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Top Billing Juxtaposition on Friedrich von Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, For and Against:

FOR: Lord Robert Skidelsky – The 2006 Hayek Lecture: The Road to Serfdom Revisited

The second thing that one needs to know about the background of The Road to Serfdom was that it arose from Hayek’s involvement in the debate on central planning in the 1930s. Socialists had argued that a central-planning authority could replicate the economic benefits of the market, minus its costs, by causing state-run firms, required to equate marginal costs and prices, to respond appropriately to simulated market signals. Hayek claimed that this was completely utopian. Central planning was doomed to failure because the knowledge needed to make it work could never be centralized. Further, it ignored the role of market competition in discovering new wants and processes. It would thus freeze economic life at a low level.

In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek extended his critique of central planning to politics. He defined central planning as the central direction of all economic activity toward particular ends. The nature of the ownership system was not crucial, since central planning removed the essential rights of owners or managers. Democratic central planning, he declared, was an illusion, because there was never sufficient voluntary consent for the goals of the central plan and because partial planning would lead to problems that required ever more extensive planning. So planning involved a “progressive suppression of that economic freedom without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past.” Fascism and communism were totalitarian culminations of what had started as democratic socialism. Western democracies were fighting fascism without realizing that they were on the slippery slope themselves. Against the planners, Hayek upheld the fundamental principle that in the ordering of our affairs, we should make as much use as possible of the “spontaneous forces of society, and resort as little as possible to coercion.”

AGAINST: Fabius Maximus –Looking at one of the most popular books in the conservative canon: The Road to Serfdom

Summary

The post-WWII era provided two great sociological experiments. 

• The phenomenal economic success of the Asian Tigers – esp vs. the more statist nations of Latin America – proved the superiority of government-regulated but essentially free-market systems.
• The success of the Scandinavian nations – along with the US and UK – have disproven the fears of Hayek and others.  Mixed-system economies, with their high degree of government intervention in the economic sphere, do not tend to slide down the slope to totalitarianism.  At least over the few generation-long horizons which Hayek and others discussed.

Hayek’s work provides a salutary warning, but the passage of 66 years have disproven his specific forecasts.  Western governments have grown in breadth and reach since 1944, esp in Scandinavia.  Yet none have succumbed to totalitarianism, or even moved visibly in that direction (Hayek gave himself an out by saying this was “not inevitable”).

In fact America has moved in the reverse direction.  When Hayek wrote a large segment of America’s people lived under goverment-sponsored oppression.  Beatings of Black veterans in Mississippi and South Carolina (e.g. Isaac Woodard) sparked President Truman’s historic executive orders taking the first step to rolling back the South’s successful counter-revolution after Reconstruction.  This continued at a high but decreasing level though the 1960?s (e.g., the 1965 murder of  Viola Liuzzo).

How many conservatives reading his book see these contradictions with history?  My guess:  very few.   It’s such a useful theory, even if false (creationism serves a similar role)! 

I note that Paul Krugman also wrote something on von Hayek and Keynes recently, but it was a brief and largely stupid ahistorical comment to score contemporary partisan points, so I won’t link to it ( and I say this while being in agreement with Krugman that there’s a potential deflationary danger present). Some ironies, von Hayek despite being lionized by conservatives, did not consider himself to be one and Keynes, von Hayek’s alleged statist bete noire was favorably inclined to The Road to Serfdom. The back and forth between the two great economists was a lot more nuanced and complex in their exchanges than is generally presented in the media.

Schmedlap –Politics and the Military Profession

Here is the deal. Military service and political office do not go together.

What do I mean by that? I am not just referring to the rare instance in which someone does both simultaneously. I am referring to four situations, in descending order of egregiousness:

Serving in the military while also serving in elected office.Serving in elected office soon after serving in the militaryServing in the military soon after serving in elected office.

Voting while in the military

Why do I see a problem with any or all of these? I will hit on the basic philosophical issue first and then hit on each situation individually.

A really good, thought-provoking, post. I don’t agree with all of it as Schmedlap has purposefully staked out an extreme position on the interrelationship of democracy, citizenship and military service but he raises good arguments that challenge contemporary assumptions ( or even assumptions held by a historical military figure of such unimpeachable personal rectitude as George C. Marshall).

AFJ:  Col. Joseph Collins – The way ahead in Afghanistan

….First, there will no doubt be some key players who favor continuing with the U.S. plan that is still unfolding. Given the protracted nature of such conflicts, and barring unforeseen surprises, the battlefield situation in December is not likely to be radically different than it is now. Conservatives will prefer to keep up the full-blown counterinsurgency operation for a few more years and move slowly on the transition to Afghan responsibility for security.

….A second option would be to reduce over a year (July 2011-July 2012) most of the 30,000 soldiers and Marines in the surge combat forces and make security assistance and capacity building – not the provision of combat forces – ISAF’s top priority. Remaining ISAF combat units could further integrate with fielded Afghanistan National Army units. Maximum emphasis would be placed on quality training for soldiers and policemen. To build Afghan military capacity, ISAF commanders would also emphasize the development of Afghan combat enablers, such as logistics, transportation and aviation. In this option, the focal point of allied strategy would be on the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan and not on allied combat forces.

….A third option – compatible with the options noted above, either sequentially or concurrently – is for the Afghan government, with coalition and U.N. support, to move out smartly on reintegration of individuals and reconciliation with parts of or even the entire Afghan Taliban. To do this, Karzai first will have to win over the nearly 60 percent of the Afghan population that is not Pashtun. These groups – Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazarras and others – were treated poorly by the Taliban and today often live in areas outside Taliban influence. They will want peace, but not at a price that threatens their regions or allows the “new” Taliban much latitude.

SEED – Suicidal Tendencies

Are higher IQ people more prone to suicide?

Coming Anarchy: Curzon  –The Changing Role of the US Secretary of State

And what role do….women play here?

Thomas P.M. Barnett – Mattis becomes Central Command boss

More on Mattis.

In Harmonium – Ethics, honour and the dangers of over-ritualization, part 1 and Ethics, honour and the dangers of over-ritualization, part 2

Newscientist.com – Google should answer some searching questions

Is Google shaping your search results to benefit Google?

RECOMMWNDED VIEWING:

Benoit Mandelbrot on the complexity of “roughness”

This entry was posted on Monday, July 12th, 2010 at 2:50 am and is filed under recommended reading, recommended viewing, TED, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.