Herman Finer

"Government is the instrument for the exchange of one kind of benefit among persons and groups for others; the exchange of some freedoms for others. Government results from the demand for rights by persons and groups; they can be free of government as soon as they reduce their demand for rights and benefits. In the present state of science and technology, and given the tradition of a high standard of living, this cannot happen."

"Most human beings like enjoyment without employment. Most human beings like the services of government while they clamor for local government and self-government. This is the paradox of human nature: to want the fruits of centralization while keeping local and personal and state rights that militate against the benefits of large-scale organization."

"If the champions of an economic and political delusion were its only victims, we could with a little charity leave them to their rude awakening. But in democratic countries delusions may become public policies, supported by power, and hungry for domination even at the cost of subverting democracy."

"No one intends to "plan" or "collectivize" or "socialize" all economic activities, but many do wish to administer solid remedies to an admittedly defective order. Hayek allows no refuge, however, to the moderate person. He does not let you be moderate: it spoils his theory!"

"Professor Hayeks history is not history. Especially before the nineteenth century, but quite plentifully since the sixteenth century, legislation has more and more replaced the growth of custom as the regulator of morals in society in every sphere. Let Professor Hayek read the history of the English Poor Law, for example, from 1535 onwards. Hayek should remember that even the status of the Churches was and is in both the United States and Great Britain regulated by statute or constitution. In every field of individual and social life legislation embodies morals : marriage, divorce, duty to family, religion, property, theft, libel, slander, contract, business — the list is never-ending. This legislation does not come out of the blue, produced without careful reflection and weighing of choices. Hayek must know that."

"Hayeks unscrupulous travesty of the democratic process of securing legislation (for that is the first basis of any government plan) culminates in his general contempt for the democratic notion altogether."

"Hitler was not a socialist. He was a nationalist and a racialist; and in Mein Kampf himself tells how he designed to use social services and equality for the purpose of the Reich for conquest of the world. The purposes of socialism — equality, prosperity, charity, and international peace — were not the aims of Hitler. He detested all of them. It is irrelevant altogether to quote to us, as Hayek does, a number of obscure economic professors who may have impressed him when he was a student, men who said they were socialists but who characteristically derided Great Britain because she was a nation of merchants, while Germany was a nation of heroes! The writings he refers to were written in the course of World War I and were war polemics."

"Karl Marx and Hayek have this in common: both believe in systems, not in men; both are fatalists; both are callous; both hold that the state is and should be the product and auxiliary of economic values, and that historically the state was a committee of the economically successful for the mastery of society. Even as Karl Marx believed that when the economic problem was settled the state would wither away, so Hayek believes that the economic problem is now settled and the state ought to vanish except to assist continued competition."

"I agree neither with Marx nor with Hayek. Even when society has become, as Lenin said, one vast office and factory with everybody governing the processes there in operation, there must still be government, for the economic impetus in man is not productive of spontaneous harmony or the continuance of competition without tears. Nor is man without other, deeper society-shaping needs such as justice, humanity, and equality; these can crash the economy, and these can be subverted or not helped by the economy."

"Men have no freedom worth mentioning when they have no possibility of exercising their faculties and energy as they feel they must. Freedom in this dynamic sense cannot come to men, in all the abundance potential in our time, unless they collectively manage a large proportion of the social resources and economic equipment. The present economic waste by mismanagement is enormous; it is nothing but lost or unexploited strength; it constitutes a loss of freedom to many."

"It is no accident that the system of economic competition leads steadily to centralization within the economic field itself; while in the state, centralization has been accompanied by the recognition of the need for decentralization and the practical establishment of it."

"Hayeks assumption is that political power is neither limited in scope, restricted in authority, responsible in operation, nor co-operative and decentralized in execution. This assumption is stupid."