Sinister Rise of the Far Right

Efficiency and equity must walk hand in hand in a society committed to justice and welfare for all, writes Satya Narayan Misra

- Satya Narayan Misra

IN the 1940s, two seminal books - Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944) Land Mises's Human Action (1949) profoundly influenced the economic policy architecture in the USA and the UK by the 1980s.

Hayek was particularly critical of the abandonment of economic freedom when countries like the USSR embraced centralized planning. He considered it inherently undemocratic, as it imposed the will of a minuscule minority on the majority. Mises argued that the free market not only outperforms any government-planned system but ultimately serves as the foundation of civilization itself. Limited government, free markets, and light taxation on the super-rich became the leitmotif of the doctrine of "neoliberalism," practiced by Ronald Reagan and his acolyte Margaret Thatcher, who was an unabashed admirer of Hayek.

The disintegration of the USSR by 1991 prompted Francis Fukuyama to predict the "end of history" in terms of ideological conflict and the triumph of liberal democracy and freedom, which he believed every country would eventually embrace. John Williamson formulated the "Washington Consensus," essentially a celebration of the free market and globalization. Milton Friedman, a protégé of Hayek, went as far as to predict the "end of geography." But Quinn Slobodian, an economic historian at Boston University, in his bracingly original new book Hayek's Bastards, argues that, in the eyes of Hayek's modern supporters, the victory of neoliberalism was not total enough-and this discontent has fuelled the sinister rise of the Far Right, both in academic circles and on the political stage.