Road to Serfdom, The - Hayek, F. A. & Caldwell, Bruce [13]
The situation was different in the United States. The worst of the lot, Herman Finer’s scabrous Road to Reaction, was also picked out for mentioning by Hayek in the 1956 foreword. The overarching message of the book was evident in its very first sentence: “Friedrich A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom constitutes the most sinister offensive against democracy to emerge from a democratic country for many decades.”76 According to Finer, Hayek’s call for constitutionalism and advocacy of the rule of law was indicative of his antidemocratic biases, the “very essence” of Hayek’s argument being “the idea that democracy is dangerous and ought to be limited.”77 Toward the end of the book (published, we remember, in 1945) we find Finer remarking on “the thoroughly Hitlerian contempt for the democratic man so perfectly expressed by Hayek.”78 Other pundits of the day took different tacks: George Soule, for example, was quick to label him “the darling of the Chamber of Commerce.”79 The left-leaning PM newspaper launched an exposé showing how business interests promoted the “selling” of Hayek’s message. The author’s concluding sentences capture well many people’s perception of the reception of the book in America: “Hayek’s book—and the Look and Reader’s Digest treatments of it—gave big business a wonderful opportunity to spread distrust and fear of the New Deal. Big business seized the opportunity.”80
Perhaps recognizing that nothing sells like controversy, the Press sent Hayek a copy of Finer’s book when it appeared in December 1945, and asked whether he might want to add a new chapter to the end of the next edition of The Road to Serfdom, in which he would reply to his critics. Hayek worked on such a postscript on and off over the next few years. A partially completed draft, dated 1948, exists in his archives, and elements of this would ultimately be incorporated into the 1956 foreword.81 It is notable, and characteristic, that Hayek’s response there was not to lash out at his critics, but rather to try to explain the differences in the receptions he received in England and the United States, again by emphasizing the different experiences that people in the two countries had had with socialism.82
It is hard to imagine that Hayek’s book would have become so widely known, remembered decades after its original publication, had it not been for the Reader’s Digest condensation. This allowed Hayek’s message to reach many more people, and in at least one instance with dramatic effect: Antony Fisher, the founder of the Institute of Economic Affairs, and after it a prime mover in the foundation of many other conservative think tanks, was inspired to wage the war of ideas after having read the condensation and then speaking with Hayek in his LSE office in the summer of 1945.83 But the condensation also turned the book into a symbol for both his admirers and his critics. The sad result is that, as John Scoon put it, “People still tend to go off half-cocked about it; why don’t they read it and find out what Hayek actually says!”84 In the next section some oft-heard criticisms of the book are briefly reviewed and assessed. We will see that some are less justified than others.
Some Prominent Criticisms
One of the earliest criticisms concerned the historical accuracy of his claims. A good example is the objection raised by Frank Knight, who in his reader’s report insisted that German history was far more complicated than Hayek had portrayed it; that, for example, the socialist policies in place since Bismarck’s time comprised only one element in explaining the subsequent trajectory of the country. I doubt that Hayek