“When the course of civilization takes an unexpected turn — when, instead of the continuous progress which we have come to expect, we find ourselves threatened by evils associated by us with past ages of barbarism — we naturally blame anything but ourselves.”

 

I suspect that you would call The Road to Serfdom F.A. Hayek’s magnum opus.  It was written in 1944 towards the end of the Second World War, when countries had been exposed to various socialist political experiments and the effect they had on the countries that adopted them were very, very evident.  But Hayek did not take for granted that people’s common sense would see the dangers.  He was well aware of the hazards socialism still posed with its pernicious ideology and promises of a better future where everyone would be equal, the rich would pay their fair share, and all would be secure within the society.

Born in Austria and living in England, Hayek saw socialism creeping into English and American life in the same ways that it had infected Germany and the Soviet Union previously. While this book is a well-reasoned apology for an economic free-market, it is more to expose the flaws and dangers within a socialist system, which always sounds sensible with its emphasis on equality and moral superiority, with the government sensibly running society but, in fact, the reality is completely different.  One of Hayek’s pertinent quotes is: “If socialists understood economics, they wouldn’t be socialists.”

After a few prefaces and an introductiion, Hayek sets his work up within the following chapters:

1.  The Abandoned Road
2. The Great Utopia
3. Individualism and Collectivism
4. The “Inevitability” of Planning
5. Planning and Democracy
6. Planning and the Rule of Law
7. Economic Control and Totalitarianism
8. Who, Whom?
9. Security and Freedom
10. Why the Worst Get On Top
11. The End of Truth
12. The Social Roots of Naziism
13. The Totalitarians in Our Midst
14. Material Conditions and Ideal Ends
15. The Prospects of International Order
16. Conclusion

It helps to understand the changes in the word “liberal” which has occurred over the decades.  Hayek explains:

“I use throughout the term ‘liberal’ in the original, nineteenth-century sense in which it is still current in Britain.  In current American usage it often means very nearly the opposite of this.  It has been part of the camouflage of leftist movements in this country, helped by the muddleheadedness of many who really believe in liberty, that ‘liberal’ has come to mean the advocacy of almost every kind of government control.”  

This is an important distinction.

Hayek explains how traditional socialism transformed into the “new” socialism and also how socialism made its transformation into fascism.

Marxism tends to begin in the universities and be transmitted outwards.  The first people who are infected by this ideology are often professors and scientists.  The professors and scientists who challenged the National Socialist movement in Germany were disposed of, but the many who were left lauded and perpetuated its growth.

The early socialists freely admitted that to implement their ideology, an authoritarian government was not only preferred but necessary.  Democratic governments function on broad mandates and general ideas which most people can agree on, but socialists must suppress the Rule of Law ( a safeguard and the embodiment of freedom.  It ensures that all the actions of government must be bound by rules which are fixed and declared beforehand so your average person is capable of seeing and predicting with fair certainty, how the authority will use its power in any given circumstances so one is able to plan one’s affairs based on this knowledge), as they must also dispense with individual freedoms for the functionality of their central planning.

If we think that economic ends can be separated from other ends in life, in that we can restrict central planning to economics only, we are sadly mistaken; everything intersects.  Economic factors affect our circumstances, and those circumstances influence our striving for other ends.

The government’s meddling, or central planning, not only causes problems economically, eventually the control becomes more and more ridged and spread over more and more areas that our freedom eventually disappears.  The continuous giving over of freedom may be trumpeted as being for the good of society but when one looks at the results of the original utopian plan, one often sees a worsening in all areas that were supposed to be improved and a concentrated power at the top of the pyramid, which ushers in a totalitarian format. Central planning leads to dictatorship simply because dictatorship is the most effective way of coercion and the reinforcement of ideals.

Hayek outlines many of the Dangers of Socialism but this point is particularly concerning:

“…. the most important change which extensive government control produces is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people.  This is necessarily a slow affair, a process which extends not over a few years but perhaps over one or two generations.  The important point is that the political ideals of a people and its attitude toward authority are as much the effect as the cause of the political institutions under which it lives.  This means, among other things, that even a strong tradition of political liberty is no safeguard if the danger is precisely that new institutions and policies will gradually undermine and destroy that spirit.  The consequences can of course be averted if that spirit reasserts itself in time and the people not only throw out the party which has been leading them further and further in the dangerous direction but also recognize the nature of the danger and resolutely change their course.” Chapter 1

 

Why do people continue to choose socialism despite many, many examples of the terrible consequences of its implementation?  Hayek thinks there are a few reasons.  First of all, people like to think they’re in control.  In a free market society, one must be content with not being able to predict everything and must be willing to ride out these unknowns and learn from them.  If the government controls everything, the average person doesn’t have to make the effort to understand the economic factors and there is the illusion that someone else is handling everything.  It gives them a false impression of security, that everything will be fixed or at least will be in a short time.  A visual image that comes directly to my mind is an ostrich with its head in the sand.

A particularly valuable aspect of Hayek’s writing is that he traces the transformation of National Socialism in Germany pre-WWII and thus gives us a snapshot into those times.  He does not villainize the German population but reveals how such thinking can permeate a society of generally rational people.

Being someone who is sceptical of the nearly unchecked progressivism, and knowing deeply the pitfalls of human nature, Hayek’s book resonated deeply with me.  And after seeing, especially recently, how easily people are willing to demonize each other for simply having different ideas or philosophies, I can see the boots of socialism marching across our culture and its outcome remains to be seen.  One hopes for the best but with the examples of Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Venezuela, Argentina and a number of other socialist countries, we can expect times of upheaval and loss of individual freedom and possibly worse if the march continues.

Here are some quotes from Hayek that deserve to be remembered:

“Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes, we can turn to another. But if we face a monopolist we are at his absolute mercy. And an authority directing the whole economic system of the country would be the most powerful monopolist conceivable…it would have complete power to decide what we are to be given and on what terms. It would not only decide what commodities and services were to be available and in what quantities; it would be able to direct their distributions between persons to any degree it liked.”

 

“It is true that the virtues which are less esteemed and practiced now–independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to bear risks, the readiness to back one’s own conviction against a majority, and the willingness to voluntary cooperation with one’s neighbors–are essentially those on which an individualist society rests. Collectivism has nothing to put in their place, and in so far as it already has destroyed then it has left a void filled by nothing but the demand for obedience and the compulsion of the individual to what is collectively decided to be good.”

 

“Freedom to order our own conduct in the sphere where material circumstances force a choice upon us, and responsibility for the arrangement of our own life according to our own conscience, is the air in which alone moral sense grows and in which moral values are daily recreated in the free decision of the individual. Responsibility, not to a superior, but to one’s own conscience, the awareness of a duty not exacted by compulsion, the necessity to decide which of the things one values are to be sacrificed to others, and to bear the consequences of one’s own decision, are the very essence of any morals which deserve the name.”

 

“Probably it is true enough that the great majority are rarely capable of thinking independently, that on most questions they accept views which they find ready-made, and that they will be equally content if born or coaxed into one set of beliefs or another. In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance only for a small minority. But this does not mean that anyone is competent, or ought to have power, to select those to whom this freedom is to be reserved. It certainly does not justify the presumption of any group of people to claim the right to determine what people ought to think or believe.”