Chapter 3: Is Socialism Atavistic?

One of the most striking claims made by Friedrich Hayek, in Law, Legislation and Liberty, along with a set of lectures and papers composed around the same time, is that socialism is “atavistic.”¹ This was undoubtedly a very powerful and effective bit of political rhetoric. One of the central claims associated with Marx’s historical materialism was the view that socialism represented a higher stage of social development than capitalism, and indeed, that the advancement of technology was pressing inexorably in its direction. Even among those who were less than enthusiastic about this anticipated future, there was still a widespread suspicion that it might represent the inevitable trajectory of social change. Thus, Hayek’s suggestion that socialism, far from being a more advanced state of society, was actually a throwback to a more primitive state produced a great deal more cognitive dissonance than it does today, among those of us whose experience of history includes witnessing the collapse of the communist states of Eastern Europe. At the very least, it caused Hayek’s adversaries to sit up and take notice.