‘The Road to Serfdom’: Why Collectivism Leads to Tyranny
A review of ‘The Road to Serfdom’, by Friedrich Hayek; University of Chicago Press, 1944.
Hayek opens The Road to Serfdom with an admission that writing it is not the best use of his time, that he is not the one most qualified to write it, and that, by writing it, he is likely to lose friends. Yet, he says, he must write it; for Britain and the other Western powers are, in his view, sleepwalking towards a totalitarian abyss. The desire for economic security through central planning, a popular view in those countries, unavoidably leads to a total loss of liberty and, in the end, tyranny. The Western countries are making the same mistakes that turned Germany and Russia into despotic, command-and-control régimes. Written during the Second World War and published a year before its end, it is polemic and manifesto, touching on economics, psychology, history and political philosophy, a ruthlessly logical study of why well-meant policy, focused on the redistribution of wealth, paves the ‘road to serfdom’.
Hayek starts slowly. He begins his analysis with an almost reverent presentation of market capitalism, casting personal choice and competition as the soul of freedom. The market, for Hayek, stands for a moral neutrality that, through its indifference to how its participants live, gives us a say over how we live our lives. In other words, we can spend our money how we want, thanks to a delicate ecosystem that runs on decentralised decision-making and regulates itself. Centralised planning, in contrast, is intrinsically flawed, for no planner, however bright, can have all of the knowledge spread across society and contained in the decisions we make every day. Prices, say, reflect our wants and needs as they are evolve and are expressed through our everyday buying decisions.
Centralised planning, in contrast, is intrinsically flawed, for no planner, however bright, can have all of the knowledge spread across society.
Hayek builds some steam. He seems to grow in self-belief as he sets out the psychological risks of handing over decision-making power to the state. Once a population starts to accept that centralised control is needed for the ‘greater good’, a subtle yet corrosive shift begins, with the upshot being that personal liberty is more and more compromised. In his chapter, ‘The End of Truth’, Hayek argues that central planning cannot tolerate dissent, as the impression of unanimity and togetherness is crucial to maintaining the planner’s authority. Dissent becomes treason and, in extreme cases, personal morality yields to loyalty to the collective or the state. The ruling power inevitably attracts the worst and most power-hungry people in society, for good people will not set aside their notions of good and bad in the name of ideology, and seek to control others for the latter’s sake. Nevertheless, to survive they may keep their heads down; and when disagreement is banned, diversity of viewpoint is abolished, and the individual sense of self becomes more and more subordinate to the state, we are living in a tyranny. Here, he foreshadows Hannah Arendt, who simplified things: ‘If something can’t be said, you’re already in a tyranny.’
How do people become complicit in their own oppression? asks Hayek. Because they do not trust what is plain to see. When others act as if nothing is wrong, we fall in line. Thus a kind of veil is draped over the mass of society as the liberty of its members is slowly eroded. Most of us do not want to swim against the stream, stand out from the crowd. This is why our contrarian writers are so valuable. ‘To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle,’ wrote George Orwell in a 1946 article for Tribune. Hayek, here, writes with the urgency and frustration of one watching his world collapse around him while everyone else goes about their lives as normal. And his tone is fitting; for freedom, Hayek makes plain, is an active state, requiring alertness, scepticism, and a readiness to resist the fashionable and avoid the temptation to put equality or security above personal liberty. He quotes Ben Franklin: ‘Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.’
‘To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle,’ wrote George Orwell.
The path to serfdom, then, is paved not just by economic concessions to the state, but by cultural shifts. Societies, often led by their intellectual class, begin to condemn individualism and idealise conformity. He cites the mad German proto-Nazis who, in the early years of the 20th century spoke of English liberty as a barbarian force in the world, and the German people as a naturally warlike and noble tribe. He points to English scientists and academics, writing in the 1940s, blithely saying much the same thing, seemingly ignorant that they are aping the sorts of people who helped Hitler into power. Needless to say, in saying such things, Hayek was condemned — not only by socialists, but by libertarians like Ayn Rand. He was called hyperbolic, shrill; unfairly distrustful of state intervention and indifferent to social inequality.
Whatever you think, reader, The Road of Serfdom paints a picture of liberal democracy not only as a great accomplishment, but as the only just system that exists. Its flaws are many — I have written about them myself—but for Hayek, these pale in comparison to the suffering that awaits those who accept or promote any collectivist ordering of society, which tends inexorably towards tyranny. So fragile is our freedom that we must be active in defending it, demanding a society-wide commitment to putting personal liberty above collective comfort. (Responding to Elizabeth Willing Powell’s question: ‘Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?’, Ben Franklin said: ‘A republic—if you can keep it.’) One may view Hayek’s book as anchored in time, contingent on the peculiar epoch in which it was written; or one may see it, like Burke’s Revolutions, as a work of enduring political relevance and value. In any case, it stands as a fierce attack on the collectivist impulse and a passionately, logically argued case for the risks intrinsinc in pursuing economic equality through state control.
