Hayek’s Road to Serfdom was a wartime campaign against socialist scientists in England

Evidence

Both Hayek and Polanyi were looking for ways to defeat the “scientism” and “scientific socialism” which they felt dominated the media and the public intelligentsia, thanks to the well-disposed editorship of Nature and the BBC. … In due course, his Abuse of Reason project laid the groundwork for The Road to Serfdom and prolonged the previous developments of his methodological views. But to a large extent, it amounted to a wartime effort against the left scientists in England who occupied vital positions within the wartime government, continued to influence the general public, and met regularly to discuss their views in the Tots & Quots discussion group. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 80

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader history of the liberal thought collective and Hayek’s Road to Serfdom project discussed elsewhere in this volume. — connects to: Wartime despair over collectivism’s ascendancy animated Hayek’s Road to Serfdom. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 203; The Road to Serfdom’s vagueness enabled its selective partisan misreading — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 234; Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom to convert his Fabian colleagues at the LSE — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 239 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom to convert his Fabian colleagues at the LSE #qualifies (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 239