Japanese

Hayek's liberalism

Does liberalism exist in Japan?

I have not learned what kind of thought liberalism is, in school. Moreover, I lived about half-century and I have never met a liberalist (also including books). Therefore, I know nothing about liberalism now.

However, I recently read the digest version (Reader's Digest) of the book "The Road to Serfdom" Friedrich A. Hayek, and I was very impressed by it. In fact, I tried to read Japanese translation of this book before (not digest version). But I could not read throughout it, I could only read one third of the book. I could not understand at all. Probably because I did not know about a liberal concept, I felt distance of consciousness from it.

However, now, I could understand the part and I thought that I want to tell many people what I got to know. Therefore, this site was started.

First, I want to try to inquire what kind of thought Hayek's liberalism is, by investigating the digest version. And I want to try to announce how I understand it and how I am impressed.

I do not know whether I am a liberalist. Moreover, I cannot get answer whether I should become a liberalist, either. Because I don't know liberalism well.

But, whether I am or not, I will keep the freedom that Hayek showed in this book, and that Hayek himself tried to keep.

The concept of Liberalism

How I understand Hayek's Liberalism.

The road to serfdom

In medieval times, many people belonged to the class called a serf. The land and tool which they cultivate for, and the harvest which they made belonged to the feudal lord. People acquired freedom by moving and changing the thing which the feudal lord owned into the self thing to own.

In modern times, the thought, "When a state managed all resources, the people could be equal and they all could become happy" became overwhelming. However, in the country which realized the thought, people have relapsed into a serf's class by moving individual property to the state side.

The foundation of free society

When you are going to go to a market store on shopping, you have not necessarily decided all you are going to buy. Sometimes you may buy completely different thing, or return without buying at all. Moreover, probably, it will be more common to decide a design, a color, etc. go there, though most things which should be bought are decided. Moreover, in some case, you may go to a market store without having decided what you are to buy, but in order to discover what is helpful to yourself.

As a matter of fact, we go to a market, trying to buy the best opportunity in our own future. Not only all things but our job, education, a travel, amusement, they all are altogether thrown in the market in free society. We have chosen what could obtain the best opportunity for ourselves out of all choices using the money which we have. The idea "Gain your own opportunity which you want, by your power and your intention" have formed the foundation of the "freedom" in liberal society. Since socialism denies private property and a market, it cannot offer this freedom.

Free society is rich

Although we think that we go to a market to consume money, as a matter of fact, we notice that we are trying to find out the most effective use of the money which we have. That is, we notice that we are going to act so that the money which we have may work most effectively for us.

In fact, we are acting for ourselves to get the greatest opportunity finally, with the method of profitable, weighing the frame to pay and the value acquired by it on a scale so that we may make wealth like an entrepreneur get the maximum gain from the difference of the selling price and the input price.

Therefore, in fact, the action they think to be consumption is that of making the greatest wealth profitability for an individual himself. In fact in this liberal society, all the individuals in connection with a market are doing the act which produces wealth. Such the world can be rich, can't it? If we shall investigate how, finding out the society which produces such wealth otherwise will be never being able to find.

The free market in this meaning is not that someone was able to make by the plan, or by the prediction. That survives now, and exists, through the sieve of the law of selection evolution that have been working very long years, and the more suitable thing survive, among all actions of many people's "want to obtain the best opportunity for oneself".

This free market exists very commonly (naturally) as a system very ordinary in our world, and as a system which employs us efficiently most. Therefore, compulsorily, the society which denies this free market takes people to the primitive world before a free market appears.

Present time, the way to socialism is paved secretly.

The heavy progressive tax is a socialist policy, though it may look moderately, by which a socialist might finally attain his purpose. Please think well. If people despise the riche men completely, the opportunity for them to become a large rich man with future will be vanished. Soon, people will even notice that it is an absurdly difficult to become a small rich man.

If you tries to perform the big work which you desire, money suitable for it will be required. Even if it was probably a small park like a Kenjyu's woody park(in fairy tale of Miyazawa Kenji), it was never being able to make if he was not the landowner's son.

Socialism calls totalitarianism

In countries like socialist's, where an individual cannot have surplus money, if people try to work by stepping toward an everyday life, they must get a budget.

Then, you may see people's violent struggle to get political power first. The great portion of daily news reports a political situation of the nation, and all people come to have an extraordinary interest in politics every day. It is because a political tendency determines the direction of a budget and it determines whether one is in the position which can perform good work. Moreover, the job of the government official, who promised the budget, becomes an occupation which people envy from the start.

Next, there occurs the motion that people are going to make the national purpose assimilate the purpose that he lives. Since merely serving the public only becomes an excuse by which one get more budgets, people set it as the purpose of their whole life to serve a state, and newspapers and teachers admire it. These form the foundation of totalitarianism.

Socialism calls war

Furthermore, socialism denies the free market which produces wealth, the nation toward socialism will bring about a rapid decline of economy. The wealth is no longer obtained but by taking other wealth or taking other resources and lands. It will call war from which the planned society can achieve success most efficiently. Are the countries which aim at the direction of socialism take the war regime which esteems a military man most entirely? This fact is clear from all examples

Through such a way, socialism calls war.

The work which the planned society can do most elatedly is "war" surely.

From the cradle to the grave

"From the cradle to the grave" was a slogan of the socialist advertised very much in Germany.

The idea of a political party which embraces all activities of the individual from the cradle to the grave, which claims to guide his views on everything, was first put into practice by the socialists. Hayek - The Road to Serfdom p.43(condenced version)

However, the place where people reached at last was a graveyard called "the Battlefield".

Socialists cannot offer the Land they promise.

Thus socialist aims and programmes are factually impossible to achieve or execute; and they also happen, into the bargain as it were, to be logically impossible. Hayek - The Fatal Conceit(The Errors of Socialism) p.7


November 1,2008

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