Hayek on the European Union

Philip Chaston (London) · Slogans & Quotations

If anything is evident it should be that, while nations might abide by formal rules on which they have agreed, they will never submit to the direction which international economic planning involves – that while they may agree on the rules of the game, they will never agree on the order of preference in which the rank of their own needs and the rate at which they are allowed to advance is fixed by majority vote. Even if, at first, the peoples should, under some illusion about the meaning of such proposals, agree to transfer such powers to an international authority, they would soon find out that what they have delegated is not merely a technical task, but the most comprehensive power over their very lives.

Hayek ‘The Road to Serfdom’ (Routledge edition: Page 236)

March 1st, 2005 |

6 comments to Hayek on the European Union

• akakya

  March 2, 2005 at 12:34 am

  Salma is a clever girl, isnt she?

• Della

  March 2, 2005 at 2:23 am

  I think you’ll find if you read a little further that “The Prospects of International Order” from “The Road to Serfdom” is actually an argument for multinational and world goverment in the context of the time before and during World War II when it seems a lot very bad ideas were going about.

  Later on he says things like:

  the supernational authority must be very powerful

  and

  The comparatively close association which a federal union represents will not at first be practicable beyond perhaps even as narrow a region as part of western Europe, though it may be possible gradually to extend it.

  It is true that with the formation of such regional federations the possibility of war between the different blocs still remains and that, to reduce this risk as much as possible, we must rely on a larger and looser association.

  i.e. First regional superblocks, then world goverment.

  and

  the world at last finding peace through the absorption of the separate states in large federated groups and ultimately perhaps in one single federation, far from being new, was indeed the ideal of almost all the liberal thinkers of the nineteenth century.

  Which goes to show I suppose that “liberal” thinkers in the ninteenth century were idiots, and “liberal” writers in the 1940s were still idiots. Progressivly larger and more powerful goverments are part of the problem, not the solution. The outcome of this plan to create superstates and world goverement would probably be far closer to Goerge Orwell’s world than the liberal utopia this woolly minded writer talks of.

  The idea he porposes is to make war impossible through some complicated political mechanism to make war effectively impossible, everybody would gather round, sing kumbiya and grow to love each other.

  What happened in reality was that nuclear weapons were invented. Nations held nuclear guns at each others heads, powerful nations are too scared to go to war with each other, so they live in peace.

• Philip Chaston

  March 2, 2005 at 6:56 am

  There are a number of points to raise here.

  The first is that nineteenth century liberalism should not be confused with those ideas which are currently described as ‘liberal’ in the United States of America. No doubt their other concepts such as free trade or minimal government were also woolly-minded and utopian.

  Secondly, in Hayek’s attack on planning in this chapter, iy is stated quite clearly that the federative states are based on the laissez-faire model of the nineteenth century. (see page 238)

  Certainly, Hayek’s ideas from the 1940s were impractical, but before nuclear weapons, it was difficult to see how peaceful conditions could be achieved.

  And as for those nineteenth century liberals, they rightly noted that war is the handmaiden of state expansion

• Gary Gunnels

  March 2, 2005 at 7:18 am

  Della,

  The traditional argument in Madison’s time was that a Republic had to be small (this was for a number of reasons). You seem to be making an allied argument re: capitalist societies. But must a capitalist society be small?

  _________________________________________

  Non-sequitor:

  I don’t know if you find any succor in thism but Amnesty International opposes The Prevention of Terrorism Bill: http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGEUR450062005

• steve shackleton

  March 2, 2005 at 9:56 pm

  It is a while since I read the book, and maybe I missed the point but I gathered he was aiming for a world encompassong free trade area, but the spoilt it by advocating an international body to regulate and enforce rules. We can all see how effective such bodies really are.

• Kurt Lawson

  January 9, 2006 at 4:26 pm

  Unite states of Amereica
  all 50 States is in the Federal Union Government
  of 1776 Declaration of Independence
  in Divine Providence.
  the European Union as treaty of Friends
  With the the United States of America.
  can Great Britain handle the one world rule
  Treaty of Peace.
  Between united States and great britain

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