Frank Knight on The Constitution of Liberty

“The reason why Hayek in his pretentiously detailed history does not mention such crucial matters as church power, the "Reformation," and religious toleration leading to the primary freedom, that of the mind for thought and expression—and especially the growth of representative government—is clear to any attentive reader. He is scornful of politically organized freedom.”

“Obviously, in exchange and other formally free relations, great inequality of power—which is the only issue, whatever the form—gives the stronger party some control over the weaker and may mean his helplessness. But for Hayek, even that does not prove coercion. He does not note that inequality tends to grow, especially economic; for one who at a moment possesses more wealth is in a better position to acquire still more. And free inheritance continues the tendency over generations. The facts have forced preventive or offsetting social action on a vast scale. The tendency is not disproved, as has sometimes been alleged, by the modern rough statistical constancy of the ratios between larger and smaller incomes. If all have grown at about the same rate, the differences grow at that rate, and it is differences not ratios that are felt, since they determine what the richer families can do and the poorer cannot.”

“The supreme absurdity in Hayek's book is reached in his discussion of opportunity and particularly equality of opportunity (especially pp. 90 ff.). True, it was absurd of Commons and Dewey to spread an ideology that identified freedom with power (if they did); but it is also absurd for Hayek to ignore the close connection between the two. Freedom, correctly conceived, implies opportunity, unobstructed opportunity, to use power, which must be possessed, to give content to freedom, or make it effective. It is a common fallacy to demand power under the name of freedom, and usage badly needs the expression "effective freedom" to take account of power and of knowledge and other dimensions in the scope of voluntary action. The social problem of freedom centers in power and its use in relations among persons and between them and society or its agents. The definition of freedom formally as the opposite (or absence?) of coercion, including fraud (p. 149), does not mention persuasion—a highly important form of power over others that is very unequal and is recognized in law as "duress." Nor does Hayek recognize that unequal power over things confers power over persons, or that the main general problem of freedom is unequal power, practically covering significant human inequality; nor, again, that freedom and power pertain to free beings, that mechanisms neither coerce nor are coerced.”