The Road To Serfdom

I, the Author have spent about half my adult life in my native Austria, in close touch with German thought, and the other half in the United States and England. In the latter period I have become increasingly convinced that some of the forces which destroyed freedom in Germany are also at work here. The very magnitude of the outrages committed by the National Socialists has strengthened the assurance that a totalitarian system cannot happen here. But let us remember that 15 years ago the possibility of such a thing happening in Germany would have appeared just as fantastic not only to nine tenths of the Germans themselves but also to the most hostile foreign observer.

There are many features which were then regarded as "typically German" which are now equally familiar in America and England, and many symptoms that point to a further development in the same direction: the increasing veneration for the state, the fatalistic acceptance of "inevitable trends," the enthusiasm for "organization" of everything (we now call it "planning").

The tragic character of the danger is, if possible, even less understood here than it was in Germany. In Germany it was largely people of good will, whose socialist beliefs prepared the way for the forces which stand for everything they detest. Few recognize that the rise of fascism and Nazism was not a reaction against socialism but a necessary (and inevitable) outcome of the trend towards socialism. Yet it is significant that many of the leaders of these movements, from Mussolini down (and including Laval and Quisling) began as socialists and ended as Fascists or Nazis. In the democracies at present, many who sincerely hate all of Nazism's manifestations are working for ideals whose realization would lead straight to such abhorred tyranny. Many influential people in society are in some measure socialists. They believe that our economic life should be "consciously directed," that we should substitute "economic planning" for the competitive system. Yet is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavor consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for?

In order to achieve their ends, the planners must create power - power over men wielded by other men - of a magnitude never before known. Democracy is an obstacle to this suppression of freedom which the centralized direction of economic activity requires. Hence arises the clash between planning and democracy.

Many socialists have the tragic illusion that by depriving private individuals of the power they possess in an individualist system, and transferring this power to society, they thereby extinguish power. What they overlook is that, by concentrating power so that it can be used in the service of a single plan, it is not merely transformed but infinitely heightened. An amount of power is created infinitely greater than any that existed before, so much more far-reaching as almost to be different in kind. It is entirely fallacious to argue that the great power exercised by a central planning board would be "no greater than the power collectively exercised by private boards of directors." There is, in a competitive society, nobody who can exercise even a fraction of the power which a socialist planning board would possess. To decentralize power is to reduce the absolute amount of power, and the competitive system is the only system designed to minimize the power exercised by man over man. Who can seriously doubt that the power which a millionaire, who may be my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest bureaucrat possesses who wields the coercive power of the state and on whose discretion it depends how I am allowed to live and work?

Our generation has forgotten that the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom. It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves. When all the means of production are vested in a single hand, whether it be nominally that of "society" as a whole or that of a dictator, whoever exercises this control has complete power over us. In the hands of private individuals, what is called economic power can be an instrument of coercion, but it is never control over the whole life of a person. But when economic power is centralized as an instrument of political power it creates a degree of dependence scarcely distinguishable from slavery. It has been well said that, in a country where the sole employer is the state, opposition means death by slow starvation.

Individualism, in contrast to socialism and all other forms of totalitarianism, is based on the respect of Christianity for the individual man and the belief that it is desirable that men should be free to develop their own individual gifts and bents. This philosophy, first fully developed during the Renaissance, grew and spread into what we know as Western civilization. The general direction of social development was one of freeing the individual from the ties which bound him in feudal society.

Our generation has forgotten that the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom.

And what is the ultimate expression and measure of private property? Money.

And we have an absolutely statist, socialized monetary system. You own nothing - your "money" is an unbacked piece of paper, a note from a political bank, that manipulates interest rates, offering to pay you more pieces of paper.

The highlighted paragraph was written by whoever condensed the book. Here is the original wording by Hayek:

But the essential features of that individualism which, from elements provided by Christianity and the philosophy of classical antiquity, was first fully developed during the Renaissance and has since grown and spread into what we know as Western European civilisation-the respect for the individual man qua man, that is the recognition of his own views and tastes as supreme in his own sphere, however narrowly that may be circumscribed, and the belief that it is desirable that men should develop their own individual gifts and bents.

and here (from earlier on the the same page):

We are rapidly abandoning not the views merely of Cobden and Bright, of Adam Smith and Hume, or even of Locke and Milton, but one of the salient characteristics of Western civilisation as it has grown from the foundations laid by Christianity and the Greeks and Romans. Not merely nineteenth- and eighteenth-century liberalism, but the basic individualism inherited by us from Erasmus and Montaigne, from Cicero and Tacitus, Pericles and Thucydides is progressively relinquished.

The author of the condensed version seems to have left out the references to Greco-Roman antiquity as a foundation of our civilization

The one thing we learn from history is that people do not learn from history. I expect some variant of socialism to seize concentrated power in the United States and to wield that power in the extermination of millions who disagree and millions who can be scapegoated as a source of revenue. Whether the victims are blacks and Jews, evangelical Christians and Jews, or homosexuals and Jews, the outcome will be a victory for evil.

The only hope is to clearly circumscribe the boundaries of governmental power. We used to do that with the Constitution, but that is now a “living document”, so it means nothing at all except as a tool to control the people.

Are you saying that 2nd amendment time is closing in on us?

I don't know what it will take, but as long as we have a monetary system based on printed fiat money, massive government and personal debt, and politicized interest rates, all coming from the financial central planning agency known as the Federal Reserve, we will continue to slip into statism, socialism, tyranny and corrupt government.

Salvation of individual souls and individuals created in God's image is compatible with individual rights and individual happiness.The Founding Fathers founded America on individualism.Collectivism is one of the foundations of libtardism.

The world leaders and great men of the Earth who want to enslave us and confiscate our wealth with socialism are going to get theirs. God promises that He will get the last laugh on these people. Perhaps He put all the oil wealth under the sands of the Arabs (perhaps the worst people on earth) in order to judge the great and mighty. For the leaders of the Earth, all roads lead to Babylon. It will be destroyed forever...

Zechariah 5: 1 Then I turned , and lifted up mine eyes, and looked , and behold a flying roll. 2 And he said unto me, What seest thou? And I answered , I see a flying roll; the length thereof is twenty cubits, and the breadth thereof ten cubits. 3 Then said he unto me, This is the curse that goeth forth over the face of the whole earth: for every one that stealeth shall be cut off as on this side according to it; and every one that sweareth shall be cut off as on that side according to it. 4 I will bring it forth , saith the LORD of hosts, and it shall enter into the house of the thief, and into the house of him that sweareth falsely by my name: and it shall remain in the midst of his house, and shall consume it with the timber thereof and the stones thereof. 5 Then the angel that talked with me went forth , and said unto me, Lift up now thine eyes, and see what is this that goeth forth. 6 And I said , What is it? And he said , This is an ephah that goeth forth . He said moreover, This is their resemblance through all the earth. 7 And, behold, there was lifted up a talent of lead: and this is a woman that sitteth in the midst of the ephah. 8 And he said , This is wickedness. And he cast it into the midst of the ephah; and he cast the weight of lead upon the mouth thereof. 9 Then lifted I up mine eyes, and looked , and, behold, there came out two women, and the wind was in their wings; for they had wings like the wings of a stork: and they lifted up the ephah between the earth and the heaven. 10 Then said I to the angel that talked with me, Whither do these bear the ephah? 11 And he said unto me, To build it an house in the land of Shinar: and it shall be established , and set there upon her own base.

"...Many socialists have the tragic illusion that by depriving private individuals of the power they possess in an individualist system, and transferring this power to society, they thereby extinguish power. What they overlook is that, by concentrating power so that it can be used in the service of a single plan, it is not merely transformed but infinitely heightened..."

A key statement.

Sad. Hayek, even back then, could see what we have occurring today.

Hayek and Orwell outline two sides of the same coin. Hayek describes on one side of the coin how things are prepared for the other side.

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