[발췌: T.V. Smith's] Review of Hayek's Road to Serfdom

지은이; T.V. Smith
출처: Ethics, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Apr., 1945), pp. 224-226 (University of Chicago Press)
자료: Jstor.org

※ 발췌 (excerpt):

There are two things about this widely publicized book which it appears prudent to deprecate. First, it is hysterical. Second, it is, so far as America goes, "criticism without a fulcrum." I call it "hysterical" because, though calm in exterior, It is agitated at heart and in turn agitates others. It is that overly controlled  hysteria which scholarship both conceals and reveals. It agitates rather than activates, because it does not so discriminate the signposts as to enable the reader to identify the turnoffs on what is luridly called "the road to serfdom." 

(... ...)

The preparation for an electrocution and for an electrocardiograph is the same, up to a point. A patient who looked around him might think himself in jeopardy, especially if he had been all but electrocuted once before and did not know he was in a friendly hospital rather than in a death cell. If at every, stage of the preparation he kept shouting to the medical attendant not to electrocute him, it might well lead to a poor medical report, if not, indeed, to thoughts of electrocution at the hands of the technician.

The author, who is an economist, apologizes for this his first "political" book but excuses himself in terms of the gravity of the moment and his solicitude for the democracies. This is the double apology of every hysterical mother who proceeds then the more resolutely to inflict her complexes on her own child. The author admits, moreover, that the way is dubious and many of the signs ambiguous. "Collectivism" is what killed Germany, is killing Britain, and will kill America, if we don't watch out. Granted, at least for the argument. Are we already collectivistic? If not, where are we to be most watchful? If so, and yet not fatal, where do we turn off to escape "serfdom"?

(...) The book is against planning, is alarmist and strident against planning; and the larger the unit, the more dangerous the planning. Butㅡmark this wellㅡthe author is not against all planning. Of even international forethought, which is the "worst" type, the author says that "it can be so devised as to make most of the harmful planning difficult while leaving the way free for all desirable planning" (p. 235). Now, that's the point: to distinguish harmful from helpful planning rather than to damn all planning, as the author motivates prejudiced readers to do. (...)