After Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made a fool of herself by defining habeas corpus as “a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country,” Justin Amash, the libertarian former congressman, posted an apt quotation on X:
Since it is the supreme leader who alone determines the ends, his instruments [staff] must have no moral convictions of their own. They must, above all, be unreservedly committed to the person of the leader; but next to this the most important thing is that they should be completely unprincipled and literally capable of everything. They must have no ideals of their own which they want to realise, no ideas about right or wrong which might interfere with the intentions of the leader.
The quote comes from Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek, one of the most important social scientists of the 20th century. You can find the quote in Chapter 10 of Hayek’s invaluable 1943 classic, The Road to Serfdom. Hayek called that chapter “Why the Worst Get on Top.”
That chapter is worth paying close attention to. Let’s start by acknowledging the purpose of Hayek’s book. During World War II, Hayek, who lived and taught in England, sought to counter an argument made by prominent intellectuals, namely, that if central planning works well in war, it ought to work well in peacetime. Postwar economic planning seemed inevitable.
Hayek dissented. For him, the economic case for socialism had already been demolished by Ludwig von Mises’s 1922 book, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis. That book had expanded on Mises’s stunning 1920 paper, “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth,” which showed that since socialist planners would not have access to market prices—markets after all were to be abolished—they could not rationally plan a great industrial economy that would efficiently serve consumers.
Why couldn’t the planners have access to prices? Because information-rich prices can emerge only through market exchanges. Markets must exist not only for consumer goods, but for the means of production, which for socialists was a no-no: that is, labor, land, raw materials, tools, equipment, machines, and buildings. But trade presupposes private property in the means of production, another no-no for the socialists. You cannot trade what you do not own.
In short: no private property = no trade. No trade = no prices. No prices = no rational planning. Market prices (a redundancy) reflect supply and demand; they also permit disparate things to be expressed in a common unit of account, for example, the dollar. This makes cost comparisons possible. If the planners could not engage in economic calculation through money prices, they could not devise the most efficient production strategies for the countless goods that consumers want.
Why does that matter? It matters because resources and labor are scarce. At any time, our large and varied demand exceeds supply. Many methods could be chosen to produce any particular good, but waste is contrary to our interests. We want the most efficient methods used because the fewer the inputs employed, the more outputs for consumers. Without prices, there would be no way to determine which method is most efficient and least wasteful. The planners would be like blind pilots flying in the dark with no instruments. As Mises said, socialism is impossible.
Before pointing to the late Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Venezuela, or North Korea as proof that Mises was wrong, remember that these systems existed in a world of semi-free-market prices. Worldwide socialism would be a nightmare.
In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek’s critique of central planning went beyond the calculation problem. He demonstrated that if politicians took central social planning seriously, the people would have to be turned into serfs. Contrary to popular misunderstanding, he did not argue that if a society takes the first step toward the welfare state, serfdom would inevitably follow. As objectionable as it is, the welfare state is not socialism. It does not abolish private property, markets, and money.
One of Hayek’s points—these were not predictions because he observed them in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and fascist Italy—was that central planning required the concentration of all power in a few hands, perhaps one set of hands. It cannot be imagined otherwise. (We’re not talking about syndicalism, which has its own problems.)
For example, imagine a society that embarks sincerely on democratic socialism. (Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez take heed.) Hayek pointed out that the people and their legislature might agree 100 percent that the economy should be planned. It does not follow, however, that they will agree 100 percent on the contents of the plan. How much steel should be produced next year? How much plastic? How many refrigerators? How many cars? How many smartphones? How many dolls? Etc., etc., etc. Socialism could not repeal scarcity. Making more of X requires making less of Y. Making more producer goods requires making fewer consumer goods now. You have a problem with that? Sue God.
The chance of substantial agreement over the details of The Plan is near zero. Because of the disagreement, the legislature would be locked in endless debate with no prospect of finalizing The Plan. An unfinished plan cannot be implemented. The deadlock would be fertile ground for the emergence of a strongman. That would appeal to the people who favored action over talk. “Give us a plan!” Democratic socialism would be exposed as a chimera.
In our context, see what Donald Trump said when the U.S. Court of International Trade said that only Congress can impose tariffs: “The horrific decision stated I would have to get the approval of Congress for these Tariffs. In other words, hundreds of politicians would sit around D.C. for weeks, and even months, trying to come to a conclusion as to what to charge other Countries that are treating us unfairly.” (Emphasis added.)
Hayek would not be surprised:
We must here return for a moment to the position which precedes the suppression of democratic institutions and the creation of a totalitarian regime. In this stage it is the general demand for quick and determined government action that is the dominating element in the situation, dissatisfaction with the slow and cumbersome course of democratic procedure which makes action for action’s sake the goal. It is then the man or the party who seems strong and resolute enough “to get things done” who exercises the greatest appeal.
Hayek noted that the strongman would need loyal, unquestioning lieutenants to faithfully carry out his decrees.
The chance of imposing a totalitarian regime on a whole people depends on the leader first collecting round him a group which is prepared voluntarily to submit to that totalitarian discipline which they are to impose by force upon the rest.
[The preempted socialist legislators] had, without knowing it, set themselves a task which only the ruthless, ready to disregard the barriers of accepted morals, can execute…. [Emphasis added.]
[A] numerous and strong group with fairly homogeneous views is not likely to be
formed by the best but rather by the worst elements of any society. [Emphasis added.]
The man and party best suited to impose the collectivist project will not be friendly to individual liberty or the free, spontaneous social process that liberalism calls for. Indeed, the “old” values would block their path and would have to be eliminated. In other words, a brutal program will be carried out by a brutal leader and brutal officers of the state, cheered on by worshipful followers.
As I’ve noted, Hayek’s subject was totalitarian central planning. But I (among others) submit that similar dangers loom with any big-government interventionist system. The current U.S. regime claims the autocratic authority to do all sorts of things that violate individual liberty. It does not seek congressional authorization, and it damns the courts for obstruction.
The potential for such concentrated power has existed in the U.S. political system for a long time. Congress has repeatedly and illegally delegated broad “emergency” powers to the executive. What makes the current regime different from its predecessors is that it invokes those powers flagrantly, arbitrarily, and often. While it does not seek to impose a comprehensive plan (yet), it nevertheless has substantial plans on a variety of matters, such as international trade, domestic industry, and labor (immigration). That makes Hayek’s analysis relevant.
Hayek opened the chapter with Lord Acton’s famous aphorism: “All power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But Hayek went beyond Acton to suggest that power attracts the corrupt or corruptible.
A key Hayekian point is that to the extent the regime carries out its plan, which will need public support, its attitude toward common-sense morality will be lax, to say the least, if not outright disdainful.
The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule; there is literally nothing which the consistent collectivist must not be prepared to do if it serves “the good of the whole”, because the “good of the whole” is to him the only criterion of what ought to be done. The raison d’etat, in which collectivist ethics has found its most explicit formulation, knows no other limit than that set by expediency—the suitability of the particular act for the end in view. And what the raison d’etat affirms with respect to the relations between different countries applies equally to the relations between different individuals within the collectivist state. There can be no limit to what its citizen must not be prepared to do, no act which his conscience must prevent him from committing, if it is necessary for an end which the community has set itself or which his superiors order him to achieve.
Who would relish the chance to round up masses of peaceful “illegal” border-crossers without due process and force them onto planes bound for prisons in El Salvador, South Sudan, or Djibouti? The current U.S. regime will reward people who would enjoy that sort of work.
There is thus in the positions of power little to attract those who hold moral beliefs of the kind which in the past have guided the European peoples…. The only tastes which are satisfied are the taste for power as such, the pleasure of being obeyed and of being part of a well-functioning and immensely powerful machine to which everything else must give way.
Yet while there is little that is likely to induce men who are good by our standards to aspire to leading positions in the totalitarian machine, and much to deter them, there will be special opportunities for the ruthless and unscrupulous…. [T]he readiness to do bad things becomes a path to promotion and power. The positions in a totalitarian society in which it is necessary to practice cruelty and intimidation, deliberate deception and spying, are numerous. Neither the Gestapo nor the administration of a concentration camp, neither the Ministry of Propaganda nor the SA or SS (or their Italian or Russian counterparts) are suitable places for the exercise of humanitarian feelings. Yet it is through positions like these that the road to the highest positions in the totalitarian state leads.
It’s too late to worry that the worst will get on top. He and they are already there.
