On the Spread of Classical Liberal Ideas

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Date: 1 March, 2015

David M. Hart, “On the Spread of (Classical) Liberal Ideas” (March 2015) Liberty Matters Online Discussion Forum. I wrote the Lead Essay for this discussion as well as extensive appendices on

  • “Historical Examples of Radical Change in Ideas and Political Structures”,
  • “The Spread of Pro-Liberty Ideas in the Post-WW2 Period”,
  • A List of Different Kinds of Strategies for Change: From Retreatism to Cadre-Building and Beyond
  • A Brief History of Key Movements, Individuals, and Events in the Evolution of the Classical Liberal Tradition

Abstract: In this Liberty Matters online discussion forum we explore a number of issues concerning the role ideas have had in changing societies by examining several historical examples such as the anti-slavery movement in Britain and America in the first half of the 19th century, Richard Cobden and the free trade movement, and the rebirth of classical liberal and free market ideas after the Second World War. In the Lead Essay David Hart surveys the field of ideological movements and present a theory of ideological production and distribution based upon Austrian capital theory as it might be applied to the production of ideas. The commentators are Stephen Davies who is education director at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London; David Gordon who is a Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute; Jason Kuznicki who is a Research Fellow at the Cato Institute and Editor, Cato Unbound; Peter Mentzel who is a Senior Fellow at Liberty Fund; Jim Powell who is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute; George H. Smith who is an independent scholar and contributor to <libertarianism.org>; and Jeffrey Tucker who is a distinguished fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education, editor at Laissez Faire Books, and founder of Liberty.me http://liberty.me/ .

The changing Optics of Bastiat Studies

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Date: 1 Dec. 2014

A paper on “Seeing the ‘Unseen’ Bastiat: the changing Optics of Bastiat Studies. Or, what the Liberty Fund’s Translation Project is teaching us about Bastiat” given to the “Colloquium on Market Institutions & Economic Processes” at NYU

Bastiat-fromDEP300

Abstract: The translation project being undertaken by Liberty Fund to translate the Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat provides us with an opportunity to reassess the work of this mid-19th century French political economist. This paper examines the changing perception of Bastiat’s work from the late 1840s until the conference held in Mugron in June 2001 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth when the decision was made to translate into English all of his available work for the first time. His contemporaries recognized his talents as a brilliant economic journalist, a free trade activist, and an elected politician who dabbled in economic theory but died in 1850 before he could complete his work. His reputation went into decline for the next 100 years as his approach to economics went against first the classical and then the neo-classical schools. Except for a very few economists like W.S. Jevons Bastiat was dismissed as a serious economic theorist. Joseph Schumpeter summed up the consensus view in 1954 describing him as not a theorist at all.

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Interview about the Bastiat translation project

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Date: 30 August, 2014

This is an interview I gave in Nov. 2013 about my work on the Bastiat Translation Project. I have only just now edited it to go online. It lasts for 12 mins. Page with video embedded.

DMH_BastiatProject_Nov2013_250px

Summary: This is an interview conducted by Liberty Fund staff of Dr. David M. Hart who is the Academic Editor of the Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat. Two volumes of the projected 6 volumes have already appeared in print: Vol. 1: The Man and the Statesman: The Correspondence and Articles on Politics; Vol. 2: The Law, The State, and Other Political Writings, 1843-1850. Volume 3 of the collected Economic Sophisms and What is Seen and What is Not Seen is in production. He talks about why Bastiat is important and the new things we can learn about him as a result of this publishing project.