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With capitalism, people expected less from governing authorities, in exchange for greater civil liberties, including individual, political and economic freedom.
- Introduction
- Part I: The Value of Freedom
- Part II: Freedom and The Law
- Part III: Freedom in The Welfare State
- Postscript: Why I Am Not A Conservative
The introduction sets the stage. The author points out that a large segment of the people of the world borrowed from Western civilisation and adopted Western ideals at a time when the West had become unsure of itself and had largely lost faith in the traditions that made it what it is. This was a time when intellectuals in the West had almost aband...
A state of liberty or freedom is achieved when the coercion of some by others is reduced as much as possible in society. Individual or personal freedom is the state in which a person is not subject to coercion by the arbitrary will of another. Freedom presupposes that the individual has some assured private sphere, that there is some set of circums...
Coercion and the State
Coercion occurs when one man’s actions are made to serve another man’s will, not for his own but for the other’s purpose. Coercion implies both the threat of inflicting harm and the intention to bring about certain conduct. Coercion is bad because it prevents a person from using his mental powers to the full, and—consequently—from making the greatest contribution that he is capable of to the community. A complete monopoly of employment, such as would exist in a fully socialist state, in which...
Law, Commands and Order
The rule whereby an indivisible border line is fixed within which the being and activity of each individual obtain a secure and free sphere is the law. This nineteenth-century conception of the law has since largely been lost. A transition from specificity and concreteness to increasing generality and abstractness can be found in the evolution from the rules of custom to law in the modern sense. It was with the growth of individual intelligence, and the tendency to break away from the habitua...
The Origins of the Rule of Law
The new power of the highly organised national state which arose in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries used legislation for the first time as an instrument of deliberate policy. The conception of limited government which emerged in seventeenth-century Britain was a departure, driven by the need of dealing with new problems. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the preservation and perfection of individual liberty became the guiding ideal in England; its institutions and tradition...
The Decline of Socialism and the Rise of the Welfare State
Efforts towards social reform have been mainly inspired by the ideals of socialism. This development reached its peak after WWII when Britain plunged into its socialist experiment. The common aim of all socialist movements was the nationalisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange, so that all economic activity might be directed in accordance with a comprehensive plan towards some ideal of social justice. When Hayek published his book in 1960, he already observed that socia...
Labour Unions and Employment
The basic principles of the rule of law have nowhere in recent times been so violated, and with such serious consequences, as in the case of labour unions. The stage has been reached where they have become uniquely privileged institutions to which the general rules of law don’t apply. More and more labour unions came to be viewed, not as a group which was pursuing a legitimate selfish aim and which must be kept in check by competing interests possessed of equal rights, but as a group whose ai...
Social Security
In the Western world some provision for those threatened by the extremes of indigence or starvation, due to circumstances beyond their control, has long been accepted as a duty of the community. In modern societies people should be compelled to insure themselves against sickness, the needs of old age and unemployment. The justification is not that people should be coerced to do what is in their own interest but that, by neglecting to make these provisions, they would become a charge on the pu...
Hayek is often associated with conservatives. They quote him often and believe that they and Hayek are soulmates. That is wrong. He sets the record straight in this postscript. The small essay starts with noting that in matters of current politics, liberals generally have little choice but to support conservative parties. Conservatism proper is a l...
- Peter de Haan
- 2016
Its primary objective is to explain capitalism's system of production through social and historical analysis. Mathematical models are necessary for the study of neoclassical economics. It takes a mathematical approach rather than a historical one.
This chapter seeks to explore and explain its attraction and dominance by looking at its ‘mythic’ and ideological character. Starting from a Foucauldian and Marxist inspired analysis, it analyses neoclassical economics as a form of power/knowledge which constitutes a dominant ‘regime of truth’.
Apr 3, 2019 · Slavery’s insertion into capitalism’s history is the rubric for new studies of race and capitalism and the racialisation of Afro-American labour. There is also new political economy of consumption and of how consumers construct markets through the exercise of preferences and collective action.
- Michael A. Peters, David Neilson
- 2019
I argue that the U.S. Constitution created the foundations of a state that would serve capitalist interests, including capitalist slave owners, but, at the same time, provided some space for social relations of production not yet fully subordinated to the power of capitalism to coexist.
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Jan 15, 2020 · Neoclassical economics vindicates capitalism. Neoclassical microeconomics, on one hand, argues that a capitalist economy, if left to itself, that is, without any interference on the part of the government, brings about efficient or optimal allocation of resources.
