History by Magazine -- Forbes praises a great man few Americans have ever heard of
Libertarian economist Friedrich Hayek's seminal 1944 book 'The Road to Serfdom' gets a 50th birthday party. My weekly take on America's news, culture and ideas -- from exactly 30 years ago.
During my stint at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in the 1990s, I wrote about 500 weekly columns like this about magazines — their births, deaths and, most of all, their contents. Is often as possible, it was my intent to insert libertarian people and ideas into the PG that otherwise would never see print.
Forbes praises an idea man
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Jan 13, 1993
You've probably never heard of him.
He's a Dead European White Male.
He won a Nobel Prize in economics in 1974. And his books are big sellers in the freshly freed formerly Communist countries of Eastern Europe.
The Clintons may have a vague inkling of him. But to Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel and enemies and victims of socialism everywhere, he is a major intellectual hero, a beloved guru of free markets and limited government.
His name? John Kenneth Galbraith.
Just kidding. It's Friedrich Hayek.
See, you never heard of him.
Nevertheless, Hayek — an Austrian economist/political scientist who died last year at the typically ancient economist's age of 92 — is a major-leaguer in the world of political ideas.
Which is why he's the subject of Forbes' current cover story, "The Road to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions," by author-columnist Thomas Sowell.
Why Hayek? Why now?
Fifty years ago Hayek wrote a then very politically incorrect and devastating critique of socialism and government planning called "The Road to Serfdom."
Not exactly a popular best-seller, the rather dense book still managed to rock the Keynesian, socialist-dominated intellectual world of 1944. A million copies in print later, Hayek has even greater influence today.
Sowell, a former Marxist who converted to free market economics, counts Hayek as one of his main mentors. He does a good job of explaining the message of "Road to Serfdom" that few on the liberal left, especially in America, wanted to believe in 1944: That fascism, communism and socialism were all "kindred forms of collectivism" that used similar arguments and tactics that ultimately undermined human freedom.
Hayek thought socialists were "dangerous idealists" who unwittingly "paved the way for totalitarianism by centralizing power and eroding the ideas and values that sustain "free institutions, such as the rule of law and the decentralization of political power and economic activity."
Forbes, an unabashed banner-waver of capitalism with 750,000 subscribers, is the first major magazine to hook a Hayek feature around the 50th anniversary of "The Road to Serfdom." It won't be the last, however.
Conservative and libertarian political magazines obviously will be partying all year long. It will be interesting to see if Atlantic or Newsweek or any other important nonpartisan magazines join the celebration.
Note:
Six year later, in a column on Feb. 17, 2000 I wrote about Hayek’s treatment by his ideological enemies at the New Yorker
*****
We return the wayback machine to my column of Jan. 13, 1994:
If you can get past Vanity Fair's cover photo of the scantily clad Roseanne Barr Arnold, you'll find an excerpt from ex-PG-staffer Barry Paris' latest book "Garbo," which will be out in toto in the spring.
Along with some photographic peeks at Greta Garbo's clandestine, post-Hollywood 50-year life alone, there are transcripts of never-before-published phone conversations.
And Business Week's cover story, "Hospital," presents an inside look at how a pillar of the American community is struggling to remake itself in the face of massive changes.
Business Week says the hospital as we know and love it is going to disappear.
*****
More than 800 consumer magazines were born last year, according to magazine maven Samir Husni, who keeps track of such things for a living. That's a record, eclipsing 1992's record of 679 and underscoring the incredible vitality of the magazine industry (3,600 new mags since 1988).
More than half of the new magazines won't see their first birthday, however, so don't take out a lifetime subscription yet for Reptiles or Round Up, the new gay Western and rodeo magazine.
Bikini, Family Life, Vibe, Short Hairstyles, Howdy! and Lo-Fat Meals were among the hatched.
Those that passed on included the once-hot LA Style, D, HG, Mas, Countryside, Celebrate! Midwest and cop-centered CrimeBeat, which didn't actually die yet but is on hiatus until it can rearrange its finances.
Maybe CrimeBeat can merge with Prison Lite, a new 1993 magazine for America's burgeoning penal population that has cover boys like Charlie Manson and cover headlines like "Manson: Get Off His Back — the Inequities of Prison Parole."