Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom to convert his Fabian colleagues at the LSE

Evidence

Hayek, who taught at the Fabian-founded London School of Economics, reflected that his Fabian colleague Harold Laski was ‘frightfully offended’ by The Road to Serfdom, which he believed was written specifically against him. Laski was not entirely mistaken. Hayek wrote the book with one clear purpose, he recalled later: to persuade his ‘Fabian colleagues that they were wrong’. In the book itself, he criticised the imperialism of the Fabians, arguing that their enthusiasm for planning went along with a veneration of large states and a ‘glorification of power’ that was akin to that of the Nazis. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 239

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: that The Road to Serfdom’s famous anti-planning argument was an intramural quarrel among LSE colleagues — an origin story that reframes the canonical text of the neoliberal canon as a Cambridge/Fabian family dispute.
• XREF: connects to: Fabian commitment to openness let a reactionary economics take root at the LSE — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 52; Wartime despair over collectivism’s ascendancy animated Hayek’s Road to Serfdom. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 203; Hayek deliberately copied Fabian gradualism to advance free-market ideas — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 261 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Hayek was not a prominent figure at LSE, Robbins and Plant dominated #complicates (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 455
• Statism is intrinsic to Labour socialism from its Fabian origins, not an accident. #responds-to (0.78)
• Statism without popular mobilization is intrinsic to Labour’s Fabian heritage #responds-to (0.78)