Chapter Ǵǵ: Hayek on the Psychology of Socialism and Freedom ȃǿȂand to the vanity and power-hunger of their superiors. Opportunities for
the unscrupulous, ruthless, and uninhibited (including people not inhib-
ited by concern for truth) will be relatively greater. Hayek (p.ȀȄȁ) quotes
Frank Knight: “the probability of the people in power being individuals
who would dislike the possession and exercise of power is on a level with
the probability that an extremely tender-hearted person would get the job
of whipping-master in a slave plantation.”
It helps describeĻe Road to Serfdomto compare it with a book
published in Switzerland four years later whose author repeatedly cites
Hayek: Walter Adolf Jöhr (ȀȈȃȇ),Ist ein freiheitlicher Sozialismus möglich?
(Is Socialism with Freedom Possible?). Hayek’s is the longer book, though
both are short (ȁȃȇpages plus introductions versusȀȂȆpages). Jöhr sticks
more closely to systematic analysis of what economic and other aspects
of society are or are not likely to be compatible with one another; he
aims rather narrowly at answering the question posed. His answer turns
out “No.” He cites, and rejects, published efforts to reconcile social-
ism and freedom by redefining one or both terms. He explains why a
centrally directed economy would destroy economic freedoms, why eco-
nomic and other freedoms cannot be sharply separated, and why polit-
ical and cultural freedoms would therefore suffer also. He shows why
losses of some freedoms are unlikely to be outweighed by gains of others.
Decentralized socialism and partial socialism would have difficulties of
their own and would experience pressures to evolve toward fuller-fledged
socialism.
Ļe two books are complementary. Hayek covers much the same
ground as Jöhr, but in a looser, more discursive, less narrowly analytical
way; he argues more by piling up plausible insights. He also ranges more
widely. He diagnoses more trends and draws more parallels. He points
out, for example, that the rise of fascism and Nazism was not a reaction
against socialist trends but rather their extension.
Ļe intensity of the moral emotions behind a movement like that of
National Socialism or communism can probably be compared only to
those of the great religious movements of history. Once you admit that
the individual is merely a means to serve the ends of the higher entity
called society or the nation, most of those features of totalitarian regimes
which horrify us follow of necessity.... When German philosophers
again and again represent the striving for personal happiness as itself
immoral and only the fulfilment of an imposed duty as praiseworthy,
they are perfectly sincere, however difficult this may be to understand