I don't know if the mistake coms from Pfaff or from Jerome, but it's not "Van Hayek", but "Hayek" (possibly a crossover with "von Mises"). Anyway, Metatone wants me to rebut this

He traces [the] origins  [of the current market ideology] to the [among others] influence of Van Hayek (rejection of totalitarism, associated with socialism and too powerful States)

Pfaff/Jerome are, of course, referring to Hayek's The Road to Serfdom [I recommend the "external links" to abridged versions at the bottom of the wikipedia article], whose main thesis is basically that socialism lays the groundwork for fascism. In other words, for Hayek economic planning not only cannot work economically, but it leads to certain habits being spread among the general population and the ruling political/technocratic class which make it easier for society to devolve into authoritarianism and ultimately totalitarianism.

Considering the historical context in which the book was written, namely the immediate aftermath of WWII, what Hayek is doing in it is explaining to himself and others how nazism happened, and how to avoid a repetition in the future. Another excellent contemporary book on the subject is Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom.

I can't muster a refutation of Hayek's argument, and my own personal ideological evolution attests to this, for as I mature politically I move from socialism to anarchism, but that is another story. The only real argument I have "against" it is that, having a hammer, Hayek sees everything as a nail. Hayek being an economist, he looks for an economic culprit for fascism, namely economic planning. Fromm, who was a social psychologist, finds psychological culprits for fascism (a futile attempt at rolling back recently gained freedoms and so recovering recently lost securities).

As we know but free-market fundamentalists seem to have forgotten, maybe on purpose, economic planning is not the only way that the government can influence economic life, and good regulation is essential to a healthy market economy. In many ways, Hayek and especially his followers throw out the baby with the bath water. In the end, for Hayek the market is not the be-all and en-all, but just an efficient mechanism for price-setting.

Probably not the rebuttal that metatone wanted.

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper

[From the Booman thread, since it seems relevant here:]

I count Hayek as a far deeper and more flexible thinker than Friedman, and as utterly unlike Rand. In saying this, I recognize that there are many people whose thinking has been influenced by all three. I do think, however, that negative influences from Hayek are largely based on simplistic and debased derivatives of his ideas.

Hayek's thinking is characterized by a profound respect for law and decentralized human social orders regulated by law. He was neither an anarchist, a conservative, nor a rigid ideologue. His profound skepticism regarding strong, lawless state power was shaped by his witness of the mass murder that grew from this during his lifetime. His aims, I believe, were entirely directed toward the common good.

There is no point in expending intellectual effort to understand why one's policy preferences differ from Rand's. It is worth considering why they differ from Hayek's -- what we have learned that he didn't know, and what misperceptions may have set his views askew.

A major fact to remember in evaluating his work: When he refers to "socialism", he means the term in the early- to mid-20th century sense, that is, the economics and (he argued) associated governance of states like the Soviet Union. Detailed central planning failed, and for reasons he articulated. This "socialism" is quite unlike the variety of socialism that has widespread support today.



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