March 11, 2004

Books that Changed the World. "SIXTY years ago this week, George Orwell reviewed a work by a little-known Austrian professor and refugee from Hitler, FA Hayek. It was called The Road to Serfdom , and Orwell didn’t think much of it. Conceding that there was some justice in Hayek’s criticism of collectivism, which Orwell granted was "not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisition never dreamed of", Orwell nevertheless dismissed Hayek’s argument for a return to "free" competition out of hand: "Since the vast majority of people would far rather have state regimentation than slumps and unemployment, the drift towards collectivism is bound to continue if popular opinion has any say in the matter." Well, Orwell got it wrong. Within 40 years, it was collectivism that was in retreat while governments, especially in the UK and the US, were withdrawing from attempts to manage the economy and reasserting the virtues of the free market. And they found the intellectual justification for their policies in the book that Orwell had dismissed. Now, with the free market and globalism dominant - for the time being, anyway - Hayek’s may be claimed as one of those books that changed the world, even though comparatively few have read it, and of those who have done so, not all, probably, have understood it. There’s nothing new in that, of course. Books may have a huge influence even when few have read them in their entirety. That certainly could be said of the work which Hayek may be said to have dislodged: Das Kapital, by Karl Marx. No-one can deny that Marx was the most influential political thinker of the 19th century. His critique of capitalism and his emphasis on the inevitability of its overthrow provided the intellectual basis for the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. If it seemed to many who called themselves socialists or social democrats that capitalism was doomed (as Orwell believed), this was because Marx had told them so. Even more remarkably, inaccurate as Marx’s analysis of history was, reputable historians endorsed his interpretation of the historical process. Books that changed the world? Well, very obviously, that may be claimed for the Bible and the Koran .. ". more ALLAN MASSIE. Posted by Greg Ransom