Posted on 01/28/2007 9:29:00 AM PST by Jacquerie
A day or two after the Democrats swept the midterms, I made a promise to finally finish reading an incredible little book called “The Road to Serfdom.” (1944)
The following are direct quotes from the English author, F.A. Hayek. I offer excerpts from the first couple of chapters with the intention of motivating as many Freepers as possible to read it themselves so as to be fully armed when the Democrats and Rinos attempt to further socialize and ultimately destroy a once proud republic.
Foreward
Dedicated “To the Socialists of All Parties”
Fascism and Communism are merely variants of the same totalitarianism which central control of economic activity tends to produce.
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.
The most important change which extensive government control produces is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people. 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 inevitable consequence of socialist planning create a state of affairs in which, if the policy is to be pursued, totalitarian forces will get the upper hand.
From the point of view of fundamental human liberties there is little to choose between communism, socialism and national socialism. They all are examples of the collectivist or totalitarian state.
Preface
I am always told by my socialist colleagues that as an economist I should occupy a much more important position in the kind of society to which I am opposed - provided, of course, that I could bring myself to accept their views.
Introduction
The supreme tragedy is still not seen that in Germany it was largely people of good will, men who were admired and held up as models in the democratic countries, who prepared the way for, if they did not actually create, the forces which now stand for everything they detest.
Few are ready to recognize that the rise of fascism and nazism was not a reaction against the socialist trends of the preceding period but a necessary outcome of those tendencies.
The Abandoned Road
For at least 25 years before the specter of totalitarianism became a real threat, we had progressively been moving away from the basic ideas on which Western civilization has been built.
We have progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past.
Wherever the barriers to the free exercise of human ingenuity were removed, man became rapidly able to satisfy ever widening ranges of desire.
By the beginning of the 20th century the workingman in the Western world had reached a degree of material comfort, security, and personal independence which a hundred years before had seem scarcely possible.
It might even be said that the very success of liberalism became the cause of its decline. Because of the success already achieved, man became increasingly unwilling to tolerate the evils still with him which now appeared both unbearable and unnecessary.
The change amounts to a complete reversal of the trend we have sketched, an entire abandonment of the individualist tradition which has created Western civilization.
The Great Utopia
What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven. F. Hoelderlin
The French writers who laid the foundations of modern socialism had no doubt that their ideas could be put into practice only by a strong dictatorial government.
While democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.
To the great apostles of political freedom the word “freedom” meant freedom from coercion, freedom from the arbitrary power of other men, release from the ties which left the individual no choice but obedience to the order of a superior to whom he was attached. The new freedom promised, however, was to freedom from necessity, release from the compulsion of the circumstances which inevitably limit the range of choice of all of us. Freedom in this sense is, of course merely another name for power or wealth.
Stalinism is worse than fascism, more ruthless, barbarous, unjust, immoral, anti-democratic, unredeemed by any hope or scuple and is better described as superfascist.
Socialism achieved and maintained by democratic means seems definitely to belong to the world of utopias.
Many a university teacher during the 1930’s has seen English and American students return from the Continent uncertain whether they were communists or Nazis and certain only that they hated Western liberal civilization.
Yes, but unlike von Mises, he reasoned without dismissing the moral question. Hayek's knowledge that human nature was not a machine tempered the scientific rationalism that is so often the refuge of those who are devoted to "what works."
The road to serfdom is paved by "free trade".
My conclusion on observing the left in the west really comes down not to ideology but to class. The left under their guise to 'help the disenfranchised" will invevitably pave the way to totalitarianism. all movements of liberation have offered the masses the same: liberation from tyranny, a new social order where the new man will be freed from the tyranny of servitute, history, class, race, etc.
But the 'struggle' is never ending. the war of liberation is perpetual. the left is always preparing for war and as a result those who do not support the movement are branded as enemies of the revolution and so on. Then the cycle of tyranny continues.
What the left despises is a free citizenry that left to it's own devices, will not follow the perscribed marxist plan. Thus they find refuge in institutions such as the judiciary, media and the academia just to name a few, that is at arms length of the democratic process. Offering them leverage to push through an agenda that may not be accepted in an open ballot. Abortion, gay marriage, stem-cell research and so on.
I suggest you pick up Robert Bork Slouching's Towards Gomorrah, The Theory of Moral Sentiment by Adam Smith. Anything by Locke & Voltaire just to name a few. Hayek is part of the same tangent of voices as others that warn us again and again that tyranny lurkes around the corners of history.
Voltaire and Hayek? Did you forget Comte?
bttt
I've heard Walter E. Williams(the Professor of Liberty!) speak of it on Rush'es show!
hedgetrimmer wrote, "The road to serfdom is paved by "free trade".
Please elaborate...I'm not following you.
Maybe I should listen to Rush more often ;)
Austrian.
Oops, my mistake. He was Austrian, not English.
"What in effect unites the socialists of the Left and the Right is common hostility to competition and their common desire to replace it by a directed economy."
You write very well and I agree with all of your points. Thanks for the reading recommendations!
BTW, being Canadian, how do you suggest we derail the national health care train that is coming around the bend?
Very good book. It should be required reading. Thomas Sowell has written some similar concepts in his work.
It is a great book.
Bump for an excellent book.
bttt
bump to encourage all to read this book
(we need a "booklist" bump list)
Re: The Road to Serfdom.
When did the terms liberal and conservative get switched around?
I've got this, i just have to read it now.
Unintentionally ironic.
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