The spatial politics of F.A. Hayek's Road to Serfdom
Abstract This paper re-examines Hayek's Road to Serfdom in historical context. Of particular interest is Hayek's claim that “left” and “right” socialism of the 1930s had much in common. In making this argument, Hayek held that all socialism implied planning at the expense of consumer sovereignty. We first agree to plan, but if we are then unable to agree on its contents, someone imposes a specific course of action on us. Hayek was strenuously opposed at the time by Abba Lerner and E.F.M. Durbin, who held that we can conceptualize, and perhaps put into place, a sort of socialism which yields to the will of consumer preferences.
The Political and Social Prerequisites for a Soviet-Type Economy
Very many will be rendered obsolete, and knowledge shall be multiple. Now while the first part of this is a cliche it is less common, in the deplorably specialised state of the social sciences, that any contribution should be multiple. For what I have to say this afternoon belongs to no particular discipline as the learned world defines them, but lies upon the borderlines of many. It is not so located for fun or for display, but in order to answer the question posed. It is methodologically very backward since it contains no algebraical symbols and probably could not have contained any, even had a more skilled hand than mine been at work. Suitable stuff, then, for an inaugural, and moreover doubly apposite, since my appointment is joint between a school of humanities and a school of social science, and since it concerns the Soviet Five Year Plans, and like them is delivered twelve months late. Practising politicians are by definition political economists, and political sociologists too. Them apart, almost the only modern students of this art are Marxists. Marx's own interest in it was no greater than, say, Mill's, for political economy was a central part of 19th century thought. But notoriously Mill left no successors,2 and the art degenerated in the West from, as it were, the Royal Academy portrait to the political poster. In reviving political economy, then, we have to take a stance vis-a-vis the only modern school of it, the Marxist school. It is not particularly appropriate, it may indeed be merely confusing, that I should be forced by my specialised ignorance to do so in the context of the Soviet-type economy. For Marxists know little about that type of economy, and have contributed almost nothing to its elucidation.:
European Neutrality in Historical Perspective
This chapter places the neutrality policies of the established European neutral states—Austria, Finland, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland—in historical context. It explores the origins of neutrality in the idea of non-belligerency in war and the history of neutrality in modern European international politics, highlighting the way in which quite a wide variety of states were or sought to be neutral at various points in the nineteenth century or the first half of the twentieth century. The chapter then shows how the Cold War division of Europe resulted in Austria, Finland, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland (along with Yugoslavia) emerging as a distinctive neutral group of states between the two blocs. The chapter also reviews how the European neutral states’ foreign and security policies have adapted since the end of the Cold War. It finishes with some conclusions about neutrality in general and the neutrality of the established European neutral states in particular.