F.A. Hayek: The Intellectuals and Socialism

Chapter 1 from our FREE paperback book: Hayek for the 21st Century

Etienne Note: This is the 2nd Article in our tribute to the great Austrian Economist Friedrich August von Hayek better known as F.A. Hayek. Some of Hayek’s core insights were that knowledge is dispersed across millions of individuals and cannot be aggregated by any central authority. Prices are information signals. When you override them with planning, you don’t just misallocate resources — you destroy the very mechanism by which society coordinates itself.

But beyond economics, Hayek was a philosopher of spontaneous order — the idea that complex, functional systems emerge from human action without human design. Language, common law, markets, social norms — none are “planned,” and all work better than their planned alternatives. Hayek explained a sophisticated intellectual framework for voluntaryism operating in practice.

In this essay, Hayek describes almost our exact strategy behind the Art of Liberty Foundation — targeting intellectuals and the intelligentsia I.E. the “secondhand dealers in ideas” ( readers, visual learners, podcast audiences, Substack readers), offering a bold alternative vision (voluntaryism) rather than just critiquing the existing system, and understanding that the real battle is for perception, not for electoral outcomes which we are simultaneously exposing as illegitimate and easily rigged.

Chapter One from Hayek for the 21st Century - Paperback available for Free with any purchase from ArtOfLiberty.org/Store, “Going Paid” on any of our Substacks or by paying S&H for the book. The copies are free thanks to the generosity of a donor to the Mises Institute and they have an offer with free S&H Here.

Previous Chapters from Hayek for the 21st Century: Introduction by Thomas J DiLorenzo, President of the Mises Institute & Editor of Hayek for the 21st Century + Hayek bio, quotes, rap battles and memes!

The Intellectuals and Socialism

by F.A. Hayek

I

In all democratic countries, in the United States even more than elsewhere, a strong belief prevails that the influence of the intellectuals on politics is negligible. This is no doubt true of the power of intellectuals to make their peculiar opinions of the moment influence decisions, of the extent to which they can sway the popular vote on questions on which they differ from the current views of the masses. Yet over somewhat longer periods they have probably never exercised so great an influence as they do today in those countries. This power they wield by shaping public opinion.

In the light of recent history it is somewhat curious that this decisive power of the professional secondhand dealers in ideas should not yet be more generally recognized. The political development of the Western world during the last hundred years furnishes the clearest demonstration. Socialism has never and nowhere been at first a working class movement. It is by no means an obvious remedy for the obvious evil which the interests of that class will necessarily demand. It is a construction of theorists, deriving from certain tendencies of abstract thought with which for a long time only the intellectuals were familiar; and it required long efforts by the intellectuals before the working classes could be persuaded to adopt it as their program.

In every country that has moved toward socialism the phase of the development in which socialism becomes a determining influence on politics has been preceded for many years by a period during which socialist ideals governed the thinking of the more active intellectuals. In Germany this stage had been reached toward the end of the last century; in England and France, about the time of the First World War. To the casual observer it would seem as if the United States had reached this phase aft er World War II and that the attraction of a planned and directed economic system is now as strong among the American intellectuals as it ever was among their German or English fellows. Experience suggests that once this phase has been reached it is merely a question of time until the views now held by the intellectuals become the governing force of politics.

The character of the process by which the views of the intellectuals influence the politics of tomorrow is therefore of much more than academic interest. Whether we merely wish to foresee or attempt to influence the course of events, it is a factor of much greater importance than is generally understood. What to the contemporary observer appears as the battle of conflicting interests has indeed often been decided long before in a clash of ideas confined to narrow circles. Paradoxically enough, however, in general only the parties of the Left have done most to spread the belief that it was the numerical strength of the opposing material interests which decided political issues, whereas in practice these same parties have regularly and successfully acted as if they understood the key position of the intellectuals. Whether by design or driven by the force of circumstances, they have always directed their main effort toward gaining the support of this “elite,” while the more conservative groups have acted, as regularly but unsuccessfully, on a more naive view of mass democracy and have usually vainly tried directly to reach and to persuade the individual voter.

II

The term intellectuals, however, does not at once convey a true picture of the large class to which we refer, and the fact that we have no better name by which to describe what we have called the secondhand dealers in ideas is not the least of the reasons why their power is not understood. Even persons who use the word intellectual mainly as a term of abuse are still inclined to withhold it from many who undoubtedly perform that characteristic function. This is neither that of the original thinker or that of the scholar or expert in a particular field of thought. The typical intellectual need be neither: he need not possess special knowledge of anything in particular, nor need he even be particularly intelligent, to perform his role as intermediary in the spreading of ideas. What qualifies him for his job is the wide range of subjects on which he can readily talk and write, and a position or habits through which he becomes acquainted with new ideas sooner than those to whom he addresses himself.

Until one begins to list all the professions and activities which belong to the class, it is difficult to realize how numerous it is, how the scope for its activities constantly increases in modern society, and how dependent on it we all have become. The class does not consist only of journalists, teachers, ministers, lecturers, publicists, radio commentators, writers of fiction, cartoonists, and artists—all of whom may be masters of the technique of conveying ideas but are usually amateurs so far as the substance of what they convey is concerned. The class also includes many professional men and technicians, such as scientists and doctors, who through their habitual intercourse with the printed word become carriers of new ideas outside their own fields and who, because of their expert knowledge of their own subjects, are listened to with respect on most others. There is little that the ordinary man of today learns about events or ideas except through the medium of this class; and outside our special fields of work we are in this respect almost all ordinary men, dependent for our information and instruction on those who make it their job to keep abreast of opinion. It is the intellectuals in this sense who decide what views and opinions are to reach us, which facts are important enough to be told to us, and in what form and from what angle they are to be presented. Whether we shall ever learn of the results of the work of the expert and the original thinker depends mainly on their decision.

The layman, perhaps, is not fully aware to what extent even the popular reputations of scientists and scholars are made by that class and are inevitably aff ected by its views on subjects which have little to do with the merits of the real achievements. And it is especially significant for our problem that every scholar can probably name several instances from his field of men who have undeservedly achieved a popular reputation as great scientists solely because they hold what the intellectuals regard as “progressive” political views; but I have yet to come across a single instance where such a scientific pseudo-reputation has been bestowed for political reason on a scholar of more conservative leanings. This creation of reputations by the intellectuals is particularly important in the fields where the results of expert studies are not used by other specialists but depend on the political decision of the public at large. There is indeed scarcely a better illustration of this than the attitude which professional economists have taken to the growth of such doctrines as socialism or protectionism. There was probably at no time a majority of economists, who were recognized as such by their peers, favorable to socialism (or, for that matter, to protection). In all probability it is even true to say that no other similar group of students contains so high a proportion of its members decidedly opposed to socialism (or protection). This is the more significant as in recent times it is as likely as not that it was an early interest in socialist schemes for reform which led a man to choose economics for his profession. Yet it is not the predominant views of the experts but the views of a minority, mostly of rather doubtful standing in their profession, which are taken up and spread by the intellectuals.

The all-pervasive influence of the intellectuals in contemporary society is still further strengthened by the growing importance of “organization.” It is a common but probably mistaken belief that the increase of organization increases the influence of the expert or specialist. This may be true of the expert administrator and organizer, if there are such people, but hardly of the expert in any particular field of knowledge. It is rather the person whose general knowledge is supposed to qualify him to appreciate expert testimony, and to judge between the experts from different fields, whose power is enhanced. The point which is important for us, however, is that the scholar who becomes a university president, the scientist who takes charge of an institute or foundation, the scholar who becomes an editor or the active promoter of an organization serving a particular cause, all rapidly cease to be scholars or experts and become intellectuals, solely in the light of certain fashionable general ideas. The number of such institutions which breed intellectuals and increase their number and powers grows every day. Almost all the “experts” in the mere technique of getting knowledge over are, with respect to the subject matter which they handle, intellectuals and not experts.

In the sense in which we are using the term, the intellectuals are in fact a fairly new phenomenon of history. Though nobody will regret that education has ceased to be a privilege of the propertied classes, the fact that the propertied classes are no longer the best educated, and the fact that the large number of people who owe their position solely to their general education do not possess that experience of the working of the economic system which the administration of property gives, are important to understanding the role of the intellectual. Professor Schumpeter, who has devoted an illuminating chapter of his Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy to some aspects of our problem, has not unfairly stressed that it is the absence of direct responsibility for practical aff airs and the consequent absence of firsthand knowledge of them which distinguishes the typical intellectual from other people who also wield the power of the spoken and written word. It would lead too far, however, to examine here further the development of this class and the curious claim which has recently been advanced by one of its theorists that it was the only one whose views were not decidedly influenced by its own economic interests. One of the important points that would have to be examined in such a discussion would be how far the growth of this class has been artificially stimulated by the law of copyright.

III

It is not surprising that the real scholar or expert and the practical man of affairs often feel contemptuous about the intellectual, are disinclined to recognize his power, and are resentful when they discover it. Individually they find the intellectuals mostly to be people who understand nothing in particular especially well, and whose judgment on matters they themselves understand shows little sign of special wisdom. But it would be a fatal mistake to underestimate their power for this reason. Even though their knowledge may often be superficial and their intelligence limited, this does not alter the fact that it is their judgment which mainly determines the views on which society will act in the not too distant future. It is no exaggeration to say that once the more active part of the intellectuals have been converted to a set of beliefs, the process by which these become generally accepted is almost automatic and irresistible. They are the organs which modern society has developed for spreading knowledge and ideas and it is their convictions and opinions which operate as the sieve through which all new conceptions must pass before they can reach the masses.

It is of the nature of the intellectual’s job that he must use his own knowledge and convictions in performing his daily task. He occupies his position because he possesses, or has had to deal from day to day with, knowledge which his employer in general does not possess, and his activities can therefore be directed by others only to a limited extent. And just because the intellectuals are mostly intellectually honest it is inevitable that they should follow their own convictions whenever they have discretion and that they should give a corresponding slant to everything that passes through their hands. Even where the direction of policy is in the hand of men of affairs of different views, the execution of policy will in general be in the hand of intellectuals, and it is frequently the decision on the detail which determines the net effect. We find this illustrated in almost all fields of contemporary society. Newspapers in “capitalist” ownership, universities presided over by “reactionary” governing bodies, broadcasting systems owned by conservative governments have all been known to influence public opinion in the direction of socialism, because this was the conviction of the personnel. This has often happened not only in spite of but perhaps even because of the attempts of those at the top to control opinion and to impose principles of orthodoxy.

The effect of this filtering of ideas through the convictions of a class which is constitutionally disposed to certain views is by no means confined to the masses. Outside his special field the expert is generally no less dependent on this class and scarcely less influenced by their selection. The result of this is that today in most parts of the Western world even the most determined opponents of socialism derive from socialist sources their knowledge on most subjects on which they have no first hand information. With many of the more general preconceptions of socialist thought the connection of their more practical proposals is by no means at once obvious, and in consequence many men who believe themselves to be determined opponents of that system of thought become in fact effective spreaders of its ideas. Who does not know the practical man who in his own field denounces socialism as “pernicious rot” but when he steps outside his subject spouts socialism like any left journalist?

In no other field has the predominant influence of the socialist intellectuals been felt more strongly during the last hundred years than in the contacts between different national civilizations. It would go far beyond the limits of this article to trace the causes and significance of the highly important fact that in the modern world the intellectuals provide almost the only approach to an international community. It is this which mainly accounts for the extraordinary spectacle that for generations the supposedly “capitalist” West has been lending its moral and material support almost exclusively to those ideological movements in countries farther east which aimed at undermining Western civilization; and that at the same time the information which the Western public has obtained about events in Central and Eastern Europe has almost inevitably been colored by a socialist bias. Many of the “educational” activities of the American forces of occupation in Germany have furnished clear and recent examples of this tendency.

IV

A proper understanding of the reasons which tend to incline so many of the intellectuals toward socialism is thus most important. The first point here which those who do not share this bias ought to face frankly is that it is neither selfish interests nor evil intentions but mostly honest convictions and good intentions which determine the intellectuals’ views. In fact it is necessary to recognize that on the whole the typical intellectual is today more likely to be a socialist the more he is guided by good will and intelligence and that on the plane of purely intellectual argument he will generally be able to make out a better case than the majority of his opponents within his class. If we still think him wrong we must recognize that it may be genuine error which leads the well-meaning and intelligent people who occupy those key positions in our society to spread views which to us appear a threat to our civilization.2 Nothing could be more important than to try and understand the sources of this error in order that we should be able to counter it. Yet those who are generally regarded as the representatives of the existing order and who believe that they comprehend the dangers of socialism are usually very far from such understanding. They tend to regard the socialist intellectuals as nothing more than a pernicious bunch of highbrow radicals without appreciating their influence, and, by their whole attitude to them, tend to drive them even further into opposition to the existing order.

If we are to understand this peculiar bias of a large section of the intellectuals we must be clear about two points. The first is that they generally judge all particular issues exclusively in the light of certain general ideas; the second, that the characteristic errors of any age are frequently derived from some genuine new truths it has discovered, and they are erroneous applications of new generalizations which have proved their value in other fields. The conclusion to which we shall be led by a full consideration of these facts will be that the effective refutation of such errors will frequently require further intellectual advance, and often advance on points which are very abstract and may seem very remote from the practical issues.

It is perhaps the most characteristic feature of the intellectual that he judges new ideas not by their specific merits but by the readiness with which they fit into his general conceptions, into the picture of the world which he regards as modern or advanced. It is through their influence on him and on his choice of opinions on particular issues that the power of ideas for good and evil grows in proportion with their generality, abstractness, and even vagueness. As he knows little about the particular issues, his criterion must be consistency with his other views, suitability to combine them into a coherent picture of the world. Yet this selection from the multitude of new ideas presenting themselves at every moment creates the characteristic climate of opinion, the dominant Weltanschauung of a period which will be favorable to the reception of some opinions and unfavorable to others, and which will make the intellectual readily accept one conclusion and reject another without a real understanding of the issues.

In some respects the intellectual is indeed closer to the philosopher than to any specialist, and the philosopher is in more than one sense a sort of prince among the intellectuals. Although his influence is farther removed from practical aff airs and correspondingly slower and more difficult to trace than that of the ordinary intellectual, it is of the same kind and in the long run even more powerful than that of the latter. It is the same endeavor toward a synthesis, pursued more methodically, the same judgment of particular views in so far as they fit into a general system of thought rather than by their specific merits, the same striving after a consistent world view, which for both forms the main basis for accepting or rejecting ideas. For this reason the philosopher has probably a greater influence over the intellectuals than any other scholar or scientist, and more than anyone else determines the manner in which the intellectuals exercise their censorship function. The popular influence of the scientific specialist begins to rival that of the philosopher only when he ceases to be a specialist and commences to philosophize about the progress of his subject—and usually only aft er he has been taken up by the intellectuals for reasons which have little to do with his scientific eminence.

The “climate of opinion” of any period is thus essentially a set of very general preconceptions by which the judges the importance of new facts and opinions. These preconceptions are mainly applications to what seem to him the most significant aspects of scientific achievements, a transfer to other fields of what has particularly impressed him in the work of the specialists. One could give a long list of such intellectual fashions and catchwords which in the course of two or three generations have in turn dominated the thinking of the intellectuals. Whether it was the “historical approach” or the theory of evolution, nineteenth century determinism and the belief in the predominant influence of environment as against heredity, the theory of relativity or the belief in the power of the unconscious—every one of these general conceptions has been made the touchstone by which innovations in different fields have been tested. It seems as if the less specific or precise (or the less understood) these ideas are, the wider may be their influence. Sometimes it is no more than a vague impression rarely put into words which thus wields a profound influence. Such beliefs as that deliberate control or conscious organization is also in social affairs always superior to the results of spontaneous processes which are not directed by a human mind, or that any order based on a plan laid down beforehand must be better than one formed by the balancing of opposing forces, have in this way profoundly affected political development.

Only apparently different is the role of the intellectuals where the development of more properly social ideas is concerned. Here their peculiar propensities manifest themselves in making shibboleths of abstractions, in rationalizing and carrying to extremes certain ambitions which spring from the normal intercourse of men. Since democracy is a good thing, the further the democratic principle can be carried, the better it appears to them. The most powerful of these general ideas which have shaped political development in recent times is of course the ideal of material equality. It is, characteristically, not one of the spontaneously grown moral convictions, first applied in the relations between particular individuals, but an intellectual construction originally conceived in the abstract and of doubtful meaning or application in particular instances. Nevertheless, it has operated strongly as a principle of selection among the alternative courses of social policy, exercising a persistent pressure toward an arrangement of social aff airs which nobody clearly conceives. That a particular measure tends to bring about greater equality has come to be regarded as so strong a recommendation that little else will be considered. Since on each particular issue it is this one aspect on which those who guide opinion have a definite conviction, equality has determined social change even more strongly than its advocates intended.

Not only moral ideals act in this manner, however. Sometimes the attitudes of the intellectuals toward the problems of social order may be the consequence of advances in purely scientific knowledge and it is in these instances that their erroneous views on particular issues may for a time seem to have all the prestige of the latest scientific achievements behind them. It is not in itself surprising that a genuine advance of knowledge should in this manner become on occasion a source of new error. If no false conclusions followed from new generalizations they would be final truths which would never need revision. Although as a rule such a new generalization will merely share the false consequences which can be drawn from it with the views which were held before, and thus not lead to new error, it is quite likely that a new theory, just as its value is shown by the valid new conclusions to which it leads, will produce other new conclusions which further advance will show to have been erroneous. But in such an instance a false belief will appear with all the prestige of the latest scientific knowledge supporting it. Although in the particular field to which this belief applies all the scientific evidence may be against it, it will nevertheless, before the tribunal of the intellectuals and in the light of the ideas which govern their thinking, be selected as the view which is best in accord with the spirit of the time. The specialists who will thus achieve public fame and wide influence will thus not be those who have gained recognition by their peers but will often be men whom the other experts regard as cranks, amateurs, or even frauds, but who in the eyes of the general public nevertheless become the best known exponents of their subject.

In particular, there can be little doubt that the manner in which during the last hundred years man has learned to organize the forces of nature has contributed a great deal toward the creation of the belief that a similar control of the forces of society would bring comparable improvements in human conditions. That, with the application of engineering techniques, the direction of all forms of human activity according to a single coherent plan should prove to be as successful in society as it has been in innumerable engineering tasks is too plausible a conclusion not to seduce most of those who are elated by the achievement of the natural sciences. It must indeed be admitted both that it would require powerful arguments to counter the strong presumption in favor of such a conclusion and that these arguments have not yet been adequately stated. It is not sufficient to point out the defects of particular proposals based on this kind of reasoning. The argument will not lose its force until it has been conclusively shown why what has proved so eminently successful in producing advances in so many fields should have limits to its usefulness and become positively harmful if extended beyond these limits. This is a task which has not yet been satisfactorily performed and which will have to be achieved before this particular impulse toward socialism can be removed.

This, of course, is only one of many instances where further intellectual advance is needed if the harmful ideas at present current are to be refuted, and where the course which we shall travel will ultimately be decided by the discussion of very abstract issues. It is not enough for the man of affairs to be sure, from his intimate knowledge of a particular field, that the theories of socialism which are derived from more general ideas will prove impracticable. He may be perfectly right, and yet his resistance will be overwhelmed and all the sorry consequences which he foresees will follow if he is not supported by an effective refutation of the idées mères. So long as the intellectual gets the better of the general argument, the most valid objections of the specific issue will be brushed aside.

V

This is not the whole story, however. The forces which influence recruitment to the ranks of the intellectuals operate in the same direction and help to explain why so many of the most able among them lean toward socialism. There are of course as many differences of opinion among intellectuals as among other groups of people; but it seems to be true that it is on the whole the more active, intelligent, and original men among the intellectuals who most frequently incline toward socialism, while its opponents are often of an inferior caliber. This is true particularly during the early stages of the infiltration of socialist ideas; later, although outside intellectual circles it may still be an act of courage to profess socialist convictions, the pressure of opinion among intellectuals will often be so strongly in favor of socialism that it requires more strength and independence for a man to resist it than to join in what his fellows regard as modern views. Nobody, for instance, who is familiar with large numbers of university faculties (and from this point of view the majority of university teachers probably have to be classed as intellectuals rather than as experts) can remain oblivious to the fact that the most brilliant and successful teachers are today more likely than not to be socialists, while those who hold more conservative political views are as frequently mediocrities. This is of course by itself an important factor leading the younger generation into the socialist camp.

The socialist will, of course, see in this merely a proof that the more intelligent person is today bound to become a socialist. But this is far from being the necessary or even the most likely explanation. The main reason for this state of affairs is probably that, for the exceptionally able man who accepts the present order of society, a multitude of other avenues to influence and power are open, while to the disaffected and dissatisfied an intellectual career is the most promising path to both influence and the power to contribute to the achievement of his ideals. Even more than that: the more conservatively inclined man of first class ability will in general choose intellectual work (and the sacrifice in material reward which this choice usually entails) only if he enjoys it for its own sake. He is in consequence more likely to become an expert scholar rather than an intellectual in the specific sense of the word; while to the more radically minded the intellectual pursuit is more often than not a means rather than an end, a path to exactly that kind of wide influence which the professional intellectual exercises. It is therefore probably the fact, not that the more intelligent people are generally socialists, but that a much higher proportion of socialists among the best minds devote themselves to those intellectual pursuits which in modern society give them a decisive influence on public opinion.

The selection of the personnel of the intellectuals is also closely connected with the predominant interest which they show in general and abstract ideas. Speculations about the possible entire reconstruction of society give the intellectual a fare much more to his taste than the more practical and short-run considerations of those who aim at a piecemeal improvement of the existing order.

In particular, socialist thought owes its appeal to the young largely to its visionary character; the very courage to indulge in Utopian thought is in this respect a source of strength to the socialists which traditional liberalism sadly lacks. This difference operates in favor of socialism, not only because speculation about general principles provides an opportunity for the play of the imagination of those who are unencumbered by much knowledge of the facts of present-day life, but also because it satisfies a legitimate desire for the understanding of the rational basis of any social order and gives scope for the exercise of that constructive urge for which liberalism, after it had won its great victories, left few outlets. The intellectual, by his whole disposition, is uninterested in technical details or practical difficulties. What appeal to him are the broad visions, the specious comprehension of the social order as a whole which a planned system promises.

This fact that the tastes of the intellectual were better satisfied by the speculations of the socialists proved fatal to the influence of the liberal tradition. Once the basic demands of the liberal programs seemed satisfied, the liberal thinkers turned to problems of detail and tended to neglect the development of the general philosophy of liberalism, which in consequence ceased to be a live issue off ering scope for general speculation. Thus for something over half a century it has been only the socialists who have off ered anything like an explicit program of social development, a picture of the future society at which they were aiming, and a set of general principles to guide decisions on particular issues. Even though, if I am right, their ideals suffer from inherent contradictions, and any attempt to put them into practice must produce something utterly different from what they expect, this does not alter the fact that their program for change is the only one which has actually influenced the development of social institutions. It is because theirs has become the only explicit general philosophy of social policy held by a large group, the only system or theory which raises new problems and opens new horizons, that they have succeeded in inspiring the imagination of the intellectuals.

The actual developments of society during this period were determined, not by a battle of conflicting ideals, but by the contrast between an existing state of affairs and that one ideal of a possible future society which the socialists alone held up before the public. Very few of the other programs which offered themselves provided genuine alternatives. Most of them were mere compromises or half-way houses between the more extreme types of socialism and the existing order. All that was needed to make almost any socialist proposal appear reasonable to these “judicious” minds which were constitutionally convinced that the truth must always lie in the middle between the extremes was for someone to advocate a sufficiently more extreme proposal. There seemed to exist only one direction in which we could move and the only question seemed to be how fast and how far the movement should proceed.

VI

The significance of the special appeal to the intellectuals which socialism derives from its speculative character will become clearer if we further contrast the position of the socialist theorist with that of his counterpart who is a liberal in the old sense of the word. This comparison will also lead us to whatever lesson we can draw from an adequate appreciation of the intellectual forces which are undermining the foundations of a free society.

Paradoxically enough, one of the main handicaps which deprives the liberal thinker of popular influence is closely connected with the fact that until socialism has actually arrived he has more opportunity of directly influencing decisions on current policy and that in consequence he is not only not tempted into that long run speculation which is the strength of the socialists, but actually discouraged from it, because any effort of this kind is likely to reduce the immediate good he can do. Whatever power he has to influence practical decisions he owes to his standing with the representatives of the existing order, and this standing he would endanger if he devoted himself to the kind of speculation which would appeal to the intellectuals and which through them could influence developments over longer periods. In order to carry weight with the powers that be he has to be “practical,” “sensible,” and “realistic.” So long as he concerns himself with the immediate issues he is rewarded with influence, material success, and popularity with those who up to a point share his general outlook. But these men have little respect for those speculations on general principles which shape the intellectual climate. Indeed, if he seriously indulges in such long run speculation he is apt to acquire the reputation of being “unsound” or even half a socialist, because he is unwilling to identify the existing order with the free system at which he aims.

If, in spite of this, his efforts continue in the direction of general speculation, he soon discovers that it is unsafe to associate too closely with those who seem to share most of his convictions and he is soon driven into isolation. Indeed there can be few more thankless tasks at present than the essential one of developing the philosophical foundation on which the further development of a free society must be based. Since the man who undertakes it must accept much of the framework of the existing order, he will appear to many of the more speculatively minded intellectuals merely as a timid apologist of things as they are; at the same time he will be dismissed by the men of affairs as an impractical theorist. He is not radical enough for those who know only the world where “with ease together dwell the thoughts” and much too radical for those who see only how “hard in space together clash the things.” If he takes advantage of such support as he can get from the men of affairs, he will almost certainly discredit himself with those on whom he depends for the spreading of his ideas. At the same time he will need most carefully to avoid anything resembling extravagance or overstatement. While no socialist theorist has ever been known to discredit himself with his fellows even by the silliest of proposals, the old-fashioned liberal will damn himself by an impracticable suggestion. Yet for the intellectuals he will still not be speculative or adventurous enough and the changes and improvements in the social structure he will have to off er will seem limited in comparison with what their less restrained imagination conceives.

At least in a society in which the main requisites of freedom have already been won and further improvements must concern points of comparative detail, the liberal program can have none of the glamour of a new invention. The appreciation of the improvements it has to offer requires more knowledge of the working of the existing society than the average intellectual possesses. The discussion of these improvements must proceed on a more practical level than that of the more revolutionary programs, thus giving a complexion which has little appeal for the intellectual and tending to bring in elements to whom he feels directly antagonistic. Those who are most familiar with the working of the present society are also usually interested in the preservation of particular features of that society which may not be defensible on general principles. Unlike the person who looks for an entirely new future order and who naturally turns for guidance to the theorist, the men who believe in the existing order also usually think that they understand it much better than any theorist and in consequence are likely to reject whatever is unfamiliar and theoretical.

The difficulty of finding genuine and disinterested support for a systematic policy for freedom is not new. In a passage of which the reception of a recent book of mine has often reminded me, Lord Acton long ago described how “[a]t all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has been sometimes disastrous, by giving to opponents just grounds of opposition. . . .” More recently, one of the most distinguished living American economists has complained in a similar vein that the main task of those who believe in the basic principles of the capitalist system must frequently be to defend this system against the capitalists—indeed the great liberal economists, from Adam Smith to the present, have always known this.

The most serious obstacle which separates the practical men who have the cause of freedom genuinely at heart from those forces which in the realm of ideas decide the course of development is their deep distrust of theoretical speculation and their tendency to orthodoxy; this more than anything else creates an almost impassable barrier between them and those intellectuals who are devoted to the same cause and whose assistance is indispensable if the cause is to prevail. Although this tendency is perhaps natural among men who defend a system because it has justified itself in practice, and to whom its intellectual justification seems immaterial, it is fatal to its survival because it deprives it of the support it most needs. Orthodoxy of any kind, any pretense that a system of ideas is final and must be unquestioningly accepted as a whole, is the one view which of necessity antagonizes all intellectuals, whatever their views on particular issues. Any system which judges men by the completeness of their conformity to a fixed set of opinions, by their “soundness” or the extent to which they can be relied upon to hold approved views on all points, deprives itself of a support without which no set of ideas can maintain its influence in modern society. The ability to criticize accepted views, to explore new vistas and to experience with new conceptions, provides the atmosphere without which the intellectual cannot breathe. A cause which offers no scope for these traits can have no support from him and is thereby doomed in any society which like ours rests on his services.

VII

It may be that as a free society as we have known it carries in itself the forces of its own destruction, that once freedom has been achieved it is taken for granted and ceases to be valued, and that the free growth of ideas which is the essence of a free society will bring about the destruction of the foundations on which it depends. There can be little doubt that in countries like the United States the ideal of freedom today has less real appeal for the young than it has in countries where they have learned what its loss means. On the other hand, there is every sign that in Germany and elsewhere, to the young men who have never known a free society, the task of constructing one can become as exciting and fascinating as any socialist scheme which has appeared during the last hundred years. It is an extraordinary fact, though one which many visitors have experienced, that in speaking to German students about the principles of a liberal society one finds a more responsive and even enthusiastic audience than one can hope to find in any of the Western democracies. In Britain also there is already appearing among the young a new interest in the principles of true liberalism which certainly did not exist a few years ago.

Does this mean that freedom is valued only when it is lost, that the world must everywhere go through a dark phase of socialist totalitarianism before the forces of freedom can gather strength anew? It may be so, but I hope it need not be. Yet so long as the people who over longer periods determine public opinion continue to be attracted by the ideals of socialism, the trend will continue. If we are to avoid such a development we must be able to offer a new liberal program which appeals to the imagination.

We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a program which seems neither a mere defense of things as they are not a diluted kind of socialism, but truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty (including the trade unions), which is not too severely practical, and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible. We need intellectual leaders who are prepared to resist the blandishments of power and influence and who are willing to work for an ideal, however small may be the prospects of its early realization. They must be men who are willing to stick to principles and to fight for their full realization, however remote. The practical compromises they must leave to the politicians. Free trade and the freedom of opportunity are ideals which still may arouse the imaginations of large numbers, but a mere “reasonable freedom of trade” or a mere “relaxation of controls” is neither intellectually respectable nor likely to inspire any enthusiasm.

The main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals and therefore an influence on public opinion which is daily making possible what only recently seemed utterly remote. Those who have concerned themselves exclusively with what seemed practicable in the existing state of opinion have constantly found that even this has rapidly become politically impossible as the result of changes in a public opinion which they have done nothing to guide. Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark. But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its greatest, the battle is not lost. The intellectual revival of liberalism is already under way in many parts of the world. Will it be in time?

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The Art of Liberty Foundation is honoring the Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek, one of the most important economists to have ever lived, with a campaign that will both syndicate the new book: Hayek for the 21st Century - Essays in Political Economy and provide free paperback copies of the book to anyone who goes paid on our Substack as an annual member and/or orders anything from ArtOfLiberty.org/store.

This introduction to F.A. Hayek includes his biography, memes, quotes, “Rap Battles” with economist Lord John Maynard Keynes, and the first installment of our syndication of Hayek for the 21st Century - Essays in Political Economy: The Introduction to the book by Thomas J DiLorenzo, President of the Mises Institute & Editor of Hayek for the 21st Century

We are also adding the full PDF of Hayek for the 21st Century to our uncensorable flash drive of Freedom: The Liberator.

Biography

F. A. Hayek’s life spanned the twentieth century, and he made his home in some of the great intellectual communities of the period.

Born Friedrich August von Hayek in 1899 to a distinguished family of Viennese intellectuals, Hayek attended the University of Vienna, earning doctorates in 1921 and 1923. Hayek came to the University at age 19 just after World War I, when it was one of the three best places in the world to study economics (the others being Stockholm and Cambridge).

Like many students of economics then and since, Hayek chose the subject not for its own sake, but because he wanted to improve social conditions—the poverty of postwar Vienna serving as a daily reminder of such a need. Socialism seemed to provide a solution. Then in 1922 Mises published his Die Gemeinwirtschaft, later translated as Socialism. “To none of us young men who read the book when it appeared,” Hayek recalled, “the world was ever the same again.” It was around this time that Hayek began attending Mises’s famed Privatseminar. For several years the Privatseminar was the center of the economics community in Vienna.

Later, Hayek became the first of this group to leave Vienna; most of the others, along with Mises himself, were also gone by the start of World War II.

At the L.S.E. Hayek lectured on Mises’s business-cycle theory, which he was refining and which, until Keynes’s General Theory came out in 1936, was rapidly gaining adherents in Britain and the U.S. and was becoming the preferred explanation of the Depression. Hayek and Keynes had sparred in the early 1930s in the pages of the Economic Journal, over Keynes’s Treatise on Money.

Within a very few years, however, the fortunes of the Austrian School suffered a dramatic reversal. Mises left Vienna in 1934 for Geneva and then New York, where he continued to work in isolation; Hayek remained at the L.S.E. until 1950, when he joined the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Other Austrians of Hayek’s generation became prominent in the U.S. but their work no longer seemed to show distinct traces of the tradition founded by Carl Menger.

At Chicago Hayek again found himself among a dazzling group. But economic theory, in particular its style of reasoning, was rapidly changing. In addition, Hayek had ceased to work on economic theory, concentrating instead on psychology, philosophy, and politics, and Austrian economics entered a prolonged eclipse.

When the 1974 Nobel Prize in economics went to Hayek, interest in the Austrian School was suddenly and unexpectedly revived. Hayek’s writings were taught to new generations, and Hayek himself appeared at the early Institute for Humane Studies conferences in the mid-1970s. He continued to write, producing The Fatal Conceit in 1988, at the age of 89.

Hayek died in 1992 in Freiburg, Germany, where he had lived since leaving Chicago in 1961.

Among mainstream economists, he is mainly known for his popular The Road to Serfdom (1944) and for his work on knowledge in the 1930s and 1940s. Specialists in business cycle theory recognize his early work on industrial fluctuations, and modern information theorists often acknowledge Hayek’s work on prices as signals, although his conclusions are typically disputed. Hayek’s work is also known in political philosophy, legal theory, and psychology.

Within the Austrian School of economics, Hayek’s influence, while undeniably immense, has very recently become the subject of some controversy. His emphasis on spontaneous order and his work on complex systems has been widely influential among many Austrians. Others have preferred to stress Hayek’s work in technical economics, particularly on capital and the business cycle, citing a tension between some of Hayek’s and Mises’s views on the social order.

Hayek’s writings on capital, money, and the business cycle are widely regarded as his most important contributions to economics. Building on Mises’s Theory of Money and Credit (1912), Hayek showed how fluctuations in economy-wide output and employment are related to the economy’s capital structure. In Prices and Production (1931) he introduced the famous “Hayekian triangles” to illustrate the relationship between the value of capital goods and their place in the temporal sequence of production.

In Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle (1933) Hayek showed how monetary injections, by lowering the rate of interest below what Mises (following Wicksell) called its “natural rate,” distort the economy’s intertemporal structure of production. Most theories of the effects of money on prices and output (then and since) consider only the effects of the total money supply on the price level and aggregate output or investment.

Hayek’s writings on dispersed knowledge and spontaneous order are also widely known, but more controversial. In “Economics and Knowledge” (1937) and “The Use of Knowledge in Society” (1945) Hayek argued that the central economic problem facing society is not, as is commonly expressed in textbooks, the allocation of given resources among competing ends.

It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only those individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge not given to anyone in its totality.

Clearly, the Austrian revival owes much to Hayek. He ranks among the greatest members of the Austrian School, and among the leading economists of the twentieth century. His work continues to be influential in business cycle theory, comparative economic systems, political and social philosophy, legal theory, and even cognitive psychology. Hayek remains one of the most intriguing intellectual figures of our time.

Fear the Boom and Bust: Keynes vs. Hayek - The Original Economics Rap Battle!

F.A Hayek vs. John Maynard Keynes square off in Fear the Boom and Bust - The Original Economics Rap Battle where Keynes, who advocated “government” action during periods of recession and depression and “wants to steer markets” squares off against F.A Hayek, who advocates for low taxation and savings-led investment by those who best understand their industries… Hayek “wants them set free”

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Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek - Economics Rap Battle Round Two

Full Lyrics Here: https://genius.com/Econstories-fight-of-the-century-lyrics

Which way should we choose?
More bottom-up or more top-down?
The fight continues
Keynes and Hayek, second round
It’s time to weigh in
More from the top or from the ground?
Let’s listen to the greats
Keynes and Hayek throwin’ down

Introduction to Hayek for the 21st Century

Introduction by Thomas J DiLorenzo, President of the Mises Institute & Editor of Hayek for the 21st Century

The rest of Hayek for the 21st Century will be syndicated in the coming weeks.

In a February 7, 2000, article in The New Yorker, journalist John Cassidy wrote that “it is hardly an exaggeration to refer to the twentieth century as the Hayek century.” He said this because of Friedrich Hayek’s prominent role throughout the century in defending free market capitalism and his critiques of socialism, especially his writings on the importance of decentralized knowledge in economic decision-making. Hayek lived to see his ideas proven correct with the worldwide collapse of socialism in the late eighties and early nineties. Watching the images of the collapse on television he said to his son, “I told you so.”

The Knowledge Problem

The “knowledge problem” is Hayek’s key contribution to the critique of socialism. It recognizes the commonsense notion that what makes the economic world go around is the use of knowledge by all kinds of people with different abilities, educations, experiences, and skills. Thanks to this international division of labor and knowledge, we collaborate “as though led by an invisible hand” in order to mutually prosper. It all depends of course on freedom—the freedom to own property, to pursue a profession of your Introduction 7 8 Hayek for the 21st Century choosing, to start and run a business, to buy and sell, to be guided in your decisions by free market prices. By contrast, socialism in all of its varieties is based on the opposite idea—that what is supposedly needed for prosperity is totalitarian powers in the hands of a small number of politicians and “planners” who will forcefully impose a single plan on an entire society. Hayek labeled this “the fatal conceit” of socialism in his last book. The entire world now knows that he was right, and all of the socialist tyrants and their propagandists and court historians were (and are) wrong.

Hayek’s “The Use of Knowledge in Society” and “The Pretense of Knowledge,” reprinted here, are the two best expositions of the Hayekian knowledge problem. Indeed, John Cassidy credited Hayek with providing an explanation of the workings of “the information age” of the internet that would develop some fifty years after he first started writing about the importance of decentralized information in society. This is not mere speculation on Cassidy’s part. As just one example, the cofounder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, claims to have gotten the idea for Wikipedia as an Auburn University undergraduate finance student aft er Mises Institute Research Fellow Mark Thornton got him to read “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” Hayek called free market capitalism guided by private property and free market prices a “telecommunications system,” which Cassidy suggested was “one of the great insights of the [twentieth] century.”

Hayek’s Demolition of Socialists and Their Ideas

Hayek wrote in a 1961 Southern Economic Journal article (“The Non Sequitur of the ‘Dependence Effect,’” republished here) that for over a hundred years socialists had argued that “the problem of production” had been solved, so that “only the problem of distribution remains.” At the time, the “latest form of this old contention” was in the form of numerous books by the socialist Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith, the best known of which was The Affluent Society. Galbraith argued in books and articles that all “essential needs” are already met, and that most of what people think are other “needs” are really fake needs created by the brainwashing effects of advertising. Only “innate” needs that we think of ourselves are useful, said Galbraith; everything else that is brought to our attention by others is therefore useless and wasteful. Therefore, the argument went, government should tax more and spend more for what it deems to be our genuinely useful needs. What is genuinely useful would of course be determined by politicians—presumably with the assistance of John Kenneth Galbraith.

Hayek called this argument “a complete non sequitur.” It implies for one thing that “the whole cultural achievement of man is not important.” The only genuinely innate human needs, said Hayek, are food, shelter, and sex. Everything else is brought to our attention by someone. Hayek’s article is a complete demolition of the Galbraithian system and his life’s work of promoting what Hayek called increasing “the share of the resources whose use is determined by political authority and the coercion of any dissenting minority.”

In 1949 Hayek authored “The Intellectuals and Socialism” in The University of Chicago Law Review. His argument is as relevant today as it was then—if not more relevant. Contrary to the common argument that “intellectuals” have little influence on day-to-day discussions about public policy, Hayek argued that “over somewhat longer periods they have probably never exercised so great an influence as they do today.” He pointed out that socialism was never a “working class” movement but was always hatched from the utopian dreams of “theorists” who spent 10 decades preaching their socialist utopianism in university classrooms and all throughout the culture. In many countries the result of this decades-long propagandizing for socialism was that the views held by socialist intellectuals became “the governing force of politics,” wrote Hayek. The “intellectual” spreaders of socialist ideas were not just academics but also “journalists, teachers, ministers, lecturers, publicists, radio commentators, writers of fiction, cartoonists, and artists,” among many others, including “scientists and doctors.” It is “the intellectuals in this sense who decide what views and opinions are to reach us.”

Eventually, so many institutions are taken over by socialists that an intellectual who espouses the philosophical foundations of a free society, by contrast, “soon discovers that it is unsafe to associate too closely with those who seem to share most of his convictions and he is driven into isolation.” This sounds like a perfect description of today’s American university world. Nevertheless, all is not lost, Hayek concluded. What is needed is education about a classical “liberal Utopia” to counter the endless promises of socialist utopias—not a “diluted kind of socialism,” he wrote, but a “truly liberal radicalism” that does not pull punches to please any special interest group. Leave the compromising to the politicians, he advised.

Hayek was relentless in his devastating critiques of socialism and interventionism, and nowhere is this more on display than in his essay “The Meaning of Competition.” By the 1940s the academic economics profession had adopted a straw-man argument version of competition. Rather than the Austrian School conception of competition as a dynamic, rivalrous discovery process, competition was newly defined as a static situation where “many” business firms all produced a homogeneous product and charged identical prices in a world where all market participants had “perfect knowledge” of everything—what consumers wanted, how to minimize costs and maximize profits, and so on. They called it “perfect competition.” In his essay Hayek explained that “‘perfect’ competition means indeed the absence of all competitive activities” because all of it—product differentiation, price cutting, mergers, advertising—was all assumed away by the perfect competition “model.”

This method of analysis was later labeled a “nirvana fallacy” by UCLA economist Harold Demsetz. Positing a utopian never-never land and comparing it to the real world, and then condemning real-world markets as “failed” because they are “imperfect,” is one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetrated by the economics profession.

In “Choice in Currency” Hayek did not oppose government issuance of money but instead opposed governmental monopoly and governments’ “power to limit the kinds of money in which contracts may be concluded.” Competing currencies could be valued “in seconds” with “electronic calculators,” Hayek wrote, long before the invention of the cell phone. Competition in currencies would be the path to honest money, for “even the slightest deviation from the path of honesty would reduce the demand for their product.” It is little wonder that Hayek’s writings on competing currencies have become enormously popular among advocates of cryptocurrencies.

Hayekian Political Philosophy

Oddly enough, despite all of his contributions to economic science and his Nobel Prize, what Friedrich Hayek is most known for among the general public is his writings on political philosophy, in particular his infamous book The Road to Serfdom, a critique of collectivism in all its forms. Hayek did not distinguish between fascism and socialism, the former being just a variant of the latter, with a common hatred of private property, free enterprise, economic freedom in general, constitutionalism, and the rule of law. The most famous chapter of The Road to Serfdom is chapter 10, “Why the Worst Get on Top,” republished here. Since any kind of socialism requires a central plan for all of society, it also requires the use of massive governmental force (and censorship of critics) to implement the plan. Consequently, the kind of people who would rise to the top of such a system are those with the fewest qualms about coercing, imprisoning, and brutalizing (or worse) their fellow citizens, wrote Hayek. That is why, he wrote, “the practice of socialism is everywhere totalitarian.”

Hopefully, this brief introduction has helped the reader to understand why the journalist John Cassidy was so inspired by the power of Hayek’s scholarship and writings that he made a case that the entire twentieth century (the good parts of it, anyway) should be thought of as “the Hayek century.” Ludwig von Mises was surely right when, he said that “Doctor Hayek . . . will be remembered as one of the great economists of all time”.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Quotes & Memes

“From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time”
― Friedrich August von Hayek, Constitution of Liberty

“Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.”
― Friedrich von Hayek

“The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better.”
― Friedrich August von Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty

“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine the can design.”
― F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism

“Probably it is true enough that the great majority are rarely capable of thinking independently, that on most questions they accept views which they find ready-made, and that they will be equally content if born or coaxed into one set of beliefs or another. In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance only for a small minority. But this does not mean that anyone is competent, or ought to have power, to select those to whom this freedom is to be reserved. It certainly does not justify the presumption of any group of people to claim the right to determine what people ought to think or believe.”
― Friedrich August von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

“The more the state “plans” the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek

“Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes, we can turn to another. But if we face a monopolist we are at his absolute mercy. And an authority directing the whole economic system of the country would be the most powerful monopolist conceivable…it would have complete power to decide what we are to be given and on what terms. It would not only decide what commodities and services were to be available and in what quantities; it would be able to direct their distributions between persons to any degree it liked.”
― Friedrich August von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

“It is true that the virtues which are less esteemed and practiced now--independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to bear risks, the readiness to back one’s own conviction against a majority, and the willingness to voluntary cooperation with one’s neighbors--are essentially those on which an individualist society rests. Collectivism has nothing to put in their place, and in so far as it already has destroyed then it has left a void filled by nothing but the demand for obedience and the compulsion of the individual to what is collectively decided to be good.” ― Friedrich August von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

“I am certain, however, that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.”
― F.A. Hayek

“I was quite depressed two weeks ago when I spent an afternoon at Brentano’s Bookshop in New York and was looking at the kind of books most people read. Once you see that you lose all hope.”
― Friedrich August von Hayek

“Emergencies” have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have eroded.”
― Friedrich Hayek

“While an equality of rights under a limited government is possible and an essential condition of individual freedom, a claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.”
― Friedrich A. von Hayek, The Mirage of Social Justice

“Our faith in freedom does not rest on the foreseeable results in particular circumstances but on the belief that it will, on balance, release more forces for the good than for the bad.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek

“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions order, and adaptation to the unknown, can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order. Yet that decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account.”
― Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism

“It is because every individual knows little and, in particular, because we rarely know which of us knows best that we trust the independent and competitive efforts of many to induce the emergence of what we shall want when we see it.”
― Friedrich August von Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty

“From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step.”
― Friedrich A. von Hayek

“It is one of the saddest spectacles of our time to see a great democratic movement support a policy which must lead to the destruction of democracy and which meanwhile can benefit only a minority of the masses who support it. Yet it is this support from the Left of the tendencies toward monopoly which make them so irresistible and the prospects of the future so dark.”
― Friedrich August von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

“To act on behalf of a group seems to free people of many of the moral restraints which control their behaviour as individuals within the group.”
― Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

“Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions and will receive praise or blame for them. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.”
― Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty

“Although we had been warned by some of the greatest political thinkers of the nineteenth century, by Tocqueville and Lord Acton, that socialism means slavery, we have steadily moved in the direction of socialism.”
― Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

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