Hayek Road To Selfdom Analysis
LINH
PHIL 1301-73432
MARCH 4, 2018
Philosophy Reflection Paper
Road to Selfdom
The Road to Selfdom is a great essay has write by Hayek- a famous economist and philosopher. Friedrich A. Hayek was a member of the Austrian School of economics. Road of Selfdom published in 1944, Hayek wrote it during World War II; and it became an economic and political classic expanding one’s thought process. This is a long essay and hard to understand all means, analysis and message that Hayek want to show to the audiences. Hayek's analysis of socialism is insightful, prophetic, and chilling. It is clear that we take for granted the freedoms we were given by our founding fathers and abdicating them to the socialist planners will lead to dire consequences. We
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He shows that only limited government in only specific areas where agreement could be found is the best guarantee of freedom and economic prosperity. Moreover, Hayek saw and shows clearly that the perennial impulse to collectivism leads inevitably to despotic totalitarianism. Nazism and Communism weren't twisted mutants of collectivism. The artical is heavily informed by the fear England and America had set on a path of central planning and state control similar with that of Germany before the war. While his fears didn't realize themselves, at least not in the way he foresaw them, many passages in this book sound particularly prescient. Especially the thirteenth chapter where you can feel his unease at trusting "moral" behavior to monopolies. He was also uneasy at any few groups claiming privileges. Better than accepting state control and the confusion of state and society he says. Better than abiding the power of the state to repress dissent. He does hint at the fatal combination of corporations allying themselves with the state in a mutually beneficial conglomerate. Same with labor and unions allying themselves in a pact that excludes the non-union majority and the rest of society. Now, those fears seem totally justified of late with the …show more content…
Here, Hayek systematically demonstrates, concept by concept, the reasons why a collectivist society can only bring destruction, not prosperity and freedom. What struck me is how eerily accurate was Mr. Hayek at describing and predicting the future and decline of collectivist/communist states during second half of 20th
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