Karl Marx and Hayek have this in common: both believe in systems, not in men; both are fatalists; both are callous; both hold that the state is and s… - Herman Finer

To get competition among firms with large capital — how is that possible? Only by setting up competitors who have interesting ideas and good projects and yet may not accumulate the necessary capital before they die. This means that to maintain competition the government planner for free-for-all competition must provide or guarantee credit to would-be competitors. To anybody? If he does not take anybody but chooses his particular people, it would set up a rising howl throughout the land; while if he did not choose among them, there would be a great many failures, and charlatans would run the government into bad debts. If he selected the creditors, by what criterion would he choose? It would have to be a guess that they were good competitive material in some particular line of business. And here Hayek's own planner would have to make distinctions between persons jar particular objects — which he said was against natural law. It is to such absurdity that the insensate attachment to unmitigated bigotry is bound to lead.

Professor Hayek's history is not history. Especially before the nineteenth century, but quite plentifully since the sixteenth century, legislation has more and more replaced the growth of custom as the regulator of morals in society in every sphere. Let Professor Hayek read the history of the English Poor Law, for example, from 1535 onwards. Hayek should remember that even the status of the Churches was and is in both the United States and Great Britain regulated by statute or constitution. In every field of individual and social life legislation embodies morals : marriage, divorce, duty to family, religion, property, theft, libel, slander, contract, business — the list is never-ending. This legislation does not come out of the blue, produced without careful reflection and weighing of choices. Hayek must know that.

On grounds of history; on grounds of logic; on grounds of the misuse of terms; of the abuse of authorities; of the neglect of verified information; of the use of the most infantile fallacy known to logic, viz. post hoc, ergo propter hoc — Hayek's attempt to identify socialism and planning and dictatorship and totalitarianism is not only a failure, it is a snare.