Hayek denied that The Road to Serfdom opposed all government intervention

Evidence

In the de cades that followed, Hayek expressed dismay at the prevalence of this interpretation. He repudiated it in his book Law, Legislation and Liberty, inveighed against it in his introduction to the 1976 edition of The Road to Serfdom, and privately wrote Paul Samuelson in 1980 to excoriate him for propounding it in his widely read textbook Foundations of Economic Analysis. This “myth,” he told Samuelson, had “prevented people from taking my argument seriously.” As Hayek repeatedly reminded his interpreters, his book both renounced any claims to inevitability and assailed the “wooden insistence” with which previous generations of liberals had clung to laissezfaire. Like Walter Lippmann’s Inquiry into the Principles of the Good Society before the war, The Road to Serfdom was premised on a belief that one could engage in a vigorous critique of planning without rejecting government intervention altogether. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 229

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader literature on how MPS scholars were misread as dogmatic laissez-faire absolutists; links to Lippmann’s Good Society and the earlier planning debates. — connects to: Hayek’s critique targets epistemic arrogance, not state action per se — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 255; The Road to Serfdom endorsed substantial state welfare and fiscal programs — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 232; Chicago doyens read Hayek’s Road to Serfdom as dogmatic and politically naive — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 90

Broader Connections

• The Road to Serfdom endorsed substantial state welfare and fiscal programs #corroborates (0.95) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 232
• Hayek’s critique targets epistemic arrogance, not state action per se #expands (0.75) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 255