Science Advanced Fastest When Individuals Were Given Freedom

Monrovians - Unite!  In the first chapter of The Road to Serfdom, F.A. Hayek discusses the history of freedom and the celebration of the individual - a road he believes Western civilization, and particularly the socialists, have abandoned.  Hayek is a recipient of the Presidential Medical of Freedom, was a pioneer in monetary theory, and co-winner of the Nobel Memorial Price in Economics.

In discussing the history of freedom for individuals, Hayek writes:

Perhaps the greatest result of the unchaining of individual energies was the marvelous growth of science which followed the march of individual liberty from Italy to England and beyond.  [Prior to this time] . . . the few attempts towards a more extended industrial use of mechanical inventions, some extraordinarily advanced, were promptly suppressed, and the desire for knowledge was stifled, so long as the dominant views were held to be binding for all:  the beliefs of the great majority on what was right and proper were allowed to bear the way of the individual innovator.  Only since industrial freedom opened the path to the free use of new knowledge, only since everything could be tried -- if somebody could be found to back it at his own risk -- and, it should be added, as often as not from outside the authorities officially entrusted with the cultivation of learning, has science made the great strides which in the last hundred and fifty years have changed the face of the world.

Hayek notes that "wherever the barriers to the free exercise of ingenuity were removed, man became rapidly able to satisfy ever widening ranges of desire. . . . [a]nd the rising standard soon led to the discovery of very dark spots in society, spots which men were no longer willing to tolerate."

Unbridled freedom, Hayek seems to believe, is the cause of enormous progress in society, but it does have downsides.  One Hundred Fifty Years of unparallelled progress led SOME to oppose ALL government regulations. 

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.

Hayek then explains how it came about that those in favor of little or no government regulation came to be seen primarily as naysayers - what we might call, the party of NO.  (Remember that Hayek was writing fifty years ago):

. . . for immediate improvement [the doctrine of freedom] had to rely largely on the gradual increase of wealth which freedom brought about, it had constantly to fight proposals which threatened this progress.  It came be regarded as a "negative" creed because it could offer to particular individuals little more than a share in the common progress - a progress which came to be taken more and more for granted and was no longer recognized as the result of the policy of freedom.  It might even be said that the very success of [freedom] became the cause of its decline.  Because of the success already achieved, man became increasingly unwilling to tolerate the evils still with him which now appeared both unbearable and unnecessary.

* * *

According to the views now dominant, the question is no longer how we can make the best use of the spontaneous forces found in a free society.  We have in effect undertaken to dispense with the forces which produced unforeseen results and to replace the impersonal and anonymous mechanism of the market by collective and "conscious" direction of all social forces to deliberately chosen goals.

Hayek then describes the crisis created in Western civilization, as follows:

, , , the people of the West continued to import German ideas and were even induced to believe that their own former convictions [regarding freedom] had merely been rationalizations of selfish interests, that free trade was a doctrine invented to further British interests, and that the political ideals of England and America were hopelessly outmoded and a thing to be ashamed of.

 This, suggests Hayek, allowed socialist ideas to gain prominence, ultimately leading to the International Socialists (the communists) and the national socialists (the Nazis). - both of which committed genoicide against their own citizens.  Hayek seems to tie the decline of the doctrine of freedom and free markets to an abandonment of the primacy of the individual, a taking for granted of the material progress that has resulted from freedom and free markets, and the idea that our Founding Principles had become outdated.