>>The obvious problem with it, which also was the source of much of the ridicule that it received from those now-ridiculed elites, was his claim in certain places in the book that social democracy would lead to dictatorship.<<(posted 8751 days ago)But of course Hayek never made this claim, said essentially the exact opposite of this claim, and repeatedly attempted to correct those who sought to undermine his credibility by attributing this claim to him. Hayek sent some rather hot letters to Paul Samuelson for spreading this false notion. Samuelson promised to retract the smear publicly, yet as has so far failed to do so. Samuelson managed to flatter Hayek via correspondence enough so that Hayek pulled back from a threated public exposure of Samuelson's smear of Hayek. The ill-motivated mis- representation of Hayek's position, however, pre-dates Samuelson, and began much earlier. Among those who consistently misrepresented Hayek's views and claims in _The Road to Serfdom_ was John Kenneth Galbraith. Others, too numerous to name, have done the same.
Greg Ransom