Launch of “Marx and Hayek” by Eric Aarons

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Eric Aarons’ book Hayek ver­sus Marx: And Today’s Chal­lenges will be launched at Glee­books on Fri­day April 24th at 6pm. I will make an open­ing speech about the book and its remark­able author. There will be pre-launch drinks from 6 till 6.40.

Atten­dance is free, but places are lim­it­ed. Please con­tact Glee­books on (02) 9660 2333, or click on the link to Request a place on Glee­books’ auto­mat­ed book­ing form.  Glee­books is at 49 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe; the launch will take place in the upstairs room, which can accom­mo­date about 100.

This is Eric’s 4th book. In a theme devel­oped in the pre­vi­ous two, he explores the com­pet­ing, and flawed, philoso­phies of Karl Marx and Friedrich Hayek, espe­cial­ly in the light of the eco­log­i­cal chal­lenges of today. Quot­ing from the pro­mo­tion­al mate­r­i­al for the book:

 The aim of the book is to stim­u­late the realign­ment of polit­i­cal, the­o­ret­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal think­ing that is now begin­ning in response to glob­al warm­ing. The author pro­vides an exam­i­na­tion of the the­o­ries of the most promi­nent social philoso­phers of the 19th and 20th cen­turies — Karl Marx and Friedrich Hayek. He does so in the belief that the work of these two thinkers, in their com­mon­al­i­ties and dif­fer­ences, suc­cess­es and fail­ures, con­tain impor­tant indi­ca­tors of the con­tent of a social phi­los­o­phy suit­ed to today’s con­di­tions. 

The book pro­ceeds in the con­text of the fail­ure of the attempts by fol­low­ers of Marx, hav­ing achieved polit­i­cal pow­er, to realise the objec­tives they took to issue from his the­o­ries, on the one hand, and of the ear­li­er suc­cess­es, but now emerg­ing fail­ures of the neo-lib­er­al phi­los­o­phy of Hayek to cope with the with the envi­ron­men­tal out­comes of those very suc­cess­es, on the oth­er. In doing so, the book will inci­den­tal­ly cri­tique post­mod­ernism, because of its claim to be ‘The­o­ry’ as such, which for a gen­er­a­tion imped­ed gen­uine the­o­ret­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal work. 

It should be a stim­u­lat­ing night. I look for­ward to see­ing some blog mem­bers there–especially those who have an inter­est in Marx­i­an or Aus­tri­an phi­los­o­phy and eco­nom­ics.