Conclusion

Abstract

There are two purposes in this final chapter and both involve the tying together of the various elements in Hayek’s philosophy. The first is to discuss the chain of reasoning which in Hayek’s thought culminates in what might be called ‘the road to serfdom thesis’. This idea was first suggested in 1944, although glimmerings of it are visible in Hayek’s earlier writings on economics which touched upon policy, but has been more systematically presented in the last few years in a particularly sophisticated interdisciplinary form. The second is to give a more general account of Hayek’s political ‘ideology’ and to try and place it on the intellectual map. In particular I shall be concerned to trace the similarities and differences between it and the more familiar doctrines of liberalism and conservatism. In exploring both these purposes the aim will be to present Hayek’s social philosophy as a systematic whole in which, although there are differences of emphasis and even changes of mind, the component parts show a remarkable consistency over an extremely long period of time. In the first two sections I shall be concerned only with the road to serfdom thesis.