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PDF FormatOfir Haivry, who wrote the introduction to The Road to Serfdom’s Hebrew edition, exacerbates the book’s shortcomings. Haivry cites two fairly general statements by Hayek, in praise of tradition and the wisdom of the ages, to make even grander a claim than did Hayek: That classic liberalism and free-market economics are the quintessential expression of “the Western tradition.” Quite the reverse is true, of course. In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith introduced a theory that was anything but traditional. Until the seventeenth century, Western economic theory had been Christian paternalist in nature, based on concepts of a “moral economy” and a “fair price” which the ruler was responsible for implementing. Then, together with the rise of strong absolutist monarchies, mercantilism made its appearance, championing state intervention in foreign trade in order to expand exports and reduce imports. Under this practice governments hoarded precious metals, which formed the basis for the economic, political and military power of kings. Adam Smith published his book in order to prove, above all else, the futility of mercantilism and the case for freedom.
The best proof of the revolutionary character of economic liberalism is to be found in the thirty-year struggle to repeal Britain’s Corn Laws—protective import duties which served the interests of large landowners—which began soon after their enactment in 1815 at the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars. For much of this period Richard Cobden, William Cobbett and John Bright—champions of liberal economics who transformed the British Whig Party into the modern Liberal Party—led the radical liberals in supporting the repeal of the Corn Laws. It was the defenders of tradition, the members of the Conservative Party, who sought to maintain the status quo. Then, in the mid-1840s, Sir Robert Peel, who was prime minister and the leader of the Conservative Party, together with fellow party member William Gladstone, then minister of finance, concluded that the decades-long demand to repeal the tariffs was indeed justified. Because of their subsequent call for abolishing the Corn Laws—that is, their embrace of liberal economics—Peel and Gladstone were forced out of the Conservative Party. Far from being a manifestation of loyalty to tradition or respect for traditional values, classic liberalism was revolutionary as both theory and policy.
Nor can the Conservative Party be rightly described as the “last bastion of the classical liberal view” after the Second World War, as Haivry asserts. The Conservatives had always supported aristocratic paternalism and government intervention to serve the interests of the landed aristocracy; they also favored certain types of social legislation. Only under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher in the 1970s and 1980s was the party transformed into a classic liberal power and the standard-bearer of the nineteenth-century liberal tradition. This was a sea change from its traditional position.
Haivry relies on another historical example to amplify Hayek’s vitriol against Labor. Hayek saw the Labor Party as a threat to the liberal character of the British regime. In retrospect, we know that Labor’s commitment to democracy and individual freedoms ran deep—despite its blunders in nationalizing important sectors of the economy. Yet at the time Winston Churchill, who responded enthusiastically to the publication of The Road to Serfdom, eagerly militated Hayek’s arguments against Labor during the elections in July 1945, soon after the war had ended. Haivry recounts how the Conservative Party even helped with the printing of subsequent editions of Hayek’s book, by contributing paper from the party’s election quota. What he fails to mention is that Churchill cooked his own goose: His electoral chances were severely harmed when he tried to translate Hayek’s intellectual claims into crude political terms, admonishing British voters that a “Gestapo-like regime” would prevail over Britain were Labor to win the election. Of course it was Churchill, not Hayek, who was to blame for this noxious formulationׁyet Hayek himself made no small contribution to it by failing to distinguish social democracy from Bolshevism.
Haivry goes so far as to enlist George Orwell into the select clubׁof which Hayek and Karl Popper are prominent membersׁthat crusaded against the “movement of good intentions,” inveighing against collectivism and arguing on behalf of individual freedom. Yet Haivry neglects to point out that Orwell was a lifelong, card-carrying leftist. He fought in the Republican ranks in the Spanish Civil War, advocated far-reaching socialist changes in Britain (The Road to Wigan Pier was a milestone in this struggle), was an active member of the Labor Party and contributed regularly to the New Statesman and the Tribune, the journals of educated leftist circles.
In short, Haivry paints a portrait of Hayek that is far truer to American neo-conservatism than to his original British context. That the neo-cons have endowed Hayek with a respect for tradition is the result of their failure to grasp the revolutionary nature of classic liberalismׁcompounded by their desire to combine a liberal economic view with a traditional cultural and religious outlook. This approach does a disservice to Hayek’s monumental work in developing liberal economic theory and conveying its message to his professional peers, and to the public at large.
The Hebrew edition, translated deftly by Aharon Amir, suffers from a number of serious errors appearing in its biographical glossary, appended to the text as an aid to the reader unfamiliar with the many political and intellectual figures to whom Hayek refers. For example, in the glossary Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a father of modern racism, is referred to as an “English thinker.” True, Chamberlain was born to an English father (prompting Hayek himself to refer to him as English). Yet from his childhood he was educated in Germany, adopted it as his homeland, became a German citizen and married a German woman (the daughter of Richard Wagner). All his writings he composed in German.
Yet none of the foregoing is meant to detract from the importance of The Road to Serfdom, or from the benefits its translation will confer upon the reading public in Israel. One may only hope that readers will be able to distinguish the wheat from the chaff, the profound and compelling arguments for the superiority of free-market economics over central planning, from Hayek’s misguided polemic which fails to distinguish totalitarians from social democrats. For even if these latter erred in nationalizing sectors of the economy, they did advance the social interests of the people by ensuring them the basic elements of human well-being, while remaining ever faithful to democracy and human liberty.
Prof. Yehoshua Porath is professor emeritus in Middle East history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
