debuted December 10, 2009, at 8 pm EST on Fox Business Network. The program looks at consumer-focused topics, such as civil liberties, the business of health care, and free trade. His blog, "Stossel’s Take", is published on both FoxBusiness.com and FoxNews.com.

Publications

Stossel has written two books. ''Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media'' is an autobiography documenting his career and philosophical transition from liberalism to libertarianism. It describes his opposition to government regulation, his belief in free market and private enterprise, support for tort reform, and advocacy for shifting social services from the government to private charities. It was a New York Times bestseller for 11 weeks. ''Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel – Why Everything You Know Is Wrong'' questions the validity of various conventional wisdoms, and argues that the belief he is conservative is untrue.

With financial support from the libertarian Palmer R. Chitester Fund, Stossel and ABC News launched a series of educational materials for public schools in 1999 entitled "Stossel in the Classroom". It was taken over in 2006 by the Center for Independent Thought and releases a new DVD of teaching materials annually. In 2006, Stossel and ABC released ''Teaching Tools for Economics'', a video series based on the National Council of Economics Education standards.

Charity and other work

Stossel often makes public appearances and speeches, advocating his brand of libertarian thought. Stossel explained at the end of the December 30, 2010 episode of ''Stossel'' that he gives away his earnings from these engagements to charity; they contribute 25% of his income. The three main groups he supports with his donations are the The Doe Fund, the Central Park Conservancy (on whose board he sits), and Student Sponsor Partners (SSP), which partners low-income high school students with donors who mentor the students and pay tuition for the students to attend private school (usually Catholic schools), which Stossel says have higher graduation rates than public schools.

Stossel and his former ABC News colleague Chris Cuomo are silent investors in Columbus Tavern, a restaurant on Columbus Avenue at 72nd Street on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

Political and personal beliefs

Contrarianism

Stossel's news reports and writings attempt to debunk popular beliefs. His ''Myths and Lies'' series of ''20/20'' specials challenges a range of widely held beliefs. He also hosted ''The Power of Belief'' (October 6, 1998), an ABC News Special that focused on assertions of the paranormal and people's desire to believe. Another report outlined the belief that opposition to DDT is misplaced and that the ban on DDT has resulted in the deaths of millions of children, mostly in poor nations.

Libertarianism

As a libertarian, Stossel says that he believes in both personal freedom and the free market. He frequently uses television airtime to advance these views and challenge viewers' distrust of free market capitalism and economic competition. He received an Honoris Causa Doctorate from Francisco Marroquin University, a libertarian university in Guatemala, in 2008. He told ''The Oregonian'', on October 26, 1994:

Stossel argues that personal greed creates an incentive to work and to innovate. He has promoted school choice as a way to improve American schools, because he believes that when people are given a choice, they will choose the better schools for their children. Referring to educational tests that rank American students lower than others he says:

}}

Stossel has criticized government programs as inefficient, wasteful, and harmful. He has also criticized the American legal system, opining that it provides lawyers and vexatious litigators the incentive to file frivolous lawsuits indiscriminately, which Stossel contends often generate more wealth for lawyers than deserving clients, stifle innovation and personal freedoms, and cause harm to private citizens, taxpayers, consumers and businesses. Although Stossel concedes that some lawsuits are necessary in order to provide justice to people genuinely injured by others with greater economic power, he advocates the adoption in the U.S. of the English rule as one method to reduce the more abusive or frivolous lawsuits.

Stossel opposes corporate welfare, bailouts and the war in Iraq. He also opposes legal prohibitions against pornography, marijuana, gambling, ticket scalping, prostitution, homosexual activity, and assisted suicide, and believes most abortions should be legal. He favors replacing the income tax with the FairTax.

When President Barack Obama altered federal guidelines in April 2010 governing the employment of unpaid interns under the Fair Labor Standards Act, Stossel criticized the guidelines, appearing in a police uniform during an appearance on the Fox News program ''America Live'', commenting, "I’ve built my career on unpaid interns, and the interns told me it was great—I learned more from you than I did in college." Asked why he did not pay them if they were so valuable, he said he could not afford to.

Regarding religion, Stossel identified himself as an agnostic in the December 16, 2010 episode of ''Stossel'', explaining that he had no belief in God, but was open to the possibility.

Praise and criticism

Awards

Stossel has won 19 Emmy Awards. He was honored five times for excellence in consumer reporting by the National Press Club, and has received the George Polk Award for Outstanding Local Reporting and the Peabody Award. In one year, according to Stossel in his book ''Give Me A Break'', "I got so many Emmys, another winner thanked me in his acceptance speech 'for not having an entry in this category'". According to Stossel, when he was in favor of government intervention and skeptical of business he was deluged with awards, but in 2006 he stated, "They like me less... Once I started applying the same skepticism to government, I stopped winning awards."

Praise

The libertarian Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman lauded Stossel, stating: ''"Stossel is that rare creature, a TV commentator who understands economics, in all its subtlety."'' P. J. O'Rourke, best-selling author of ''Eat the Rich'' and ''Parliament of Whores'' praised Stossel, stating: ''"... about John Stossel's fact-finding. He seeks the truths that destroy truisms, wields reason against all that's unreasonable, and ... puncture(s) sanctimonious idealism.... He makes the maddening mad. And Stossel’s tales of the outrageous are outrageously amusing."'' Steve Forbes, the editor of ''Forbes Magazine'', described Stossel as riveting and "one of America’s ablest and most courageous journalists."

An article published by the libertarian group Advocates for Self Government notes praise for Stossel. Independent Institute Research Analyst Anthony Gregory, writing on the libertarian blog, LewRockwell.com, described Stossel as a "heroic rogue... a media maverick and proponent of freedom in an otherwise statist, conformist mass media." Libertarian investment analyst Mark Skousen said Stossel is "a true libertarian hero".

Criticism and controversy

Watchdog groups

Progressive watch dog organizations such as Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) and Media Matters for America (MMfA), have criticized Stossel's work, for what was perceived by those groups as a lack of balance of coverage and distortion of facts. For example, Stossel was criticized for a segment on his October 11, 1999, show during which he argued that AIDS research has received too much funding, "25 times more than on Parkinson's, which kills more people." FAIR responded that, "In fact, AIDS killed more than 16,000 people in the United States in 1999," whereas Parkinson's averaged "a death toll in the United States of less than 4,000 per year."

Accusation of conflict of interest

In a February 2000 Salon.com feature on Stossel entitled "Prime-time propagandist", David Mastio wrote that Stossel has a conflict of interest in donating profits from his public speaking engagements to, among others, a non-profit called "Stossel in the Classroom" which includes material for use in schools, some of which uses material made by Stossel.

Galbraith and Stossel

University of Texas economist James K. Galbraith has alleged that Stossel, in his September 1999 special ''Is America #1?'', used an out of context clip of Galbraith to convey the notion that Galbraith advocated the adoption by Europe of the free market economics practiced by the United States, when in fact, Galbraith actually advocated that Europe adopt some of the United States' social benefit transfer mechanisms such as Social Security, which is the economically opposite view. Stossel denied any misrepresentation of Galbraith's views, and stated that it was not his intention to convey that Galbraith agreed with all of the special's ideas, but re-edited that portion of the program for its September 2000 repeat, in which Stossel paraphrased, "Even economists who like Europe's policies, like James Galbraith, now acknowledge America's success."

Organic vegetables

A February 2000 story about organic vegetables on ''20/20'' included statements by Stossel that tests had shown that neither organic nor conventional produce samples contained any pesticide residue, and that organic food was more likely to be contaminated by ''E. coli'' bacteria. The Environmental Working Group objected to his report, mainly questioning his statements about bacteria, but also managed to determine that the produce had never been tested for pesticides. They communicated this to Stossel, but after the story's producer backed Stossel's recollection that the test results had been as described, the story was rebroadcast months later, uncorrected, and with a postscript in which Stossel reiterated his claim. Later, after a report in ''The New York Times'' confirmed the Environmental Working Group's claims, ABC News suspended the producer of the segment for a month and reprimanded Stossel. Stossel apologized, saying that he had thought the tests had been conducted as reported. However, he asserted that the gist of his report had been accurate.

Frederick K. Price

In a March 2007 segment about finances and lifestyles of televangelists, ''20/20'' aired a clip of Rev. Frederick K. Price, a TV minister, that was originally broadcast by the Lifetime Network in 1997. Price alleged that the clip portrayed him describing his wealth in extravagant terms, when he was actually telling a parable about a rich man. ABC News twice aired a retraction and apologized for the error. In August 2010, a lower court's dismissal of the minister's defamation suit against ABC, ''Price v. Stossel'', was overturned by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

"Sick Sob Stories"

In an opinion piece published in ''The Wall Street Journal'' in September 2007 called "Sick Sob Stories", Stossel described the case of Tracy and Julie Pierce that was explored in Michael Moore's film, ''Sicko''. Julie Pierce criticized Stossel, saying her husband would have been saved by the Canadian health care system, and she thought Stossel should have interviewed her and her doctor before writing about them. Stossel expressed sympathy, but said she had been misled to believe the treatment was routinely available in Canada. He said that the treatment is also considered "experimental" in Canada, and is provided there even more rarely than in the U.S.

Global warming

He challenges the notion that man-made global warming would have net negative consequences, pointing to assertedly warmer periods in human history. Central to his argument is the idea that groups and individuals get much more public attention, donations, and government funding when they proclaim "this will be terrible" than groups that say "this is nothing to worry about." He points to groups like the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and to activists such as Rachel Carson and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore as examples of environmental scaremongers.

In 2001, the progressive media watchdog organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting criticized Stossel's reportage of global warming in his documentary, ''Tampering with Nature,'' for using "highly selective...information" that gave "center stage to three dissenters from among the 2,000 members of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which recently released a report stating that global temperatures are rising almost twice as fast as previously thought."

In a 2006 discussion hosted by the Fraser Institute, Stossel stated that he accepts that global warming has occurred in the past century, that it has been about one degree Celsius, and that man-made emissions "may be part of the cause." Nevertheless he groups environmental groups with astrologers and psychics in his second book, ''Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity''. He stated that the "myths" come in with the debate about proposed solutions to reduce global warming, which he argues will not solve the problem at all and will restrict people's freedom.

David Schultz incident

On December 28, 1984, during an interview for ''20/20'' on professional wrestling, wrestler David Schultz struck Stossel after Stossel stated that he thought professional wrestling was "fake". Stossel stated that he suffered from pain and buzzing in his ears eight weeks after the assault. Stossel sued and obtained a settlement of $425,000 from the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). In his book, ''Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity'', he writes that he has come to regret doing so, having adopted the belief that lawsuits harm hundreds of innocent people. Schultz maintains that he attacked Stossel on orders from Vince McMahon, the head of the then-WWF.

Personal life

Stossel lives in New York City with his wife, Ellen Abrams. He has two grown children.

Stossel's older brother, Thomas P. Stossel, is a hematologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and a professor at Harvard Medical School. He has served on the advisory boards of Merck, Biogen Idec and Dyax, as a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, and as a trustee of the American Council on Science and Health.

Stossel's nephew is the journalist and magazine editor Scott Stossel.

See also

List of newspaper columnists

References

Further reading

External links

"John Stossel's Take", John Stossel's blog at Fox Business

Harper Collins (Publisher) – Biography at Publisher's website

Biographies and articles about Stossel

ABC News Biography

Johnson, Peter. "Stossel's evolution from activist to contrarian angers some of his fans", ''USA Today'', April 30, 2006

"John Stossel: Myth-Buster", FrontPageMag.com

Sigall, Ed. "John Stossel: Not Afraid to Tell the Truth", NewsMax.com, June 3, 2006

"John Stossel – Libertarian", TheAdvocates.org

Sullum, Jacob. "Risky Journalism: ABC's John Stossel bucks a fearful establishment" ''Reason'', April 1997.

Articles by Stossel

John Stossel's 20/20 Web Page

John Stossel's Newspaper Columns

John Stossel's contributions to Reason Magazine

"Confessions of a Welfare Queen: How rich bastards like me rip off taxpayers for millions of dollars" is an excerpt from his first book.

John Stossel's Column on Creators.com

Category:ABC News personalities Category:American columnists Category:American libertarians Category:American people of Jewish descent Category:American political pundits Category:American skeptics Category:American agnostics Category:American television news anchors Category:Emmy Award winners Category:Fox News Channel Category:George Polk Award recipients Category:Jewish American writers Category:Minarchists Category:New Trier High School alumni Category:Peabody Award winners Category:Portland, Oregon television anchors Category:Princeton University alumni Category:1947 births Category:Living people

de:John Stossel fr:John Stossel ms:John Stossel simple:John Stossel

School tradition	Austrian School
Color	firebrick
Name	Thomas DiLorenzo
Birth date	August 08, 1954
Nationality	United States
Field	Economic history, American history
Influences	Henry Hazlitt, John T. Flynn
Opposed	Harry V. Jaffa
Contributions	}}

Thomas James DiLorenzo (born August 8, 1954) is an American economics professor at Loyola University Maryland. He is an adherent of the Austrian School of Economics. He is a senior faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and an associated scholar of the Abbeville Institute. He was formerly an affiliated scholar of the now-defunct League of the South Institute, the research arm of the pro-secession League of the South (though he has denied any lasting affiliation, noting that he only gave a few lectures there shortly after its founding). He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Virginia Tech.

DiLorenzo has devoted much effort to scholarly historical revisionism, focusing on what has been called "the Lincoln Cult" as a political and historical phenomenon. In the same vein, he has spoken out in favor of the secession of the Confederate States of America, defending the right of these states to secede in a view similar to that of abolitionist Lysander Spooner. He has also criticized the crediting of the New Deal for ending the Great Depression.

DiLorenzo lectures widely, and is a frequent speaker at Mises Institute events.

Publications

DiLorenzo has authored at least ten books, including:

''Hamilton's Curse: How Jefferson's Arch Enemy Betrayed the American Revolution – and What It Means for Americans Today'' (2008)

''Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe'' (2006)

''How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, From the Pilgrims to the Present'' (2004)

''The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War'' (2003)

''From Pathology to Politics: Public Health in America'' (2000)

''The Food and Drink Police: America's Nannies, Busybodies, and Petty Tyrants'' (1998)

''CancerScam: The Diversion of Federal Cancer Funds for Politics'' (1997)

References

External links

Mises Media Webcast Lectures by DiLorenzo at the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Archive of DiLorenzo commentary for the Mises Institute.

Archive of DiLorenzo commentary for The Independent Institute

Archive of DiLorenzo commentary for LewRockwell.com

The Real Abraham Lincoln - a debate between Thomas DiLorenzo and Harry V. Jaffa

Critical review of ''The Real Lincoln'' by Thomas Krannawitter of the Claremont Institute

DiLorenzo and his Critics by Clyde N. Wilson

Interview with Thomas DiLorenzo in the " Southern Partisan".

Q & A with Thomas DiLorenzo (video) on C-SPAN discussing his two books about Abraham Lincoln.

The 2006 Steven Berger Seminar: Thomas DiLorenzo (10 videos)

Category:1954 births Category:Living people Category:American economists Category:American historians Category:American libertarians Category:American political writers Category:Austrian School economists Category:Libertarian historians Category:Libertarian economists Category:Libertarian theorists Category:Virginia Tech alumni Category:American people of Italian descent

cs:Thomas DiLorenzo et:Thomas DiLorenzo es:Thomas DiLorenzo fr:Thomas DiLorenzo ko:토머스 딜로렌조 hsb:Thomas DiLorenzo it:Thomas DiLorenzo pt:Thomas Dilorenzo ru:Дилоренцо, Томас Джеймс zh:湯瑪斯·迪洛倫佐

name	Paul America
birth name	Paul Johnson
birth date	February 25, 1944
birth place	New Jersey, U.S.
death date	October 19, 1982
death place	Ormond Beach, Florida, U.S.
occupation	Film actor }}

Paul Johnson (February 25, 1944 – October 19, 1982), better known as Paul America, was a member of Andy Warhol's Warhol Superstars group who starred in one Warhol-directed film, ''My Hustler''. He also appeared in Edie Sedgwick's last film ''Ciao! Manhattan'' (1972) and in the documentary ''Superartist''.

Warhol years

According to most stories, Warhol discovered America at a discotheque called Ondine sometime in mid-1965, and soon invited him to visit The Factory. At first he simply hung around making repairs to a motorcycle, eventually forming close relationships with the Warhol crowd; living briefly with Chuck Wein and engaging in a short-lived romance with Edie Sedgwick.

Warhol described America as "unbelievably good looking - like a comic strip drawing of Mr. America, clean cut, handsome, very symmetrical," and also suggested that perhaps he may have gotten his name because of an apartment in which he had lived at the Hotel America, "a super-funky midtown hotel that was the kind of place Lenny Bruce, say, stayed in." He himself often had problems with the name given:

America has seemingly become a gay icon, mainly for his performance in the title role of Warhol's, ''My Hustler''. After ''My Hustler'', America appeared in several other Warhol films from 1965: the unreleased sequels, ''My Hustler: In Apartment'' and ''My Hustler: Ingrid'', and also Dan Williams's silent film ''Harold Stevenson'', in which America, Gerard Malanga, Stevenson, Sedgwick, and others converse and drink wine while posing photogenically on a couch in a New York hotel suite. Another four-minute silent portrait of Paul America, shot on the beach during the making of ''My Hustler'', had been found in the "long version" of that film, in the edited montage by Dan Williams that was added to the sixty-six-minute film in 1967.

Later years and death

Also, that same year after a brief stint in the U.S. Army, America obtained legal assistance and convinced Warhol to reimburse him retroactively for his role in the by-then commercially-successful ''My Hustler''. He reportedly received around $1,000 in several installments.

America also starred alongside Edie Sedgwick in John Palmer and David Weisman's film ''Ciao! Manhattan'' (1972), filmed from 1967 to 1971. His role in the film was severely diminished when he was imprisoned on Michigan drug-related charges. America tried to contact Warhol for the last time in 1982.

On October 19, 1982, Paul America was killed by a car while walking home from a dental appointment in Ormond Beach, Florida.

Bibliography

External links

Paul America at Warholstars.org

Category:Actors from New Jersey Category:American film actors Category:Pedestrian road accident victims Category:People from Florida Category:People from New Jersey Category:Road accident deaths in Florida Category:Warhol Superstars Category:1944 births Category:1982 deaths