To discover the meaning of what is called "social justice" has been one of my chief preoccupations for more than 10 years. I have failed in this endeavour or rather, have reached the conclusion that, with reference to society of free men, the phrase has no meaning whatever.

Friedrich August von Hayek

Categorized in : Years Men Justice

The idea of social justice is that the state should treat different people unequally in order to make them equal.

Friedrich August von Hayek

order people ideas

If socialists understood economics, they wouldn't be socialist.

Friedrich August von Hayek

socialist economics politics

Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.

Friedrich August von Hayek

freedom responsibility mean

There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal.

Friedrich August von Hayek

differences liberty people

[Socialistic] economic planning, regulation, and intervention pave the way to totalitarianism by building a power structure that will inevitably be seized by the most power-hungry and unscrupulous.

Friedrich August von Hayek

regulation planning way

What our generation has forgotten is that the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that nobody has complete power over us, that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves.

Friedrich August von Hayek

our-generation mean people

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

Friedrich August von Hayek

design liberty men

Capitalism is not only a better form of organizing human activity than any deliberate design, any attempt to organize it to satisfy particular preferences, to aim at what people regard as beautiful or pleasant order, but it is also the indispensable condition for just keeping that population alive which exists already in the world. I regard the preservation of what is known as the capitalist system, of the system of free markets and the private ownership of the means of production, as an essential condition of the very survival of mankind.

Friedrich August von Hayek

beautiful order mean

Liberty is an opportunity for doing good, but this is only so when it is also an opportunity for doing wrong.

Friedrich August von Hayek

doing-good liberty opportunity

If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.

Friedrich August von Hayek

essentials liberty wish

'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

Friedrich August von Hayek

liberty historical war

Human reason can neither predict nor deliberately shape its own future. Its advances consist in finding out where it has been wrong.

Friedrich August von Hayek

learning integrity knowledge

That democratic socialism, the great utopia of the last few generations, is not only unachievable, but that to strive for it produces something so utterly different that few of those who wish it would be prepared to accept the consequences, many will not believe until the connection has been laid bare in all its aspects.

Friedrich August von Hayek

democratic-socialism wish believe

Few are ready to recognize that the rise of fascism and Nazism was not a reaction against the socialist trends of the preceding period but a necessary outcome of those tendencies.

Friedrich August von Hayek

reactions trends outcomes

The idea that human kind can shape the world according to wish is what I call the fatal conceit

Friedrich August von Hayek

shapes wish ideas

From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.

Friedrich August von Hayek

equality law people

It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program - on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off - than on any positive task.

Friedrich August von Hayek

envy law people

The chief evil is unlimited government, and nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power.

Friedrich August von Hayek

unlimited government evil

Social justice rests on the hate towards those that enjoy a comfortable position, namely, upon envy.

Friedrich August von Hayek

envy hate justice

[T]hose who are willing to surrender their freedom for security have always demanded that if they give up their full freedom it should also be taken from those not prepared to do so.

Friedrich August von Hayek

surrender giving-up taken