Readings: Tocqueville and Hayek

The following excerpts are from Friedrich A. Hayek’s book, “The Road to Serfdom”, Chapter 2: The Great Utopia. pg 77/78.

"Nobody saw more clearly than Tocqueville that democracy is an essentially individualist institution stood in irreconcilable conflict with socialism:

“Democracy extends to the sphere of individual freedom,” he said in 1848;”socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”

"To allay these suspicions and to harness to its cart the strongest of all political motives – the craving for freedom – socialism began increasingly to make use of the promise of a “new freedom”. The coming of socialism was to be the leap from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. It was to bring “economic freedom”, without which the political freedom already gained was “not worth having”. Only socialism was capable of effecting the consummation of the age-long struggle for freedom, in which the attainment of political freedom was but a first step.

"The subtle change to which the word “freedom” was subjected in order that this argument should sound plausible is important. To the great apostles of political freedom the word had meant freedom from coercion, freedom from the arbitrary power of other men, release from the ties which left the individual no choice but obedience to the orders of a superior to whom he was attached. The new freedom promised, however, was to be freedom from necessity, release from the compulsion of the circumstances which inevitable limit the range of choice of all of us, although for some very much more than for others. Before man could be truly free, the “despotism of physical want” had to be broken, the “restraints of the economic system relaxed.

"Freedom in this sense is, of course, merely another name for power or wealth….

"…What the promise really amounted to was that the great existing disparities in the range of choice of different people were to disappear. The demand for the new freedom was thus only another name for the old demand for an equal distribution of wealth. But the new name gave the socialists another word in common with the liberals [libertarians in the modern American sense, ed], and they exploited it to the full. And, although the word was used in a different sense by the two groups, few people noticed this and still fewer asked themselves whether the two kinds of freedom promised could really be combined.”

The Alinski methodology of radical seizure of control depends on the deception of redefinition of words, and the idea that most people remain ignorant, no matter what. In fact it is more than ignorance that the radicals depend on; it is a belief that the masses are stupidly engaged in self-interest, single issues and are easily fooled and manipulated. This conceit works under special conditions, despite the glaring racist and classist overtones and the obviously manipulated moral attachments to power grabs, all in the name of freedom and equality.