"MUCH THAT HAS BEEN BLAMED ON THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM IS IN FACT DUE TO REMNANTS OR REVIVALS OF PRECAPITALISTIC FEATURES": CAPITALISM AND THE HISTORIANS, INSCRIBED BY HAYEK TO GERMAN-AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST AND PHILOSOPHER HEINRICH KLÜVER

HAYEK, Friedrich A. Capitalism and the Historians. (Chicago): University of Chicago Press, (1954). Octavo, original red cloth, original dust jacket.

Presentation first edition of this collection of essays arguing that early capitalism in 19th-century Britain was better for workers, both financially and socially, than the period prior to the Industrial Revolution, edited and with an introduction by Friedrich Hayek. Inscribed and initialed by Hayek on the front free endpaper to his fellow professor at the University of Chicago, renowned German-American psychologist and philosopher Heinrich Klüver: "To Heinrich Klüver, with the best wishes for Xmas, Dec. 1954, F.A.H."

This collection of essays by Ashton, Jacker, de Jouvenel and Hutt, edited by Hayek, strives to prove that the vast majority of historical criticism about the Industrial Revolution and its impact on workers was fundamentally flawed. In his introduction Hayek points out that the general misery of a bad crop yield may have been easier to tolerate emotionally than the individual injustice of a single worker cast aside by an impersonal system. Here, the authors argue that capitalism actually provided workers with greater opportunity and financial stability than they had experienced under the previous system. Together, these essays take a broader view of capitalism and examine the plight of workers as a group, ultimately showing the Industrial Revolution as having a very positive social benefit, even for the poor. Published the same year as the London edition. Recipient Heinrich Klüver (1897-1979) was a German-American biological psychologist and philosopher born in Holstein, who emigrated to the United States in 1923 to attend Stanford University, and became a U.S. citizen in 1934. From 1933 until his retirement in 1963, he was on the Experimental Psychology faculty at the University of Chicago.

Book with mild sunning to cloth at spine and board edges, dust jacket with toning and light edge-wear, very good. Scarce inscribed, and with an intriguing association.