Socialism and Freedom

...Local authorities are buyers on a great scale of furniture, building requisites, stationery, catering equipment and so on...

...But I think that that particular arrangement should be regarded, not as the one essential element in Socialist policy, pending the application of which nothing valuable can be done, but merely as one species of a large genus of expedients for bringing economic enterprise under social control, and that, instead of ignoring other members of the family, we should labor to stimulate their growth...

...The mother of liberty has, in fact, been law...

...It is a piece of mysticism pardonable in persons brought up on their knees before some mortal god, but which—if the irreverence may be permitted—is, none the less, a bluff...

...this spring the book will be published in the United States by Pantheon Books, through whose kind permission we here print several excerpts...

...Nothing could be more remote from socialist ideals than the competitive scramble of a society which pays lip-service to equality, but too often means by it merely equal opportunities of becoming unequal...

...The unification on a national basis hitherto adopted may, in some or many cases, be the right design...

...The villain in Professor von Hayek's tragedy is, of course, the Planning and Organizing State...

...The emphasis of the former interpretation of the phrase is on mobility...

...falsifies ethical standards...

...I am in favour, therefore, of extending, with the necessary improvements, public ownership and management by national boards and corporations, as and when practicable...

...In many, perhaps in most, cases, it might not deem it necessary to exercise that right, but on some it would, and the knowledge that such a power of inside control existed would be a salutary influence on all...

...It facilitates, therefore, the substitution of an intelligent staffwork at the top and co-operative labour throughout, for a competitive scramble or monopolistic restrictionism...

...The society sought by it is one in which, while individuals are free to follow the bent of their talents or tastes, the impulse to seek a new position is not sharpened by exasperation at unnecessary disabilities attaching to that already held, and in which the majority of men are happy to continue in familiar surroundings, because they enjoy in them, not only the economic security, but the dignity, the social contacts, and, if they please, the intellectual interests and culture, which human nature demands...

...It is also, and even more important, who owns and controls the state...

...The danger of topheavy bureaucracy and remote control is, in my opinion, genuine...

...The essential point, however, is that full and effective use should be made of all...

...The point is that, without neglecting new departures in nationalization, we ought to think, not in terms of a single bottle-neck through which Socialist re-organization must be forced, but of a multitude of growing points, at each of which a Socialist government can bring its influence to bear...

...The social and full employment policies of the Labour Government did, I think, come home to them...

...Not by impairing traditional liberties, but by resolution in using them, they have taken . . . the first steps towards the attainment of objectives long proclaimed and long resisted...

...Against its advantages, however, must be set certain drawbacks...

...There is no reason whatever for regarding that security as likely to be weakened merely because steps are taken, as they have been in Great Britain, to extend to the whole population opportunities of well-being previously restricted to a minority...

...Why, in heaven's name, should we be afraid of it...

...Today, when we are periodically told that the State is the executive of the capitalist class or—more terrifying still—the product of one of the nastier Freudian complexes, it is a pessimistic bluff...

...If, as is commonly held by British socialists, the essential characteristic of a planned economy consists, not as Professor von Hayek seems to suggest, in a detailed budget of production, but in the transference for the responsibility for the higher ranges of economic strategy from profit-making entrepreneurs to a national authority, his mystery of iniquity is attenuated to a mare's nest and his bloodthirsty Leviathan becomes a serviceable drudge...

...The serfs, it is said, might be less uncomfortable...

...His curtain falls on a world in which personal liberty, freedom of thought and speech, tolerance, objective science, private and public morality, have one by one, as socialism advances, been ruthlessly extinguished, and universal darkness covers all...

...It is a question whether, in the case of public companies, the government should not be given the right to ap point a proportion of the directors...

...But why assume despotism...

...In so far as freedom depends on the ability of a society to determine, within the limits set by nature, the character of the economic regime under which it shall live, it seems reasonable to say that it would be substantially increased...

...A formula sometimes hailed by Socialists as the watch-word of a new order is Equality of Opportunity...

...Civil liberty depends on freedom of worship...

...I doubt whether its industrial policy, which to most of them was a spectacle, rather than a personal experience, did...

...I regard it, not as the example of up-to-date realism boasted by its votaries, but as a long-familiar poison...

...freedom of speech and writing...

...The faithful animal—to vary the metaphor—will run our errands...

...The statement often made by our opponents that the sole distinctive feature of Socialist policy is nationalization is ludicrously beside the mark...

...The attitude of the worker who refuses a foreman's job because it would divide him from his mates illustrates the second...

...But it is a bluff in either case...

...but, as cogs in the mechanism of an authoritarian state they would have bartered their dignity as citizens and men —their initiative, their responsibility, their right to live their own lives and wreck them if they pleased—for a shot of morphia in the soul...

...The sentiment of the father who hopes—too often, as things are, with reason—that his son will follow any trade but his own illustrates the first view...

...Though directors in nationalized industries do not swindle workers, the gulf between the brass-hats and the industrial PBI still too often remains profound...

...But it is an instrument, and nothing more...

...Political liberty depends partly on civil liberty, partly on the existence of constitutional arrangements for the maintenance of representative and responsible Government...

...freedom in the choice of occupations...

...The chicanery, discreetly termed relativism, which dismisses ordinary human virtues, from honesty to mercy, as bourgeois morality...

...It is not easy to specify what, if any, liberties would be jeopardized by the substitution of such an authority, pursuing, with full responsibility to the Cabinet and through it, to Parliament, a deliberate production and investment policy, for a group of large combines or a welter of small firms...

...In reality, the Socialist arsenal contains a diversity of different weapons, among which nationalization has an important place...

...does not, to his shame, study the works of economic theorists with the assiduity that they deserve, for the reason—if it is a reason and not mere weakness of the flesh—explained to her pupil by the school-mistress in that ancient, but admirable play, The Importance of Being Earnest: "Do not read Mill's chapter on the fall of the rupee, my dear...

...On his conception of planning it is needless to dwell, since it is not one which any British socialist of standing has ever accepted...

...The idea that there is an entity called "the State" which possesses, in virtue of its title, uniform characteristics, existing independently of the varying histories, economic environments, constitutional arrangements, legal systems and social psychologies of particular states, and that these characteristics necessarily combine the manners of a Japanese customs official with the morals of a human tiger, is a pure superstition...

...The mere transference of property-rights involved in it is not by itself tidings of great joy...

...Or they may be opportunities to lead a good life, in all senses of the term, whether one "rises" or not...

...It should be to effect a complete divorce between differences of pecuniary income and differences in respect of health, security, amenity of environment, culture, social status and esteem...

...Socialism ought to mean something vital and inspiring in the lives of the great majority of workers...

...On the contrary, I think that, in the absence of sustained and strenuous efforts, the way is as likely to lead down hill as up, and that Socialism, if achieved, will be the creation, not of any mystical historical necessities, but of the energy of human minds and wills...

...We have committed too many crimes ourselves to be critical of our neighbours...

...Sensible and decent men will use it for ends which are sensible and decent...

...The State is an important instrument...

...It is really too much to expect us, at this time of day, to relapse into hysterics because some nervous professor has decided, on grounds of high theory, that the harmless and obedient creature, whom we have cursed, kicked and fondled all our lives, is in reality, not a dog at all, but a ferocious species of Siberian wolf...

...For both reasons arrangements facilitating vertical mobility are important...

...There does not seem to be any reason why similar facilities should not deliberately be extended to groups of undertakings organized on socialist and co-operative lines...

...It is equally or more essential, however, that the mass of mankind, who, for obvious statistical reasons, cannot perform athletic feats in scaling social heights, should enjoy a high standard of civilization...

...The present writer...

...The version of planning expounded by him is, doubtless, a possible one, and his readers should be grateful to him for developing its implications...

...and freedom to combine...

...The nostalgic self-deception which, here and there, looks back on the days before the deluge, with their exclusive felicities and securelyguarded comforts, as a golden age of freedom, is not a matter for surprise...

...They regard, it may be suspected, full employment, expanded social services, and the transference of foundation industries to public ownership, less as a curtailment of freedom than as an enlargement of it...

...Its aim is the establishment of conditions which offer the maximum scope for individual self-advancement...

...to exchange one position for a succession of others...

...To imply, however, as Professor von Hayek appears to do, that the procedure whose horrifying consequences he portrays with such force alone needs to be considered, or that all other procedures must necessarily lead to the same fatal goal, is to beg all questions...

...but to combine the nationalization of the former with some form of co-operative organization of the latter ought not to be beyond the wit of man...

...freedom of meeting...

...or as the result of a decision by a Cabinet responsible to a popularly elected chamber that the national interest will best be served by treating some requirements, rather than others, as possessing the first claim on national resources...

...If he does not do his tricks nicely, we are quite capable of beating our own dog ourselves, as—to do him justice—he is well aware...

...Democracy, in one form or another, is, in short, not merely one of several alternative methods of establishing a Socialist commonwealth...

...The view that Socialism consists in socializing everything except political authority, on which all else depends, is puerile...

...show, on the rare occasions that we tell him, a handsome mouthful of sharp teeth, and generally behave like a useful and well-conducted cur...

...But the pretense that the resulting police collectivisms are a shining example for Western Socialists to follow, when not mere cynical bluff, is either ignorance or a credulity so extreme as to require, not argument, but a doctor...

...The increase in the freedom of ordinary men and women during the last two generations has taken place, not in spite of the action of Governments, but because of it...

...convey us on our journeys...

...Given these assumptions, it is not surprising that a Totalitarian monster should emerge as his conclusion, since he has been at pains to include Totalitarianism among his premises...

...and it seems appropriate, on the tenth anniversary of this journal, to bring together a small anthology of his reflections on this topic...

...It is obvious that, if a despotic government enlarges its control over economic affairs, it will use the only methods which it understands, and manage them as a despot...

...There are some undertakings which it may not at present be possible to nationalize outright, but which nevertheless it is important to harness to public ends...

...That process was for long carried forward hesitatingly and with reluctance, by Governments which only half believed in it...

...Further, society cannot afford more than a certain proportion of fools in high places, which in England is already— to speak with moderation—sufficiently large, and must draw, if its directive work is to be efficiently done, on a broad stream of talent from below...

...It is an essential condition of such a commonwealth's existence...

...It is needless, however, to multiply examples, of which many better ones, doubtless, could be found...

...fetch and carry for us...

...It must be recognized, finally, that there are nations with histories so tragic and environmental difficulties so immense that some form of authoritarian regime may well be the best of which for the time being they are capable...

...The sole security for the preservation of either is a public opinion which is determined to preserve them...

...I do not share Marx's mid-Victorian conviction of the inevitability of progress...

...but the phrase may express either of two distinct—and sometimes, though not always, antithetic— ideals...

...mind our children...

...and it is here, in the debatable land between economics and politics, that the counter-attack is launched...

...hence the struggle to control it...

...We, in England, have repeatedly re-made the State, and are re-making it now, and shall re-make it again...

...but he would certainly have trembled even while he disbelieved...

...It involves, of course, a substantial enlargement of the activities of public bodies...

...Professor von Hayek, it would appear, understands by the term a comprehensive program, embracing the whole range of economic activities, under which the quantity and quality of every article to be produced, from steel-plants to pins, and the occupation and payment of every individual, are prescribed in advance for a term of years by a central authority—an authority uninfluenced by the views of consumers or producers, acknowledging no responsibility, however indirect, to a representative assembly, and conducting its affairs by the issue of orders, the infringement of which is a criminal offense...

...Applied in suitable circumstances, nationalization possesses genuine virtues...

...to get on...

...It is, perhaps, not presumptuous, therefore, for one of the prospective serfs to hazard an opinion on the doom awaiting him...

...It is improbable that the majority of British wage-earners, who recall an unemployment rate averaging, from 1921 to 1938, approximately one-seventh of all insured workers, view the blessings of that happy period in quite the same light...

...Since the number of industries ready for prompt nationalization is limited, I question whether, unless enlarged, it can...

...Our aim should be the opposite...

...It provides a clear space, free from the obstructive jungle of private interests, on which to build...

...Might it not, indeed, be beneficial, not only to destroy the connection between them existing today, but to reverse it, so as to make it contemptible to be rich and honourable to be poor...

...and applauds as triumphs of proletarian heroism on one side of a frontier episodes denounced by it as Fascist atrocities on the other, appears to me nauseous...

...it is too exciting for a young girl...

...Effective supervision of these Leviathans by public and parliament has hardly yet been established...

...to climb, in the conventional metaphor, the educational or economic ladder...

...Since the war public money has been used to build in the Development Areas factories to be leased to private firms...

...I do not believe that any alchemy exists by which historical facts and tendencies can either be made a substitute for such judgments of value or directly converted into them...

...On that state of super-blessedness, however, I must not now dwell...

...The foundation of Socialism is, in my view, a decision that certain types of life and society are fit for human beings and others not...

...or because certain industries, formerly conducted for the profit of shareholders, are owned and administered by public authorities...

...Tawney, described in the book by Hugh Gaitskell as "the Democratic Socialist par excellence," was steadily concerned with the relationship of socialism and freedom...

...The conventional retort to such arguments is to accuse those who advance them of a soulless materialism...

...It is important less for what it does than for what it makes it possible to do...

...As the Socialist hold on local government strengthens, the obvious course for such authorities would seem to be the establishment by joint action between them of productive works for self-supply...

...If his esteemed colleague, the author of The Road to Serfdom, had confined himself to a forecast of the economic catastrophe threatened by socialism, he cannot say that, like the devils in Scripture, he would have believed and trembled...

...Economic liberties are neither the only, nor the most important, liberties...

...The emphasis of the latter is on solidarity...

...Professor von Hayek has chosen as his target, however, not the economics of socialism, but the political and cultural nemesis which, he is convinced, it entails...

...His friends in England, as a tribute to his career, brought together a number of his best essays under the title The Radical Tradition...

...The truth is that these paroxysms of alarm at the menace to individual freedom involved in every fresh extension of the activities of public bodies are the product of an authoritarian nightmare which, in countries so unfortunate as not yet to have taught their rulers that they are servants, not masters, has only too much justification, but which a mature democracy should have outgrown...

...The infinite diversities of the building industry—a few large firms of national importance with a multitude of minor local units—may preclude conventional patterns of public ownership...

...nor do I regard social development as an automatically ascending spiral with Socialism as its climax...

...and, provided that such states are willing to live and let live, British Socialists should wish them such success as political systems of the kind allow...

...Half a century ago, when we were informed by philosophers fed on Hegel that the State represented our high selves, it was an optimistic bluff...

...It has been due to the fact that, once political democracy had found its feet, popularly elected chambers began, under the pressure of their electors, to prescribe minimum standards of life and work, to extend public services, to pool surplus wealth and employ it for the common good, to confer a legal status on trade unions, and generally to treat their economically weaker citizens as human beings entitled to the opportunities, advantages, and security against unmerited misfortune, which had previously been confined to the economically strong...

...attend our sick-beds...

...The question for Socialists is not merely whether the state owns and controls the means of production...

...Individuals deprived of the chance to use their powers as they please suffer from frustration...

...Fools will use it, when they can, for foolish ends, and criminals for criminal ends...

...The opportunities which it is desired to equalize may be opportunities to rise...

...The late R. H. Tawney—the distinguished British historian known for his Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, and at the same time a prominent British Socialist known for his The Acquisitive Society and Equality—died in 1963...