The Road of the constraint

the Road of the constraint is a book of Friedrich August von Hayek, published in 1944. Its thesis is that the interventionism of the State harms freedoms of the individuals. This work is still today a best-seller translates in a score of languages. As example, its shortened version of 1945 was distributed the year even to more than 600.000 specimens.

Context and impact

Friedrich Hayek writes this book with the beginning of the year 1940, whereas the world is in war. Although teaching with the London School off Economics , it is Austrian of birth and seeks to analyze the origins of the totalitarian modes . It fears in fact to see in the economic intentions according to war of the elite of its ground of asylum, the the United Kingdom, the same errors as that which contributed to the appearance of the fascistic modes and socialist. He indeed seeks to fight the ideas of his friend John Maynard Keynes who preaches a vigorous intervention of the State in the economy in the event of crisis, as of the economists known as “keynésiens” who wish a permanent official regulation of the activities. Keynes will however be said in agreement with the majority of the ideas of the text of Hayek.

Moreover in 1942, the British economist William Henry Beveridge had submitted a report to the British Parliament entitled “ Social Insurance and Allied Services ” proposing the installation of a Welfare State offering a generalized system of Social protection and assistance to the needy one, and which was one of the bases of the British policy of consensus of post-war period. Although analyzing the extreme modes, the book is primarily a warning against the socialization of the economy which would carry out according to Hayek on the road of the constraint and would lead finally the Western Démocratie S to dangerous drifts. The book is then presented in the form of a liberal plea and individualistic. Although not preventing the domination of the thought keynésienne or the installation of planned economies and interventionists until the years 1970, the book had share the continuation a great influence on certain political circles, inspiring as much Margaret Thatcher with the the United Kingdom that the preserving S with the the United States.

The thesis of the book

Collectivism, Planning and constraint

The Collectivisme, whose dominant historical form is the Socialisme, has several initial objectives. For some it means equality, Social justice and allows a better regulation and an increased stability of the economic system. However “the centralized direction of all the economic activity in accordance with a single plan, exposing how the resources of the company must be consciously directed to achieve in a given way a given goal” is likely to be used for final particular group, for example a racial elite (in Germany) or the members of a political party (in the USSR). Economic planning coincides with the emergence of Fascism, Communism, and harms individual freedoms seriously.

On the political plan, planning cannot be installation by a Parlement, but must be entrusted to economic experts who receive a quasi absolute capacity then. Thus only a formal democracy remains without being capable to control arbitrary these experts charged with the Planification.

In the research of the arbitrarily established objectives (which different from a mode planned with the other: those of Fascism are not those of Communism), the Gouvernement S are freed from the immutability of the Loi S and adapt them according to the circumstances. The Individu, if he wants to be able to carry out projects, has need contrary to a relativity legislative stability in order to be capable to make long-term forecasts. Its capacity of initiative is thus restricted. In a company collectivist, the State treats on a hierarchical basis the priorities and the claims of the various sections of Citoyen S and uses the spring of the law to satisfy them and answer the economic and social problems according to the circumstances. Thus the law becomes a means with the service of an ideology likely to threaten inalienable freedoms, and to give up the formal equality in front of the law in the name of an arbitrary ideal, the such distributive Justice in the socialist companies.

The planning of the economy, by controlling the Production and the Price, control indirectly (see directly) the recruiting, the Wages and the Consumption. The life of the individuals is then subjected to the needs for the plan, and the latter are reduced to the statute of “means”, and not of finalities as in an individualistic company. Private freedom is condemned to the profit of abstract ideals which are not inevitably shared by the whole of the population: the “good social being”, the safety of the nation, equality, the Social justice, the destiny of the Aryan Race…

In order to guarantee the perenniality of the system, it is thus necessary to obtain the approval of the ideological objectives of controlling by the population. The totalitarian States thus set up a misusing demagogic system of propaganda of the concepts which they canted to them-even: the Freedom, the Truth, the equity…

The system moreover is diverted its initial objectives. In the socialist system, one takes to the rich person to give the “poor”. But the State must “weigh up on each occasion the merits of the groups and of the individuals”, thus the systems of political pressures come into play aiming at influencing the decisions of the State as regards distribution of the richnesses. It is thus with strongest and to the members of the dominant party that benefits the official distribution from the incomes. These people with the report heading are likely to be the worst individuals of the company, the men who from now on protected by the pretext of the national cause are free to use of the most unjust means. They are thus logically the “men without scruples” which direct the totalitarian modes.

Praise of the liberal company

Liberalism is a consequence of the individualistic heritage of the Western civilization since the ancient Greece. This Individualisme is often wrongly confused with the selfishness whereas it consists in “respecting the individual as such, to recognize that its opinions and its tastes belong only to him”. Thus the recourse to coercion must be weakest possible in order to respect the individual.

If the progress permitted by liberalism is very progressive they are real. The company becomes aware of freedom: individual capacity to influence its destiny and its happiness. It is the release of the individual initiative which involves the development of the ideas, science and the economy.

On the economic plan, the complexity of industry requires the competition and the absence of centralization. It is the pricing system which indicates the needs and the offers of products. The administration of the prices thus prevents the normal circulation of this information. The optimal coordination of the economic agents is thus compromised.

Which role remains it in the State? For Hayek, it is essential that the prices are free and the markets subjected to competition, which does not exclude the State as legitimate actor from the economy. This last can for example legitimately control and regulate certain harmful productions (toxic for example) or limit the duration of the work without that not threatening competition. The freedom which is expensive to him requires “to have a vital minimum for its subsistence, to feel with the shelter of the elementary physical deprivations”. Thus the State can also organize a system of Social Security and must worry about the monetary policy.

Hayek also invites to the creation of an international political authority in order to make respect the fundamental common laws.

External bond

Interview of Hayek

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