Economics as Ideology: Keynes, Laski, Hayek and the Creation of Contemporary Politics

This is a very credible work of prodigious scholarship, with frequent keen analyses and insights, and written in a lively, attractive style. — Kenneth Dolbeare, editor of American Political Thought

An important book and a fascinating, absorbing read. — G. C. Harcourt, Jesus College, Cambridge University

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. — Rodney Barker, London School of Economics

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. — Sanford F. Schram, Author of Praxis for the Poor: Piven and Cloward and the Future of Social Science in Social Welfare

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. — James Scott, Yale University

A rich portrait of the politics and intellectual life of Great Britain (and to a lesser extent, the United States) during the formative events of the century, and these chapters serve as a good general introduction to the ideas of these three men. A useful read for historians of economics and economic thought, as well as those with an interest in the development of political thought in the twentieth century.

Economics as Ideology is, in short, popular intellectual history at a high level. For those seeking both an engaging review of the economic ideas that shaped much of the history of the twentieth century and short biographies of three principals in formulating and advancing these ideas, it is an enlightening and illuminating work.

This is a valuable book, the subject of which is the grand sweep of twentieth-century British economic ideology from the standpoint of its crucial historical and biographical contexts. It will have particular significance for social scientists studying this subject or period in British history.