ABSTRACT
Even though Hayek had insisted that ‘probably nothing has done so much harm to the liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some liberals on certain rough rules of thumb, above all the principle of laissez-faire’, he struggled to convince many readers of the Road to Serfdom that he really was offering something new, with a fresh, positive role for government in creating the framework within which economic freedom could flourish. In the United States in particular, Hayek was regarded as an unsophisticated champion of the old school, often by allies and enemies alike. A review in The Nation was revealingly entitled ‘Back to Grandfather: Dr Hayek’s Guide to the Pre-War Era’ (Chase, 1945; Finer, 1945). Likewise, an editorial in the New Republic (1945) wrote that Hayek’s book ‘found an enthusiastic response in the United States among those who are using the economic theories of the 1880s to justify the business practices of the 1940s.’ Yet even his allies, the long-standing opponents of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, who regarded the work as offering their position strong intellectual support, also understood it as signalling a call for a return to an older ‘common sense’ approach to the economy. 1
