Sunday, May 1, 2011

Extra Extra! This just in Hayek thinks that Socialism and Liberalism are completely different entities.

Believe it or not this seems to be news to me.

Granted that I’ve only taken a few courses in political science and only one of which would fall into the category of political theory, but typically I’ve noted a trend of many people tying these two ideologies together even though they are very different. I have heard of the analogy that Hayek tries to debunk numerous times (the one about a the whole….”imagine a line, this line is a spectrum of political identity. You have Conservatism on the far right and then you have liberalism on the center left and socialism on the far left.”) I lived how Hayek defines each of these positions then notes that a more correct analogy would be that of a triangle “with the conservatives occupying one corner, with the socialists pulling toward the second and the liberals toward the third.” (p. 389)

I thought it was interesting he noted that in a sense Socialism can be considered to be closer to Conservatism than Liberalism. This idea at first sounds outlandish and any political T.V. pundit would argue against it in a heartbeat. Hayek though, finds points to back up this argument. For instance his point about how reformed Socialists typically end up favoring Conservatism rather than Liberalism. This is something that I have notice among those who have made that change. He notes that Conservatives favor authority in order to have liberty and Socialists who favor authority to constrict it.

Like I have noted in this post this idea is very new to me, and I find it more surprising than the title of the chapter. :-)

See you all this Thursday now it’s off to getting ready for some finals.

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