Continuing our article series on Benjamin Wiker’s “10 Books every Conservative Must Read,” we come to Part III: The Place of Economics for Conservatives and Chapter 10, “The Road to Serfdom (1944),” by the Austrian economist and moral philosopher, Friedrich August Hayek, who unmasked the utopian socialism of Karl Marx’s homo economicus declaring that “the most important change which extensive government control produces is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people,” a change that Wiker says “occurs when they willingly yield their freedom to a totalitarian state, even if it is the comfortable servitude of the welfare state.”

Regarding Hayek’s critical legacy in economics, Milton Friedman wrote: “There is no figure who had more of an influence … on the intellectuals behind the Iron Curtain than Friedrich Hayek. His books were translated and published by the underground and black market editions, read widely, and undoubtedly influenced the climate of opinion that ultimately brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union.”

Following the intellectual traditions of Aristotle, the father of political conservatism, as well as Burke, Tocqueville, Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Belloc and Voegelin, Hayek strongly advocated individual moral responsibility to expand one’s own abilities to take care of themselves and their society. Therefore, Hayek believed that the government should be a means “to help individuals in the fullest development of their individual personality,” rather than an end in itself. Hayek believed that socialism crushes the human spirit and the opportunity to develop one’s own intelligence and moral responsibility, to direct his own human potential and to contribute to the commonwealth.

Although initially unremarkable as a student at the University of Vienna, he considered himself an agnostic as well as a Fabian socialist or Marxism with a smiley face, which imposed socialism gradually through the democratic process rather than at the point of a gun through violent revolution. Eventually Hayek found his passion in studying economics and developed several key relationships at the famed Austrian School of Economics, including: Carl Menger, Friedrich von Wieser and Ludwig von Mises. He would later form an intellectual discussion group with Eric Voegelin called the Geistkreis and attend von Mises’ private seminars, which further solidified his conservative economic worldviews.

Hayek earned his doctorate in law in 1921 (with a minor in economics) and a doctorate in political science in 1923. From 1923-24 with von Mises help, he studied at New York University and later he worked briefly at the Federal Reserve while greatly improving his fluency in English. In 1927 he founded the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research with von Mises where he discarded any leftover Fabian socialist tendencies. As a professor at the London School of Economics, he frequently debated with the famous socialist economist Harold Laski. Later, at the University of Chicago, he was a professor in the Committee on Social Thought where his faculty seminar on the philosophy of science was attended by many of the university’s most notable scientists of the time, including Enrico Fermi, Sewall Wright and Leó Szilárd.

Wiker says of Hayek that humility defined his worldview, that “human beings are not gods. We are not, and can never be, all-knowing. For our own good, we need to accept, with humility, our own human intellectual limitations.” Hayek’s arguments favoring free-market capitalism, federalism and limited government were not based upon parochialism, anarchy or greed, but upon a vigorous recognition of the intrinsic limitations of the human condition. Hayek knew that the leviathan federal government was the antithesis of humility, and therefore could never recognize that it cannot possibly know and judge all things for all people nor have the deference to take a laissez-faire approach to an activist government seeking to solve all social ills.

On this point Wiker wrote:

Socialist government sees itself as a benevolent god; it becomes instead a malevolent tyrant, micromanaging the details of everyone’s life with all the blundering inefficiency, confusion, unintended consequences, and plain idiocy (which we politely call “imprudence”) that have made the name “bureaucrat” a term of infamy. The bureaucrat truly becomes evil when he comes to believe that local people are too stupid to know what’s good for them and are better off ruled with the iron hand of the government’s experts.

Hayek isn’t against all forms of government and concedes a role for government in the economy. Hayek allows that government should assure that prices aren’t fixed by collusion, that monopolies don’t crush competition and that some regulatory safeguards are necessary to protect society against obvious dangers like poisons, food safety and dangerous products for the preservation of competition and anti-monopoly.

Like Voegelin, Hayek understood that treating politics and economics as if they were branches of physics or chemistry was a dangerous fallacy and a fundamental left-liberal, or socialist, error. “Those who argue that we have to an astounding degree learned to master the forces of nature but are sadly behind in making successful use of the possibilities of social collaboration are quite right. … This is not only the path to totalitarianism but the path to destruction of our civilization and a certain way to block future progress.”

Hayek and C. S. Lewis both foresaw the inherent dangers in ever advancing technology. Hayek wrote, “While there is nothing in modern technological developments which forces us toward comprehensive economic planning, there is a great deal in them which makes infinitely more dangerous the power a planning authority would possess.” This recalls Lewis’ repeated warning, that “each new power won by man is a power over man as well.”

If Hayek were alive today, he would be outraged that America, the world’s oldest republic and the greatest nation in the history of humanity, has descended so low from conservative free-market capitalism as to recklessly amass a $14.3 plus trillion debt and have Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton repeatedly beg our enemies, like China, to buy our debt so we can further bankrupt America by funding an unconstitutional and unsustainable socialist welfare state.

© Ellis Washington

Ellis Washington is former editor of the Michigan Law Review and law clerk at The Rutherford Institute. He hosts a radio program Thursdays at 11 a.m. Eastern on 1620 AM in Atlanta. It can be heard online at the Radio Sandy Springs website. His weekly podcasts are available Mondays at The Conservative Beacon. Washington is a graduate of John Marshall Law School and a lecturer and freelance writer on constitutional law, legal history and critical race theory. He has written over a dozen law review articles and several books, including “The Inseparability of Law and Morality: The Constitution, Natural Law and the Rule of Law” (2002). Washington’s latest book is “The Nuremberg Trials: Last Tragedy of the Holocaust.”

 

WesternFront America

Justice has several definitions according to the Merriam Webster dictionary.

1. The maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited awards or punishments. 2. The administration of law; especially: the establishment or determination of rights according to the rules of law or equity The quality of being just, impartial, or fair. (justice.2009)

Now what was listed above is not all of the definitions, however, as I am simply explaining what I believe justice is or what it means to me they will do for my belief set. Being a student of American history, our Founding Fathers and the Constitution, I have concluded that justice should mean what is best for all parties, as well as the country as a whole.

The field I wish to enter is involved in writing, teaching, and working directly with police departments and Judicial Courts systems nationwide in the implementation of better programs concerning juvenile offenders. I truly feel that juvenile offenders generally, can be rehabilitated and that as a society we have let ourselves down by continuing the current methods of incarceration and punishment of juvenile offenders without a longer look into the surroundings of the offenders themselves. While I do not believe that a person should be able to blame their past for the actions of today, I do strongly feel that by addressing the potential problems of today we can change the future for the better. To this end, my idea of justice revolves around simply utilizing current understanding of the law and the way juveniles and their legal guardians are approached to create more awareness and benefit the juveniles as well as society as a whole.

Justice in my opinion is the equitable treatment of the offenders and by this definition if we ascribe to the notion that there is an age of consent or a legal age the legal guardians must be held responsible for their actions in the matter as well. We as a society tend to approach juvenile offenders from the standpoint of you do the crime you do the time, little realizing that in many cases these juvenile offenders may be committing these actions as a way of calling out for help. By not helping them and indeed showing them that being a parent is not necessarily binding nor is it necessary- or by punishing them as adults in many cases, we show the rest of the juveniles that they do not matter as juveniles. As a result, we have children having children and not raising them or even trying or caring. We also have lifetime criminals that get started at relatively young ages when they could potentially have been helped.

True justice in this dismal situation would mean that we hold the parents or guardians responsible either monetarily or physically for the continuing crimes of their children. I do not wish to see parent going to prison based on the first offense of a child, however, if the child is a repeat offender and the guardian is not committing the necessary time to adjust or assist the juvenile and is by default allowing the juvenile to commit these crimes than the adults involved should face penalties as well. I do not feel that removing the juvenile from the home is a legitimate answer either. In some cases it may be necessary, however, it is a common kneejerk action taken by a large percentage of Juvenile Courts in this country today. Nothing can be worse for the situation than this in many cases. Instead, we in the Justice System should be expecting the parents, guardians to step up to the plate so to speak and take responsibility for their actions.

I feel that to mete out an equitable justice solution in many cases we, as a nation must enforce more personal responsibility. In our modern day and age, you hear common defenses such as the following. My childhood this, or temporary insanity that, instead of insisting on personal responsibility for the actions they have taken. Many of us in this class may find my views somewhat cold and unfeeling, yet as a parent, and someone who has seen serious crime and the results of it firsthand more than I care to remember I can only say, our decisions of today guide our results of tomorrow.

So in conclusion, my idea of justice is simple, the ones meting the justice out be they Law Enforcement Officers, or Judges must maintain an equitable dispersal of justice in the form of law and the interpretation of it. Those on the other side should re-think their approach to life, their personal responsibility concerning the decisions they make daily. Justice is only as good as the society and the laws of that society.

Citations

Justice. (2009). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.

Retrieved May 18, 2009, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/justice

© Jesse Mathewson

 

WesternFront America