This book called my attention for primarily historical reasons. The ideas set forth here seem to be the bedrock of modern European liberalism and the spine of American conservative intellectualism; indeed, you might say that Hayek is the intellectual giant on whose shoulders thinkers such as Sowell [Insert Link] and freedman stand. At it’s heart, the book is a summary of the Austrian school of economics, sometimes indistinguishable from the Chicago school of economics, as applied to public policy.
In a nutshell, the book is famous for the outline of the theoretical arguments for why the pursuit of utopia, and utopianistic presidence must be sought through power and inevitably results in dystopia. Hayek’s argument walks through four primary arguments.
1. All economic systems that curtail the freedom of the individual (Socialism and Fascism) are effectively indistinguishable forms of central planning (authoritarianism) rather than opposite ends of the political spectrum
2. Contrary to popular belief Central planning is not inevitable nor necessary; primarily because its presumed benefits (distribution of resources) are atheoretical and counter evidentiated.
“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.”
3. Pursuit of the purported benefits of the centrally planned will necessarily result in curtailment of freedom as selective peter is robbed for collective paul.
“It is pathetic, but characteristic, of the muddle into which many of our intellectuals have been led the conflicting ideals in which they believe, that a leading advocate of the most comprehensive central planning like H.G. wells should at the same time write an ardent defense of the rights of man. The individual rights which Mr. Wells hopes to preserve would inevitably obstruct the planning which he desires. To some extent, he seems to realize the dilemma, we find therefore the provisions of his proposed declaration of the rights of man so hedged about with qualifications that they lose all significance.”
4. A vicious cycle of trading freedom for better distribution resulting in poorer distribution resulting in another trade begins. The cycle is perpetuated by the institutions of central power who must justify their existence. The result of the cycle is the downfall of democracy and dystopia (my word not his).
“Yet, an agreement that planning is necessary together with the inability of democratic assemblies to produce a plan, will evoke stronger and stronger demands that the government or some single individual should be given powers to act on their own responsibility. The belief is becoming more and more widespread, that if things are to get done, the responsible authorities must be freed from the fetters of democratic procedure.” –Planning and Democracy
The argument requires some elucidation. It rests on the premise that central planning must fail and this is where some of Hiyach’s arguments were most potent for me. The argument he outlines for the ineffectuality of central planning can be encapsulated in three quotes spaced through the book.
“It is impossible for any man to survey more than a limited field; to be aware of the urgency of more than a limited number of needs. Whether his interests center around his own physical needs or he takes a warm interest in the welfare of every human being he knows, the ends about which he can be concerned will always be only an infinitesimal fraction of the needs of all men.” –Planning and Democracy.
The first quote lays bare the problem with picking an axiom of optimization. Who gets to decide what utopia is aiming at? General prosperity? equality? peace? happiness? who’s peace? Who’s happiness? The country? all of humanity? what about children? and unborn children? and what about policies that make some people happy and some people oppressed? Does the utopia take into account the relative and unequal happiness of our fathers? and what about our children? These are some of the “needs” that hiyach might be referring to, the point is people aim at different things. Who can say which is worth aiming at and which is not? This brings us to the second quote.
“Not equality but greater equality is what was aimed at. Though these two phrases sound very similar they are as different as possible as far as our problem is concerned. While absolute equality would clearly determine the planner’s task, the desire for greater equality is nearly negative: no more than an expression of dislike of the current state of affairs and so long as we are not prepared to say that every move in the direction of complete equality is desirable it answers scarcely any of the questions the planner will have to decide.”
Equality, we might call it equity today, was the north star value axiom of several 20th-century utopian philosophies ranging from Stalinism to Maoism and many in the states today. Hyach’s not saying it’s necessarily a bad value, he’s merely using it as an example of the difficulty of trying to balance multiple priorities as a central planner. Saying we want everything to be “more equal’ (a common redoubt for the politically modderate today) doesn’t actually tell us what needs be done at the expense of what. It doesn’t say what the planners are willing to sacrifice to achieve the fading goal post of “more equal”. No, only the planner who says “absolutely equal” has a clear path before them. No sacrifice is to great to achieve equality because equality is the only goal post that matters and we’re not satisfied with moving that way, we must arrive. That planner’s path is filled with the ideology of gulag‘s and the four olds.
“Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process, and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of the social process.”
Prophetic quotes
Freedom or liberty are by no means the only words whose meaning has been changed into their opposites to make them serve as instruments of totalitarian propaganda. We have already seen how the same happens to ‘justice’ and ‘law’, ‘right’ and ‘equality’, the list could be extended until it could encompass almost all moral and political terms generally in use. If one has not one’s self experienced this process it will be difficult to appreciate the magnitude of this change of meaning of words. The confusion which it creates and the barriers to any rational discussion which it creates. (watched this happen with ben and ana)
“It seems that pure mathematics is no less a victim and that even the holding of particular views about the nature of continuity can be ascribed to bourgeoise prejudices. According to the webbs, the journal for Marxist-Leninist natural sciences has the following slogan. ‘We stand for Party in mathematics. We stand for the purity of Marxist-Leninist theory in surgery.'”
Morality of freedom
“Freedom to order our own conduct in the sphere where material circumstances force a choice upon us, and responsibility for the arrangement of our own life according to our own conscience, is the air in which alone moral sense grows and in which moral values are daily recreated in the free decision of the individual. Responsibility, not to a superior, but to one’s own conscience, the awareness of a duty not exacted by compulsion, the necessity to decide which of the things one values are to be sacrificed to others, and to bear the consequences of one’s own decision, are the very essence of any morals which deserve the name.”
“Nothing makes conditions more unbearable than the knowledge that no effort of our can change them and even if we should never have the strength of mind to make the necessary sacrifice then the knowledge that we could escape if we only strove hard enough makes many otherwise intolerable positions bearable.”
Utopia and the disentegration of law
“The conflict then is not between liberty and law – as John Locke had already made clear, there cannot be liberty without law – but rather between different kinds of law, law so different that they should hardly be called by the same name. One is the law of the rule of law, general principles laid down beforehand, the rules of the game which enable individuals to foresee how the coercive apparatus of the state will be used or what he and his fellow citizens will be allowed to, or made to do in stated circumstances. The other kind of law in effect gives the authority power to do what it thinks fit to do. Thus the rule of law could clearly not be preserved in a democracy that undertook to decide every conflict of interests, not according to rules previously laid down, but “on its merits”.
“(The rule of law) cannot be preserved in totalitarian regimes. There, as E.B. Ashton has well expressed it the liberal principle is replaced by the maxim, ‘No must remain without punishment, whether the law explicitly provides for it or not'”.
“The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the passion for equality (equity) made vain the hope for freedom.” -Lord Acton
The perenial probelm of distribution
What little information we have about the distribution of incomes in soviet Russia does not suggest that the inequalities are substantially smaller there than in the capitalist society. Max Eastman the end of socialism in Russia 1937 pg 30-34 gives some information from official Russian sources that suggests that the difference between the highest and the lowest salaries paid in Russia is of the same order of magnitude (about 50:1) as in The United States and Leon Trotsky, estimated as late as 1949 that upper 11 or 12 percent of the Soviet population now receives approximately 50% of the national income.
“It is easier for people to agree on a negative program, on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off, than on any positive task.”
Closing statements
If the democracies themselves abandon the supreme ideal of the freedom and happiness of the individual, if they implicitly admit that their civilization is not worth preserving… they have indeed nothing to offer.
If we are to succeed in the war of ideologies… we must first of all regain the belief in the traditional values for which we have stood in the past and we must have the moral courage stoutly to defend the ideals which our enemies attack. Not by shamed faced apologies and by assurances that we are rapidly reforming. Not by explaining that we are seeking some compromise between the traditional liberal values and the new totalitarian ideas shall we win confidence and support. Not the latest improvements we may have affected in our social institutions which count but little compared the basic differences of two opposed ways of life but our unwavering faith in those traditions which have made England and America countries of free and upright, tolerant and independent people is the thing that counts.