ŏ Ŕ ō Ŝ Š ő Ş șȚHayek on the Psychology of
Socialism and Freedom*
ŕŚŠŞśŐšŏŠŕśŚ (Ŏť ŔőŞŎőŞŠ şŠőŕŚ)
Nineteen eighty-four is the eighty-fifth anniversary of the birth of Frie-
drich Hayek, Nobel laureate and one of this century’s great economists.
Ļis year is also the fortieth anniversary of Hayek’s best-known book,Ļe
Road to Serfdom.
Ļe Road to Serfdomwas published at a critical time. ĻeȀȈȂǿs had
been a decade of exceptionally rapid increase of the economic role of gov-
ernment in the Western democracies, including the United States and
Britain. InȀȈȃȃ, as the war was coming to an end, the common, expec-
tation was that this trend would be resumed in the postwar period. Ļe
usual term for the postwar economic environment was “postwar planning,”
meaning planning by government.
During theȀȈȂǿs there had been little objective intellectual resistance
to the movement toward increasing government controls. In the United
States resistance came from Republicans, Southern Democrats, and busi-
ness organizations and could be dismissed as partisan, nostalgic, or self-
interested.
Hayek’s book was the opening—and the most important—shot in
the intellectual resistance to the trend toward government control. Hayek
argued that military victory over the Nazis and Fascists would not per-
manently ensure the triumph of freedom. Ļe repulsive features of the
Nazi and Fascist regimes were not the results of peculiarly German and
Italian characteristics. Rather they were the results of carrying out fully
the implications of a socialist way of thinking that was already present in
Britain and the United States. He warned that unless we rejected that way
of thinking we could follow along the same road to serfdom.
*FromAEIEconomist(NovemberȀȈȇȃ):Ȁ–Ȅ.ȂȈȆ