Hayek on basic principles of liberalism

There is nothing in the basic principles of liberalism to make it a stationary creed; there are no hard-and-fast rules fixed once and for all.  The fundamental principle that in the ordering of our affairs we should make as much use as possible of the spontaneous forces of society, and resort as little as possible  to coercion, is capable of an infinite variety of applications.  There is, in particular, all the difference between deliberately creating a system within which competition will work as beneficially as possible and passively accepting institutions as they are.  Probably nothing has done so much harm to the liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some liberals on certain rough rules of thumb, above all the principle of laissez faire.  Yet in a sense, this was necessary and unavoidable.  Against the innumerable interests which could show that particular measures would confer immediate and obvious benefits on some, while the harm they caused was much more indirect and difficult to see, nothing short of some hard-and-fast rule would have been effective.  And since a strong presumption in favor of industrial liberty had undoubtedly been established, the temptation to present it as a rule which knew no exception was too strong always to be resisted.

 

But, with this attitude taken by many popularizers of the liberal doctrine, it was almost inevitable that, once there position was penetrated at some points, it should soon collapse as a whole. The position was further weakened by the inevitably slow progress of a policy which aimed at a gradual improvement of the institutional frame work of a free society.  This progress depended on the growth of our understanding of the social forces and the conditions most favorable to their working in a desirable manner.  Since the task was to assist, and where necessary to supplement, their operation, the first requisite was to understand them.  The attitude of the  liberal toward society is like that of the gardener who tends to plant and, in order to create the conditions most favorable to its growth, must know as much as possible about its structure and the way it functions. (The Road to Serfdom p. 17-18)

 

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