F.A. Hayek and the Road to Serfdom’s timeless message.

I have embarked on a new reading adventure The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek arguably one of the most notable and influential of the Austrian economists. I plan to dissect this book very carefully and plan to do so here on this blog, perhaps chapter by chapter. I presume it will serve as a reminder during the reading of a difficult text that I must pay attention. As of now this will be one of the more challenging texts that I have tackled on the matter of politics and economics, although this is still principally a political book.

I have also somewhat lost appreciation for Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg as I am seeing far too many parallels between the two works. Although Goldberg’s message was that of drawing parallels between modern day liberals and fascists, the underlying message seems to resonate largely from Hayek.

While I am still in the early stages of the work, some of the focal messages in the book are those that many of us on the right tend to parrot each and every day. Specifically the dangers of ignoring history and the dangers of central planning and control. Hayek’s work can be considered revolutionary as he wrote the work after the second world war ended and began seeing eerie trends in England (where he was lecturing) and the United States (where he eventually would move), he took the bold step of suggesting that heading towards central planning could potentially result in another Soviet Union or Germany. That is not to suggest that all socialist or central planning policies necessarily result in totalitarian regimes, but the road that leads there has now been traveled. Further still, a point that I am sure Hayek will later expand on, socialists ending up in a totalitarian regime generally detest and despise what they have created. That is to say, socialists unwillingly foster and generate environments that sabotage and destroy freedom and realize this phenomena only after it’s much too late. Much like today’s liberals bursting at the seams with noble intentions and humanitarian desires neglect entirely the concept of undermining liberty and it’s possible implication.

I myself, like to always watch out for history repeating itself and really early in the book Hayek mentions a certain Sir William Vernon Harcourt or rather his now famous quote. Hayek points out that although at the time the quote was no longer fashionable, the underlying desire was very much alive and well.

The quote of course is “We are all socialists now” and if history does not always repeat itself perfectly, it came very close with Newsweeks’s title cover: We are all socialists now.

Mind you of course, that while Newsweek attempts to delve into the pros and cons of big government socialism, I will stand by the simple fundamental fact that there are no pros to big government and the road to socialism is invariably a road to serfdom.