Jon Sigurdsson. Painting by Thorarinn B. Thorlaksson (uncle of Jon Thorlaksson).

In 2017, RNH Academic Director, Politics Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson, published two papers in the Econ Journal Watch in its series on (classical) liberalism in various countries. The first paper was on the history of liberalism in Iceland till late 20th century, with a discussion on the economic ideas of Jon Sigurdsson and Arnljotur Olafsson in the 19th century and Jon Thorlaksson, Benjamin Eiriksson and others in the 20th century. Olafsson, Thorlaksson and Eiriksson were the authors of the first economic treatises in Icelandic, Audfraedi [Theory of Wealth] (1880), Laggengid [Currency Depreciation] (1924) and Orsakir erfidleikanna i atvinnu- og gjaldeyrismalunum [Causes of the Current Problems in the Economy and Foreign Trade] (1938), respectively. The journal also interviewed Gissurarson (podcast). The second paper was about the 1991–2004 liberal reforms and different narratives on the 2008 bank collapse. As Gissurarson mentioned certain assertions by Sociology Professor Stefan Olafsson on poverty and income distribution in Iceland, the journal offered him a right of reply, of which Olafsson availed himself in the autumn of 2017.

Now the 2018 autumn issue of Econ Journal Watch has appeared with a rejoinder by Gissurarson to Olafsson’s composition. Gissurarson recalls that Olafsson asserted before the 2003 parliamentary elections that poverty was more widespread in Iceland than in the other Nordic countries, and that he asserted before the 2007 parliamentary elections that income distribution (based on figures from 2004) was less equal in Iceland than in the other Nordic countries. According to Gissurarson, the evidence shows both assertions to be wrong. Gissurarson also criticises some assertions by Olafsson on the 2008 bank collapse, which Olafsson would like to blame to a large extent on David Oddsson, Prime Minister in 1991–2004 and Governor of the Central Bank of Iceland in 2005–9.

Benediktsson receives the report from Gissurarson. Photo: Haraldur Gudjonsson, Vbl.

On 25 September 2018, RNH Academic Director Hannes H. Gissurarsion delivered a report to Finance Minister Bjarni Benediktsson about foreign factors in the 2008 Icelandic bank collapse. It was written under the auspices of the Social Science Research Institute at the University of Iceland and commissioned by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs. The main conclusions are, 1) that the British government invoked an Anti-Terrorism Act needlessly against Iceland, as it could have used softer measures to achieve its stated objective of hindering illegal transfers from the United Kingdom to Iceland; 2) that the British government violated the rules of the European internal market by rescuing all British banks save two, Heritable and KSF (Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander), which were Icelandic-owned; 3) that the United States, through its Federal Reserve Board, came to the assistance of Sweden, Denmark and Norway during the 2008 financial crises, but refused any similar support to Iceland. Gissurarson agrees with the conclusion by finance specialists Dr. Asgeir Jonsson and Dr. Hersir Sigurgeirsson in a recent book that in 2008 the assets of the Icelandic banks were probably no worse and no better than assets generally of foreign banks. Gissurarson also gives an account of how assets of the Icelandic banks were captured after the collapse at hefty discounts by well-connected local businessmen in Norway, Finland and Denmark, with the connivance of local authorities.

Gissurarson argues that the response of the Icelandic authorities to the bank collapse was sensible and proved, ultimately, successful. By the Emergency Act of 6 October 2008 they managed to calm the general public while limiting the financial obligations of the sovereign Icelandic state. To make deposits priority claims on the estates of banks, as the Icelanders did, might serve as a model for other countries, thus making government guarantees of banks superfluous. According to Gissurarson, two political conclusions may be drawn from the bank collapse: that discretionary power would always be abused, just like the British government did with the Anti-Terrorism Act, and that Iceland has only herself to rely on, as nobody was willing to help her in her hour of need, except the Faroese and Polish governments. Gissurarson’s report is in English, but he also delivered an Icelandic extract and wrote four articles on its content for Morgunbladid, the Icelandic journal of record. In 2017, Gissurarson also wrote a report on lessons for Europe from the Icelandic bank collapse, which was published by the think tank New Direction in Brussels.

Those Icelanders who believe that their nation was solely responsible for the bank collapse and that the 2007–9 international financial crisis had little or nothing to do with it, received Gissurarson’s report angrily, as this cartoon illustrates:

More than one hundred people attended the regional meeting of European Students for Liberty, Nordic Students for Liberty and the Icelandic Association of Liberal Students at Grand Hotel in Reykjavik 22 September 2018. The chief local organisers were Magnus Orn Gunnarsson, Marta Stefansdottir and Sigurvin Jarl Armannsson. Between twenty and thirty students from abroad participated in the meeting.

Vera Kichanova gives an account of Putin’s Russia.

Many topics were covered in the programme. Before noon, Professor James Lark III from the US spoke about “Economic Fallacies: Discussion of Some Common Fallacies and Misconceptions about Economics”. Lark was also a speaker at the first ESFL regional meeting in Reykjavik. Kyle Walker from the US then spoke about “Ideas and People: How SFL is Changing the World”. In the first afternoon session Gil Dagan from Israel spoke about “How free trade can help the Middle East” and the US social media activists Matt B. and Terry Kibbe about “Reaching skeptics with liberalism”. Matt Kibbe is the author of the 2014 bestseller Don’t Hurt People and Don’t Take Their Stuff: A Libertarian Manifesto. In the second afternoon session Bill Wirtz from Luxembourg spoke about “The European Case Against the European Union”, Grace Morgan from the US about “IGO Watch: Global Taxpayers at Risk”, Vera Kichanova from Russia about “Fighting the Russian Leviathan: Libertarians against Putin” and Professor Antony Davies from the US about “Cooperation, Coercion, and Human Development”. Icelandic Foreign Minister Gudlaugur Thor Thordarson contributed some final remarks.

RNH has regularly supported the regional meetings in Iceland of the European Students for Liberty. This is the fifth and so far the best-attended ESFL meeting in Reykjavik, and the participants were in good spirits. Friday night RNH Academic Director, Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson, invited all speakers, local organisers and foreign participants to a reception at his home, and Saturday night all participants met at an Open House. The day after the meeting the foreign students went on a ‘Liberty Trip’ outside Reykjavik, looking at geysers, glaciers, waterfalls, lava fields and other natural wonders in Iceland. The support by RNH of the ESFL regional meetings forms a part of a joint project with ACRE, Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europa, on ‘Europe, Iceland and the Free Market’.

Lark giving his talk at the meeting. Johann Ari Sigfusson in the chair.

RNH Academic Director Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson was one of the speakers at an international conference on communism organised by the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory on 23 August 2018. His participation in the conference formed a part of the joint RNH-ACRE project on ‘Europe of the Victims’. Gissurarson argued that it was not a coincidence, and rather an inevitable outcome, that everywhere communism had led to totalitarianism, oppression and misery. The originators, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, had been full of hate and violence, as their writings, not least their exhange of private letters, showed. The two of them had also adhered to extreme scientism, believing that science was the possession rather than the pursuit of truth. Thirdly, after a revolution there was always the danger that the cruellest and most ruthless filled the vacuum left by the former powers, as Edmund Burke had pointed out in his critique of the French Revolution.

Oksanen and Gissurarson in Tallinn. Photo: Mari-Ann Kelam.

Gissurarson elaborated on two further reasons why communism would develop into totalitarianism. In a country where the state was the sole employer, any opposition would encounter almost insurmountable difficulties: the really significant freedom was the freedom to dissent. Fifthly, the core communist programme was the abolition of dispersed ownership and freedom of trade, but it was precisely under those conditions that the dispersed knowledge of individuals was utilised, as Friedrich A. Hayek had demonstrated. If the state operated all the means of production, it would have to reduce and simplify human needs in order to implement its plans and decisions. This the state could only do by seizing control of the most important means of moulding human souls, such as schools, the media, the courts, art, science and sports, but it was precisely such a system that would be defined as being totalitarian. At the conference, Gissurarson introduced his two recent reports, Voices of the Victims: Notes Towards a Historiography of Anti-Communist Literature, published by New Direction in late 2017, og Totalitarianism in Europe: Three Case Studies, published by ACRE in early 2018.

Other speakers at the conference included Finnish-Estonian author Sofi Oksanen, author of best-selling novel Purge, and Professor Richard Overy, who has written an acclaimed comparative study of Hitler and Stalin. In conjunction with the conference, the President of Estonia, Kersti Kaljulaid, inaugurated a Memorial to the Victims of Communism in the outskirts of Tallinn. Guests at the ceremony and the conference included the ministers of justice of the three Baltic republics, Poland, Ukraine and other countries.

President Kaljulaid lays a wreath at the Memorial to the Victims of Communism. Photo: Martin Andreller.

Bergsson opens the School.

The Liberty Summer School, held by ESFL, European Students for Liberty, and SFF, the Association of Libertarian Students, in Reykjavik 28 July 2018 was well-attended and lively. Einar Freyr Bergsson, Chairman of the Assocation of Libertarian Students, opened the School in the morning, followed by MP Oli B. Karason on the origins of liberal ideas and lawyer David Thorlaksson on the proper role of government. In the afternoon, Sigridur Andersen, Minister of Justice, discussed the main arguments for freedom of expression; psychologist Ragnhildur A. M. Vilhjalmsdottir spoke about the decriminalisation of drugs and MP Brynjar Nielsson about the role of media in a free society. Finally, the keynote lecture was given by Professor Jeffrey Miron of Harvard University on the economics of liberty. Miron is the author of four books on libertarian economics. His lecture was very well-received. In the evening, the attendees met over dinner and celebrated the success of the Liberty Summer School.

The support by RNH of the Liberty Summer School forms a part of its joint project with ACRE, the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe, on ‘Europe, Iceland and the Future of Capitalism’. ESFL will be holding a regional conference in Iceland 22 September 2018, in cooperation with the Icelandic Association of Libertarian Students. This video has been made to announce the event:

Education does not take place in schools only and is not solely provided by government, Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson, RNH Research Director, observed at a session on education at a ACRE (Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe) summit in Baku, Azerbaidjan, 9 June 2018. It was necessary, he emphasised, that schools were not diverted from their main purpose, at least at the primary level, which was to teach pupils the basic skills required in a free society, such as reading, writing and arithmetic. But also general education should not be neglected—what the Germans called ‘Bildung’ and consisted in knowledge of other times and other places. Education is essentially the transmission of culture, and, at least in small and homogeneous nations, it should be based firmly on respect for the national heritage, although Edmund Burke certainly was right: “To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.” Gissurarson submitted that it was therefore an important, indeed crucial, task for any leaders of a country to make it lovely, and that meant to make it free and prosperous.

Gissurarson stressed that knowledge was valuable in itself, and not only for its usefulness. Science could best be defined, with Karl Popper, as the free competition of ideas. He pointed out however that a 2001 OECD survey showed a robust correlation between the investment by private business in research and development, but no such correlation when government was involved. Indeed, government schools, including universities and science funds, often seemed to pursue other aims than pure knowledge and the transmission of culture. The leftist intellectuals dominant in universities, especially in the humanities and social sciences, had replaced the ideal of the free competition of ideas with a political agenda, substituting collective identities for ideas, seeking out and even creating victims to be helped with other people’s money while trying to erode the moral foundations of the free society, such as property and family. Of course their freedom of thought should be respected, but in this endeavour they should not be supported financially by taxpayers.

Gissurarson, former Bolivian President Quiroga and his wife, after the closing dinner at the Baku summit.

Gissurarson argued that conservatives and classical liberals would probably always be in a small minority in the humanities and social sciences, simply because they tended to choose other professions, such as business, medicine, engineering and law. It was therefore necessary for those right wing individuals who were themselves preoccupied with creating wealth to support the very few intellectuals who were in favour of wealth creation. Economic education in particular consisted in making the invisible hand visible: to explain how the gain of one need not be the loss of another and how order could be brought about spontaneously, by virtue of prices and traditions, and not by orders from above. Gissurarson quoted Friedrich A. Hayek who had once remarked to him that the most important task of economists was to demonstrate why economists were not necessary to run the economy.

Other participants in the session on education for a free society at the ACRE summit were Firudin Gurbanov, the Azerbaidjan Deputy Minister of Education, Professor Asif Ahmed, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Health, Aston University, og Sebastian Keciek, who is in charge of digitalisation in Polish schools. Other speakers at the conference included Jorge Quiroga, former President of Bolivia, Jan Zahradil, President of ACRE, Baroness Nosheena Mobarik, MEP, and many other MEPs. The master of ceremonies was British journalist and publisher Iain Dale, and the conference was organised by ACRE Executive Director Richard Milsom and his staff.