It's hard to imagine now, but at one time even so ardent an anticommunist as Whittaker Chambers believed the West was on the losing side of history. If we didn't succumb to communism, certainly we would be consumed by a home-grown form of socialism. The Great Depression and two world wars had left few willing to refute the idea that big government was needed to order human society.
Friedrich A. Hayek--born 100 years ago tomorrow--was willing to question the prevailing wisdom. His seminal work, "The Road to Serfdom," published in 1944, challenged the economic and political theories of his day by asserting that central planning and individual freedom could not coexist. For penning such heterodox notions as "a policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy," Hayek earned a prophet's reward: First he was scorned, then ignored.
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Fortunately, Hayek lived to see his reputation restored, first in 1974 when he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, and later when George Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And although his books remain conspicuously absent from the required-reading lists of most universities, this courtly Austrian-born British citizen remains one of our century's most influential thinkers.
Hayek was intrigued by man, markets and their effect on society. He earned three doctorates--in law, economics and the social sciences--and ranged fearlessly over many fields, publishing groundbreaking work not only in economics but also in political theory, legal philosophy, psychology and the history of ideas. The father of ideas that years later would inspire Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, he began sounding the alarm that the foes of freedom were on the march long before even George Orwell did so.
In a rebuke to modern sensibilities, Hayek repudiated the tendency of individuals and societies to blame others for their problems and declared the concepts of liberty and responsibility "inseparable." In his 1960 book, "The Constitution of Liberty," he explored this theme at length: "Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions and will receive praise or blame for them." Taking charge of one's life is an "unceasing task," Hayek wrote, which explains why "many people are afraid of liberty."
Despite derision from his fellow economists, Hayek's influence extended well beyond the halls of academia, especially in the U.S., where his ideas found a more receptive audience. Reader's Digest published an abridged version of "The Road to Serfdom," and a paperback version became a bestseller. When Hayek toured the U.S. soon after its publication, he was surprised to find himself speaking to overflow crowds, even in university lecture halls.
Although Hayek did brilliant research on money, credit, capital, interest and monetary cycles (his 1931 book, "Prices and Production," was cited by the Nobel Prize committee), perhaps his greatest contribution lies in a simple insight: Man does not and cannot know everything, and when he acts as if he did, he invites trouble. "It may indeed prove to be far the most difficult and not the least important task for human reason rationally to comprehend its own limitations," he wrote. Hayek recognized that socialism, the collectivist state and planned economies represent the ultimate form of hubris, for the planners attempt--with insufficient knowledge--to redesign the nature of man. He considered such presumption "The Fatal Conceit"--the title of his final book, published in 1988.
Hayek's nonconformist observations courted academic ostracism from those who had committed their lives to socialism. Yet together with a small and initially obscure band of associates known as the Mont Pelerin Society (which has included Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, James Buchanan, Ronald Coase and Gary Becker), he converted millions to his view of freedom. As David Horowitz writes in "The Politics of Bad Faith": "Von Mises and Hayek, and the other prophets of capitalist economy, are now revered throughout the [former] Soviet bloc, even as the names of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky are despised." For his part, Mr. Friedman considers Hayek's contributions to economic theory and political philosophy "secondary to [his] influence in strengthening the moral and intellectual support for a free society."
Today one hears a rising chorus of doubt about the promise of liberty, particularly in Europe and the former Soviet Union. The doubters would do well to spend a long weekend with Hayek's writing. There they would learn that when a society establishes its basic organizing principles, it must choose between freedom and coercion. There is no viable "third way." As one of Hayek's admirers, former Czech Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus, likes to say, "the 'third way' is the fastest route to the third world." Hayek's great gift to the world was to illuminate the real choices confronting mankind and to point the way--the only way--to freedom.
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