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

I agree neither with Marx nor with Hayek. Even when society has become, as Lenin said, one vast office and factory with everybody governing the processes there in operation, there must still be government, for the economic impetus in man is not productive of spontaneous harmony or the continuance of competition without tears. Nor is man without other, deeper society-shaping needs such as justice, humanity, and equality; these can crash the economy, and these can be subverted or not helped by the economy.

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.

Hayek's assumption is that political power is neither limited in scope, restricted in authority, responsible in operation, nor co-operative and decentralized in execution. This assumption is stupid.