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arguments were not actually new at all. Another debate on the feasibility of socialism had taken place immediately following the First World War, and Hayek’s mentor, Ludwig von Mises, had contributed a key argument. This earlier controversy had taken place in mostly German-language publications. When Hayek came to England and encountered similar arguments in favor of planning being made by his academic colleagues and in the press, he decided to educate them about the earlier discussion. In 1935 he published the edited volume, Collectivist Economic Planning: Critical Studies on the Possibilities of Socialism.20 The book contained translations of articles by others, including von Mises’s seminal piece “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth,” as well as introductory and concluding essays by Hayek.21 In the former Hayek reviewed the earlier Continental debates on socialism; in his concluding essay, titled “The Present State of the Debate,” he identified and assessed a number of more recent proposals, among them the idea of reintroducing competition within a socialist state, dubbed “pseudo-competition” by Hayek, which later came to be called “market socialism.”22 This drew a response from the socialist camp, the most prominent being that of the Polish émigré economist Oskar Lange, whose defense of market socialism in a journal article was later reprinted in a book, On the Economic Theory of Socialism.23 Hayek would respond in turn to Lange and to another proponent of socialism, H. D. Dickinson, in a book review a few years later.24

Hayek’s three essays constitute the written record of his early economic arguments against socialism. But the battle was also taking place in the classrooms (and doubtless spilling over into the senior commons room, as well) at the LSE. Beginning in the 1933–34 summer term (which ran from late April through June) Hayek began offering a class entitled “Problems of a Collectivist Economy.” The socialist response was immediate: the next year students could also enroll in a class titled “Economic Planning in Theory and Practice,” taught first by Hugh Dalton and in later years by Evan Durbin.25 According to the LSE calendar, during the 1936–37 summer term students could hear Hayek from 5 to 6 pm and Durbin from 6 to 7 pm each Thursday night! This may have proved to be too much: the next year their classes were placed in the same time slot on successive days, Durbin on Wednesdays and Hayek on Thursdays.

By the time that World War II was beginning, then, Hayek had criticized, in a book, a journal, and in the classroom, a variety of socialist proposals put forth by his fellow economists. The Road to Serfdom is in many respects a continuation of this work, but it is important to recognize that it also goes beyond the academic debates. By the end of the decade there were many other voices calling for the transformation, sometimes radical, of society. A few held a corporativist view of the good society that bordered on fascism; others sought a middle way; still others were avowedly socialist—but one thing all agreed on, that scientific planning was necessary if Britain was to survive.

Thus in their two volume work Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? Fabian socialists Sidney and Beatrice Webb praised the “Cult of Science” that they had discovered on their visits to the Soviet Union, and held out the hope that scientific planning on a massive scale was the appropriate medicine to aid Britain in its recovery from the depression.26 The sociologist Karl Mannheim, who fled Frankfurt in 1933 and ultimately gained a position on the LSE faculty, warned that only by adopting a comprehensive system of economic planning could Britain avoid the fate of central Europe. For Mannheim, planning was inevitable; the only question was whether it was going to be totalitarian or democratic. These economists were joined by other highly respected public intellectuals, from natural scientists to politicians.27

If planning was the word on everyone’s lips, very few were clear about exactly what it was to entail.