Ideology and Utopia in the Social Philosophy of the Libertarian Economists (Contributions in Economics & Economic History) Book

Challenging the libertarians' definition of freedom and democracy, this study portrays the social philosophy of Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, Friedrich Hayek, and George Stigler as the bulwark of an attack on welfare and regulatory state collectivism and as undermining democracy, civil liberties, and social equality. The book opens with Frank Knight's doctrines and their impact on the Chicago laissez faire economists, places libertarianism within the American tradition of empirical collectivism, and explores Friedrich Hayek's road-to-serfdom thesis. Posing problems of corporate power, it uses Friedman, Stigler, and Buchanan as examples of libertarian denial of these problems and, in a consideration of the debate between the New Left and Libertarian Right, contrasts their ideologies. The work concludes with a historical summing up that juxtaposes the recent past to the present and links libertarian materialiam with the growth of corporate hegemony.Read More