{"id":591913,"date":"2026-04-27T03:50:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T03:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/?p=591913"},"modified":"2026-04-27T03:50:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T03:50:00","slug":"hayek-orwell-and-the-end-of-truth-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/?p=591913","title":{"rendered":"Hayek, Orwell, And ‘The End Of Truth’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hayek, Orwell, And ‘The End Of Truth’<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Jonathan Miltimore via Civitas Institute<\/a>,<\/em><\/p>\n

In 1942, after fighting in the Spanish Civil War (1936\u20131937), a disillusioned writer returned to London to write about his experience. <\/strong>It wasn\u2019t just that the fascists in Spain had won and his side\u2014a small, anti-Stalinist Marxist group\u2014had lost. What frightened him was the ease with which truth itself had been erased and replaced by propaganda.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed.<\/strong> I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories … and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened<\/strong>.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The writer was George Orwell, and the quote appears in his book \u201cLooking Back on the Spanish Civil War<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The disconnect between reality and narrative clearly made an impression on Orwell, who worried that \u201cthe very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world.\u201d<\/strong> The theme of falsified history and the destruction of truth would resurface in his fictional masterpiece \u201cNineteen Eighty\u2011Four,\u201d where \u201cmemory holes\u201d swallowed inconvenient facts and the past was rewritten to suit the Party\u2019s needs.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Orwell\u2019s book would go on to sell 25 million copies worldwide, and he is today remembered as a prophet for foreseeing a future in which the state\u2019s deliberate power could extinguish truth itself.<\/p>\n

Yet few today remember that five years before the publication of \u201cNineteen Eighty\u2011Four<\/a>,\u201d an Austrian economist, in his own magnum opus, explored how the state destroys truth.<\/p>\n

Management of Minds<\/h2>\n

Unlike George Orwell, Friedrich Hayek (1899\u20131992) is not a household name, but his 1944 classic \u201cThe Road to Serfdom\u201d made him one of the twentieth century\u2019s most influential thinkers\u2014despite the book\u2019s inauspicious beginning.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Originally a memo penned at the London School of Economics, \u201cThe Road to Serfdom\u201d was rejected by three publishers before finding a home with Routledge. The first run\u20142,000 copies\u2014sold out in 10 days. Hayek\u2019s book went on to sell more than two million copies and be translated into over twenty languages. Its core argument was straightforward: central planning, however well-intentioned, erodes individual freedom and sets society on a path toward serfdom.<\/p>\n

What is often overlooked is Hayek\u2019s deeper insight. Economic control does not remain confined to the economy. Once the state directs production and prices, it inevitably reaches into thought, expression, and belief. For Hayek, the danger of socialism was not only material impoverishment\u2014as seen in the USSR\u2014but the steady expansion of intellectual control.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201c… It is not enough that everybody should be forced to work for the same ends,\u201d Hayek wrote. \u201cIt is essential that people should come to regard them as their own ends.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Hayek was warning that once the state begins to manage prices and production, it will soon find it necessary to manage minds. When a government takes control over economic life, it must \u201cjustify its decisions to the people\u201d and \u201cmake people believe that they are the right decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

In doing so, it inevitably begins to decide which opinions and values align with its plan\u2014rewarding and amplifying voices that comply while punishing, suppressing, and silencing those that do not.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018The End of Truth\u2019<\/h2>\n

The quotes above appear in Chapter 11 of \u201cSerfdom,\u201d aptly titled \u201cThe End of Truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I first read the book twenty years ago, the chapter didn\u2019t stand out to me. Today it does. After all, we recently lived through a period in which the phenomenon Hayek described played out before our eyes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The COVID-19 pandemic was a vast economic experiment. The federal government issued a wide array of public health \u201crecommendations\u201d that soon became dogmas. To question the efficacy of masks or social distancing\u2014a policy we learned in 2024<\/a> had no basis in science\u2014was to risk being censored or accused of spreading \u201cmisinformation.\u201d Scientific debate gave way to official decree, and many who questioned<\/a> \u201cthe plan\u201d or resisted it<\/a> lost their jobs or were booted from platforms.<\/p>\n

None of this would have surprised Hayek, who warned that the plans constructed by central planners must be \u201csacrosanct and exempt from criticism.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIf the people are to support the common effort without hesitation, they must be convinced that not only the end aimed at but also the means chosen are the right ones,\u201d he wrote. \u201cPublic criticism or even expressions of doubts must be suppressed because they tend to weaken public support.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Hayek\u2019s chapter is not primarily about censorship. Instead, he argues that the rise of state power will systematically undermine the concept of truth itself and the human pursuit of it.<\/p>\n

As governments assert control over economic and social life, facts and evidence are subordinated to political goals\u2014an idea Orwell illustrated vividly when the Party refused to accept Winston Smith\u2019s claim that two plus two equals four.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018Sometimes, Winston…\u2019<\/h2>\n

The phenomenon Orwell described was not moral relativism but factual relativism. It was a theme Hayek also addressed. The Austrian economist noted that in totalitarian systems, even basic facts\u2014including mathematics\u2014become subservient to state dogma. He reminded readers that in the USSR and Nazi Germany, ideology had consumed even the sciences. There was \u201cGerman Physics\u201d and a \u201cMarxist-Leninist theory in surgery.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is entirely in keeping with the whole spirit of totalitarianism that it condemns any human activity done for its own sake and without ulterior purpose,\u201d he wrote. \u201cScience for science\u2019s sake, art for art\u2019s sake, are equally abhorrent to the Nazis, our socialist intellectuals, and the communists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hayek observed that as the state\u2019s power grows, the sciences become corrupted. Instead of advancing truth, they become tools in the hands of planners.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOnce science has to serve, not truth, but the interest of a class, a community, or a state,\u201d he wrote, \u201cthe sole task of argument and discussion is to vindicate and to spread still further the beliefs by which the whole life of the community is directed.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Hayek said the phenomenon he described was most pronounced in dictatorships, but he added that it was not \u201cpeculiar to totalitarianism.\u201d Even in free societies, he warned, \u201cthe most intelligent and independent people cannot entirely escape [the] influence\u201d of state propaganda. His point was unsettling: susceptibility to propaganda is not limited to the gullible or uninformed\u2014propaganda ensnares the thoughtful and educated as well.<\/p>\n

The erosion of truth becomes apparent through a decay in language. Words like \u201cfreedom,\u201d \u201cright,\u201d \u201cequality,\u201d and \u201cjustice\u201d lose their meaning. Eventually, the word \u201ctruth\u201d itself \u201cceases to have its old meaning.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIt describes no longer something to be found,\u201d Hayek wrote, \u201cit becomes something to be laid down by authority\u2014something which has to be believed in the interest of unity of the organized effort, and which may have to be altered as the exigencies of this organized effort require it<\/strong>.\u201d (emphasis added)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

All of this sounds familiar to readers of \u201cNineteen Eighty-Four,\u201d who see Winston Smith struggling to hold onto objective truth in a world where truth is dictated by power. Surely two plus two equals four, he pleads.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cSometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five,\u201d <\/strong>he is told in the Ministry of Love. \u201cSometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u2018The Tragedy of Collectivist Thought\u2019<\/h2>\n

Orwell was a master, and \u201cNineteen Eighty-Four\u201d is a masterpiece. But Hayek was describing Orwellianism several years before Orwell gave it fictional form. (It\u2019s also worth noting that G.K. Chesterton used the \u201ctwo plus two equals four\u201d blasphemy metaphor<\/a> nearly a half-century before Orwell.)<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t diminish Orwell\u2019s work. On the contrary, it shows how powerfully he dramatized ideas that Hayek had already diagnosed in theory. (Orwell, it should be noted, read \u201cThe Road to Serfdom\u201d and enjoyed it, with caveats<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Still, Hayek deserves credit for superbly articulating\u2014in one chapter!\u2014the phenomenon that Orwell would translate into a terrifying warning, one that millions of junior high and high school students would receive in English courses.<\/p>\n

The economist Daniel Klein recently called<\/a> \u201cThe End of Truth\u201d the most important chapter in Hayek\u2019s most important work. I couldn\u2019t agree more. The chapter serves as a reminder that the human mind is not something to be controlled but something to be unleashed. If we forget this simple lesson, we risk surrendering the very capacity for independent thought that sustains civilization.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tragedy of collectivist thought,\u201d he noted, \u201cis that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nSun, 04\/26\/2026 – 23:50<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hayek, Orwell, And ‘The End Of Truth’ Authored by Jonathan Miltimore via Civitas Institute, In 1942, after fighting in the Spanish Civil War (1936\u20131937), a disillusioned writer returned to London to write about his experience. It wasn\u2019t just that the fascists in Spain had won and his side\u2014a small, anti-Stalinist Marxist group\u2014had lost. What frightened… Continue reading Hayek, Orwell, And ‘The End Of Truth’<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":591905,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[20,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-591913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economic-empowerment","category-national-security","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=591913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/591905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=591913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=591913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=591913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}