Jesse Ch. 1

Q: How does Hayek compare totalitarianism and socialism?

A: Hayek says that "it is somewhat difficult to think of Germany, Italy or of Russia, not as different worlds, but as products of a development of thought in which we have shared; it is, at least so far as our enemies are concerned, easier and more comforting to think that they are entirely different from us and that what happened there cannot happen here. yet the history of these countries in the years before the rise of the totalitarian system showed few features with which we are not familiar. The external conflict is a result of a transformation of European thought in which others have moved so much faster as to bring them into irreconcilable conflict with our ideals, but which has not left us unaffected" (hayek 14). Hayek implies that america is basically the same as the countries which became totalitarian, we are jsut moving a lot slower than everyone else, yet america refuses to believe it, later he states that "we have progressivlely abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past" calling this a "new form of slavery" (hayek 16). If no economic freedom(socialism) means that there is not personal or political freedom(totalitarianism) then, socialism is essentially the same as totalitarianism, or at least a major step towards it.

-jesselman