Bookpages Commentary

The Road to Serfdom - pages 65-66

2008-02-05T23:17:00.000-06:00

When the course of civilization takes an unexpected turn—when, instead of the continuous progress which we have come to expect, we find ourselves threatened by evils associated by us with past ages of barbarism—we naturally blame anything but ourselves. Have we not all striven according to our best lights, and have not many of our finest minds incessantly worked to make this a better world? Have not all our efforts and hopes been directed toward greater freedom, justice, and prosperity? If the outcome is so different from our aims—if, instead of freedom and prosperity, bondage and misery stare us in the face—is it not clear that sinister forces must have foiled our intentions, that we are the victims of some evil power which must be conquered before we can resume the road to better things? However much we may differ when we name the culprit ... we all are, or at least were until recently, certain of one thing: that the leading ideas which during the last generation have become common to most people of good will and have determined the major changes in our social life cannot have been wrong. We are ready to accept almost any explanation of the present crisis of our civilization except one: that the present state of the world may be the result of genuine error on our own part and that the pursuit of some of our most cherished ideals has apparently produced results utterly different from those which we expected.

F. A. Hayek (1944) - Chapter 1, The Abandoned Road

The Road to Serfdom - page 61

2008-02-05T22:25:00.000-06:00

The problem is not why the Germans as such are vicious, which congenitally they are probably no more than other peoples, but to determine the circumstances which during the last seventy years have made possible the progressive growth and the ultimate victory of a particular set of ideas, and why in the end the victory has brought the most vicious elements among them to the top. Mere hatred of everything German instead of the particular ideas which now dominate the Germans is, moreover, very dangerous, because it blinds those who indulge in it against a real threat. It is to be feared that this attitude is frequently merely a kind of escapism, caused by an unwillingness to recognize tendencies which are not confined to Germany and by a reluctance to re-examine, and if necessary to discard, beliefs which we have taken over from the Germans and by which we are still as much deluded as the Germans were. It is doubly dangerous because the contention that only the peculiar wickedness of the Germans has produced the Nazi system is likely to become the excuse for forcing on us the very institutions which have produced that wickedness.

F. A. Hayek (1944) - Introduction

The Road to Serfdom - pages 59-61

2008-02-05T21:36:00.000-06:00

The supreme tragedy is still not seen that in Germany it was largely people of good will, men who were admired and held up as models in the democratic countries, who prepared the way for, if they did not actually create, the forces which now stand for everything they detest. ... Few are ready to recognize that the rise of fascism and naziism was not a reaction against the socialist trends of the preceding period but a necessary outcome of those tendencies. This is a truth which most people were unwilling to see even when the similarities of many of the repellent features of the internal regimes in communist Russia and National Socialist Germany were widely recognized. As a result, many who think themselves infinitely superior to the aberrations of naziism, and sincerely hate all its manifestations, work at the same time for ideals whose realization would lead straight to the abhorred tyranny.

... [These developments] can be prevented if people realize in time where their efforts may lead. ...

It is because nearly everybody wants it that we are moving in this direction. There are no objective facts which make it inevitable. ... Is it not possible that if the people whose convictions now give it an irresistible momentum began to see what only a few yet apprehend, they would recoil in horror and abandon the quest which for half a century has engaged so many people of good will? ... 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?

F. A. Hayek (1944) - Introduction

Two and a half millennia ago in Athens stood a sage of the stature of Hayek, Solon.

[Solon] held the belief of his countrymen, Surfeit breeds Pride, when great success attends. And Hubris, Insolent Pride, to him was not so much a usurpation of the rights of a god as the appropriation of the rights of other human beings, so that they were left a life less than human.
Kathleen Freeman (1976) The Work and Life of Solon, pp. 201-202

Liberal Fascism - page 134

2008-02-05T01:56:00.000-06:00

Or consider H. G. Wells. ... In the summer of 1932, Wells delivered a major speech at Oxford University to Britain's Young Liberals organization, in which he called for a "'Phoenix Rebirth' of Liberalism" under the banner of "Liberal Fascism."

Jonah Goldberg (2008) - Chapter 4, Franklin Roosevelt's Fascist New Deal - Liberal Fascism

This passage solves a mystery. Why are there a phoenix and two tight bundles of rods above the entrance to Coit Tower?

Coit Tower was built the year after Wells' call to arms.

I'm a native San Franciscan and was troubled to see these there some 20 years ago. I've always wondered.

What's even more troubling is that the bundles line up with the columns below. Each of these columns resemble the tower itself. Is the tower meant to symbolize a tight bundle? How horrifying a concept to someone like me who grew up loving the look of Coit Tower on top of Telegraph Hill.

These fascistic bundles (sans ax) are spooky. They speak to me of factions uniting with little if any respect for individual rights.

At the founding of our country, we had another symbol for unity, the unity behind the American Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. This symbol was a bundle of arrows, loosely held together. The looseness and the respect for rights make all the difference. This symbol reportedly came from the example of the Iroquois Confederacy, and its legendary founder Deganawidah.

Credits:
shellswong (photo #1, derivatives allowed, cropped by me)
speedwaystar (photo #2)
Dave Smith (photo #3)

Update (Feb 5, 2008, 9:15 pm Central): Jonah Goldberg has written an excellent, informative post on this subject today - Coit Tower, Fascist?

Goldberg writes,

Now, as for the Coit Tower, I don't know a lot about it. But if you wanted to make the case that it's fascistic it probably wouldn't be too hard. Aesthetically, a lot of the stuff built, sculpted or painted in the 1930s had that feel. Check out the sculpture on the Hoover Dam next time you're out there. It could be Soviet or National Socialist — to my admittedly untrained eyes. That the murals in the Coit tower were painted under the auspices of the Federal Arts Project is a good sign that the builders of the tower were in that milieu (though the pictures of the mural at Wikipedia don't look particularly fascistic to me). And of course, by 1933, it might tell you something that these guys were still using fasces more than a decade after Mussolini had co-opted the word and symbol.

Still, three things make me skeptical that the Coit tower was directly inspired by HG Well's speech. First, phoenixes and fasces were still commonplace icons in the 1930s. Second, fascistic architecture, loosely speaking, was all the rage anyway. And three, I doubt that Wells' speech had that sort of impact in San Francisco back then. That said, I would just love to be proven wrong. [emphasis added]

I, myself, would prefer to think that the artist had no mean intent, but I can't shake my horror, given its context.

I wrote an email to Goldberg this morning, discussing the murals a bit. You can read it here.

Update (Feb 6, 2008, 11:00 am Central): I'm convinced now that my hypothesis doesn't hold water. Here is the comment that convinced me, and here is my response.

The Road to Serfdom - page 58

2008-02-04T22:43:00.000-06:00

Although one does not like to be reminded, it is not so many years since the socialist policy of [Germany] was generally held up by progressives as an example to be imitated....

F. A. Hayek (1944) - Introduction

... reminded by, say, Jonas Goldberg.

The Road to Serfdom - page 58

2008-02-04T22:38:00.000-06:00

It is not to the Germany of Hitler, the Germany of the present war, that England and the United States bear yet any resemblance. But students of the currents of ideas can hardly fail to see that there is more than a superficial similarity between the trend of thought in Germany during and after the last war and the present current of ideas in the democracies. There exists now in these countries certainly the same determination that the organization of the nation which has been achieved for purposes of defense shall be retained for the purposes of creation. There is the same contempt for nineteenth-century liberalism....

F. A. Hayek (1944) - Introduction

The Road to Serfdom - page 57

2008-02-04T22:33:00.001-06:00

An accidental combination of experience and interest will often reveal events to one man under aspects which few yet see.

F. A. Hayek (1944) - Introduction

The Road to Serfdom - page 55

2008-02-04T22:29:00.000-06:00

It has frequently been alleged that I have contended that any movement in the direction of socialism is bound to lead to totalitarianism. Even though this danger exists, this is not what the book says. What it contains is a warning that unless we mend the principles of our policy, some very unpleasant consequences will follow which most of those who advocate these policies do not want.

F. A. Hayek (1976) - Preface to the 1976 edition

The Road to Serfdom - pages 53-54

2008-02-04T22:09:00.000-06:00

This book, written in my spare time from 1940 to 1943, while my mind was still mainly occupied with problems of pure economic theory, has unexpectedly become for me the starting point of more than thirty years' work in a new field. This first attempt in the new direction was caused by my annoyance with the complete misinterpretation in English "progressive" circles of the character of the Nazi movement....

But though I tried hard to get back to economics proper, I could not free myself of the feeling that the problems on which I had so undesignedly embarked were more challenging and important than those of economic theory, and that much that I had said in my first sketch needed clarification and elaboration. When I wrote the book, I had by no means sufficiently freed myself from all the prejudices and superstitions dominating general opinion, and even less had I learned to avoid all the prevalent confusions of terms and concepts of which I have since become very conscious. [emphasis added]

F. A. Hayek (1976) - Preface to the 1976 edition

I wish Hayek had given a name to this "new field". Did he? I tend to call it "Constitutional Economics", using a phrase of James M. Buchanan's.

What an endearing turn of phrase: "so undesignedly embarked."

The Road to Serfdom - page 50

2008-02-04T21:59:00.000-06:00

Perhaps I should also remind the reader that I have never accused the socialist parties of deliberately aiming at a totalitarian regime or even suspected that the leaders of the old socialist movements might ever show such inclinations. What I have argued in this book, and what the British experience convinces me even more to be true, is that the unforeseen but inevitable consequences of socialist planning create a state of affairs in which, if the policy is to be pursued, totalitarian forces will get the upper hand. I explicitly stress that "socialism can be put into practice only by methods of which most socialists disapprove" and even add that in this "the old socialist parties were inhibited by their democratic ideals" and that "they did not possess the ruthlessness required for the performance of their chosen task."

F. A. Hayek (1956) - Foreword to the 1956 American paperback edition

You might call this the Fargo effect. "This was supposed to be a no rough stuff type deal!"

The Road to Serfdom - pages 49-50

2008-02-04T21:25:00.000-06:00

Is it too pessimistic to fear that a generation grown up under these conditions is unlikely to throw off the fetters to which it has grown used? Or does this description not rather fully bear out Tocqueville's prediction of the "new kind of servitude" when
after having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered but softened, bent and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, buty they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrial animals, of which government is the shepherd.—I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people.
What Tocqueville did not consider was how long such a government would remain in the hands of benevolent despots when it would be so much more easy for any group of ruffians to keep itself indefinitely in power by disregarding all the traditional decencies of political life.

F. A. Hayek (1956) - Foreword to the 1956 American paperback edition

The key is to recognize what Benjamin Constant realized, in his 1815 essay The Sovereignty of the People, which Constant wrote when Alexis de Tocqueville was but a child. The sovereignty of the people is limited. It's limited by people's rights.

The Road to Serfdom - page 48

2008-02-04T21:05:00.000-06:00

Special agencies, called Citizen's Advice Bureaus, are set up to steer the bewildered through the forest of rules, and to indicate to the persistent the rare clearings where a private person may still make a choice. [emphasis added]

— L. J. Barnes (1945) Youth Service in an English County

Quoted by:
F. A. Hayek (1956) - Foreword to the 1956 American paperback edition

This imagery of a forest and its rare clearings is wonderful. It reminds me of Randy Barnett's analogy of a sea of powers, where yet remain selected islands of rights. Rather, our Constitution calls for but islands of powers in our pre-existing sea of rights.

The Road to Serfdom - page 48

2008-02-04T20:46:00.000-06:00

The important point is that the political ideals of a people and its attitude toward authority are as much the effect as the cause of the political institutions under which it lives. This means, among other things, that even a strong tradition of political liberty is no safeguard if the danger is precisely that new institutions and policies will gradually undermine and destroy that spirit. The consequences can of course be averted if that spirit reasserts itself in time and the people not only throw out the party which has been leading them further and further in the dangerous direction but also recognize the nature of the danger and resolutely change their course. [emphasis added]

F. A. Hayek (1956) - Foreword to the 1956 American paperback edition

James Madison would use the word "faction" rather than "party".

The Road to Serfdom - pages 45-46

2008-01-31T20:32:00.000-06:00

But there is one point of phraseology which I ought to explain here to forestall any misunderstanding. I use throughout the term "liberal" in the original, nineteenth-century sense in which it is still current in Britain. In current American usage it often means very nearly the opposite of this. It has been part of the camouflage of leftish movements in this country, helped by the muddleheadedness of many who really believe in liberty, that "liberal" has come to mean the advocacy of almost every kind of government control. I am still puzzled why those in the United States who truly believe in liberty should not only have allowed the left to appropriate this almost indispensable term but should even have assisted by beginning to use it themselves as a term of opprobrium. This seems to be particularly regrettable because of the consequent tendency of many true liberals to describe themselves as conservatives.

It is true, of course, that in the struggle against the believers in the all-powerful state the true liberal must sometimes make common cause with the conservative, and in some circumstances, as in contemporary Britain, he has hardly any other way of actively working for his ideals. But true liberalism is still distinct from conservatism, and there is danger in the two being confused. Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic, and power-adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism than true liberalism; and with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desirable if this world is to become a better place. A conservative movement, by its very nature, is bound to be a defender of established privilege and to lean on the power of government for the protection of privilege. The essence of the liberal position, however, is the denial of all privilege, if privilege is understood in its proper and original meaning of the state granting and protecting rights to some which are not available on equal terms to others.

F. A. Hayek (1956) - Foreword to the 1956 American paperback edition

The Road to Serfdom - page 32

2008-01-31T20:23:00.000-06:00

Even more troubling, politicians instinctively recognize the seductive power of war. Times of national emergency permit the invocation of a common cause and a common purpose. War enables leaders to ask for sacrifices. It presents an enemy against which all segments of society may unite. This is true of real war, but because of its ability to unify disparate groups, savvy politicians from all parties find it effective to invoke war metaphors in a host of contexts. The war on drugs, the war on poverty, and the war on terror are but three examples from recent times. What makes these examples even more worrisome than true wars is that none has a logical endpoint; each may be invoked forever.

Bruce Caldwell (2007) - Introduction

The Road to Serfdom - page 30

2008-01-31T20:07:00.000-06:00

This was Hayek's logical argument against planning, one that he had succinctly articulated in 1939 in "Freedom and the Economic System."
In the end agreement that planning is necessary, together with the inability of the democratic assembly to agree on a particular plan, must strengthen the demand that the government, or some individual, should be given powers to act on their own responsibility. It becomes more and more the accepted belief that, if one wants to get things done, the responsible director of affairs must be freed from the fetters of democratic procedure.

Bruce Caldwell (2007) - Introduction

The Road to Serfdom - page 29

2008-01-31T19:55:00.000-06:00

A more plausible way to read Hayek's words is to see him as warning that, unless we change our ways, we are headed down the road to serfdom. It was certainly a part of Hayek's intent to issue such a warning. He was in particular afraid that we might embark on such a path without really realizing it, or, as he put it in his speech before the Economic Club of Detroit, "the danger is the greater because we may choose the wrong way, not by deliberation and concerted decision, but because we seem to be blundering into it."

Bruce Caldwell (2007) - Introduction

The Road to Serfdom

2008-01-31T19:35:00.000-06:00

The Road to Serfdom is the most important book published in the 20th century. If you'd like to vote responsibly in the 21st century, this is a must read.

Welcome!

2008-01-31T18:58:00.000-06:00

Welcome to Bookpages Blog! What do you do when you have a bunch of post-it notes in your books with nowhere to go? Why you place them here for all eternity.

While I'm reading a book, I'll try to post fair-use quotes and notes for people to comment upon.