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THE SOCIALISTS’ HYPOTHESES AND THE ROAD TO SERFDOM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2025

Gabriel F. Benzecry ,
Nicholas Jensen  and
Daniel J. Smith Open the ORCID record for Daniel J. Smith [Opens in a new window]
Gabriel F. Benzecry
Affiliation:
Gabriel F. Benzecry: Assistant Professor of Economics and Bretzlaff Scholar, Northwood University.
Nicholas Jensen
Affiliation:
Nicholas Jensen: PhD Fellow, Political Economy Research Institute and Department of Economics and Finance at Middle Tennessee State University.
Daniel J. Smith*
Affiliation:
Daniel J. Smith: Professor of Economics, Political Economy Research Institute at Middle Tennessee State University.
*
Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

This paper examines the writings of socialist scholars who played a pivotal role in shaping Friedrich Hayek’s perspective in The Road to Serfdom, including William Beveridge, Stuart Chase, Henry Dickinson, Hugh Dalton, Evan Durbin, Oskar Lange, Harold Laski, Abba Lerner, Barbara Wootton, and the contributing authors in Findlay MacKenzie’s Planned Society (1937). Many of these socialist thinkers held two main hypotheses. First, industrial concentration was inevitable under capitalism. Second, they argued, government ownership or control of key economic sectors was necessary to protect democracy from industrial consolidation in the capitalist system and to reduce political opposition to complete state ownership or control over the means of production. Despite sharing Hayek’s concern for socialism’s potential erosion of democratic freedoms, these socialist hypotheses have received much less scholarly attention than Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. We conclude that Hayek formalized socialist scholars’ fears and developed a well-defined hypothesis that central planning could threaten democratic freedoms.

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Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , First View , pp. 1 - 26
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of History of Economics Society

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Footnotes

We thank our two anonymous referees for helpful feedback on our manuscript.

References

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