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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
F.A. Hayek
The Road To Serfdom
The Great Utopia
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What has always made the state a hell on earth has been
precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven . - F. Hoelderlin.
That socialism has displaced liberalism as the doctrine
held by the great majority of progressives does not
simply mean that people had forgotten the warnings of
the great liberal thinkers of the past about the consequences
of collectivism. It has happened because they were persuaded
of the very opposite of what these men had predicted. The ex-
traordinary thing is that the same socialism that was not only
early recognized as the gravest threat to freedom, but quite
openly began as a reaction against the liberalism of the French
Revolution, gained general acceptance under the flag of liberty.
It is rarely remembered now that socialism in its beginnings
was frankly authoritarian. The French writers who laid the
foundations of modern socialism had no doubt that their ideas
could be put into practice only by a strong dictatorial govern-
ment. To them socialism meant an attempt to “terminate the
revolution” by a deliberate reorganization of society on hier-
archical lines and by the imposition of a coercive “spiritual
power.” Where freedon was concerned, the founders of social-
ism made no bones about their intentions. Freedom of thought
they regarded as the root-evil of nineteenth-century society,
and the first of modern planners, Saint-Simon, even predicted
that those who did not obey his proposed planning boards
would be “treated as cattle.”
Only under the influence of the strong democratic currents
preceding the revolution of 1848 did socialism begin to ally
itself with the forces of freedom. But it took the new “demo-
cratic socialism” a long time to live down the suspicions
aroused by its antecedents. Nobody saw more clearly than De
Tocqueville that democracy as an essentially individualist in-
stitution stood in an irreconcilable conflict with socialism:
“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom,” he
said in 1848; “socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all
possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere
agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing
in common but one word; equality. But notice the difference:
while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks
equality in restraint and servitude.”
To allay these suspicions and to harness to its cart the strong-
est of all political motives — the craving for freedom — socialism
began increasingly to make use of the promise of a “new free-
dom.” The coming of socialism was to be the leap from the
realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. It was to bring
“economic freedom,” without which the political freedom al-
ready gained was “not worth having.” Only socialism was
capable of effecting the consummation of the age-long strug-
gle for freedom, in which the attainment of political freedom
was but a first step.
The subtle change in meaning to which the word “freedom”
was subjected in order that this argument should sound plausi-
ble is important. To the great apostles of political freedom the
word had meant freedom from coercion, freedom from the ar-
bitrary power of other men, release from the ties which left the
individual no choice but obedience to the orders of a superior
to whom he was attached. The new freedom promised, how-
ever, was to be freedom from necessity, release from the com-
pulsion of the circumstances which inevitably limit the range
of choice of all of us, although for some very much more than
for others. Before man could be truly free, the “despotism of
physical want” had to be broken, the “restraints of the eco-
nomic system” relaxed .
Freedom in this sense is, of course, merely another name for
power or wealth. Yet, although the promises of this new free-
dom were often coupled with irresponsible promises of a great
increase in material wealth in a socialist society, it was not
from such an absolute conquest of the niggardliness of nature
that economic freedom was expected. What the promise really
amounted to was that the great existing disparities in the range
of choice of different people were to disappear. The demand
for the new freedom was thus only another name for the old
demand for an equal distribution of wealth. But the new name
gave the socialists another word in common with the liberals,
and they exploited it to the full. And, although the word was
used in a different sense by the two groups, few people noticed
this and still fewer asked themselves whether the two kinds of
freedom promised could really be combined.
There can be no doubt that the promise of greater freedom
has become one of the most effective weapons of socialist
propaganda and that the belief that socialism would bring
freedom is genuine and sincere. But this would only heighten
the tragedy if it should prove that what was promised to us as
* The characteristic confusion of freedom with power, which we shall meet again and again throughout this discussion, is too big a subject to be thoroughly examined here. As old as socialism itself, it is so closely allied with it that almost seventy years ago a French scholar, discussing its Saint-Simonian origins, was led to say that this theory of liberty “cst elle scule tout le socialisme" (Paul Janet,
Saint-Simon et le SaintSimonisme [1878], p. 26 n.). The most explicit defender of this confusion is, significantly, the leading philosopher of American left-wingism, John Dewey, according to whom “liberty is the effective power to do specific things” so that “the demand for liberty is demand for power” (“Liberty and
Social Control,” Social Frontier y November, 1935, p. 41).
the Road to Freedom was in fact the High Road to Servitude.
Unquestionably, the promise of more freedom was responsible
for luring more and more liberals along the socialist road, for
blinding them to the conflict which exists between the basic
principles of socialism and liberalism, and for often enabling
socialists to ursurp the very name of the old party of freedom.
Socialism was embraced by the greater part of the intelli-
gentsia as the apparent heir of the liberal tradition: therefore
it is not surprising that to them the idea of socialism’s leading
to the opposite of liberty should appear inconceivable.
In recent years, however, the old apprehensions of the un-
foreseen consequences of socialism have once more been strong-
ly voiced from the most unexpected quarters. Observer after
observer, in spite of the contrary expectation with which he
approached his subject, has been impressed with the extraor-
dinary similarity in many respects of the conditions under
“fascism” and “communism.” While “progressives” in Eng-
land and elsewhere were still deluding themselves that com-
munism and fascism represented opposite poles, more and
more people began to ask themselves whether these new tyran-
nies were not the outcome of the same tendencies. Even com-
munists must have been somewhat shaken by such testimonies
as that of Max Eastman, Lenin’s old friend, who found him-
self compelled to admit that “instead of being better, Stalin-
ism is worse than fascism, more ruthless, barbarous, unjust, im-
moral, anti-democratic, unredeemed by any hope or scruple,”
and that it is “better described as superfascist”; and when we
find the same author recognizing that “Stalinism is socialism,
in the sense of being an inevitable although unforeseen politi-
cal accompaniment of the nationalization and collectivization
which he had relied upon as part of his plan for erecting a class-
less society,”® his conclusion clearly achieves wider significance.
Mr. Eastman’s case is perhaps the most remarkable, yet he
is by no means the first or the only sympathetic observer of the
Russian experiment to form similar conclusions. Several years
earlier W. H. Chamberlin, who in twelve years in Russia as
an American correspondent had seen all his ideals shattered,
summed up the conclusions of his studies there and in Ger-
many and Italy in the statement that “socialism is certain to
prove, in the beginning at least, the road not to freedom, but
to dictatorship and counter-dictatorships, to civil war of the
fiercest kind. Socialism achieved and maintained by demo-
cratic means seems definitely to belong to the world of utopi-
as.” Similarly a British writer, F. A. Voigt, after many years
of close observation of developments in Europe as a foreign
correspondent, concludes that “Marxism has led to Fascism
and National Socialism, because, in all essentials, it is Fascism
and National Socialism.” And Walter Lippmann has arrived
at the conviction that “the generation to which we belong is
now learning from experience what happens when men re-
treat from freedom to a coercive organization of their affairs.
Though they promise themselves a more abundant life, they
must in practice renounce it; as the organized direction in-
creases, the variety of ends must give way to uniformity. That
is the nemesis of the planned society and the authoritarian
principle in human affairs.”
Many more similar statements from people in a position to
judge might be selected from publications of recent years,
particularly from those by men who as citizens of the now
totalitarian countries have lived through the transformation
and have been forced by their experience to revise many
cherished beliefs. We shall quote as one more example a Ger-
mam writer who expresses the same conclusion perhaps more
justly than those already quoted.
“The complete collapse of the belief in the attainability
of freedom and equality through Marxism,” writes Peter
Drucker, “has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a
totalitarian, purely negative, non-economic society of unfree-
dom and inequality which German has been following. Not
that communism and fascism are essentially the same. Fascism
is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion,
and it has proved as much an illusion in Stalinist Russia as in
pre-Hitler Germany.”
No less significant is the intellectual history of many of the
Nazi and Fascist leaders. Everyone who has watched the
growth of these movements in Italy or in Germany has been
struck by the number of leading men, from Mussolini down-
ward (and not excluding Laval and Quisling), who began as
socialists and ended as Fascists or Nazis. And what is true of
the leaders is even more true of the rank and file of the move-
ment. The relative ease with which a young communist could
be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was generally known in
Germany, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties.
Many a university teacher during the 1930’s has seen English
and American students return from the Continent uncertain
whether they were communists or Nazis and certain only that
they hated Western liberal civilization.
It is true, of course, that in Germany before 1933, and in
Italy before 1922, communists and Nazis or Fascists clashed
more frequently with each other than with other parties. They
competed for the support of the same type of mind and re-
served for each other the hatred of the heretic. But their prac-
tice showed how closely they are related. To both, the real
enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common and
whom they could not hope to convince, is the liberal of the old
type. While to the Nazi the communist, and to the commu-
nist the Nazi, and to both the socialist, are potential recruits
who are made of the right timber, although they have listened
to false prophets, they both know that there can. be no com-
promise between them and those who really believe in individ-
ual freedom.
Lest this be doubted by people misled by official propa-
ganda from cither side, let me quote one more statement from
an authority that ought not to be suspect. In an article under
the significant title of “The Rediscovery of Liberalism,” Pro-
fessor Eduard Heimann, one of the leaders of German re-
ligious socialism, writes: “Hitlerism proclaims itself as both
true democracy and true socialism, and the terrible truth is
that there is a grain of truth for such claims — an infinitesimal
grain, to be sure, but at any rate enough to serve as a basis for
such fantastic distortions. Hitlerism even goes so far as to claim
the role of protector of Christianity, and the terrible truth is
that even this gross misinterpretation is able to make some im-
pression. But one fact stands out with perfect clarity in all the
fog: Hitler has never claimed to represent true liberalism.
Liberalism then has the distinction of being the doctrine most
hated by Hitler.” It should be added that this hatred had
little occasion to show itself in practice merely because, by the
time Hitler came to power, liberalism was to all intents and pur-
poses dead in Germany. And it was socialism that had killed it.
While to many who have watched the transition from social-
ism to fascism at close quarters the connection between the two
* Social Research^ Vol. VIII, No. 4 (November, 1941). It deserves to be repeated in this connection that, whatever may have been his reasons. Hitler thought it expedient to declare in one of his public speeches as late as February,1941, that "basically National Socialism and Marxism are the same" (cf. the Bulletin of International News [published by the Royal Institute of International
Affairs], XVIII, No. 5, 269).
systems has become increasingly obvious, in the democracies
the majority of people still believe that socialism and freedom
can be combined. There can be no doubt that most socialists
here still believe profoundly in the liberal ideal of freedom and
that they would recoil if they became convinced that the real-
ization of their program would mean the destruction of free-
dom. So little is the problem yet seen, so easily do the most ir-
reconcilable ideals still live together, that we can still hear
such contradictions in terms as “individualist socialism” seri-
ously discussed. If this is the state of mind which makes us
drift into a new world, nothing can be more urgent than that
we should seriously examine the real significance of the evolu-
tion that has taken place elsewhere. Although our conclusions
will only confirm the apprehensions which others have already
expressed, the reasons why this development cannot be re-
garded as accidental will not appear without a rather full ex-
amination of the main aspects of this transformation of social
life. That democratic socialism, the great utopia of the last few
generations, is not only unachievable, but that to strive for it
produces something so utterly different that few of those who
now wish it would be prepared to accept the consequences,
many will not believe until the connection has been laid bare
in all its aspects.
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- "How sharp a break not only with the recent past but with the whole evolution of Western civilization the modern trend toward socialism means becomes clear if we consider it not merely against the background of the nineteenth century but in a longer historical perspective. 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 civilization as it has grown from the foundations laid by Christianity and the Greeks and Romans... The Nazi leader who described the National Socialist revolution as a counter-Renaissance spoke more truly than he probably knew." F. A. Hayek
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