Hayek's Literary Work, 24th Nov., 2010.

F. A. Hayek wrote his first book, Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle, in 1929.  He wrote four more books before 1941, covering prices, profits, and capital.  After his next book, The Road to Serfdom, his theories focused much more on the political implications of central planning.  His professor, Ludwig von Mises, continued the early focus on the economic effects of central planning.

In 1920, Ludwig von Mises had published “Economic Planning in the Socialist Commonwealth.”  In it, he argued “Without economic calculation there can be no economy. Hence, in a socialist state wherein the pursuit of economic calculation is impossible, there can be—in our sense of the term—no economy whatsoever.” (Mises 1990, pp. 14)  In 1935, F. A. Hayek, then a professor at the London School of Economics, felt compelled to edit the book Collectivist Economic Planning “by the fact that he found that certain new insights which were known on the Continent had not reached the English-speaking world.” (Ebenstein 2001, pp. 91)  This would lead him to become one of the main opponents of central planning in the English-speaking world during the 20^th Century.

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