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" "Hitler was not a socialist. He was a nationalist and a racialist; and in Mein Kampf himself tells how he designed to use social services and equality for the purpose of the Reich for conquest of the world. The purposes of socialism — equality, prosperity, charity, and international peace — were not the aims of Hitler. He detested all of them. It is irrelevant altogether to quote to us, as Hayek does, a number of obscure economic professors who may have impressed him when he was a student, men who said they were socialists but who characteristically derided Great Britain because she was a nation of merchants, while Germany was a nation of heroes! The writings he refers to were written in the course of World War I and were war polemics.
Herman Finer (February 24, 1898 – March 4, 1969) was a Jewish Romanian-born British political scientist and Fabian socialist.
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Government is the instrument for the exchange of one kind of benefit among persons and groups for others; the exchange of some freedoms for others. Government results from the demand for rights by persons and groups; they can be free of government as soon as they reduce their demand for rights and benefits. In the present state of science and technology, and given the tradition of a high standard of living, this cannot happen.
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Hayek cannot see how, in a planned state, groups can settle their differences over the course to be followed when, the state is to undertake various business projects. He pretends that in this case it is necessary to leave it to "the discretion of the judge or authority in question" to decide what is "fair and reasonable." This again is hypothetical. The solution depends on how the law of the plan is constructed, and the ability and state of mind of the negotiators in parliament, in the courts, and in regulatory bodies such as the Tariff Commission, the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are solving problems and building up important experience. But principally it depends on nationwide debate conducted over the course of years, assisted by the sifted results of scientific research and experience. The plan, such as it is, emerges from the majority; and only that emerges from the majority which the majority can thereafter operate. That is the answer to Hayekian obscurantism.