Economics as Ideology: Keynes, Laski, Hayek and the Creation of Contemporary Politics explores the lives and thought of three powerful theorists who shaped the foundations of the center, left, and right of the political spectrum in the 20th century. Noted scholar Kenneth R. Hoover examines how each thinker developed their ideas, looks at why and how their views evolved into ideologies, and draws connections between these ideologies and our contemporary political situation. Similar in age, colleagues in academic life, and participants in the century's defining political events, the story of Keynes, Laski, and Hayek is also the story of how we in the west came to define politics as the choice between government and the market, between regulation and freedom, and between the classes and the masses.
Kenneth R. Hoover is professor of political science at Western Washington University. His previous books include The Elements of Social Scientific Thinking, Ideology and Political Life, and The Power of Identity: Politics in a New Key.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Preface: Left, Center, and Right in the 20th Century Chapter 2 Acknowledgements Chapter 3 Of Identities, Ideas, and Ideologies Chapter 4 The Pre-War World: Seeds of Struggle Chapter 5 World War I: Unresolved Conflicts Chapter 6 The Twenties: Government and the Market in Combat Chapter 7 The Thirties: Duel of Allegiances Chapter 8 World War II: Destruction and Deliverance Chapter 9 The Post-War World: Denouement Chapter 10 The Second Half-Century: From Ideas to Ideologies Chapter 11 Developmental Turning Points and the Formation of Ideology Chapter 12 The Oppositional Bind of Ideology Chapter 13 Identity, Ideology, and Politics
What People are Saying About This
Kenneth Dolbeare
This is a very credible work of prodigious scholarship, with frequent keen analyses and insights, and written in a lively, attractive style.
Sanford F. Schram
Economics as Ideology is a most engrossing book. It tells an important tale of the development of economic thinking through the stories of three giants of political economic thought. Lives intersected at the nexus of theory and practice told in a compelling, even dramatic, narrative makes for better reading than a novel. I kept wanting to know how it was going to turn out—even though I knew the general contours from the start. The book offers important background for understanding economic thinking as it has evolved. It will be greatly prized.
Rodney Barker
I enormously enjoyed reading Economics as Ideology. The tradition of parallel and interacting biography is small but distinguished. Hoover adds a further dimension with his examination of the role of opposition, and his investigation of the link between social situation, individual circumstances, and thinking.
James Scott
The idea is simply splendid. It does make supreme sense to construct a history of theories of political economy in the 20th century around Keynes, Laski, and Hayek and the three do, in fact, succeed one another in 'hegemony' as the century unfolds. Inasmuch as Keynes and Hayek were interlocutors and rivals and duelists their relationship bears considerable drama and the fact that Hayek appears to have had the last laugh makes for high irony. It is a major achievement of this volume that Hoover never loses sight of the intellectual stakes in these debates.
G.C. Harcourt
An important book and a fascinating, absorbing read.
