The Road To Serfdom - Criticism

Criticism

The Road To Serfdom has been criticized on theoretical grounds. Economic sociologist Karl Polanyi made a case diametrically opposed to Hayek, arguing that unfettered markets had undermined the social order and that economic breakdown had paved the way for the emergence of dictatorship.

Herman Finer, a Fabian socialist, published a rebuttal in his The Road to Reaction in 1946. Hayek called Finer's book "a specimen of abuse and invective which is probably unique in contemporary academic discussion."

Barbara Wootton wrote Freedom under Planning after reading an early copy of The Road to Serfdom, provided to her by Hayek. In the introduction to her book, Wootton mentioned The Road to Serfdom and claimed that "Much of what I have written is devoted to criticism of the views put forward by Professor Hayek in this and other books." The central argument made in Freedom under Planning is that "there is nothing in the conscious planning of economic priorities which is inherently incompatible with the freedoms which mean most to the contemporary Englishman or American. Civil liberties are quite unaffected. We can, if we wish, deliberately plan so as to give the fullest possible scope for the pursuit by individuals and social groups of cultural ends which are in no way state-determined." Wootton criticizes Hayek for claiming that planning must lead to oppression, when, in her view, that is merely one possibility among many. She argues that "there seems hardly better case for taking for granted that planning will bring the worst to the top than for the opposite assumption that the seats of office will be filled with angels." Thus, Wootton acknowledges the possibility that planning may exist alongside tyranny, but claims that it is equally possible to combine planning with freedom. She concludes that "A happy and fruitful marriage between freedom and planning can, in short, be arranged."

However, Frank Knight, founder of the Chicago School of Economics, disputes the claim that Freedom under Planning contradicts The Road to Serfdom. He wrote in a scholarly review of the Wootton book: "Let me repeat that the Wootton book is in no logical sense an answer to The Road to Serfdom, whatever may be thought of the cogency of Hayek's argument, or the soundness of his position."

In his review (collected in The Present as History, 1953) Marxist Paul Sweezy joked that Hayek would have you believe that if there was an over-production of baby carriages, the central planners would then order the population to have more babies instead of simply warehousing the temporary excess of carriages and decreasing production for next year. The cybernetic arguments of Stafford Beer in his 1974 CBC Massey Lectures, Designing Freedom – that intelligent adaptive planning can increase freedom – are of interest in this regard, as is the technical work of Herbert A. Simon and Albert Ando on the dynamics of hierarchical nearly decomposable systems in economics – namely, that everything in such a system is not tightly coupled to everything else.

Jeffrey Sachs wrote that the social-welfare states, with high rates of taxation and social outlays, outperform the relatively free-market economies, according to the empirical evidence. William Easterly wrote a rebuttal and Sachs wrote a re-rebuttal.

Eric Zencey wrote that the free market economy Hayek advocated is designed for an infinite planet, and when it runs into physical limits (as any growing system must), the result is a need for centralized planning to mediate the problematic interface of economy and nature. "Planning is planning, whether it's done to minimize poverty and injustice, as socialists were advocating then, or to preserve the minimum flow of ecosystem services that civilization requires, as we are finding increasingly necessary today."