… is from pages 181-182 of F.A. Hayek’s 1938 essay “Freedom and the Economic System,” which is reprinted as chapter eight of the 1997 collection, edited by Bruce Caldwell, Socialism and War:
The similarity between many of the characteristic features of the ‘fascist’ and the ‘communist’ regimes becomes steadily more obvious. Nor is it an accident that in the fascist states a socialist is often regarded as a potential recruit while the liberal of the old school is regarded as the arch-enemy.
Adherents of all popular political ideologies other than classical-liberalism and libertarianism assume, explicitly or implicitly, that social order must ultimately be created by the conscious exercise of force by an agency charged with “governing” society. Only classical liberals and libertarians understand not only that this assumption is false both historically and theoretically, but also that acting upon this assumption uncorks a cascade of unintended ill consequences.
