The Real Road to Serfdom: How Hayek’s Disciples Built the System He Feared
Nearly a century after Friedrich Hayek published The Road to Serfdom, his work remains a touchstone for those who see government intervention as the root of all economic evil. But rather than heeding his warnings, his most ardent followers have inverted them, justifying an authoritarian economic order that serves only the ruling class. In yesterday’s article, I detailed how corporate landlords, private equity firms, and the financial sector have engineered the housing crisis to their own benefit, ensuring that working-class people remain in a state of permanent rentership. But this crisis—the erosion of homeownership, the merger of corporate and state power, and the economic subjugation of the working class—didn’t arise in a vacuum. It was decades in the making, built on a foundation of neoliberal ideology that took Hayek’s warnings about state control and repurposed them to legitimise corporate control. The irony is as deep as it is insidious: the very economic serfdom that Hayek feared has come to pass, not through socialist central planning, but through the relentless expansion of market forces that he championed.
Hayek’s primary argument in The Road to Serfdom was that central economic planning inevitably leads to totalitarianism. He warned that any expansion of the welfare state or state intervention in markets would create a slippery slope, where bureaucrats would accumulate unchecked power, stripping away individual freedoms. The solution, in his view, was unregulated markets and minimal state interference. But nearly a hundred years later, we are living in an economic system that has achieved precisely what he claimed to oppose—only instead of a government apparatus controlling the economy, it is a handful of financial institutions, corporate landlords, and investment firms that dictate the material conditions of millions. Private capital has become the unaccountable, unelected force that governs lives, determining who can own a home, who can access credit, and who is allowed economic stability.
This inversion of Hayek’s argument hasn’t happened in isolation. It has been reinforced by decades of right-wing propaganda, particularly in the United States, where neoliberalism has been framed as synonymous with freedom. Enter Glenn Beck, one of Hayek’s most vocal modern disciples, who has twisted The Road to Serfdom into a reactionary conspiracy theory. Beck has built a media empire on the claim that global elites—corporations, governments, and international institutions—are conspiring to impose “corporate socialism,” a dystopian hybrid of capitalism and communism that allegedly seeks to control every aspect of human life. His books on The Great Reset argue that multinational corporations and leftist governments are working together to destroy individual liberty, using crises like climate change and pandemics as pretexts for economic control. But Beck’s argument is fundamentally incoherent: he simultaneously blames capitalism and socialism for the same phenomenon, never acknowledging that what he describes is simply capitalism functioning as designed. His framing serves only to divert attention from the actual mechanisms of economic control, leading his audience down reactionary rabbit holes that obscure the true nature of power.
The reality is that Hayek’s followers—especially those who champion unfettered capitalism whilst railing against supposed socialist overreach—have spent decades implementing policies that ensure precisely the kind of economic coercion he claimed to oppose. Neoliberalism has hollowed out social safety nets, empowered monopolies, and handed control of essential services to private capital, all whilst presenting itself as the antidote to tyranny. But what is modern capitalism if not an authoritarian system, where corporations wield unchecked power, where financial institutions dictate economic conditions, and where the majority live in permanent precarity? The serfdom that Hayek warned of has arrived, but it wasn’t central planners who built it—it was the market fundamentalists who worshipped him. Today’s article will explore how Hayek’s legacy has been twisted into a justification for corporate rule, how Beck’s fearmongering about the Great Reset distracts from the real consolidation of economic power, and how the true road to serfdom was paved not by socialist bureaucrats, but by rent-seeking capitalists.
Hayek’s Premise: The ‘Dangers’ of Collectivism
Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom was built on a singular conviction: that any attempt at state economic planning, no matter how well-intentioned, would inevitably lead to totalitarian control. He argued that even modest state intervention in markets—be it welfare policies, labour protections, or public ownership—would place too much power in the hands of bureaucrats, leading society down a slippery slope to authoritarianism. In Hayek’s view, the only safeguard against this creeping tyranny was the unregulated market, where economic decisions were made by individuals rather than central planners. To him, the rise of socialism, or even Keynesian economic policies, was a step toward an oppressive system in which individual freedom would be crushed under state control.
Written in 1944, The Road to Serfdom was very much a product of its time. Hayek was responding to the global shift toward economic planning, spurred on by the Great Depression and the Second World War. Governments across Europe and North America had expanded their roles in economic life, creating welfare states, regulating industries, and in some cases, experimenting with socialist policies. The Soviet Union’s rapid industrialisation and the post-war push for social democracy in Britain terrified Hayek, who believed that any form of collectivist planning, regardless of intent, would end in political oppression. But his arguments were shaped more by ideological paranoia than economic reality. The post-war boom, which saw the greatest expansion of wealth and economic security for the working class in modern history, happened precisely because of the kinds of state interventions he railed against. Social democratic policies—progressive taxation, strong labour protections, and public investment in housing, healthcare, and education—created decades of relative prosperity in the West. If anything, it was neoliberalism, Hayek’s preferred model of deregulation and free markets, that ushered in economic instability and rising inequality.
The fundamental contradiction in Hayek’s argument is that he saw power as dangerous only when wielded by the state, but ignored how markets themselves produce concentrations of power that are just as coercive. He warned that bureaucrats would control people’s economic lives, yet he failed to see that corporate monopolies and financial institutions could do the same, but with even less accountability. In Hayek’s world, an unelected government planner setting production targets was tyranny, but a landlord consortium raising rents beyond affordability was merely the market at work. He feared that state intervention would strip individuals of their agency, yet he championed a system where billionaires and corporate executives hold unchecked influence over wages, prices, housing, and essential services. Hayek’s vision of freedom was, in reality, freedom for capital, not for people. What he failed to grasp—or perhaps refused to acknowledge—is that economic power, whether held by the state or private capital, always carries the potential for coercion. The serfdom he feared was not imposed by socialist central planners, but by the same capitalist oligarchs he spent his life defending.
The Inversion: How Neoliberals Built the Very System Hayek Feared
Hayek warned of a world where a bureaucratic elite would centrally plan the economy, stripping individuals of their autonomy and forcing them into servitude under an unaccountable state. But in the century since The Road to Serfdom was published, it is not socialist bureaucrats who have taken control of economic life—it is private monopolies, the very institutions that Hayek and his disciples insisted were the guarantors of freedom. Today, corporations like BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street effectively dictate financial markets, controlling vast swathes of the global economy through their ownership of nearly every major industry. Tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Meta dominate commerce, information, and social infrastructure, deciding what businesses thrive or fail and who is allowed to participate in the digital economy. Walmart and a handful of agribusiness giants set the terms for food supply chains, whilst just four companies control the meat industry in the United States, dictating prices and squeezing out independent farmers. These are not free markets—they are controlled economies, run by corporate central planners who operate with even less transparency and accountability than any state bureaucracy Hayek feared.
Under neoliberal capitalism, economic coercion has not been abolished—it has merely shifted from the hands of the state to private capital. The serfdom Hayek warned about has become a reality, but not because of government overreach. Instead, it has been delivered by the financial institutions, landlords, and corporations that govern people’s material conditions. Individuals are not beholden to state planners deciding their livelihoods, but to gig economy algorithms that determine whether they get work, to corporate landlords who raise rents beyond affordability, and to financial institutions that can destroy their lives with a single credit decision. Hayek’s libertarian vision promised a world in which economic choices were freely made, but in practice, neoliberalism has created a world where individuals have no real choice at all—only the illusion of it, dictated by forces they cannot see and cannot challenge.
The greatest irony is that the policies inspired by Hayek’s philosophy—privatisation, deregulation, and the dismantling of social safety nets—have created a system where economic freedom exists only for those who already have wealth. Public services have been stripped away, leaving essential goods and infrastructure in the hands of corporations that operate purely for profit. Social housing has been gutted, forcing millions into the rental market controlled by Wall Street landlords. Healthcare has been financialised, trapping people in debt to access basic medical care. Even water, energy, and transportation have been sold off to private entities that extract wealth from the very people who depend on these services. Hayek feared that state planning would lead to a system where the many were ruled by the few, yet the world neoliberalism built has done exactly that—only now, it is corporate executives, not government bureaucrats, who dictate the terms of economic life. The real road to serfdom was not paved by socialist central planners, but by the capitalists who insisted that markets alone would set us free.
Glenn Beck and the Manufactured Crisis of ‘Corporate Socialism’
Glenn Beck has built his career on a reactionary interpretation of Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, positioning himself as one of its most vocal modern champions. But rather than applying Hayek’s ideas in any coherent way, Beck has repurposed them into a sprawling, contradictory conspiracy theory that simultaneously blames capitalism and socialism for the same phenomenon. To Beck, Hayek’s warnings about state control are not just relevant in a general economic sense—they are supposedly playing out right now, as shadowy elites conspire to impose what he calls “corporate socialism.” He claims that a coordinated global effort is underway, led by multinational corporations, progressive politicians, and international organisations, all working to eliminate individual freedoms through economic control. But in reality, Beck’s rhetoric serves only to obscure the very real capitalist mechanisms that are stripping people of their autonomy.
This manufactured crisis is best exemplified in Beck’s books The Great Reset: Joe Biden and the Rise of Twenty-First-Century Fascism (2022) and Dark Future (2023), where he argues that the World Economic Forum (WEF), major corporations, and governments are colluding to enforce a dystopian new world order. According to Beck, the Great Reset—a WEF initiative focused on post-pandemic economic restructuring—is actually a plan to destroy free-market capitalism and replace it with a socialist-style planned economy. He paints a picture of an impending future in which digital currencies, environmental policies, and AI-powered surveillance will strip individuals of property rights and force them into complete economic dependence on the state and corporate oligarchs. This framing conveniently allows Beck to cast neoliberal capitalism and leftist economic policies as part of the same supposed conspiracy, treating all forms of economic centralisation as the enemy whilst ignoring the fact that market deregulation—the very ideology he supports—is what enables corporate power to grow unchecked.
The contradictions in Beck’s narrative are glaring. He insists that the world is being taken over by “corporate socialism,” yet the very corporations he cites—BlackRock, Vanguard, and multinational banks—are not socialist entities; they are profit-driven firms operating within a global capitalist framework. He portrays Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) policies as an instrument of leftist coercion, ignoring the fact that ESG initiatives are designed to serve investor interests, not the working class. In Beck’s world, any form of corporate influence on governance is proof of a socialist conspiracy, even when those same corporations are amassing record profits and exploiting the exact neoliberal structures he claims to defend.
Perhaps most absurdly, Beck invokes Hayek’s fears of economic centralisation whilst ignoring the role that private monopolies play in engineering precisely that condition. Hayek’s concerns were about state overreach, yet Beck repackages them to paint a picture where both the state and corporations are conspiring together to impose collectivist rule—ignoring the fact that corporate monopolies function as private central planners, dictating economic life with no democratic oversight. By casting both capitalism and socialism as threats, Beck leads his audience away from any meaningful critique of neoliberalism, instead funnelling them into reactionary paranoia. His narrative serves not as a genuine analysis of economic power, but as a smokescreen—one that ultimately protects the very corporate interests he claims to oppose.
The True Road to Serfdom: Neoliberal Feudalism
The modern working class no longer owns homes, land, or even the full value of their own labour—they rent everything. From the corporate landlords who extract wealth from housing, to tech firms that control access to work, to financial institutions that dictate the terms of survival, the structures of ownership and economic power have been fully enclosed. What was once framed as the free market has, in reality, become a vast system of rent-seeking, where ordinary people are locked into permanent financial dependence. The serfdom Hayek feared has arrived, but it has not come from socialist central planners—it has been delivered by capitalists who have turned every necessity into an instrument of profit extraction.
The merger of corporations and the state is now undeniable, but it is not the command economy Hayek warned of—it is a system in which private capital dictates policy through lobbying, campaign financing, and regulatory capture. The largest firms, from BlackRock and Vanguard to Amazon and JPMorgan, exert more influence over economic life than elected governments. They shape labour laws, influence monetary policy, and control the housing market through institutional ownership. Instead of state bureaucrats setting economic conditions, it is hedge fund managers and corporate executives, unelected and unaccountable to the public, who dictate who has access to stability and who is forced into precarity. Far from preventing tyranny, neoliberalism has merely privatised it, allowing wealth to concentrate in the hands of the few while maintaining the illusion of democratic choice.
Hayek’s vision of market freedom was always a fantasy. He argued that capitalism would prevent coercion, that a free market would ensure individual autonomy. But in reality, capitalism has replaced government coercion with private economic coercion, where billionaires set the conditions of life for the vast majority. The market does not provide real choices—it offers only the illusion of choice, as monopolies consolidate power and entire industries function as cartels. Workers do not negotiate freely; they accept whatever terms are dictated to them by employers who know there is no alternative. Tenants do not choose where to live; they are trapped within an engineered housing crisis that ensures they will always be paying more than they can afford. Consumers do not shape the market; they are held captive by corporations that control supply chains, pricing, and availability.
The road to serfdom was not paved by socialist bureaucrats imposing collectivist rule. It was built by neoliberals who stripped away regulations, gutted social protections, and handed economic power to a financial aristocracy. The state has not withered away as libertarians imagined—it has been repurposed as an instrument of corporate rule, enforcing property rights and debt collection while abandoning any pretence of serving the public good. This is the true road to serfdom: a world where the working class remains permanently locked out of ownership, bound not by government decree, but by the invisible chains of capital.
Breaking the Cycle: Reclaiming Freedom from Capitalism
The road to serfdom can be reversed, but not through the market-driven solutions Hayek and his followers prescribed. The only way to break free from this system of economic servitude is to dismantle the structures that allow capital to rule over people’s lives. That means rejecting the false promises of neoliberalism, reclaiming public ownership of essential goods and services, and rebuilding worker power from the ground up. The system we live under was not inevitable—it was built through policy choices that prioritised capital over people. And just as it was built, it can be dismantled.
Reclaiming public ownership is the first and most necessary step. For decades, neoliberalism has told us that privatisation is the path to efficiency, that markets will provide, that the state should step back and let capital do its work. The result has been an economic order where housing is controlled by private equity firms, healthcare is a financialised commodity, and banking is a system of wealth extraction rather than a public good. None of these things should be profit-driven enterprises. Housing should be a right, not an asset class. Healthcare should exist to serve human needs, not to generate dividends. Banks should facilitate productive economic activity, not function as a cartel extracting wealth from the working class. Public ownership is not a relic of the past—it is the only way to ensure that essential services operate in the interest of the people, rather than for the accumulation of private capital.
At the same time, worker power must be rebuilt. Hayek and his disciples have framed freedom as the absence of state interference, but real economic freedom comes from control over one’s labour and economic future. That means strengthening unions, expanding cooperative ownership, and replacing the top-down corporate model with workplace democracy. The gig economy and the casualisation of work are not natural evolutions of the labour market—they are deliberate strategies to strip workers of bargaining power. The only way to counteract this is through organised labour and collective control over the workplace. Workers must have a say in the conditions of their labour, in how wealth is distributed, and in the decisions that affect their economic lives.
This requires a fundamental rejection of neoliberal propaganda. For decades, Hayek’s ideas have functioned as an ideological weapon to justify economic coercion, convincing people that the greatest threat to freedom is government intervention rather than corporate power. But the evidence is clear: neoliberalism has not liberated the individual, it has subjected them to a new kind of tyranny—one where economic life is dictated by unaccountable financial institutions, where basic needs are contingent on market forces, and where property rights are sacrosanct while human rights are optional. To break the cycle, we must unlearn the myths of the free market and recognise that true freedom does not come from deregulation—it comes from dismantling the systems of private capital that keep us in economic subjugation. The path forward is not a return to the failed promises of neoliberalism, but a reinvention of society itself, where economic power is held collectively, rather than concentrated in the hands of the few.
Final thoughts …
Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom as a warning against state overreach, fearing that government intervention in the economy would lead to an unaccountable ruling class with unchecked control over people’s lives. But in practice, his ideas have enabled precisely the kind of economic tyranny he feared—only it isn’t socialist bureaucrats who are running the show. It is corporate monopolies, financial institutions, and rent-seeking capitalists who have taken control, dictating the conditions of life for the vast majority while remaining insulated from any democratic accountability. Hayek’s legacy, far from protecting individual liberty, has been weaponised to justify the dismantling of public goods, the destruction of worker power, and the consolidation of economic life into the hands of a few. Neoliberalism, the economic doctrine built in his image, has not liberated people—it has transformed them into permanent tenants, debtors, and precarious workers in a system designed to serve capital, not humanity.
Meanwhile, Glenn Beck and his ilk have spent years peddling paranoia, claiming that a shadowy globalist elite is conspiring to impose a collectivist dystopia. But Beck’s conspiracy theories offer no real solutions—they only serve to distract people from the true sources of economic control. He tells his audience to “do your own homework,” so I did. Today’s article is my report on what I found. Like most Marxists, I read a lot. I engage with history, with theory, with economic data, with real-world material conditions. Sadly, many in Beck’s audience don’t. They are encouraged to reject systemic analysis in favour of sensationalist narratives that frame their struggles as the result of an abstract, all-encompassing “globalist” plot rather than the direct and measurable outcomes of capitalist accumulation. Beck’s entire function is to direct righteous anger away from corporate monopolies, financial speculation, and the neoliberal policies that gutted economic stability, and instead funnel it into culture wars, reactionary panic, and an incoherent fear of “socialism” that ultimately serves to protect the very elites he pretends to oppose.
If we want to avoid a future of corporate feudalism, we must reject neoliberalism in all its forms. The free-market fundamentalism that has dominated economic policy for the past fifty years has not delivered prosperity—it has concentrated wealth, eroded democracy, and locked entire generations into economic precarity. The only path forward is one that dismantles monopolistic capitalism and redistributes economic power to the people. That means reclaiming public ownership of essential services, rebuilding worker control, and ensuring that no private entity—be it a corporation or a financial institution—can dictate the conditions of people’s survival. Economic power must be democratised, or else it will continue to serve only those who already have it. Hayek feared that central planning would create a new aristocracy—what he failed to see is that markets, left unchecked, would do the exact same thing. The question now is not whether we are on the road to serfdom, but whether we are ready to fight for a road out.