What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven. —Hölderlin 1
That socialism has displaced liberalism as the doctrine held by the great majority of progressives does not simply mean that people had forgotten the warnings of the great liberal thinkers of the past about the consequences of collectivism. It has happened because they were persuaded of the very opposite of what these men had predicted. The extraordinary thing is that the same socialism that was not only early recognized as the gravest threat to freedom, but quite openly began as a reaction against the liberalism of the French Revolution, gained general acceptance under the flag of liberty. It is rarely remembered now that socialism in its beginnings was frankly authoritarian. The French writers who laid the foundations of modern socialism had no doubt that their ideas could be put into practice only by a strong dictatorial government. To them socialism meant an attempt to “terminate the revolution” by a deliberate reorganization of society on hierarchical lines and by the imposition of a coercive “spiritual power.” Where freedom was concerned, the founders of socialism made no bones about their intentions. Freedom of thought they regarded as the root-evil of nineteenth-century society, and the first of modern planners, Saint-Simon, even predicted that those who did not obey his proposed planning boards would be “treated as cattle.” 2
Only under the influence of the strong democratic currents preceding the revolution of 1848 did socialism begin to ally itself with the forces of freedom. But it took the new “democratic socialism” a long time to live down the suspicions aroused by its antecedents. Nobody saw more clearly than Tocqueville that democracy as an essentially individualist institution stood in an irreconcilable conflict with socialism:
“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom,” he said in 1848; “socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.” 3
To allay these suspicions and to harness to its cart the strongest of all political motives—the craving for freedom—socialism began increasingly to make use of the promise of a “new freedom.” The coming of socialism was to be the leap from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. It was to bring “economic freedom,” without which the political freedom already gained was “not worth having.” Only socialism was capable of effecting the consummation of the age-long struggle for freedom, in which the attainment of political freedom was but a first step.
The subtle change in meaning to which the word “freedom” was subjected in order that this argument should sound plausible is important. To the great apostles of political freedom the word had meant freedom from coercion, freedom from the arbitrary power of other men, release from the ties which left the individual no choice but obedience to the orders of a superior to whom he was attached. The new freedom promised, however, was to be freedom from necessity, release from the compulsion of the circumstances which inevitably limit the range of choice of all of us, although for some very much more than for others. Before man could be truly free, the “despotism of physical want” had to be broken, the “restraints of the economic system” relaxed.
Freedom in this sense is, of course, merely another name for power 4 or wealth. Yet, although the promises of this new freedom were often coupled with irresponsible promises of a great increase in material wealth in a socialist society, it was not from such an absolute conquest of the niggardliness of nature that economic freedom was expected. What the promise really amounted to was that the great existing disparities in the range of choice of different people were to disappear. The demand for the new freedom was thus only another name for the old demand for an equal distribution of wealth. But the new name gave the socialists another word in common with the liberals, and they exploited it to the full. And, although the word was used in a different sense by the two groups, few people noticed this and still fewer asked themselves whether the two kinds of freedom promised could really be combined.
There can be no doubt that the promise of greater freedom has become one of the most effective weapons of socialist propaganda and that the belief that socialism would bring freedom is genuine and sincere. But this would only heighten the tragedy if it should prove that what was promised to us as the Road to Freedom was in fact the High Road to Servitude. Unquestionably, the promise of more freedom was responsible for luring more and more liberals along the socialist road, for blinding them to the conflict which exists between the basic principles of socialism and liberalism, and for often enabling socialists to usurp the very name of the old party of freedom. Socialism was embraced by the greater part of the intelligentsia as the apparent heir of the liberal tradition: therefore it is not surprising that to them the idea of socialism’s leading to the opposite of liberty should appear inconceivable.
In recent years, however, the old apprehensions of the unforeseen consequences of socialism have once more been strongly voiced from the most unexpected quarters. Observer after observer, in spite of the contrary expectation with which he approached his subject, has been impressed with the extraordinary similarity in many respects of the conditions under “fascism” and “communism.” While “progressives” in England and elsewhere were still deluding themselves that communism and fascism represented opposite poles, more and more people began to ask themselves whether these new tyrannies were not the outcome of the same tendencies. Even communists must have been somewhat shaken by such testimonies as that of Max Eastman, Lenin’s old friend, who found himself compelled to admit that “instead of being better, Stalinism is worse than fascism, more ruthless, barbarous, unjust, immoral, antidemocratic, unredeemed by any hope or scruple,” and that it is “better described as superfascist”; and when we find the same author recognizing that “Stalinism is socialism, in the sense of being an inevitable although unforeseen political accompaniment of the nationalization and collectivization which he had relied upon as part of his plan for erecting a classless society,” 5 his conclusion clearly achieves wider significance.
Mr. Eastman’s case is perhaps the most remarkable, yet he is by no means the first or the only sympathetic observer of the Russian experiment to form similar conclusions. Several years earlier W. H. Chamberlin, who in twelve years in Russia as an American correspondent had seen all his ideals shattered, summed up the conclusions of his studies there and in Germany and Italy in the statement that “socialism is certain to prove, in the beginning at least, the road NOT to freedom, but to dictatorship and counter-dictatorships, to civil war of the fiercest kind. Socialism achieved and maintained by democratic means seems definitely to belong to the world of utopias.” 6 Similarly a British writer, F. A. Voigt, after many years of close observation of developments in Europe as a foreign correspondent, concludes that “Marxism has led to Fascism and National Socialism, because, in all essentials, it is Fascism and National Socialism.” 7 And Walter Lippmann has arrived at the conviction that “the generation to which we belong is now learning from experience what happens when men retreat from freedom to a coercive organization of their affairs. Though they promise themselves a more abundant life, they must in practice renounce it; as the organized direction increases, the variety of ends must give way to uniformity. That is the nemesis of the planned society and the authoritarian principle in human affairs.” 8
Many more similar statements from people in a position to judge might be selected from publications of recent years, particularly from those by men who as citizens of the now totalitarian countries have lived through the transformation and have been forced by their experience to revise many cherished beliefs. We shall quote as one more example a German writer who expresses the same conclusion perhaps more justly than those already quoted.
“The complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxism,” writes Peter Drucker, “has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian, purely negative, non-economic society of unfreedom and inequality which Germany has been following. Not that communism and fascism are essentially the same. Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Stalinist Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany.” 9
No less significant is the intellectual history of many of the Nazi and Fascist leaders. Everyone who has watched the growth of these movements in Italy 10 or in Germany has been struck by the number of leading men, from Mussolini downward (and not excluding Laval and Quisling), who began as socialists and ended as Fascists or Nazis. 11 And what is true of the leaders is even more true of the rank and file of the movement. The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was generally known in Germany, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. Many a university teacher during the 1930s has seen English and American students return from the Continent uncertain whether they were communists or Nazis and certain only that they hated Western liberal civilization.
It is true, of course, that in Germany before 1933, and in Italy before 1922, communists and Nazis or Fascists clashed more frequently with each other than with other parties. They competed for the support of the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic. But their practice showed how closely they are related. To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common and whom they could not hope to convince, is the liberal of the old type. While to the Nazi the communist, and to the communist the Nazi, and to both the socialist, are potential recruits who are made of the right timber, although they have listened to false prophets, they both know that there can be no compromise between them and those who really believe in individual freedom.
Lest this be doubted by people misled by official propaganda from either side, let me quote one more statement from an authority that ought not to be suspect. In an article under the significant title of “The Rediscovery of Liberalism,” Professor Eduard Heimann, one of the leaders of German religious socialism, writes: “Hitlerism proclaims itself as both true democracy and true socialism, and the terrible truth is that there is a grain of truth for such claims—an infinitesimal grain, to be sure, but at any rate enough to serve as a basis for such fantastic distortions. Hitlerism even goes so far as to claim the role of protector of Christianity, and the terrible truth is that even this gross misinterpretation is able to make some impression. But one fact stands out with perfect clarity in all the fog: Hitler has never claimed to represent true liberalism. Liberalism then has the distinction of being the doctrine most hated by Hitler.” 12 It should be added that this hatred had little occasion to show itself in practice merely because, by the time Hitler came to power, liberalism was to all intents and purposes dead in Germany. And it was socialism that had killed it.
While to many who have watched the transition from socialism to fascism at close quarters the connection between the two systems has become increasingly obvious, in the democracies the majority of people still believe that socialism and freedom can be combined. There can be no doubt that most socialists here still believe profoundly in the liberal ideal of freedom and that they would recoil if they became convinced that the realization of their program would mean the destruction of freedom. So little is the problem yet seen, so easily do the most irreconcilable ideals still live together, that we can still hear such contradictions in terms as “individualist socialism” seriously discussed. If this is the state of mind which makes us drift into a new world, nothing can be more urgent than that we should seriously examine the real significance of the evolution that has taken place elsewhere. Although our conclusions will only confirm the apprehensions which others have already expressed, the reasons why this development cannot be regarded as accidental will not appear without a rather full examination of the main aspects of this transformation of social life. That democratic socialism, the great utopia of the last few generations, is not only unachievable, but that to strive for it produces something so utterly different that few of those who now wish it would be prepared to accept the consequences, many will not believe until the connection has been laid bare in all its aspects.
1 [ Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin, Hyperion, oder der Eremit in Griechenland. Sämtliche Werke, vol. 3 (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1957), Erster Band, Erstes Buch, p. 31. The quotation in German reads, “Immerhin hat das den Staat zur Hölle gemacht, daß ihn der Mensch zu seinem Himmel machen wollte.” —Ed.]
2 [See Henri Saint-Simon, “Letters from an Inhabitant of Geneva to his Contemporaries,” in Henri Saint-Simon (1760–1825): Selected Writings on Science, Industry and Social Organization, trans. and ed. Keith Taylor (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1975), p. 78, where Saint-Simon says, “Every man who fails to obey this commandment will be regarded and treated by others as an animal.” The social reformer Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) was a founder of French socialism. In his account of the origins of “scientism” and of “the abuse of reason,” Hayek characterized Saint-Simon as “a megalomaniac visionary.” See F. A. Hayek, “The Counter-Revolution of Science,” in The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies in the Abuse of Reason, op. cit., p. 222. The sentence containing the passage that Hayek quotes was apparently deleted by Saint-Simon’s disciples from some later versions of the tract. —Ed.]
3 Alexis de Tocqueville, “Discours prononcé à l’assemblée constituante dans la discussion de projet de constitution (12 Septembre 1848) sur la question du droit au travail,” Oeuvres complètes d’Alexis de Tocqueville, vol. 9 (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1866), p. 546. [The original passage reads, “La démocratie étend la sphère de l’indépendance individuelle, le socialisme la resserre. La démocratie donne toute sa valeur possible à chaque homme, le socialisme fait de chaque homme un agent, un instrument, un chiffre. La démocratie et le socialisme ne se tiennent que par un mot, l’égalité; mais remarquez la différence: la démocratie veut l’égalité dans la liberté, et le socialisme veut l’égalité dans la gêne et dans la servitude.” —Ed.]
4 The characteristic confusion of freedom with power, which we shall meet again and again throughout this discussion, is too big a subject to be thoroughly examined here. As old as socialism itself, it is so closely allied with it that almost seventy years ago a French scholar, discussing its Saint-Simonian origins, was led to say that this theory of liberty “est à elle seule tout le socialisme” (Paul Janet, Saint-Simon et le Saint-Simonisme [Paris: G. Baillière et cie., 1878], p. 26 n.). The most explicit defender of this confusion is, significantly, the leading philosopher of American left-wingism, John Dewey, according to whom “liberty is the effective power to do specific things” so that “the demand for liberty is demand for power.” See John Dewey, “Liberty and Social Control,” The Social Frontier, vol. 2, November 1935, p. 41.
5 Max Eastman, Stalin’s Russia and the Crisis in Socialism (New York: W. W. Norton, 1940), the quoted passages are found on p. 82, p. 82, and p. 154, respectively. [Hayek originally listed the quotations as all appearing on p. 82. The American Max Eastman (1883–1969) was the editor and publisher of the radical organ The Masses. He traveled to the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution and married a Russian woman. By the 1930s he had become disillusioned with the Soviet experiment, believing that the original purpose of Lenin’s revolution had been subverted by Stalin. As noted in my introduction, p. 19, Eastman condensed The Road to Serfdom for Reader’s Digest. —Ed.]
6 W. H. Chamberlin, Collectivism: A False Utopia (New York: Macmillan, 1937), pp. 202–203. [Author and journalist William Henry Chamberlin (1897–1969) went to Moscow in 1922 as a journalist for the Christian Science Monitor. Though initially sympathetic to the revolutionary cause, he quickly became disillusioned with Stalinism. —Ed.]
7 F. A. Voigt, Unto Caesar (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1938), p. 95. [The English journalist and author Frederick Augustus Voigt (1892–1957) was the Berlin correspondent for the Manchester Guardian during the interwar years. I could not locate the passage cited in Voigt’s book, though the following lines, taken from p. 35, express similar sentiments: “Marxism would be a phenomenon of little more than historical interest, seeing that it has failed even it its principal stronghold, were it not so closely akin to National Socialism. National Socialism would have been inconceivable without Marxism.” Voigt notes similarities between Marxism and National Socialism as well as between the persons of Lenin and Hitler in his book. —Ed.]
8 Walter Lippmann, “The Government of Posterity,” The Atlantic, vol. 158, November 1936, p. 552. [The American journalist, author, and social commentator Walter Lippmann (1889– 1974) wrote for the New York Herald Tribune. He won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 1962. —Ed.]
9 Peter Drucker, The End of Economic Man: A Study of the New Totalitarianism (New York: The John Day Co., 1939), pp. 245–246. [In the original, Hayek mistakenly listed the page on which the quotation is found as p. 230. Vienna-born American management consultant Peter Drucker (1909–2005) taught at Bennington College and New York University before his appointment as professor of social sciences at the Claremont Graduate School, now Claremont Graduate University, in California. —Ed.]
10 An illuminating account of the intellectual history of many of the Fascist leaders will be found in Robert Michels (himself a former Marxist Fascist), Sozialismus und Fascismus als politische Strö-mungen in Italien: historische Studien, vol. 2, Sozialismus und Fascismus in Italien (Munich: Meyer and Jessen, 1925), 264–66, 311–12.
11 [French politician Pierre Laval (1883–1945) served as Marshall Pétain’s deputy and subsequently as prime minister during the Vichy regime. He was executed as a collaborator following the liberation. Norwegian diplomat Vidkun Quisling (1887–1945) formed the Nasjonal Samlung party, modeled on the German National Socialist party, in 1933, and served as the puppet prime minister during the occupation of Norway. His name has become synonymous with collaboration. Quisling was tried and executed at war’s end. —Ed.]
12 Eduard Heimann, “The Rediscovery of Liberalism,” Social Research, vol. 8, November 1941, p. 479. It deserves to be recalled in this connection that, whatever may have been his reasons, Hitler thought it expedient to declare in one of his public speeches as late as February, 1941, that “basically National Socialism and Marxism are the same.” Compare the article, “Herr Hitler’s Speech of February 24,” Bulletin of International News (published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs), vol. 18, March 8, 1941, p. 269. [Eduard Heimann (1889–1967) taught at the University of Hamburg from 1925 to 1933, when he fled Germany and took a position at the New School for Social Research in New York. —Ed.]