Hazlitt’s One-Two Punch

W hen Henry Hazlitt’s devastating critique of the Keynesian system appeared last year (The Failure of the ‘New Economics’), many academic reviewers dismissed that scholarly work as the product of a “pamphleteer.” Rising to this challenge, Hazlitt has now levelled the second half of a thumping one-two punch by collecting under one cover all the major writings critical of Keynes—most of them by impeccably bona fide academicians. Even the most impudent reviewer will find himself hard put to dismiss the critics of keynesian economics (edited by Henry Hazlitt, Van Nostrand, $7.00) as a pamphlet.

Mr. Hazlitt has dug deep to unearth long-forgotten or even unknown criticisms of Keynes, published over the years since the General Theory appeared in 1936. As isolated essays or journal articles, they could be, and were, dismissed during the Keynesian hullabaloo. But, put together, they form an impressive and many-sided scholarly criticism of Keynes, on varying levels of political interest and technical difficulty.

MR

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Murray N. Rothbard

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W hen Henry Hazlitt’s devastating critique of the Keynesian system appeared last year (The Failure of the ‘New Economics’), many academic reviewers dismissed that scholarly work as the product of a “pamphleteer.” Rising to this challenge, Hazlitt has now levelled the second half of a thumping one-two punch by collecting under one cover all the major writings critical of Keynes—most of them by impeccably bona fide academicians. Even the most impudent reviewer will find himself hard put to dismiss the critics of keynesian economics (edited by Henry Hazlitt, Van Nostrand, $7.00) as a pamphlet.

Mr. Hazlitt has dug deep to unearth long-forgotten or even unknown criticisms of Keynes, published over the years since the General Theory appeared in 1936. As isolated essays or journal articles, they could be, and were, dismissed during the Keynesian hullabaloo. But, put together, they form an impressive and many-sided scholarly criticism of Keynes, on varying levels of political interest and technical difficulty.