[발췌 10장: Hayek's Road to Serfdom] Why the Worst Get on Top

자료: [구글도서] his Collected Works, vol.2 (Univ. of Chicago Press 2009) ; [구글도서] Routledge(1944 [2001]) ;Some HTML (& its contents) ; Some PDF ; ... 차례/독서노트 ;

※ This is a reading note with excerpts taken and some personal annotations or remarks added, in trying to partially read the above text. So visit the links above or elsewhere to see the original work.

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※ 발췌 (excerpts):

Chapter 10

Why the Worst Get on Top

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

─Lord Acton. [n.1]

We must now examine a belief from which many who regard the advent of totalitarianism as inevitable derive consolation and which seriously weakens the resistance of many others who would oppose it with all their might if they fully apprehend its nature. It is the belief that the most repellent features of the totalitarian regimes are due to the historical accident that they were established by groups of blackguards and thugs. Surely, it is argued, if in Germany the creation of a totalitarian regime brought the Streichers and Killingers, the Leys and Heines, the Himmlers and Heydrichs to power, this may prove the viciousness of the German character but not that the rise of such people is the necessary consequence of a totalitarian system. [n.2] Why should it not be possible that the same sort of system, if it be necessary to achieve important ends, be run by decent people for the good of the community as a whole?

We must not deceive ourselves into believing that all good people must be democrats or will necessarily wish to have a share in the government. Many, no doubt, would rather entrust it to somebody whom they think more competent. Although this might be unwise, there is nothing bad or dishonorable in approving a dictatorship of the good. Totalitarianism, we can already hear it argued, is a powerful system alike for good and evil, and the purpose for which it will be used depends entirely on the dictators. And those who think that it is not the system which we need fear, but the danger that it might be run by bad men, might even be tempted to forestall this danger by seeing that it is established in time by good men.

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