Collectivism In The Road To Serfdom By Hayek

In The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek asserts that the philosophical theme of collectivism with the use of economic planning can lead to the formation of economic totalitarianism within a society. Hayek claims that when the government adopts a planned economy, the freedom of the individuals to decide their own economic future is taken away, thus reducing economic diversity and overall output. In addition, Hayek emphasizes that government intervention in a planned economy only yields distortions within that economy, and in turn creates a series of further interventions that seek to rectify those distortions. These constant manipulations create a totalitarian regime where the government controls the economy instead of the people. This collectivism and active tampering with the market is what ultimately leads a society down the road to serfdom.

Hayek writes, “for any mind to comprehend the infinite variety of different needs of different people which compete for the availability of resources and to attach a definite weight to each… it is impossible for any man to survey more than a limited field, to be aware of the urgency of more than a limited number of needs” (Hayek 44). This shows that the efforts of the government to direct the economy as a whole are profoundly flawed. This is because what one person defines as good is inherently different from what another defines as good, therefore a collective good is impossible to establish. This lack of a collective good ultimately leads to misguided plans for the economy where resources are not necessarily devoted to where they are best suited. This also leads to a system where one group must inevitably sacrifice its production for another’s. These sacrifices highlight the flaw of collectivism by showing that the government is hurting its own economy by interfering with the natural flow of the