Since the end of the 20th century, propaganda has evolved significantly. Today's propaganda is characterised by psych-ops and disinformation, whereas a few decades ago it was dominated by posters and simple films.
Middle East
Afghan War
In the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, psychological operations tactics were employed to demoralise the Taliban and to win the sympathies of the Afghan population. At least six EC-130E Commando Solo aircraft were used to jam local radio transmissions and transmit replacement propaganda messages. Leaflets were also dropped throughout Afghanistan, offering rewards for Osama bin Laden
and other individuals, portraying Americans as friends of Afghanistan
and emphasising various negative aspects of the Taliban. Another shows a
picture of Mohammed Omar in a set of crosshairs with the words: "We are watching."
Iraq War
Both the United States and Iraq employed propaganda during the Iraq War.
The United States established campaigns towards the American people on
the justifications of the war while using similar tactics to bring down Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq.
Iraqi propaganda
The Iraqi insurgency's plan was to gain as much support as possible by using violence as their propaganda tool. Inspired by the Vietcong's tactics, insurgents were using rapid movement to keep the coalition off-balance. By using low-technology strategies to convey their messages, they were able to gain support.
Graffiti slogans were used on walls and houses praising the virtues of
many group leaders while condemning the Iraqi government. Others used
flyers, leaflets, articles and self-published newspapers and magazines
to get the point across.
Insurgents also produced CDs and DVDs and distributed them in communities that the Iraq and the US Government were trying to influence.
The insurgents designed advertisements that cost a fraction of what the
US was spending on their ads aimed at the same people in Iraq with much
more success. In addition, a domestic Arabic language
television station was established with the aim of informing the Iraqi
public of alleged coalition propaganda efforts in the country.
US propaganda in Iraq
USPSYOPpamphlet disseminated in Iraq. The pamphlet says: "This is your future, Al-Zarqawi", and shows Al-Qaeda fighter Al-Zarqawi caught in a rat trap.
To achieve their aim of a moderate, pro-western Iraq, US authorities
were careful to avoid conflicts with Islamic culture that would produce
passionate reactions from Iraqis, but differentiating between "good" and
"bad" Islam has proved challenging for the US.
The US implemented black propaganda
by creating false radio personalities that would disseminate
pro-American information, but supposedly run by the supporters of Saddam
Hussein. One radio station used was Radio Tikrit.
Another example of use of black propaganda is that the United States
paid Iraqis to publish articles written by US troops in their newspapers
under the idea that they are unbiased and real accounts; this was
brought forth by The New York Times in 2005. The article stated that it was the Lincoln Group who had been hired by the US government to create the propaganda. However, their names were later cleared from any wrongdoing.
The US was more successful with the Voice of America campaign, which is an old Cold War tactic that exploited people's desire for information. While the information they gave out to the Iraqis was truthful,
they were in a high degree of competition with the opposing forces
after the censorship of the Iraqi media was lifted with the removal of
Saddam from power.
In November 2005, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times alleged that the United States military had manipulated news reported in Iraqi media in an effort to cast a favourable light on its actions while demoralising the insurgency.
Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military spokesman in Iraq, said the program
is "an important part of countering misinformation in the news by
insurgents", while a spokesman for former Defense SecretaryDonald H. Rumsfeld said the allegations of manipulation were troubling if true. The Department of Defense confirmed the existence of the program.
Propaganda aimed at US citizens
The extent to which the US government used propaganda aimed at its own people is a matter of discussion. The book Selling Intervention & War, by Jon Western, argued that president Bush was "selling the war" to the public.
President George W. Bush gave a talk at the Athena Performing
Arts Centre, at Greece Athena Middle and High School, Tuesday, May 24,
2005, in Rochester, New York. About halfway through the event, Bush
said: "See, in my line of work, you got to keep repeating things over
and over, and over again, for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult
the propaganda."
People had their initial reactions to the War on Terror. While
the United States' official stance was to remove Saddam Hussein's power
in Iraq with allegations that his government held weapons of mass
destruction or was related to Osama Bin Laden, over time the Iraq war as a whole has been seen in a negative light. Video and picture coverage in the news has shown images of torture being done under the Iraqi Government.
The U.S. Military has provided millions in funding to
professional sports organizations in exchange for pro-military
messaging, such as a "salute" to active duty soldiers and war veterans.
Every year, a state-owned publishing house releases several cartoons (called geurim-chaek in North Korea), many of which are smuggled across the Chinese border and, sometimes, end up in university libraries in the United States. The books are designed to instill the Juche philosophy of Kim Il-sung
(the "father" of North Korea)—radical self-reliance of the state. The
plots mostly feature scheming capitalists from the United States and
Japan who create dilemmas for naïve North Korean characters.
DPRK textbooks claim that US missionaries came to the Korean
Peninsula and committed barbarous acts against Korean children,
including injecting dangerous liquids into the children and writing the
word "THIEF" on the forehead of any child who stole an apple for
missionary-owned orchards in Korea.
Mexican drug cartels
Drug cartels
have been engaged in propaganda and psychological campaigns to
influence their rivals and those within their area of influence. They
use banners and narcomantas
to threaten their rivals. Some cartels hand out pamphlets and leaflets
to conduct public relation campaigns. They have been able to control the
information environment by threatening journalists, bloggers and others
who speak out against them. They have elaborate recruitment strategies
targeting young adults to join their cartel groups. They have
successfully branded the word narco, and the word has become part
of Mexican culture. There is music, television shows, literature,
beverages, food and architecture that all have been branded narco.
United States
The Shared Values Initiative
was a public relations campaign that was intended to sell a "new"
America to Muslims around the world by showing that American Muslims
were living happily and freely, without persecution, in post-9/11
America. Funded by the United States Department of State,
the campaign created a public relations front group known as Council of
American Muslims for Understanding (CAMU). The campaign was divided in
phases; the first of which consisted of five mini-documentaries for
television, radio, and print with shared values messages for key Muslim
countries.
Propaganda is used by the Communist Party of China to sway public and international opinion in favour of its policies. Domestically, this includes censorship
of proscribed views and an active cultivation of views that favour the
government. Propaganda is considered central to the operation of the
Chinese government. The term in general use in China, xuanchuan (宣傳 "propaganda; publicity") can have either a neutral connotation in official government contexts or a pejorative connotation in informal contexts. Some xuanchuancollocations usually refer to "propaganda" (e.g., xuānchuánzhàn 宣传战 "propaganda war"), others to "publicity" (xuānchuán méijiè 宣傳媒介 "mass media; means of publicity"), and still others are ambiguous (xuānchuányuán 宣传员 "propagandist; publicist").
Aspects of propaganda can be traced back to the earliest periods
of Chinese history, but propaganda has been most effective in the
twentieth century owing to mass media and an authoritarian government. China in the era of Mao Zedong
is known for its constant use of mass campaigns to legitimise the state
and the policies of leaders. It was the first Chinese government to
successfully make use of modern mass propaganda techniques, adapting
them to the needs of a country which had a largely rural and illiterate population. In poor developing countries, China spreads propaganda through methods such as opening Confucius Institutes, and providing training programs in China for foreign officials and students.
Vietnam
Propaganda posters in Vietnam with images of solidarity and Ho Chi Minh
Posters hanging everywhere often describe unity of the working class, farmers and soldiers under the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh. Residents and students have been studying ethics and ideology of Ho Chi Minh.
Some contemporary supporters of Marxism see many aspects of
Marxist thought as viable, but they contend that the corpus is
incomplete or somewhat outdated in regard to certain aspects of
economic, political or social theory. They may therefore combine some
Marxist concepts with the ideas of other theorists such as Max Weber—the Frankfurt School provides one example of this approach.
Conservative historian Paul Johnson
wrote: "The truth is, even the most superficial inquiry into Marx's use
of evidence forces one to treat with skepticism everything he wrote
which relies on factual data". For example, Johnson stated: "The whole
of the key Chapter Eight of Capital is a deliberate and systematic
falsification to prove a thesis which an objective examination of the
facts showed was untenable".
Historical materialism
Historical materialism remains one of the intellectual bases of Marxism. It proposes that technological advances in modes of production inevitably lead to changes in the social relations of production. This economic "base" of society supports, is reflected by and influences the ideological "superstructure" which encompasses culture, religion, politics, and all other aspects of humanity's social consciousness.
It thus looks for the causes of developments and changes in human
history in economic, technological and, more broadly, material factors
as well as the clashes of material interests among tribes, social
classes, and nations. Law, politics, the arts, literature, morality and
religion are understood by Marx to make up the superstructure as
reflections of the economic base of society. Many critics have argued
that this is an oversimplification of the nature of society and claim
that the influence of ideas, culture and other aspects of what Marx
called the superstructure are just as important as the economic base to
the course of society, if not more so. However, Marxism does not claim
that the economic base of society is the only determining element in
society as demonstrated by the following letter written by Friedrich Engels, Marx's long-time contributor:
According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately
determining element in history is the production and reproduction of
real life. More than this neither Marx nor I ever asserted. Hence if
somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only
determining one he transforms that proposition into a meaningless,
abstract, senseless phrase.
According to critics, this also creates another problem for Marxism.
If the superstructure also influences the base then there is no need for
Marx's constant assertions that the history of society is one of
economic class conflict. This then becomes a classic chicken or the egg argument as to whether the base or the superstructure comes first. Peter Singer
proposes that the way to solve this problem is to understand that Marx
saw the economic base as ultimately real. Marx believed that humanity's
defining characteristic was its means of production
and thus the only way for man to free himself from oppression was for
him to take control of the means of production. According to Marx, this
is the goal of history and the elements of the superstructure act as
tools of history.
Marx held that the relationship between material base and
ideological superstructure was a determination relation and not a causal
relation.
However, some critics of Marx have insisted that Marx claimed the
superstructure was an effect caused by the base. For instance, Anarcho-capitalistMurray Rothbard
criticized historical materialism by arguing that Marx claimed the
"base" of society (its technology and social relations) determined its
"consciousness" in the superstructure.
Historical determinism
Marx's theory of history has been considered a variant of historical determinism linked to his reliance on dialectical materialism as an endogenous mechanism for social change. Marx wrote:
At a certain stage of development, the material
productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing
relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in
legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which
they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive
forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of
social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or
later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.
The concept of the dialectic emerged from the dialogues of the ancient Greek philosophers, but it was brought out by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
in the early 19th century as a conceptual framework for the often
opposing forces of historical evolution. Historical determinism has also
been associated with scholars like Arnold Toynbee and Oswald Spengler, but in recent times this conceptual approach has fallen into disuse.
Terry Eagleton
writes that Marx's writings "should not be taken to mean that
everything that has ever happened is a matter of class struggle. It
means, rather, that class struggle is most fundamental to human
history".
Academic Peter Stillman believes Marx's status as a determinist is a "myth". Friedrich Engels
himself warned about conceiving of Marx's ideas as deterministic,
saying: "According to the materialist conception of history, the
ultimately determining element in history is the production and
reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever
asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic
element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into
a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase." On another occasion, Engels remarked that "younger people sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it".
While historical materialism has been referred to as a materialist
theory of history, Marx does not claim to have produced a master-key to
history and that the materialist conception of history is not "an
historico-philosophic theory of the marche generale, imposed by
fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it
finds itself". In a letter to editor of the Russian newspaper Otetchestvennye Zapiskym (1877), he explains that his ideas are based upon a concrete study of the actual conditions in Europe.
In an effort to reassert this approach to an understanding of the forces of history, Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar criticised what he considers narrow conceptual basis of Marx's ideas on historical evolution. In the 1978 book The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism, Ravi Batra pointed out crucial differences in the historical determinist approaches of Sarkar and Marx:
Sarkar's main concern with the human element is what
imparts universality to his thesis. Thus while social evolution
according to Marx is governed chiefly by economic conditions, to Sarkar
this dynamic is propelled by forces varying with time and space:
sometimes physical prowess and high-spiritedness, sometimes intellect
applied to dogmas and sometimes intellect applied to the accumulation of
capital (p. 38). [...] The main line of defence of the Sarkarian
hypothesis is that unlike the dogmas now in disrepute, it does not
emphasise one particular point to the exclusion of all others: it is
based on the sum total of human experience – the totality of human
nature. Whenever a single factor, however important and fundamental, is
called upon to illuminate the entire past and by implication the future,
it simply invites disbelief, and after closer inspection, rejection.
Marx committed that folly, and to some extent so did Toynbee. They both
offered an easy prey to the critics, and the result is that today
historical determinism is regarded by most scholars as an idea so
bankrupt that it can never be solvent again.
The American neoclassical economistMilton Friedman
argued that under socialism the absence of a free market economy would
inevitably lead to an authoritarian political regime. Friedman's view
was also shared by Friedrich Hayek, who also believed that capitalism is a precondition for freedom to flourish in a nation state. Daniel De Leon
countered this by stating: "Capitalism is a fraud within a fraud.
Proclaiming itself individualistic, it organizes collectively in order
to promote the aims of a few. Socialism, on the other hand, [...] would
secure to labor the products of its toil, now confiscated by the few,
and, in this way, preserve to the workers, the majority of the
population, a greater individuality than that which they now attain". David Harvey
has responded to such claims by suggesting that socialism enables
individual freedom, stating that "the achievement of individual
liberties and freedoms is, I argued, a central aim of such emancipatory
projects. But that achievement requires collectively building a society
where each one of us has adequate life chances and life possibilities to
realize each one of our own potentialities."
Anarchists have also argued that centralized communism will inevitably lead to coercion and state domination. Mikhail Bakunin believed Marxist regimes would lead to the "despotic control of the populace by a new and not at all numerous aristocracy". Even if this new aristocracy were to have originated from among the ranks of the proletariat,
Bakunin argued that their new-found power would fundamentally change
their view of society and thus lead them to "look down at the plain
working masses".
Economic
Marxian economics
have been criticized for a number of reasons. Some critics point to the
Marxian analysis of capitalism while others argue that the economic
system proposed by Marxism is unworkable.
There are also doubts that the rate of profit in capitalism would tend to fall as Marx predicted. In 1961, Marxian economistNobuo Okishio devised a theorem (Okishio's theorem) showing that if capitalists pursue cost-cutting techniques and if the real wage does not rise, the rate of profit must rise.
Labor theory of value
The labor theory of value is one of the most commonly criticized core tenets of Marxism.
The Austrian School argues that this fundamental theory of classical economics is false and prefers the subsequent and modern subjective theory of value put forward by Carl Menger in his book Principles of Economics.
The Austrian School was not alone in criticizing the Marxian and
classical belief in the labor theory of value. British economist Alfred Marshall
attacked Marx, saying: "It is not true that the spinning of yarn in a
factory [...] is the product of the labour of the operatives. It is the
product of their labour, together with that of the employer and
subordinate managers, and of the capital employed".
Marshall points to the capitalist as sacrificing the money he could be
using now for investment in business, which ultimately produces work.
By this logic, the capitalist contributes to the work and productivity
of the factory because he delays his gratification through investment. Through the law of supply and demand,
Marshall attacked Marxian theory of value. According to Marshall, price
or value is determined not just by supply, but by the demand of the
consumer.
Labor does contribute to cost, but so do the wants and needs of
consumers. The shift from labor being the source of all value to
subjective individual evaluations creating all value undermines Marx's
economic conclusions and some of his social theories.
Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan argue that most studies
purporting to show empirical evidence of the labor theory of value often
make methodological errors by comparing the total labor value to total
price of multiple economic sectors, which results in a strong overall
correlation but this is a statistical exaggeration; the authors argue
that the correlations between labor value and price in each sector are
often very small if not insignificant. Bichler and Nitzan also argue
that because it is difficult to quantify a way to measure abstract
labor, researchers are forced to make assumptions. However, Bichler and Nitzan argue these assumptions involve circular reasoning:
The most important of these
assumptions are that the value of labour power is proportionate to the
actual wage rate, that the ratio of variable capital to surplus value is
given by the price ratio of wages to profit, and occasionally also that
the value of the depreciated constant capital is equal to a fraction of
the capital’s money price. In other words, the researcher assumes
precisely what the labour theory of value is supposed to demonstrate.
Distorted or absent price signals
The economic calculation problem is a criticism of socialist economics or, more precisely, of centralizedsocialist planned economies. It was first proposed by Austrian School economistLudwig von Mises in 1920 and later expounded by Friedrich Hayek. The problem referred to is that of how to distribute resources rationally in an economy. The free market solution is the price mechanism,
wherein people individually have the ability to decide how a good
should be distributed based on their willingness to give money for it.
The price conveys embedded information about the abundance of resources
as well as their desirability which in turn allows on the basis of
individual consensual decisions corrections that prevent shortages and surpluses.
Mises and Hayek argued that this is the only possible solution and,
without the information provided by market prices, socialism lacks a
method to rationally allocate resources. The debate raged in the 1920s
and 1930s and that specific period of the debate has come to be known by
economic historians as the socialist calculation debate. In practice, socialist states like the Soviet Union used mathematical techniques to determine and set prices with mixed results.
Reduced incentives
Some
critics of socialism argue that income sharing reduces individual
incentives to work and therefore incomes should be individualised as
much as possible.
Critics of socialism have argued that in any society where everyone
holds equal wealth there can be no material incentive to work because
one does not receive rewards for work well done. They further argue that
incentives increase productivity for all people and that the loss of
those effects would lead to stagnation. In Principles of Political Economy (1848), John Stuart Mill said:
It is the common error of Socialists to overlook the
natural indolence of mankind; their tendency to be passive, to be the
slaves of habit, to persist indefinitely in a course once chosen. Let
them once attain any state of existence which they consider tolerable,
and the danger to be apprehended is that they will thenceforth stagnate;
will not exert themselves to improve, and by letting their faculties
rust, will lose even the energy required to preserve them from
deterioration. Competition may not be the best conceivable stimulus, but
it is at present a necessary one, and no one can foresee the time when
it will not be indispensable to progress.
However, he later altered his views and became more sympathetic to socialism, particularly Fourierism, adding chapters to his Principles of Political Economy in defence of a socialist outlook and defending some socialist causes.
Within this revised work, he also made the radical proposal that the
whole wage system be abolished in favour of a co-operative wage system.
Nonetheless, some of his views on the idea of flat taxation remained,
albeit in a slightly toned-down form.
The economist John Kenneth Galbraith
has criticised communal forms of socialism that promote egalitarianism
in terms of wages or compensation as unrealistic in its assumptions
about human motivation:
This hope [that egalitarian reward would lead to a higher
level of motivation], one that spread far beyond Marx, has been shown
by both history and human experience to be irrelevant. For better or
worse, human beings do not rise to such heights. Generations of
socialists and socially oriented leaders have learned this to their
disappointment and more often to their sorrow. The basic fact is clear:
the good society must accept men and women as they are.
Edgar Hardcastle
responds to this by saying: "They want to work and need no more
inducement than is given by the knowledge that work must be done to keep
society going, and that they are playing their part in it along with
their fellow men and women." He continues by criticising what he sees
are the double standards
of anti-socialists: "Notice how they object to the unemployed receiving
a miserly dole without having to work, but never object to the
millionaires (most of them in that position through inheritance) being
able to live in luxurious idleness." Authors like Arnold Petersen argue that arguments such as these are inaccurate as hunter-gatherers practiced primitive communism without problems such as these.
Inconsistency
Vladimir Karpovich Dmitriev writing in 1898, Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz writing in 1906–1907 and subsequent critics have alleged that Karl Marx's value theory and law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall
are internally inconsistent. In other words, the critics allege that
Marx drew conclusions that actually do not follow from his theoretical
premises. Once those errors are corrected, Marx's conclusion that
aggregate price and profit are determined by—and equal to—aggregate
value and surplus value no longer holds true. This result calls into
question his theory that the exploitation of workers is the sole source
of profit.
The inconsistency allegations have been a prominent feature of Marxian economics and the debate surrounding it since the 1970s. Andrew Kliman
argues that since internally inconsistent theories cannot possibly be
right, this undermines Marx's critique of political economy and
current-day research based upon it as well as the correction of Marx's
alleged inconsistencies.
Critics who have alleged that Marx has been proved internally inconsistent include former and current Marxian and/or Sraffian economists, such as Paul Sweezy, Nobuo Okishio, Ian Steedman, John Roemer, Gary Mongiovi and David Laibman,
who propose that the field be grounded in their correct versions of
Marxian economics instead of in Marx's critique of political economy in
the original form in which he presented and developed it in Capital.
Proponents of the temporal single system interpretation
(TSSI) of Marx's value theory, like Kliman, claim that the supposed
inconsistencies are actually the result of misinterpretation and argue
that when Marx's theory is understood as "temporal" and "single-system",
the alleged internal inconsistencies disappear. In a recent survey of
the debate, Kliman concludes that "the proofs of inconsistency are no
longer defended; the entire case against Marx has been reduced to the
interpretive issue".
Relevance
Marxism has been criticized as irrelevant, with many economists rejecting its core tenets and assumptions. John Maynard Keynes referred to Capital
as "an obsolete textbook which I know to be not only scientifically
erroneous but without interest or application for the modern world". According to George Stigler,
"Economists working in the Marxian-Sraffian tradition represent a small
minority of modern economists, and that their writings have virtually
no impact upon the professional work of most economists in major
English-language universities". In a review of the first edition of The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, Robert Solow criticized it for overemphasizing the importance of Marxism in modern economics:
Marx
was an important and influential thinker, and Marxism has been a
doctrine with intellectual and practical influence. The fact is,
however, that most serious English-speaking economists regard Marxist
economics as an irrelevant dead end.
A 2006 nationally representative survey of American professors found
3% of them identify as Marxists. The share rises to 5% in the humanities
and is about 18% among social scientists.
Social
Social criticism is based on the assertion that the Marxian conception of society is fundamentally flawed. The Marxist stages of history, class analysis and theory of social evolution have been criticised. Jean-Paul Sartre
concluded that "class" was not a homogenous entity and could never
mount a revolution, but continued to advocate Marxist beliefs. Marx himself admitted that his theory could not explain the internal development of the Asiatic social system, where much of the world's population lived for thousands of years.
Epistemological
Arguments against Marxism are often based on epistemological reasoning. Specifically, various critics have contended that Marx or his adherents have a flawed approach to epistemology.
According to Leszek Kołakowski, the laws of dialectics at the very base of Marxism
are fundamentally flawed: some are "truisms with no specific Marxist
content", others "philosophical dogmas that cannot be proved by
scientific means", yet others just "nonsense". Some Marxist "laws" are
vague and can be interpreted differently, but these interpretations
generally fall into one of the aforementioned categories of flaws as
well. However, Ralph Miliband countered that Kolakowski had a flawed understanding of Marxism and its relation to Leninism and Stalinism.
What
Marx accomplished was to produce such a comprehensive, dramatic, and
fascinating vision that it could withstand innumerable empirical
contradictions, logical refutations, and moral revulsions at its
effects. The Marxian vision took the overwhelming complexity of the real
world and made the parts fall into place, in a way that was
intellectually exhilarating and conferred such a sense of moral
superiority that opponents could be simply labelled and dismissed as
moral lepers or blind reactionaries. Marxism was – and remains – a
mighty instrument for the acquisition and maintenance of political
power.
Many notable academics such as Karl Popper, David Prychitko, Robert C. Allen, and Francis Fukuyama argue that many of Marx's predictions have failed.
Marx predicted that wages would tend to depreciate and that capitalist
economies would suffer worsening economic crises leading to the ultimate
overthrow of the capitalist system. The socialist revolution would
occur first in the most advanced capitalist nations and once collective
ownership had been established then all sources of class conflict would
disappear. Instead of Marx's predictions, communist revolutions took
place in undeveloped regions in Latin America and Asia instead of
industrialized countries like the United States or the United Kingdom.
Popper has argued that both the concept of Marx's historical method as well as its application are unfalsifiable and thus it is a pseudoscience that cannot be proven true or false:
The
Marxist theory of history, in spite of the serious efforts of some of
its founders and followers, ultimately adopted this soothsaying
practice. In some of its earlier formulations (for example in Marx's
analysis of the character of the 'coming social revolution') their
predictions were testable, and in fact falsified. Yet instead of
accepting the refutations the followers of Marx re-interpreted both the
theory and the evidence in order to make them agree. In this way they
rescued the theory from refutation; but they did so at the price of
adopting a device which made it irrefutable. They thus gave a
'conventionalist twist' to the theory; and by this stratagem they
destroyed its much advertised claim to scientific status.
Popper believed that Marxism had been initially scientific, in that Marx
had postulated a theory which was genuinely predictive. When Marx's
predictions were not in fact borne out, Popper argues that the theory
was saved from falsification by the addition of ad hoc
hypotheses which attempted to make it compatible with the facts. By
this means, a theory which was initially genuinely scientific
degenerated into pseudoscientific dogma. Popper agreed on the general non-falsifiability of the social sciences, but instead used it as an argument against central planning and all-encompassing historiographical ideologies.
Popper devoted much attention to dissecting the practice of using the
dialectic in defence of Marxist thought, which was the very strategy
employed by V.A. Lektorsky in his defence of Marxism against Popper's
criticisms. Among Popper's conclusions was that Marxists used dialectic
as a method of side-stepping and evading criticisms, rather than
actually answering or addressing them:
Hegel
thought that philosophy develops; yet his own system was to remain the
last and highest stage of this development and could not be superseded.
The Marxists adopted the same attitude towards the Marxian system.
Hence, Marx's anti-dogmatic attitude exists only in the theory and not
in the practice of orthodox Marxism, and dialectic is used by Marxists,
following the example of Engels' Anti-Dühring, mainly for the purposes
of apologetics – to defend the Marxist system against criticism. As a
rule critics are denounced for their failure to understand the
dialectic, or proletarian science, or for being traitors. Thanks to
dialectic the anti-dogmatic attitude has disappeared, and Marxism has
established itself as a dogmatism which is elastic enough, by using its
dialectic method, to evade any further attack. It has thus become what I
have called reinforced dogmatism.
Bertrand Russell
has criticized as unscientific Marx's belief in progress as a universal
law. Russell stated: "Marx professed himself an atheist, but retained a
cosmic optimism which only theism could justify". Marxists like Thomas Riggins have claimed that Russell misrepresented Marx's ideas
The Road to Serfdom (German: Der Weg zur Knechtschaft) is a book written between 1940 and 1943 by Austrian-British economist and philosopherFriedrich Hayek. Since its publication in 1944, The Road to Serfdom has been an influential and popular exposition of liberalism. It has been translated into more than 20 languages and sold over two million copies (as of 2010). The book was first published in Britain by Routledge in March 1944, during World War II, and was quite popular, leading Hayek to call it "that unobtainable book", also due in part to wartime paper rationing. It was published in the United States by the University of Chicago Press in September 1944 and achieved great popularity. At the arrangement of editor Max Eastman, the American magazine Reader's Digest published an abridged version in April 1945, enabling The Road to Serfdom to reach a wider non-academic audience.
The Road to Serfdom was to be the popular edition of the second volume of Hayek's treatise entitled "The Abuse and Decline of Reason", and the title was inspired by the writings of the 19th century French classical liberal thinker Alexis de Tocqueville on the "road to servitude". In the book, Hayek "[warns] of the danger of tyranny that inevitably results from government control of economic decision-making through central planning." He further argues that the abandonment of individualism and classical liberalism inevitably leads to a loss of freedom, the creation of an oppressive society, the tyranny of a dictator, and the serfdom of the individual. Hayek challenged the view, popular among British Marxists, that fascism (including Nazism) was a capitalist reaction against socialism.
He argued that fascism, Nazism and socialism had common roots in
central economic planning and empowering the state over the individual.
Initially written as a response to the report written by William Beveridge, the Liberal politician and dean of the London School of Economics where Hayek worked at the time, the book made a significant impact on 20th-century political discourse, especially American conservative and libertarian economic and political debate, being often cited today by commentators. Subject to much attention, the ideas advocated in The Road to Serfdom have been criticized and defended by many academics since the book was published.
Publication
Writing in the era of the Great Depression, the rise of autocracies in Russia, Italy and Germany, and World War II, Hayek wrote a memo to the director of the London School of Economics, William Beveridge, in the early 1930s to dispute the then-popular claim that fascism represented the dying gasp of a failed capitalist system. The memo grew into a magazine article, and he intended to incorporate elements of the article into a book much larger than The Road to Serfdom. However, he ultimately decided to write The Road to Serfdom as its own book.
The book was originally published for a British audience by Routledge Press in March 1944 in the United Kingdom. The book was subsequently rejected by three publishers in the United States, and it was only after economist Aaron Director spoke to friends at the University of Chicago that the book was published in the U.S by the University of Chicago Press on September 18, 1944.
The American publisher’s expectation was that the book would sell
between 900 and 3,000 copies. But the initial printing run of 2,000
copies was quickly sold out, and 30,000 copies were sold within six
months. In 2007, the University of Chicago Press estimated that more than 350,000 copies had been sold.
A 20-page version of the book was then published in the April 1945 issue of Reader's Digest, with a press run of several million copies. A 95-page abridged version was also published in 1945 and 1946. In February 1945, a picture-book version was published in Look magazine, later made into a pamphlet and distributed by General Motors. The book has been translated into approximately 20 languages and is dedicated "To the socialists of all parties". The introduction to the 50th anniversary edition is written by Milton Friedman (another recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics 1976).
In 2007, the University of Chicago Press issued a "Definitive Edition", Volume 2 in the Collected Works of F. A. Hayek series. In June 2010, the book achieved new popularity by rising to the top of the Amazon.com bestseller list following extended coverage of the book on The Glenn Beck Program. Since that date, it has sold another 250,000 copies in its print and digital editions.
Summary
Hayek argues that Western democracies, including the United Kingdom and the United States,
have "progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without
which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past".
Society has mistakenly tried to ensure continuing prosperity by
centralized planning, which inevitably leads to totalitarianism. "We
have in effect undertaken to dispense with the forces which produced
unforeseen results and to replace the impersonal and anonymous mechanism
of the market by collective and ‘conscious’ direction of all social
forces to deliberately chosen goals."
Socialism, while presented as a means of assuring equality, does so
through "restraint and servitude", while "democracy seeks equality in
liberty". Planning, because it is coercive, is an inferior method of regulation, while the competition of a free market
is superior "because it is the only method by which our activities can
be adjusted to each other without coercive or arbitrary intervention of
authority".
Centralized planning is inherently undemocratic in Hayek's view, because it requires "that the will of a small minority be imposed upon the people".
The power of these minorities to act by taking money or property in
pursuit of centralized goals, destroys the Rule of Law and individual
freedoms.
Where there is centralized planning, "the individual would more than
ever become a mere means, to be used by the authority in the service of
such abstractions as the 'social welfare' or the 'good of the community'". Even the very poor have more personal freedom in an open society than a centrally planned one. "While the last resort of a competitive economy is the bailiff, the ultimate sanction of a planned economy is the hangman."
Socialism is a hypocritical system, because its professed humanitarian
goals can only be put into practice by brutal methods "of which most
socialists disapprove".
Such centralized systems also require effective propaganda, so that the
people come to believe that the state's goals are theirs.
Hayek argues that the roots of National Socialism lie in socialism, and then draws parallels to the thought of British leaders:
The increasing veneration for the state, the admiration
of power, and of bigness for bigness' sake, the enthusiasm for
"organization" of everything (we now call it "planning") and that
"inability to leave anything to the simple power of organic growth" ...
are all scarcely less marked in England now than they were in Germany.
Hayek believed that after World War II, "wisdom in the management of
our economic affairs will be even more important than before and that
the fate of our civilization will ultimately depend on how we solve the
economic problems we shall then face". The only chance to build a decent world is "to improve the general level of wealth" via the activities of free markets. He saw international organization as involving a further threat to individual freedom.
He concluded: "The guiding principle that a policy of freedom for the
individual is the only truly progressive policy remains as true today as
it was in the nineteenth century."
Role of government
Although
Hayek believed that government intervention in markets would lead to a
loss of freedom, he recognized a limited role for government to perform
tasks for which he believed free markets were not capable:
The successful use of competition as the principle of
social organization precludes certain types of coercive interference
with economic life, but it admits of others which sometimes may very
considerably assist its work and even requires certain kinds of
government action.
While Hayek is opposed to regulations that restrict the freedom to
enter a trade, or to buy and sell at any price, or to control
quantities, he acknowledges the utility of regulations that restrict
legal methods of production, so long as these are applied equally to
everyone and not used as an indirect way of controlling prices or
quantities, and without forgetting the cost of such restrictions:
To prohibit the use of certain poisonous substances, or
to require special precautions in their use, to limit working hours or
to require certain sanitary arrangements, is fully compatible with the
preservation of competition. The only question here is whether in the
particular instance the advantages gained are greater than the social costs they impose.
He notes that there are certain areas, such as the environment, where
activities that cause damage to third parties (known to economists as
"negative externalities") cannot effectively be regulated solely by the marketplace:
Nor can certain harmful effects of deforestation, of some
methods of farming, or of the smoke and noise of factories, be confined
to the owner of the property in question, or to those willing to submit
to the damage for an agreed compensation.
The government also has a role in preventing fraud:
Even the most essential prerequisite of its [the
market's] proper functioning, the prevention of fraud and deception
(including exploitation of ignorance), provides a great and by no means
fully accomplished object of legislative activity.
The government also has a role in creating a safety net:
There is no reason why, in a society which has reached
the general level of wealth ours has, the first kind of security should
not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom; that is:
some minimum of food, shelter and clothing, sufficient to preserve
health. Nor is there any reason why the state should not help to
organize a comprehensive system of social insurance in providing for
those common hazards of life against which few can make adequate
provision.
He concludes: "In no system that could be rationally defended would the state just do nothing."
Clarifications
Since publication, Hayek has offered a number of clarifications on words that are frequently misinterpreted:
"Socialism", as Hayek used it, refers to state socialism and is used to mean state control of the economy, not a welfare state
In 2007, the University of Chicago Press estimated that more than 350,000 copies of The Road to Serfdom have been sold. It appears on Martin Seymour-Smith's list of the 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written, and it made number 1 on Human Events: Top Ten Books Every Republican Congressman Should Read in 2006. It was influential enough to warrant mention during the 1945 British general election, when according to Harold Macmillan, Winston Churchill was "fortified in his apprehensions [of a Labour government] by reading Professor Hayek's The Road to Serfdom" when he warned in an election broadcast in 1945 that a socialist system would "have to fall back on some form of Gestapo". The Labour leader Clement Attlee
responded in his election broadcast by claiming that what Churchill had
said was the "second-hand version of the academic views of an Austrian
professor, Friedrich August von Hayek". The Conservative Central Office sacrificed 1.5 tons of their precious paper ration allocated for the 1945 election so that more copies of The Road to Serfdom could be printed, although to no avail, as Labour won a landslide victory.
Political historian Alan Brinkley had this to say about the impact of The Road to Serfdom:
The publication of two books ... helped to galvanize the
concerns that were beginning to emerge among intellectuals (and many
others) about the implications of totalitarianism. One was James Burnham’s The Managerial Revolution ... [A second] Friedrich A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom ...
was far more controversial—and influential. Even more than Burnham,
Hayek forced into public discourse the question of the compatibility of
democracy and statism ...
In responding to Burnham and Hayek ... liberals [in the statist sense
of this term as used by some in the United States] were in fact
responding to a powerful strain of Jeffersonian anti-statism in American
political culture ... The result was a subtle but important shift in
liberal [i.e. American statist] thinking.
Reviews
The Road to Serfdom
has been the subject of much praise and much criticism. It was placed
fourth on the list of the 100 best non-fiction books of the 20th century compiled by National Review
magazine, was ranked number 16 in reader selections of the hundred best
non-fiction book of the twentieth century administered by Modern Library, and appears on a recommended reading list for the libertarian right hosted on the Political Compass test website.
John Maynard Keynes
said of it: "In my opinion it is a grand book ... Morally and
philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of
it: and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement." However, Keynes did not think Hayek's philosophy was of practical
use; this was explained later in the same letter, commenting: "What we
need therefore, in my opinion, is not a change in our economic
programmes, which would only lead in practice to disillusion with the
results of your philosophy; but perhaps even the contrary, namely, an
enlargement of them. Your greatest danger ahead is the probable
practical failure of the application of your philosophy in the United
States."
George Orwell
responded with both praise and criticism, stating, "in the negative
part of Professor Hayek's thesis there is a great deal of truth. It
cannot be said too often – at any rate, it is not being said nearly
often enough – that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on
the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish
Inquisitors never dreamt of." Yet he also warned, "[A] return to 'free'
competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse,
because more irresponsible, than that of the state."
Milton Friedman described The Road to Serfdom as "one of the great books of our time," and said of it:
I think the Adam Smith role was played in this cycle
[i.e. the late twentieth century collapse of socialism in which the idea
of free-markets succeeded first, and then special events catalyzed a
complete change of socio-political policy in countries around the world]
by Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.
Herman Finer, a Fabian socialist, published a rebuttal in his The Road to Reaction
in 1946. Hayek called Finer's book "a specimen of abuse and invective
which is probably unique in contemporary academic discussion".
In his review (collected in The Present as History, 1953) MarxistPaul Sweezy
joked that Hayek would have you believe that if there was an
over-production of baby carriages, the central planners would then order
the population to have more babies instead of simply warehousing the
temporary excess of carriages and decreasing production for next year.
The cybernetic arguments of Stafford Beer in his 1973 CBC Massey Lectures, Designing Freedom – that intelligent adaptive planning can increase freedom – are of interest in this regard, as is the technical work of Herbert A. Simon and Albert Ando
on the dynamics of hierarchical nearly decomposable systems in
economics – namely, that everything in such a system is not tightly
coupled to everything else.
Mises Institute economist Walter Block has observed critically that while The Road to Serfdom makes a strong case against centrally planned economies, it appears only lukewarm in its support of a free market system and laissez-fairecapitalism,
with Hayek even going so far as to say that "probably nothing has done
so much harm to the liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some
liberals on certain rules of thumb, above all the principle of
laissez-faire capitalism". In the book, Hayek writes that the government
has a role to play in the economy through the monetary system (a view
that he later withdrew),
work-hours regulation, social welfare, and institutions for the flow of
proper information. Through analysis of this and many other of Hayek's
works, Block asserts that: "in making the case against socialism, Hayek
was led into making all sort of compromises with what otherwise appeared
to be his own philosophical perspective – so much so, that if a system
was erected on the basis of them, it would not differ too sharply from
what this author explicitly opposed".
Criticism
Jeffrey Sachs argues that empirical evidence suggests welfare states, with high rates of taxation and social outlays, outperform the comparatively free-market economies. William Easterly
wrote a rebuttal criticizing Sachs for misrepresenting Hayek's work and
for criticizing the book on issues it did not actually address, such as
welfare programs for the elderly or sick, something Hayek was not
entirely opposed to. Easterly noted that the Road to Serfdom was about
the dangers of centralized planning and nationalization of industry,
including the media.
In Sachs' counter-rebuttal, he argued that he was addressing Hayek's
foreword in the 1976 adaptation which stated that efforts to bring about
large-scale welfare states would bring about serfdom, although much
more slowly than under centralized planning. Sachs cited the Nordic
states which remained economically free and relatively capitalist,
despite a large welfare state that Hayek was wrong about such programs
leading to serfdom.
Gordon Tullock has argued Hayek's analysis incorrectly predicted governments in much of Europe in the late 20th century would descend into totalitarianism. He uses Sweden, in which the government at that time controlled 63 percent of GNP, as an example to support his argument that the basic problem with The Road to Serfdom
is "that it offered predictions which turned out to be false. The
steady advance of government in places such as Sweden has not led to any
loss of non-economic freedoms." While criticizing Hayek, Tullock still
praises the classical liberal notion of economic freedom, saying,
"Arguments for political freedom are strong, as are the arguments for
economic freedom. We needn’t make one set of arguments depend on the
other." However, according to Robert Skidelsky,
Hayek "safeguarded himself from such retrospective refutation".
Skidelsky argues that Hayek's argument was contingent, and that, "By the
1970s there was some evidence of the slippery slope ... and then there
was Thatcher. Hayek's warning played a critical part in her determination to 'roll back the state.'"
Economic sociologist Karl Polanyi
made a case diametrically opposed to Hayek, arguing that unfettered
markets had undermined the social order and that economic breakdown had
paved the way for the emergence of dictatorship.
Barbara Wootton wrote Freedom under Planning after reading an early copy of The Road to Serfdom, provided to her by Hayek. In the introduction to her book, Wootton mentioned The Road to Serfdom
and claimed that "Much of what I have written is devoted to criticism
of the views put forward by Professor Hayek in this and other books." The central argument made in Freedom under Planning
is that "there is nothing in the conscious planning of economic
priorities which is inherently incompatible with the freedoms which mean
most to the contemporary Englishman or American. Civil liberties
are quite unaffected. We can, if we wish, deliberately plan so as to
give the fullest possible scope for the pursuit by individuals and
social groups of cultural ends which are in no way state-determined." Wootton criticizes Hayek for claiming that planning must lead to oppression, when, in her view, that is merely one possibility
among many. She argues that "there seems hardly better case for taking
for granted that planning will bring the worst to the top than for the
opposite assumption that the seats of office will be filled with
angels".
Thus, Wootton acknowledges the possibility that planning may exist
alongside tyranny, but claims that it is equally possible to combine
planning with freedom. She concludes that "A happy and fruitful marriage
between freedom and planning can, in short, be arranged." However, Frank Knight, founder of the Chicago school of economics, disputes the claim that Freedom under Planning contradicts The Road to Serfdom. He wrote in a scholarly review of the Wootton book: "Let me repeat that the Wootton book is in no logical sense an answer to The Road to Serfdom, whatever may be thought of the cogency of Hayek's argument, or the soundness of his position."
Eric Zencey
wrote that the free market economy Hayek advocated is designed for an
infinite planet, and when it runs into physical limits (as any growing
system must), the result is a need for centralized planning to mediate
the problematic interface of economy and nature. "Planning is planning,
whether it's done to minimize poverty and injustice, as socialists were advocating then, or to preserve the minimum flow of ecosystem services that civilization requires, as we are finding increasingly necessary today."
