“We can still turn back on the road to bondage”

WirtschaftsWoche: Professor Kooths, Friedrich August von Hayek warned of the spread of socialism in his book “The Road to Serfdom,” published in 1944. What was the background to Hayek’s warning?
Stefan Kooths: Hayek wrote his book in his adopted home of England shortly before the end of the Second World War. At that time, the victory of the Western Allies against Nazi Germany was already becoming apparent. What worried Hayek was the observation that, despite the country’s liberal intellectual tradition, the socialist-collectivist ideas cultivated in continental Europe, especially Germany, were increasingly spreading in Britain. Hayek recognized that fascism and socialism ultimately draw from the same source: the belief in constructivist collectivism in rejection of Western, liberal, individualistic culture. Hayek wanted to protect his fellow citizens from following the path to socialism because it ends – not intentionally, but necessarily – in political bondage. You have to know: Socialism was the political mainstream at the time, it was considered modern thinking and, for many, a future guarantee of progress and prosperity. At that time, Hayek went against this unfulfillable promise with deep concern that the West might win the war against Nazi barbarism but then lose its freedom in peace.