My current rereading of “Road to Serfdom” is paying off in ways that I did not anticipate when I picked the book up this morning.  Within the several prefaces to the book the point is made about the impact this book had on intellectual development after the war.  The general thesis of these arguments seems to lead to something like: Hayek started a conversation among socialist and liberal (point should be made – classical liberal) points of view.  This conversation not initiated from the liberal side, is assumed to be mute in the face of well meaning social reformers. 

I do not want to take anything from Hayek (every time I read or discuss his ideas I am more impressed), but I am taken by the way in which the argument is delivered.   I can only assume that the environment of the time was so socialist as to warrant such a strong case to be given to the socialist side of the debate.  He seems to posit the idea that socialism is one end of a spectrum and that free market is at the other end.  Implicit in the title is the idea that feudalism was something that we rose out of, and that the opportunities to return to this lower echelon of political arrangement is a constant threat.

What credit then do we give Socialism by seeing it as a sustainable state of affairs.  The argument never quite claims that feudalism and socialism are the same, but I am certainly to take from an argument against socialism that some drastic consequence is at hand.  Therefore, it must mean that Socialism is nothing more than a false utopia.  Clearly he gives us fair representation of this tendency in the chapter specifically on Utopian philosophy.  The way that he talks about good and evil seem to speak to a dichotomy which is also a little hard to grasp.  The central point being that if you defect from Capitalism, then you are necessarily bent on a path towards totalitarianism whatever your goals of socialism are. 

The part of his argument that I find instantly compelling is that socialism, reached through some central societal reform is doomed to fail.  The examples are evident, National socialism in Germany, Fascism, and the commitment to reforming man in the French revolution.  The part that I struggle with is that there is only one road, and we must recognize the truer of the paths as we go forward.  This prognosis is difficult to see.  That must be some economic truth in growth that will keep us as free as we can be, limited only by our constraints as human beings.  I am not sure that this idea is elaborate enough to stand the polar opposite of the socialist utopian dream.  So maybe we are doomed to try the utopian experiment as a check on the extent of government in the market.

As with any argument that deals in dichotomy, I am a little wary.  I have to admit that Hayek has done much to make me think more deeply on the matter.  I read this book the first time when I was an undergrad.  I made many notes in the columns trying to understand his argument, which I thought at the time were facetious; as I read them now I recognize them to be tenants which I hold.  Hayek has thus had an effect on the way that I think, and I hope to one day understand his point with deeper appreciation. 

Even Hayek must admit, on rereading the book (as he does in the 1976 edition) that this was the first book in a series of thought.  So I don’t hold it up to the same scrutiny which I would myself (purely a derivative of his insight).  I do hold him up though, trying to see the conflicts in the treatise, herein I find much room for thought.  It is very seldom that you can find a book, both an excellent foray into a subject and a tool for further study.  I find so few authors which write on these multiple levels.  So the truth is that I only have begun to digest the problems that were real and pressing then and almost certainly will remain the bane of any free society as it confronts the moral conflicts of pain and misery among the streets of great commerce.