Wasserman's examination of the Austrian school of economics history makes you think about the origin of ideas in the social sciences. Carl Menger's initial insights into how prices are set at the margins and influenced by the subjective values of consumers is an insight that emerges in England, France, and Austria roughly at the same point in history. The class of gentlemen scholars begins to engage in a glassbead game (see Herman Hesse) that offers insight into the nature of the economy but also obscures a good bit about the economy. Menger initially gets into a tussle with the German historical school over what role theoretical economics and empirical economics should play in this game.
Inevitably people play along. Many of the people playing this game also play important roles in the government of the Habsburg empire. Their proximity to power attracts others to play the game and it goes on. It eventually becomes a game of ideological warfare pitting the Austrian tradition against socialism. The liberal ideas of the Austrians are not always popular with other conservative forces, but they continue to have a seat at the table. Many members of the school try to figure out how to thread the needle of an alliance with Fascist Italy to offset being absorbed into a National Socialist Germany. Things go awry and so the Austrians flee to wherever they can find shelter.
Their ideas are popular with the business classes and some political elites, but they are forced to share space with other political intellectuals as they struggle for status. Some achieve considerable success. Ludwig von Mises works with groups like the National Association of Manufacturers. Gottfried Haberler lands at Harvard and becomes an advocate for free trade. Oskar Morgenstern secures tenure dealing with game theory and eventually gains influence with think tanks and government agencies hoping to improve the odds of successful outcomes in their competitive endeavors. Friedrich von Hayek gains a professorship at the London School of economics and goes on to a variety of other positions from there. In some ways, it is not a puzzle how elites schooled in one empire can become influential in another empire dealing with their former country, but Wasserman does a great job of filling in the details and the gossip of how these arrangements came to be.
Later we see the traditions of the school become integrated into an American context, producing intellectuals of aq similar caliber who begin to try to translate their thinking powers into a place at the policymaking table largely by serving the interest of elites interested in keeping a larger share of their wealth at the expense of the bureaucratic state. At some point, some of these ideas motivate political movements like the Tea Party, etc. Wasserman notes with concern that the Austrian school has had an affinity for the political right including associations with Augusto Pinochet, Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan. It even has odd permutations in the forms of anarcho-capitalism and European nationalisms. Some folks in the tradition are trying to distance the school from active politics and find a way back to the gentleman's/gentlewoman's hobby of science or try to take it in the direction of being a handmaid to left-wing politics, but it appears the liberal tradition has a greater affinity to the political right than the political left.
To what degree the Austrians have stumbled across interesting insights about the structure of reality and the nature of the generation of wealth and to what degree they contribute to a struggle for the wealth society produces is an open question. Since many of their books are eight hundred or more pages long only the most intrepid adventurer will go into this labyrinth to figure out what treasures it may hold. Wasserman does us a favor by outlining the big picture so we can try to figure this out for ourselves with a less than heroic effort. His book does have a bias against the political right, but his bias obscures the Austrian tradition less than the Austrians themselves have done through their voluminous writings.
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S B
Excellent book, very measured and informative
Rezension aus Deutschland vom 19. Juni 2022
