Emphasis mine:
The promotion of collectivism is combined with the profession of individualist values.
Individualism … can be achieved only in a liberal order in which government activity is limited primarily to establishing the framework within which individuals are free to pursue their own objectives.
The free market is the only mechanism that has ever been discovering for achieving participatory democracy.
Unfortunately, the relation between the ends and the means remains widely misunderstood. Many of those who profess the most individualistic objectives support collectivist means without recognizing the contradiction.
To understand why it is that ‘good’ men in positions of power will produce evil, while the ordinary many without power but able to engage in voluntary cooperation with his neighbors will produce good, requires analysis and thought, subordinating the emotions to the rational faculty.
The argument for collectivism is simple, if false; it is an immediate emotional argument. The argument for individualism is subtle and sophisticated; it is an indirect rational argument.
Experience … has strongly confirmed Hayek’s central insight – that coordination of men’s activities through central direction and through voluntary cooperation are roads going in very different directions: the first to serfdom, the second to freedom. That experience has also strongly reinforced a secondary theme – central direction is also a road to poverty for the ordinary man; voluntary cooperation, a road to plenty.
The battle for freedom must be won over and over again. The socialists in all parties to whom Hayek dedicated his book must once again be persuaded or defeated if they and we are to remain free men.
The bulk of the intellectual community almost automatically favors any expansion of government power so long as it is advertised as a way to protect individuals from big bad corporations, relieve poverty, protect the environment, or promote ‘equality.’
It is only a little overstated to say that we preach individualism and competitive capitalism, and practice socialism.
-Milton Friedman (Introduction to 50th Anniversary of F.A. Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom“)
(H/T: Issues and Insights)
