The Road to Serfdom at 80: Still an Enduring Libertarian Classic
By: HLMenckenFan
The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek has shockingly stood the test of time and is as relevant today as it was eighty years ago when it was first published in March 1944. The Road to Serfdom remains a popular text because of its vital lessons about economics, government, and individual freedom. The publication of Hayek's book marked a pivotal moment in the free-market economic revolution that changed the world and continues to this day. The economist warned that government intervention can easily overstep its bounds and erode the principles of a free society.
The publication of Hayek’s work in 1944 stirred much controversy with its argument against socialism and central economic planning. Professor Hayek at the London School of Economics debated British economist John Maynard Keynes, who argued for government economic intervention to alleviate the Depression. He also challenged the Beveridge Report that paved the way for the modern British welfare state and warned of the dangers of the emerging Nazi Party.
Keynesian economics inspired the New Deal in America and Britain followed shortly afterward. British intellectuals such as Sidney and Beatrice Webb of the Fabian Society, playwright George Bernard Shaw, and novelist George Orwell supported the socialist Labour Party. Hayek’s explanation defied the progressive view of government and the Marxist view of class struggle because it highlighted that individual freedom is lost under central planning. Hayek’s work was famously “Dedicated to socialists of all parties” during a time when central planning was favored over market-based economics in the world’s leading nations. President Roosevelt praised Mussolini as an “admirable Italian gentleman”, prolonged the Great Depression, packed the Supreme Court, and threw over 100,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps. The totalitarian regimes of Mussolini and Hitler embraced central planning, defended nationalization, supported a massive welfare state, rejected laissez-faire capitalism, and murdered millions.
Hayek warned about the danger of embracing this collectivist phenomenon in his book. The collectivist ideologies of progressivism, communism, and fascism all differ from classical liberalism because their adherents organize society by “refusing to recognize autonomous spheres in which the ends of the individuals are supreme”. Under the guise of organizing society on behalf of ‘the common good,’ people are misled about what central planners want. One cannot measure what counts as the ‘general welfare’ under a central planning model.
Ordinary people are left out of the decision-making process under central planning. According to Hayek: “It is impossible for any mind to comprehend the infinite variety of different needs of different people”. There are no checks on the authority of central planners. This will invariably lead to a situation where “the will of a small minority be imposed upon the people”. Hayek realized that freedom under central planning is only freedom to agree with those in power and made a bold prediction about the future of freedom in Europe. He boldly stressed that “the chief evil is unlimited government…nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power.”
Hayek noted in the chapter “Why the Worst Get on Top” that central planning would enable unscrupulous totalitarians to rise to power in fulfillment of historian Lord Acton’s timeless idea that “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Dictatorship is inevitable under socialism. Hayek’s final chapter “The Socialist Roots of Nazism”, argues that German national socialism was motivated by a hatred of economic freedom where there are no individual rights, only duties. He asserted that Nazism was an anti-capitalist phenomenon.
Hayek’s work became a bestseller in Britain and made him a public intellectual. Although an opponent of Hayek’s ideas, Keynes called Serfdom a “grand book”. Orwell in reviewing Serfdom defended Hayek’s thesis and envisioned totalitarianism enabled through central planning as something arising out of his famous dystopian novel 1984 written a few years later: “It cannot be said too often…that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamed of”. Winston Churchill referenced Serfdom in a speech during the 1945 election against Clement Attlee of the Labour Party and future Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher became an advocate for Hayek’s ideas after reading the book as an undergraduate at Oxford.
The Road to Serfdom was an instant success in America upon publication in September 1944. Reader’s Digest summarized the insights in a 20-page comic book format and hundreds of thousands of copies circulated. Hayek became a leader of the free-market Mont Perelin Society and provided the guidelines for its founding in Switzerland in 1947. He received the Nobel Prize in economics in 1974 on behalf of the Austrian School of Economics for his work on the ‘Pretense in Knowledge’ that guided the whims of economic planners. He noted that no one can account for all decisions made in the economy as central planning fails to allocate resources effectively. Hayek wrote over twenty books including The Constitution of Liberty and The Fatal Conceit in defense of free market economics and on the errors of socialism during his lifetime.
Keynesianism as an economic doctrine fell out of favor in the United States during the stagflation of the 1970s and was replaced by the supply-side economics of Reagan who regarded Serfdom as one of his favorite books. President Reagan enjoyed meeting Hayek at the White House in 1983 and President HW Bush rewarded the economist with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991.
Hayek became a Distinguished Lecturer and later a Senior Fellow at the libertarian CATO Institute in the 1980s. He associated with libertarian economists Milton Friedman and fellow Austrian émigré Ludwig von Mises who were main figures in the burgeoning American libertarian movement during his lifetime. Hayek’s legacy of classical liberal free-market economics was furthered by the famous 1976 Nobel economic laureate and Reagan economic advisor Milton Friedman who defended it in a 1994 CSPAN interview promoting the 50th anniversary of Serfdom and wrote the foreword to the 50th anniversary edition calling it a “true classic”. Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose in 1980 among other bestselling books popularized free-market economics among the American public.
Hayek as an intellectual remained an inspiration to American libertarians in the struggle against socialism and central planning. The Road to Serfdom became a famous text of the postwar conservative movement, regardless Hayek maintained: that he was a liberal in the classical sense, writing the essay “Why I Am Not a Conservative” critical of conservatism in 1960. To this day, his works are often quoted in economic policy debates. Hayek lived to see the fall of the Berlin Wall and the failure of socialism in Eastern Europe as a testament to the success of his ideas.
The Road to Serfdom offers a dire warning that greater government control of economic activity invariably involves a loss of liberty and equally powerful lessons eighty years after its initial release. We must remain vigilant as we libertarians pass the torch of freedom to new generations of freedom fighters to resist the siren song of socialism and temptations of totalitarianism and prepare for the intellectual battle of a lifetime.
