An Evaluation: Civilization Based on Personal Decisions

Abstract

If a negative view of social rights or, as we have also called it, a conception of basic social rights, has passed the ‘Hayekian test’ for the use of legitimate coercion in a free society, why did Hayek exclude it? Because he did not take seriously his own normative arguments in favour of the rule of law, and because he has gradually detached himself from those arguments, exchanging them for an evolutionist theory which rules out all moral and normative considerations, including the ‘Hayekian test’ itself. However peculiar and perhaps even daring this contention may sound, this final chapter on Hayek’s argument will present the case for it.

The latter-day liberals fell into the same error as Marx. Only they became apologists for instead of opponents of the status quo.

Walter Lippmann, The Good Society, 1938

Sometimes we find among liberals — as among Marxists — a tendency to believe that the world order permits the conciliation of reality with our aspirations. This confidence is not without a certain grandeur. Allow me to admire it, without imitating it.

Raymond Aron, Political Studies, 1972

We may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.

Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, 1945