How Far to Serfdom?

Some thoughts on F.A. Hayek's 'The Road to Serfdom' in modern context

In the midst of World War 2, Friedrich Hayek published a book that warned of a dangerous path that he saw the liberal democracies of the west starting to travel: The Road to Serfdom. Having experienced the first World War in his home country of Austria, and having narrowly escaped the second by emigrating to Britain, he had a closer view of the rise of totalitarianism in Europe than almost anyone. When he raised concerns about the rise of collectivism in western society, our ancestors would have done well to listen to him; we would do well to heed his words today. But have we? Did we continue to travel the path? How far away is Serfdom? Are we getting ever closer? Or did we already arrive? Have we gone so far it's fading into the distance behind us? In the midst of political, economic and cultural turmoil of our day it's time to start asking the question: How Far to Serfdom?

The biggest fear of Hayek was the rise of the planners. That collectives, parties or individuals would be able to set the path for people they had never met nor could ever hope to understand the lives of. Hayek wrote in depth on his issues with planning, while they stemmed from an economic point of view, the effect of planning would be much the same in any area of planning. Chief among those issues was that the planner could not plan half as well as they or the people who grant them the power might think. Centralized decision making is not compatible with the liberal principles of modern democracy according to Hayek. He argued that no single planner or group of planners could ever acquire or utilize all the information necessary to create a plan that achieves the desired ends. As the saying goes, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Hayek posits that any planner would face a flurry of punches everyday and would never be able to predict them or create a plan that would account for them. All that planning would do is to constrict the movement of the individual, for any individual the plan was not tailored for. Hayek feared that planning would lead to the end of individualism that was characteristic of liberal governance.

It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that nobody has complete power over us, that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves. If all the means of production were vested in a single hand, whether it be nominally that of "society" as a whole, or that of a dictator, whoever exercises this control has complete power over us. - Hayek (Who, Whom?)

So the question becomes, to what extent does planning exist in our society? We tend to believe in the western world that we live in liberal democracies, where freedom is held highest among our values. Our politicians spew forth constantly on the efforts to protect or maintain the freedoms of their constituents. We think that freedom had been secured so long ago by those old men in wigs, and then defended again and again by heroic soldiers in the fields or on the beaches. We hold a position that liberty was long ago secured, and all we have to do now is our best to distribute it equally. But who determines which liberties we are granted? Whom determines how it is to be distributed? The planners. Those that plan how much money is to be printed, what media we are to consume, what we are to learn in schools and where we are supposed to build our houses. The bureaucratic class that oversees our most important institutions and our largest corporations. What Orwell would call “The Inner Party”.

The desire to force upon the people a creed which is regarded as salutary for them is, of course, not a thing that is new or peculiar to our time. New, however, is the argument by which many of our intellectuals try to justify such attempts. There is no real freedom of thought in our society, so it is said, because the opinions and tastes of the masses are shaped by propaganda, by advertising, by the example of the upper classes, and by other environmental factors which inevitably force the thinking of the people into well-worn grooves. - Hayek (The End of Truth)

Now sure, we are granted liberties, many more liberties than are allowed in some other parts of the world. There is no coercive force that impedes us in our daily lives. (So long as you stay reasonably within the system, so long as you refrain from doing something so dastardly such as sleeping on a park bench or walking across a road without a cross-walk) But the tentacles of planners reach all parts of our lives in unseen ways. They are hidden in the forces that have always been there, the ones our forefathers thought necessary to secure freedom for the future. They are brought forth in the name of safety or prosperity. The forces of collectivism are hidden and justified by the promise of liberty. But the principles we must adhere to in order to actually maintain liberty are often nowhere to be found.

The principles of liberalism, laid out by the original liberals: Smith, Locke, Jefferson, Adams and many others throughout history are degraded by the effects of planning. Every action of planning leads to an increase in collectivism, which leads to an increase in centralization, which leads to a rise in totalitarianism and ends in serfdom. This is what Hayek was trying to get at. Planning is a dangerous path to follow. Now in the modern era it has to be said that we spend far more time planning than anything else. I personally would even go so far as to say that planning is one of our main industries. The federal government is the largest employer in the United States after all. So much of the workforce is centralized into a few of the largest organizations, that sounds a lot like planning to me. So How Far is it to Serfdom? Miles or inches?

Though it is natural that, as the world around us becomes more complex, our resistance grows against the forces which, without our understanding them, constantly interfere with individual hopes and plans, it is just in these circumstances that it becomes less and less possible for anyone fully to understand these forces. - Hayek (Material Conditions and Ideal Ends)

I'm not sure that many in the developed world would consider themselves Serfs, but I'm also not sure if anyone today would recognize their position if they were. Planning has infected our society for generations now. If all you ever knew was Serfdom, would you be aware that you weren't free? Are we still approaching Serfdom? Is it on the horizon? Or is it so far behind us that we can't make out its skyline anymore. Regardless of where we are, the only hope to put distance between it and ourselves is for us to ask ourselves what road we are on, and in what direction we should be traveling. Should we stomp on the brakes and kick it into reverse gear? Or keep the cruise control on and bump some tunes? To make that decision we need to ask ourselves the age old question. Not just How Far to Serfdom? But Are We There Yet?