Viena y Chicago¿Amigos o Enemigos? – Osvaldo Schenone & Adrián Ravier

En el libro de Javier Milei Capitalismo, Socialismo y la Trampa Neoclásica (Planeta, 2024) se contraponen los puntos de vista de la Escuela Austríaca y de la Escuela Neoclásica. Este contrapunto había sido analizado por Mark Skousen en 2005 en su libro Vienna & Chicago: Friends or Foes? A Tale of Two Schools of Free-Market Economics.

En 2007 se publicó en Review of the History of Economics (2007, Vol. 46, Issue 1, págs 194-197) una reseña de cuatro páginas del libro de Skousen. A continuación, la reseña en su idioma original.

This fascinating book starts out by telling us that Friedrich A. von Hayek, alarmed by the rapid advance of socialism and the horrors of the war, summoned the main liberal thinkers of the world to a meeting that was carried out in the small town of Mont Pelerin, Switzerland, in 1947. This encounter extended for ten days at the beginning of April of that year, with the attendance of 38 intellectuals. These individuals were predominantly economists, historians and philosophers. Prominent members of both the Chicago and the Austrian Schools attended the meeting to establish a society that would have the goals of preserving a free civilisation and opposing all forms of totalitarianism. Some of the most prominent intellectuals of the twentieth century subsequently became presidents of this society, including
Hayek, Wilhelm Ropke, Bruno Leoni, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, James Buchanan, Gary Becker and Pascal Salin.

Of course, not everyone at the first meeting at Mont Pelerin had identical ideas with respect to every detail that was discussed. However, there was a consensus that they were, essentially, pursuing a common objective. Mark Skousen’s book is a successful attempt to review this intellectual friendship between both schools of thought, pointing out the main issues that unite or divide them.