Friedrich Hayek on The Road to Serfdom

“You know, The Road to Serfdom had a great influence on George Orwell, the author of Animal Farm and 1984. In fact, he had reviewed The Road to Serfdom before he wrote these two books. On the whole, I still believe in what I said in that book, although it made me frightfully unpopular among my colleagues, particularly in this country. I was more disliked here in this country than in England! In England, and in Europe generally, people had started to reflect on the dangerous aspects of socialism. Here the New Deal had created a new enthusiasm for planning, and I seemed to be tearing down the finist ideas of the period. I was hated — intensely disliked — for writing The Road to Serfdom. But I gradually regained my reputation.”

“You see, the English had been aware of these problems, you could accuse me of having exaggerated an argument, but it was not a wholly new conception. Some of the more reflective people-well the fact that Orwell, of course, was arguing at the same time, and I no longer believe this, but I did believe at one time that he was directly inspired by my Road to Serfdom, he had written a review of that book, and I thought it had started him, but it's now clear that by that time he already had the draft of Animal Farm ready. So he must have arrived at this general view independently of anything he learned from it. He was not the only one. This was not a completely new idea. It was an idea to which the English public was somewhat prepared.”