Orwell on Hayek

This is a review Orwell wrote of Hayek's 'Road to Serfdom' & another book by a Labour party politician/

Taken together, these two books give grounds for dismay.

Why? There was a War on. Even after the War, there was bound to be a long period of high taxes, tight regulations, rationing etc. Everyone would be worse off- whether in  

The first of them is an eloquent defence of laissez-faire capitalism,

Which couldn't return for a long while. The UK was deeply in debt. Exchange Controls & rationing would remain in place till at least the end of the decade.  

the other is an even more vehement denunciation of it.

It was obvious that under conditions of total war the Government had to take a hand in almost everything.  

They cover to some extent the same ground, they frequently quote the same authorities, and they even start out with the same premise, since each of them assumes that Western civilization depends on the sanctity of the individual.

As opposed to his incessant sodomization. Oddly, guys who had the money & education to buy the type of books written by these erudite authors, preferred sanctity to sodomy. 

Yet each writer is convinced that the other’s policy leads directly to slavery, and the alarming thing is that they may both be right.

Hitler would have conquered Britain if it hadn't become a command economy & conscripted soldiers. But, if it had a Socialist government- like that of Blum in France- the upper class may have had no incentive to fight. 'Better Hitler than Blum' was quite a popular slogan in Paris. Some still think that Britain should have done a deal with the Nazis. The problem was that Hitler never stuck to any agreement he made. 

Of the two, Professor Hayek’s book is perhaps the more valuable, because the views it puts forward are less fashionable at the moment than those of Mr Zilliacus.

The truth is, industrialists were glad of government contracts & 'administered pricing'.  

Shortly, Professor Hayek’s thesis is that Socialism inevitably leads to despotism,

It was the claim Churchill made in his infamous 'Labour Gestapo' drunken radio speech.  

and that in Germany the Nazis were able to succeed because the Socialists had already done most of their work for them, especially the intellectual work of weakening the desire for liberty.

Germans didn't want liberty. Everybody wants security & enough to eat & a job which pays a decent wage.  

By bringing the whole of life under the control of the State, Socialism necessarily gives power to an inner ring of bureaucrats, who in almost every case will be men who want

you anal cherry? 

power for its own sake and will stick at nothing in order to retain it. Britain, he says, is now going the same road as Germany, with the left-wing intelligentsia in the van and the Tory Party a good second. The only salvation lies in returning to an unplanned economy, free competition, and emphasis on liberty rather than on security.

Which was cool provided V2 rockets weren't being fired at you.  

In the negative part of Professor Hayek’s thesis there is a great deal of truth.

One better expressed by Lord Acton- power corrupts, absolute poverty corrupts absolutely.  

It cannot be said too often – at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough – that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamed of.

Actually, the Brits genuinely didn't like being tyrants. I don't suppose most people do. Maybe it is because British officials don't wear uniforms & click their heels & zeig heil each other. Instead they wore bowlers and carried brollies.  

Professor Hayek is also probably right in saying that in this country the intellectuals are more totalitarian-minded than the common people.

They might talk that way, but there was a long tradition of talking bollocks. Doing evil shit, on the other hand, was frowned on. It was...Continental. There is a Napoleonic Code. There is no Wellington Code. There is a Wellington boot and there is beef Wellington- which, sadly, tastes like a old boot if my g.f. makes it. 

But he does not see, or will not admit, that a return to ‘free’ competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse, because more irresponsible, than that of the State.

Capitalists will insist on personally sodomizing every worker at least twice a day.  

The trouble with competitions is that somebody wins them.

If the most meritorious win, then more seek to acquire merit. The trouble with giving everybody a medal is that there is no incentive to work hard & achieve excellence.  

Professor Hayek denies that free capitalism necessarily leads to monopoly, but in practice that is where it has led,

Not in publishing. The BBC, at that time, was a monopoly. Newspapers & magazines had to compete with each other.  

and since the vast majority of people would far rather have State regimentation than slumps and unemployment, the drift towards collectivism is bound to continue if popular opinion has any say in the matter.

Rationing would change their minds.  

Mr Zilliacus’s able and well-documented attack on imperialism and power politics consists largely of an exposure of the events leading up to the two world wars. Unfortunately the enthusiasm with which he debunks the war of 1914

caused by Germany's refusal of a British alliance in 1898.  

makes one wonder on what grounds he is supporting this one.

 because if the Tories did a deal with Hitler, Labour would split & become unelectable. This is because Labour, but not the Tories, had lots of Pacifists, Vegetarians & other such cranks. 

After retelling the sordid story of the secret treaties and commercial rivalries which led up to 1914, he concludes that our declared war aims were lies and that ‘we declared war on Germany because

we wanted to sink their ships & bottle their navy up in the Baltic. You have to declare war before you are allowed to do so.  

if she won her war against France and Russia she

could conquer England 

would become master of all Europe, and strong enough to help herself to British colonies’.

They were far away. England is close to the Continent. Fat ladies were swimming across the Channel all the time. 

Why else did we go to war this time?

Same reason. You have to be at war to sink ships. The Royal Navy kicked ass.  

It seems that it was equally wicked to oppose Germany in the decade before 1914

we offered them an alliance. They told us to fuck off.  

and to appease her in the nineteen-thirties,

that was the French & the Poles. We needed a casus belli to have an excuse to sink German ships.  

and that we ought to have made a compromise peace in 1917,

 With whom? The Kaiser was bat-shit crazy. 

whereas it would be treachery to make one now. It was even wicked, in 1915, to agree to Germany being partitioned

 There was no such plan. Perhaps the Ottoman Empire is meant. 

and Poland being regarded as ‘an internal affair of Russia’:

which it would be if it occupied it- not otherwise.  

so do the same actions change their moral colour with the passage of time.

Breaking a treaty is immoral- unless you are dealing with darkies.  

The thing Mr Zilliacus leaves out of account is that wars have results, irrespective of the motives of those who precipitate them.

If you break a treaty or violate neutrality, the result will be that people don't trust you. Their options are surrender or to fight to the finish.  

No one can question the dirtiness of international politics from 1870 onwards:

It was clean enough- if you were West European.  

it does not follow that it would have been a good thing to allow the German army to rule Europe.

Sinking German ships was a good thing. That's what Britain focused on. However, the efficiency of the Expeditionary Force in 1914 came as a shock to the Germans.  

It is just possible that some rather sordid transactions are going on behind the scenes now, and that current propaganda ‘against Nazism’ (cf. ‘against Prussian militarism’) will look pretty thin in 1970,

Orwell was wrong about that.  

but Europe will certainly be a better place if Hitler and his followers are removed from it. Between them these two books sum up our present predicament. Capitalism leads to dole queues,

No. Capitalism leads to jobs. No country can offer a 'dole' if there are no fucking jobs.  

the scramble for markets,

what were the Soviets scrambling for?  

and war.

Very true. The Trojan war was caused by Greek Capitalists seeking to enter the Trojan olive oil market.  

Collectivism leads to concentration camps,

Britain & the US used them in South Africa & the Philippines respectively.  

leader worship, and war.

Trojan War was caused by Greek Socialists seeking to overthrow the Trojan feudal aristocracy.  

There is no way out of this unless a planned economy can somehow be combined with the freedom of the intellect,

put Old Etonians like Keynes in charge. Orwell too was an Old Etonian.  

which can only happen if the concept of right and wrong is restored to politics.

Churchill & Atlee had no such concept. That is why they sodomized Aneurin Bevan incessantly.  

Both of these writers are aware of this, more or less;

Nobody was aware of stupid shit which only existed in Orwell's brain.  

but since they can show no practicable way of bringing it about the combined effect of their books is a depressing one.

Out of Orwell's depression came some immortal works of literature. But, au fond, he was a silly ass.