Tuesday, June 9, 2009

The Road to Serfdom and why Fascism is derived from Socialism.

by F. A. Hayek as it appeared in the April 1945 edition of Reader's Digest

by StFerdIII



This is an edited version of Hayek's correct and in fact irrefutable linkage between Socialism and Fascism. Far from being a 'conservative, reactionary, and capitalist' movement, Fascism was entirely Marxist and communal. Hitler used to boast that he pilloried the appealing aspects of Socialist-Marxist thought and welded them to militarist nationalism. It was no accident that the Nazis and Communists fought a bloody street war in Germany during the late 1920s and into the 1930s – they were fighting over the same political space. Far from being opposites – they were in fact twins. Fascism is the logical outcome of political, cultural and economic Marxist-socialist idealism; and is the exact opposite construct of orthodox conservative, and freedom based democratic pluralism.

Hayek:
The reality of Fascist thought:

“.......There are many features which were then regarded as ‘typically German’ which are now equally familiar in America and England, and many symptoms that point to a further development in the same direction: the increasing veneration for the state, the fatalistic acceptance of ‘inevitable trends’, the enthusiasm for ‘organization’ of everything (we now call it ‘planning’).

The character of the danger is, if possible, even less understood here than it was in Germany. The supreme tragedy is still not seen that in Germany it was largely people of good will who, by their socialist policies, prepared the way for the forces which stand for everything they detest. Few recognize that the rise of fascism and Marxism was not a reaction against the socialist trends of the preceding period but a necessary outcome of those tendencies. Yet it is significant that many of the leaders of these movements, from Mussolini down (and including Laval and Quisling) began as socialists and ended as fascists or Nazis.

In the democracies at present, many who sincerely hate all of Nazism’s manifestations are working for ideals whose realization would lead straight to the abhorred tyranny. Most of the people whose views influence developments are in some measure socialists. They believe that our economic life should be ‘consciously directed’ that we should substitute ‘economic planning’ for the competitive system. Yet is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavour consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for?
........

When orthodox Liberalism or Conservatism is abandoned [like it is today]:

It is significant that this abandonment of liberalism, whether expressed as socialism in its more radical form or merely as ‘organization’ or ‘planning’, was perfected in Germany. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth, Germany moved far ahead in both the theory and the practice of socialism, so that even today Russian discussion largely carries on where the Germans left off.

The Germans, long before the Nazis, were attacking liberalism and democracy, capitalism, and individualism.

Long before the Nazis, too, the German and Italian socialists were using techniques of which the Nazis and fascists later made effective use. The idea of a political party which embraces all activities of the individual from the cradle to the grave, which claims to guide his views on everything, was first put into practice by the socialists. It was not the fascists but the socialists who began to collect children at the tenderest age into political organization to direct their thinking. It was not the fascists but the socialists who first thought of organizing sports and games, football and hiking, in party clubs where the members would not be infected by other views. It was the socialists who first insisted that the party member should distinguish himself from others by the modes of greeting and the forms of address. It was they who, by their organization of ‘cells’ and devices for the permanent supervision of private life, created the prototype of the totalitarian party.

By the time Hitler came to power, liberalism was dead in Germany. And it was socialism that had killed it.

To many who have watched the transition from socialism to fascism at close quarters the connection between the two systems has become increasingly obvious, but in the democracies the majority of people still believe that socialism and freedom can be combined. They do not realize that democratic socialism, the great utopia of the last few generations, is not only unachievable, but that to strive for it produces something utterly different – the very destruction of freedom itself. As has been aptly said: ‘What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven.’

It is disquieting to see in England and the United States today the same drawing together of forces and nearly the same contempt of all that is liberal in the old sense. ‘Conservative socialism’ was the slogan under which a large number of writers prepared the atmosphere in which National Socialism succeeded. It is ‘conservative socialism’ which is the dominant trend among us now.

......

Fascists and Communists united:

Although our modern socialists’ promise of greater freedom is genuine and sincere, in recent years observer after observer has been impressed by the unforeseen consequences of socialism, the extraordinary similarity in many respects of the conditions under ‘communism’ and ‘fascism’. As the writer Peter Drucker expressed it in 1939, ‘the complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxism has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian 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 Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany.’

No less significant is the intellectual outlook of the rank and file in the communist and fascist movements in Germany before 1933. The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was well known, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. The communists and Nazis clashed more frequently with each other than with other parties simply because they competed for the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic. Their practice showed how closely they are related. To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common, was 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 made of the right timber, they both know that there can be no compromise between them and those who really believe in individual freedom.

What is promised to us as the Road to Freedom is in fact the Highroad to Servitude. For it is not difficult to see what must be the consequences when democracy embarks upon a course of planning. The goal of the planning will be described by some such vague term as ‘the general welfare’. There will be no real agreement as to the ends to be attained, and the effect of the people’s agreeing that there must be central planning, without agreeing on the ends, will be rather as if a group of people were to commit themselves to take a journey together without agreeing where they want to go: with the result that they may all have to make a journey which most of them do not want at all.

.....

Socialism leading to Totalitarianism:

...It is characteristic that both in Germany and in Italy the success of fascism was preceded by the refusal of the socialist parties to take over the responsibilities of government. They were unwilling wholeheartedly to employ the methods to which they had pointed the way. They still hoped for the miracle of a majority’s agreeing on a particular plan for the organization of the whole of society. Others had already learned the lesson that in a planned society the question can no longer be on what do a majority of the people agree but what the largest single group is whose members agree sufficiently to make unified direction of all affairs possible.

.......Moreover, under central planning the government cannot be impartial. The state ceases to be a piece of utilitarian machinery intended to help individuals in the fullest development of their individual personality and becomes an institution which deliberately discriminates between particular needs of different people, and allows one man to do what another must be prevented from doing. It must lay down by a legal rule how well off particular people shall be and what different people are to be allowed to have.

The Rule of Law, the absence of legal privileges of particular people designated by authority, is what safeguards that equality before the law which is the opposite of arbitrary government. It is significant that socialists (and Nazis) have always protested against ‘merely’ formal justice, that they have objected to law which had no views on how well off particular people ought to be, that they have demanded a ‘socialization of the law’ and attacked the independence of judges.
...
The Rule of Law was consciously evolved only during the liberal age and is one of its greatest achievements. It is the legal embodiment of freedom. As Immanuel Kant put it, ‘Man is free if he needs obey no person but solely the laws.’

.......

The Fascist/Socialist myth of security:

The general endeavour to achieve security by restrictive measures, supported by the state, has in the course of time produced a progressive transformation of society – a transformation in which, as in so many other ways, Germany has led and the other countries have followed. This development has been hastened by another effect of socialist teaching, the deliberate disparagement of all activities involving economic risk and the moral opprobrium cast on the gains which make risks worth taking but which only few can win. We cannot blame our young men when they prefer the safe, salaried position to the risk of enterprise after they have heard from their earliest youth the former described as the superior, more unselfish and disinterested occupation. The younger generation of today has grown up in a world in which, in school and press, the spirit of commercial enterprise has been represented as disreputable and the making of profit as immoral, where to employ 100 people is represented as exploitation but to command the same number as honourable.”

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Summary:
Hayek was right. The main tenets of Fascism – communal solidarity; guaranteed security; obeying the ruling cult and elevated leader; state ownership over most if not all of the economy either directly or indirectly; laws governing everything from diet to hobby activities; free education, welfare and pensions; and a disdain for trade, business, innovation and positive sum foreign relationships; and a limitation on freedom of speech and thinking; are all Socialist ideals and have nothing in common with the attributes and beliefs of freedom, individualism or self-respect.

Today we see these Fascist concepts enumerated by Hayek and which are premised on Socialist/Marxist ideals in such groups as the intolerant lying eco-cult; those who believe in the power of government and redistribution such as the Prophet Obamed and his legions of loyal fanatics; and those who support a complete safety net of unrestricted welfare and 'care'. These groups are simply following in the footsteps of Nazis, Communists and militant communalists. They are the true Fascists, in every real sense that this mis-used word conveys.