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xsysmgr This is the 60th anniversary of the publication of "Road to Serfdom," by Friedrich Hayek. It is one of the most important books of the 20th century, as important as the publication of "Das Kapital" was, in its malign way, in the 19th. Hayek's intellectual blockbuster came out when it seemed Marxist socialism would displace capitalism as the world's ruling economic doctrine. Sixty percent of the world's population was living under socialism before the 1991 Soviet collapse. Hayek's thesis drew on the words of Hilaire Belloc: "The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself." In fact, he used Belloc's maxim as an epigraph to one of the chapters in "Road to Serfdom." The defeat of socialism had actually started long before 1991. It began with the spread of Hayekism, the intellectual assault on the would-be "reign of virtue," as Jean Jacques Rousseau might have put it. It began with a quasi-global plebiscite against Marxist socialism by millions of its victims who fled socialist countries any way they could, hurdling high-voltage fences, sailing in leaky tubs in the pirate-infested South China Sea and the Fidel Castro-infested Caribbean, risking asphyxiation in crowded freight cars, flying in home-made planes, anything to get away. The Austrian-born Hayek who died in 1992, explained what he called "the extended order of human cooperation, an order more commonly, if somewhat misleadingly, known as capitalism." In his later book, "The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism," he elaborated on his thesis, namely socialism could never work, no matter how it came to pass, whether by revolution and dictatorship, as in the onetime Soviet Union, or by the ballot box, as in postwar Great Britain. Socialism to Hayek, a Nobel Laureate, had become a code word for the "economics of scarcity." For Hayek, the fatal conceit was to think a bunch of ideologized bureaucrats could through the machinery of what was called "central authority" -- in other words, socialism -- uncover the information needed to make the socialist system work. As the Economist summarized Hayekism: "Socialism is factually flawed (because it is wrong in its description of why capitalism flourished) and logically flawed as well (because it must deny itself the information-gathering apparatus that it would need if it were ever to work)." For Hayek, competition was the surest way for an economic system to work and competition could exist only under a free market system. In other words, as economist John Cassidy put it, "By allowing millions of decision-makers to respond individually to freely determined prices, it allocated resources, labor, capital, and human ingenuity -- in a manner that can't be mimicked by a central plan, however brilliant the central planner.... The view of capitalism as a spontaneous processing machine -- 'telecommunications system' was how Hayek referred to it -- was one of the real insights of the century." Mr Cassidy suggested, "It is hardly an exaggeration to refer to the 20th century as the Hayek century." Yet "socialism" is still the reigning dogma in the vast majority of social science departments of American universities. As Hayek once put it: "The higher we climb up the ladder of intelligence, the more we talk with intellectuals, the more likely we are to encounter socialist convictions." To remain a Marxist today or a Marxist fellow-traveler when the whole world has voted against the malice of Marxism raises the most profound questions as to the rationality of the true believer. Especially as we celebrate publication of Hayek's irrefutable "Road to Serfdom." Arnold Beichman, a Hoover Institution research fellow, is a columnist for The Washington Times.
View Replies To: xsysmgr "Socialism is factually flawed (because it is wrong in its description of why capitalism flourished) and logically flawed as well (because it must deny itself the information-gathering apparatus that it would need if it were ever to work)." One of the classic statements of Western philosophy is : The unexamined life is not worth living. Obviously, socialism does not have the essential component of SELF-criticism. When "socialist man" speaks, everyone else MUST listen - OR DIE. The socialist can never be wrong about anything, in his own eyes. So we have disastrous utopian "experiments" such as the extreme communism of Pol Pot in Cambodia. In socialism, many things are forbidden, all else is compulsory. The "neo-socialists" or "socialist lites" who populate the liberal bastions of power and influence would deny this wholeheartedly. This issue deserves much more thorough discussion and argumentation. Suggested references: The Black Book of Communism, Leftist Illusions, among many others. org, too, has interesting articles, books and essays online that argue convincingly that nazism, fascism, communism and socialism are ONE AND THE SAME in their ideological roots, utopian fervor and "heresy."
View Replies To: xsysmgr The reason that the higher one goes in the "intellectual" world, socialism is more dominant is because: 1) Socialism tells the intellectual, you are more intelligent than the other people.
View Replies To: xsysmgr "Those who dare to undertake the institution of a people must feel themselves capable, as it were, of changing human nature, of transforming each individual ... of altering the constitution of man for the purpose of strengthening it."
Chairman Fred As Hayek once put it: "The higher we climb up the ladder of intelligence, the more we talk with intellectuals, the more likely we are to encounter socialist convictions." The book sounds like a great read, but I have to disagree with the author's statement quoted above. "Intellectuals" are not inclined by nature to be socialists or communists. If that were true, then our Constitution--and the world's greatest nation--would never have ever been created. Our countries founding fathers were some of the most intellectually great men to have ever lived. And history yields many examples of great thinkers and great nations that were not socialist or communist. Unfortunately, however, our modern institutions of "higher learning" have been hijacked by Marxists "educators" and these people have a profound influence over the thinking of our nation's emerging "intellectual" youth. Brainwashing is not difficult, particularly when you have fresh young minds with which to work (and uninvolved parents who are either working too hard to meet their tax burdens, or are too busy with their liberal ideals of self-involvement). That is the key to overthrowing a country from within: seize the minds of the nation's youth (and the non-intellectual masses of society). That is why socialism has spread to every level of education (and why the NEA is paying for expensive prime-time TV advertising to get even younger children into "preschool" indoctrination classes).
View Replies To: SpyGuy It's not by accident that socialism is so often paired with atheism - and not merely in the usual sense of the word. They don't just disbelieve in god, but despise the very concept. Afterall, HE created Human Nature, which is their arch enemy.
View Replies To: SpyGuy 1) The book is an outstanding read, please read it. It was not their vanity that they should have utter political power to themselves; It is their Great Wet Dream that they should be in control of Leviathan.
View Replies To: xsysmgr "Human Action" by Ludwig von Mises, published before Hayek's work, was far more incisive and influential. Besides, Hayek was a former Socialist who recognized the error of his ways, but von Mises began as a laissez-faire Capitalist and had it right all along.
View Replies To: xsysmgr "Human Action" by Ludwig von Mises, published before Hayek's work, was far more incisive and influential. Besides, Hayek was a former Socialist who recognized the error of his ways, but von Mises began as a laissez-faire Capitalist and had it right all along.
View Replies To: Sam Cree "Road to Serfdom" is required reading. It was actually when I read Milton Friedman's 'Capitalism and Freedom' that I was sold. There really can be no freedom without capitalis...
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