The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944 by Friedrich Hayek, is a beloved text of libertarians and conservatives. Written during World War 2 while Hayek was living in the UK, the text offered a powerful condemnation of totalitarian forms of government and has remained popular, selling more than two million copies as of 2010. As a political theorist on the left and a lover of ideas, I figured it was well worth my time to read and engage with this influential book.
A few positive thoughts before I get to the heart of the text.
In so far as Hayek critiques the totalitarian systems of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, I couldn’t agree more. Representative democracy, with respect for liberal rights and a capitalist economy, is a much more just and less oppressive system of governance.
When Hayek uses the term “socialism” to mean central planning in the context of a massive, bureaucratic, unaccountable, Soviet-style state, I agree that this is not something to emulate. (Although the word “socialism” also has meant and continues to mean other, much more democratic and admirable arrangements).
And, finally, Hayek is rightly horrified at the monstrous power and genuine evil of Nazi Germany. It comes through viscerally in the text. Hayek also stands in admirable contrast to many other intellectual figures on the right who embraced fascism, from the three prominent elitists in Italy (Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca, Robert Michels) to influential scholars like philosopher Martin Heidegger and legal theorist Carl Schmitt in Germany.
A similar humanitarianism pervades The Road to Serfdom with regard to the horrors of war and the dangers to truth and human decency that ongoing war poses. It is in many respects a deeply humane text.
Now for the disagreements.
Hayek’s basic thesis concerns the dangers posed by central planning of the economy and how even democratic socialism will likely lead, in time, to Stalinist tyranny. Hayek grants that the intentions of democratic socialists, in the UK and elsewhere, are good, and that they believe in representative democracy and individual rights, and indeed want to expand these. But, by concentrating economic power in the national government through the mechanism of central planning and the state ownership of the means of production, they will inevitably (or at least very likely), and basically against their will, slowly transform the state into a totalitarian one.
This leads to one of the problems with the book. What exactly counts as central planning? When does social democracy, or a welfare state, slide into the central planning that Hayek warns of? Do the wartime policies of the Roosevelt administration regarding production and rationing count as central planning? What about the high levels of public ownership that characterizes Scandinavian social democracy? We will return to these questions shortly.
At times Hayek suggests that various regulations of business, to deal with externalities affecting the environment as well as other issues, are justified and pose none of the authoritarian dangers he identifies with central planning. (The author of the introduction to the book says as much, thus attempting to head off the critique that pretty much of all of Europe adopted various socialist policies post-world war 2 and none of them became totalitarian.) But at other times Hayek seems to suggest that any left-wing economic policies, however well-intentioned, will inevitably lead to Stalinist tyranny, a claim that is obviously false.
Now the dangers of authoritarianism, and extreme concentrations of state power are well noted, as is the importance of the left remaining democratic. For those of us on the left, we shouldn’t be status-quo centrists or milquetoast liberals but we must remain committed to democracy and the protection of essential rights (including freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, and so on). This is important to remember. Fuck Leninism, celebrations of the power of the Chinese Community Party, and any leftist embrace of authoritarianism. But also, I think Hayek’s central thesis is basically false, though any assessment of its empirical validity requires engaging with very complex historical questions.
If Hayek’s critique does apply to Europe, as many casual readers on the right seem to assume, it is clearly false, since Europe went down a social democratic route and is arguably the most democratic and rights-respecting region on Earth. The only European countries tending in an authoritarian direction are led by right wing governments.
If Hayek’s thesis does not apply to Europe, because social democracy and welfare states are not real socialism (i.e. central planning and an authoritarian, bureaucratic state), then it’s not clear if his critique applies to any country on earth.
It is not a good depiction of the rise of the Nazi Party. The Nazis were not a democratic or liberal party but a violent, racist, dictatorial party committed from their inception to overthrowing democracy, eliminating all individual rights, jailing or killing all political opponents, and conquering all of Europe, if not the entire world. They didn’t slowly and accidentally create a totalitarian state. It was their monstrous goal from the outset. They were genuinely evil, and deeply undemocratic and illiberal, from the start.
(Although they arguably became even worse and more brutal as the war dragged on. This touches on a good point of Hayek’s, that war is brutalizing and damaging to the cause of human decency and freedom. Howard Zinn, from the opposite side of the political spectrum, makes a similar point regarding the evils of war accelerating the evils of Naziism).
Hayek’s thesis does not appear to be a good depiction of the USSR either, whose authoritarianism likely owes more to a brutal, prolonged civil war, desperate famine, and the authoritarian ideology of the Bolshevik party (apparent from the beginning), than it does to a slow, unintentional slide into total state power by unwitting democrats. Maybe this is part of the story but not much. The leftist believers in democracy were largely silenced and crushed by the Bolshevik state.
Nor does it seem to apply to the rest of the Communist countries, which largely and unthinkingly embraced the Soviet political and economic model of centralized political and economic power. These state actors weren’t naive believers in democracy, as Hayek suggests democratic socialists in the UK were. There may be traces of Hayek’s story with regard to Cuba in the 1960s but I’m not convinced. Cuba embraced the Soviet bloc at least in part because the US began sanctioning them, diplomatically and economically, pre-missile crisis, thus pushing them into the arms of the Soviets, at which point they shut down the free press and knowingly embraced, fairly quickly, the rigid authoritarian system of the USSR. They didn’t slowly and accidentally concentrate economic power.
I think, maybe, Venezuela under Hugo Chavez and especially Nicolás Maduro could be an example of Hayek’s thesis, in which implementation of democratic socialism led to a concentration of state power that ended with the defeat of democracy. Indeed, Venezuela has not had a free election since 2015 and has crumbled into a dysfunctional, economically broken, authoritarian state. But again, the actual story strikes me as much more complex than Hayek’s thesis allows. Was Maduro’s authoritarianism (and note, Venezuela is not totalitarian) an inevitable result of the policies enacted under the democratically elected Chavez? If not inevitable, was it highly likely? More specifically, did a concentration of economic power lead to a concentration of unaccountable political power? If so, then this may be a good case for Hayek. But explaining this slow slide into authoritarian government requires far more detail and careful analysis than today’s would-be Hayek’s are given to undertake.
This again leaves us with these questions that need much more specification—what exactly is central planning? Which “socialist” policies lead down the road to serfdom and which are safe? How and why countries become authoritarian (and when they democratize) are incredibly complex questions studied by political scientists, sociologists, and historians. They don’t readily lend themselves to glib answers, nor is it clear that the paths taken in the 21st century will mirror those taken in centuries past.
So by all means read The Road to Serfdom, for its condemnation of the evils of Nazi Germany, Stalinist tyranny, and war, and for a reminder that this book, and its author, are far more thoughtful than many of their proponents today. It also serves as a healthy reminder to those of us on the left to reject any remnants of authoritarianism from our past.
But, for all its many insights, Hayek’s thesis strikes me as too simplistic and, in practice, mostly false. Historically, most countries and parties that proclaimed leftist ideals were either authoritarian (or totalitarian) from the beginning, and remained so, or democratic from the beginning, and remained so. The latter, democratic leftism, remains something for those of us on the left to aspire to, with continued commitment to the defense and expansion of democracy and individual freedoms as well as egalitarian economic policies.
In a word, the slow slide from democratic socialism to totalitarian socialism, i.e. the slippery road to serfdom that Hayek warns of does not seem to be something that happened much, if ever, in the past 100 years. As I said above, most parties and governments of the left either started and remained authoritarian, or started and remained democratic. The Scandinavian model of robust social democracy, or democratic socialism, whatever ones wishes to call it, remains a great path to emulate.