"It is demonstrable that Hayek suffers from the defects of the very rationalism he condemns. His antitheses between tradition and reason, experience and experiment, are analytically untenable and historically unjustifiable. Intelligent social control always learns from experience and history. It no more need take the form of a Utopian blueprint than concern for history need make a fetish of the past. Revolutions have more often been the result of unendurable evils that intelligent reforms could have abolished, were it not for supine reliance on the non-rational processes of history, than of the imperialism of reason. The conception of "self-regulating forces" in history and society is largely mythical. We would still be living in a state of slavery had we relied on them. Tradition never uniquely determines what we do. On the contrary, it is a present interest or policy that determines the tradition to which we appeal. That is why Hayek imagines himself a member of the old Whigs who upset many traditions in their time. The author often compares society to an organism. The analogy has a very limited usefulness. It suggests, however, that the analogue of his attitude toward the body politic in the treatment of the ills of the human body would be a fanatical opposition to scientific medicine, especially preventive medicine, as an interference with the self-regulating forces of the organism, and a reliance instead upon a mystical nature cure. In the light of the evidence it is the author who appears doctrinaire, as one who refuses to learn from history. A generation ago he predicted that planning would lead to the eclipse of our freedoms. The state of liberty in England is healthier than when he made his dire prediction; and in this country, far better than in the heyday of unregulated capitalism. In countries where freedom has been lost, its destruction preceded the introduction of planning. Planning need not be all or none. In a political democracy, it can take plural forms resulting in a mixed economy. That there are threats to freedom in some types of planning cannot by gainsaid. But there are also threats to freedom, even if more indirect, in a pure market economy. It is doubtful whether free cultures could survive severe depressions again. The absent pages of comment on the evidence against his thesis suggest that Mr. Hayek is waiting on history to vindicate his role of Cassandra. Orthodox Marxists are also waiting on history for the breakdown of capitalism. Both are victims of an historical monism which underestimates the influence of moral and political ideals in redetermining the shape of our economy. The tendency of the author to think in terms of either-or instead of more-or-less vitiates the discussion of other basic themes. Although the essence of freedom for him is equality before the law, he ignores the extent to which social inequalities result in the imposition of unequal penalties under the law. His conception of the just law makes it compatible both with treating and mistreating everybody equally under the same rule. He counterposes a government of laws to a government of men as if the first were possible without the second, and as if the processes of judicial legislation, which, of course, should never be supreme in a democracy, could be avoided when general rules are applied to particular cases. As a cautionary voice Mr. Hayek is always worth listening to. He is an intellectual tonic. But in our present time of troubles, his economic philosophy points the road to disaster."