Henry Hazlitt
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| Birth | November 28, 1894 |
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| Death | July 8, 1993 (aged 98) |
Henry Hazlitt (November 28, 1894 – July 8, 1993) was a libertarian economist,[1] and journalist for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Newsweek, and The American Mercury, among other publications.
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[edit] Biography
In childhood his family's finances were meagre, his father having died when Hazlitt was an infant. He attended New York City's tuition-free City College, but left after a year and a half to become a journalist. Hazlitt started his career at the Wall Street Journal, and he wrote his first book, Thinking as a Science, at the age of 21. He also worked as a journalist for the New York Sun, The Nation, the New York Times, and Newsweek. He was H. L. Mencken's chosen successor as editor of The American Mercury, wrote a signed column for Newsweek, and, with John Chamberlain, served as editor the early free market publication The Freeman.
He is credited with bringing Austrian economics to an English-speaking audience. Along with the efforts of his friends, John Chamberlain and Max Eastman, for example, he is credited with bringing F. A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom to the American reading public's attention through his review in The New York Times. Hazlitt was a prolific writer, authoring some 25 books in his lifetime.[2]
[edit] Economics
Hazlitt is well-known for his book Economics in One Lesson, but he also wrote other books, among which are a major work on ethics, The Foundations of Morality, and The Failure of the New Economics, a detailed chapter-by-chapter critique of Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (of which he paraphrased a quote attributed to Samuel Johnson that he was "unable to find in it a single doctrine that is both true and original. What is original in the book is not true; and what is true is not original." In the preface to the General Theory, Keynes had written: "Those who are strongly wedded to what I shall call 'the classical theory', will fluctuate, I expect, between a belief that I am quite wrong and a belief that I am saying nothing new. It is for others to determine if either of these or the third alternative is right.")
[edit] Affiliation
Hazlitt was the founding vice-president of the Foundation for Economic Education and an early editor of The Freeman magazine.
From 1997 to 2002 there was an organization called The Henry Hazlitt Foundation which actively promoted libertarian networking online, especially through its website Free-Market.Net. This organization was named in honor of Hazlitt because he was known for introducing a wide range of people to libertarian ideas through his writing and for helping free-market advocates connect with each other. For example, he secured a position at New York University for the economist Ludwig von Mises, and he introduced the novelist Ayn Rand to Mises, whom she admired. It is important to note that the foundation was started after Hazlitt's passing and had no official connection with his estate.
[edit] Books
- Thinking as a Science, 1915
- The Way to Will Power, 1922
- A Practical Program for America, 1933
- The Anatomy of Criticism, 1933
- Instead of Dictatorship, 1933
- A New Constitution Now, 1942
- Freedom in America: The Freeman (with Virgil Jordan), 1945
- The Full Employment Bill: An Analysis, 1945
- Economics in One Lesson, 1946
- Economics in One Lesson (Spanish), 1946
- Will Dollars Save the World?, 1947
- Forum: Do Current Events Indicate Greater Government Regulation, Nationalization, or Socialization?, Proceedings from a Conference Sponsored by The Economic and Business Foundation, 1948
- The Illusions of Point Four, 1950
- The Great Idea, 1951 (titled Time Will Run Back in Britain, revised and rereleased with this title in 1966)
- The Free Man's Library, 1956
- The Failure of the 'New Economics': An Analysis of the Keynesian Fallacies, 1959
- The Critics of Keynesian Economics (ed.), 1960
- What You Should Know About Inflation, 1960
- The Foundations of Morality, 1964
- Man vs. The Welfare State, 1969
- The Conquest of Poverty, 1973
- To Stop Inflation, Return to Gold, 1974
- The Inflation Crisis and How to Resolve It], 1978
- From Bretton Woods to World Inflation, 1984
- The Wisdom of the Stoics: Selections from Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, 1984
- The Wisdom of Henry Hazlitt, 1993
[edit] Notes
- ^ Greaves, Bettina Bien. "Henry Hazlitt: A Man for Many Seasons." The Freeman. Foundation for Economic Education. November 1989. [1]
- ^ Ludwig von Mises Institute, Henry Hazlitt: A Giant of Liberty, pp. 20-27
- Henry Hazlitt: A Giant of Liberty. Ludwig von Mises Institute. 1994. ISBN 0-945466-16-1.
[edit] Articles
See Bibliography of Henry Hazlitt for complete list.
