Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Maryland Law Review

Abstract

My motivation is simple. In order to understand the evolution of political theory, it is important to identify the strands of socialist thought in Hayek that with time have become the mainstays of the political left. Hayek's effort to find some common ground with his opponents led him to make unwise concessions to the benevolent use of state power. Of course, Hayek did not conceive of himself as the champion of the expansion of government power; nor has he ever been construed that way by friend or foe. But nonetheless, his substantive positions helped to make respectable the growth of state power in the post-World War II era. Quite simply, Hayek was prepared throughout his political writings to accept some claim for minimum welfare rights for all individuals, even as he attacked centralized planning on the one hand and industry-specific protectionism on the other. The size and importance of that concession can be best understood first by setting out Hayek's general orientation, and then by isolating the unmistakable, if unintended, socialist elements found in his work. In fairness to Hayek, at times toward the end of his life, he seemed aware of the potential scope of his modest concessions. But during his most creative period, those state institutions that he spared in his original attacks of socialism became the bulwark of the revisionist socialism of the next generation. The first portion of this lecture therefore critically summarizes Hayek's basic intellectual orientation. The second portion examines the critical connection between the socialism of central planning and the more modern socialism (at least of a sort) associated with the guarantee of minimum welfare rights.

First Page

271

Volume

58

Publication Date

1999

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