Utopias and tyrants: The road to hell is always paved with good intentions

What Hayek feared most was not dictatorship in its most visible form, but the slow and subtle collapse of liberty under the weight of promises.

Photo by Matt Foxx on Unsplash

In today’s political climate political parties like the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) have gained both intellectual and popular support. This raises the concern that society may once again be heading down a familiar and dangerous path. In the early 20^th century, especially during the 1930s, collectivist ideologies held sway across much of Europe. These ideas, which called for strong state control over socio-economic life, laid the groundwork for the rise of Nazism in Germany. Many intellectuals, driven by a genuine desire to build a fairer society through central planning, failed to recognise the inherent dangers in such thinking.

Today, similar calls for equality through government intervention are becoming more common and they echo the promises made by earlier collectivist movements. In The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek warned that even the most well-meaning plans can lead to a gradual erosion of freedom and the emergence of authoritarian rule. As I reflect on Hayek’s insights, I can’t help but notice the striking parallels between the intellectual climate of his time and the movements gaining ground today. This essay will explore how intellectuals have supported dangerous ideologies in the past, how collectivism helped fuel the rise of Nazism, and why Hayek’s critique of state control remains crucial in the modern world.

The irresistible allure of the abstract

What draws intellectuals to dangerous ideas is rarely malice. Often, it’s an attraction to abstract ideals that appear morally irresistible. As Hayek observed, “What appeals to [the intellectual] are the broad visions, the specious generalizations, the comprehensive schemes for the reorganization of society as a whole.” It’s theory that pulls them in, not practicality and not reality. The elegance of an idea matters more than whether it works. Socialism, with its language of justice and equality, offers a neat, morallycharged narrative for people who operate in the realm of ideas rather than markets. It gives them a cause, a vocabulary of righteousness, and a sense of moral elevation. They aren’t just simply thinking – they believe they are saving the world.

But there’s also something deeper, which is a kind of alienation. Intellectuals often feel estranged from a world that rewards usefulness over intelligence. In such a world, where the market values outcomes more than ideas, resentment begins to build. Planning then feels like the antidote to the perceived chaos, and the notion of a centrally guided society offers both order and purpose. Hayek understood this well. He noted that it was “the courage to be utopian” that gave socialism its grip on the minds of the educated. The intellectual doesn’t simply want to interpret the world; they also want to redesign it.

From ideals to iron fists

Nowhere is the danger of collectivist thinking clearer than in the rise of Nazism in Germany. In the aftermath of World War I, intellectuals across Europe were disillusioned with liberal democracy and increasingly seduced by comprehensive blueprints for social order. In Germany, the idea of a powerful state guiding the nation’s destiny gained appeal not just among populists, but also among the educated elite. One prominent figure was Johann Plenge, a sociologist and one-time Marxist who became a vocal proponent of what he called “the ideas of 1914”; a vision of national unity through state control and collective will. Plenge argued that the war had revealed the superiority of Germany’s planned economy over liberal individualism. His writings provided ideological scaffolding for national socialism by linking collectivist ideals with nationalist aims.

While Nazism was not socialist in the Marxist sense, it borrowed key features from the socialist tradition, which include, a hostility to capitalism, a belief in central economic planning, and a vision of society as an organic whole bound together by shared purpose. The Nazi state regulated industries, controlled wages and prices, and implemented public works projects under the banner of national renewal. These policies were not only tolerated but actively supported by many intellectuals who were desperate for order in the wake of Weimar chaos. In their eyes, planning offered a morally superior alternative to the perceived disorder of markets.

But the same centralisation that promised renewal also created the conditions for repression. By subordinating the individual to the collective, the state gained the authority to silence dissent and define the terms of inclusion and exclusion. This consolidation of power, which was justified in the name of unity and progress, gradually gave rise to militarism, laws of racial purity, and, ultimately, genocide. The descent from collectivist idealism to totalitarian horror did not occur overnight. It unfolded step by step and was enabled by intellectuals who failed to confront the darker implications of their utopian designs.

Red berets and black shirts: A new face for old dangers

The dangers of this kind of thinking are not confined to history. In South Africa, the EFF has revived many of the instincts that once fuelled authoritarian regimes in Europe. Although it presents itself as a vehicle for black liberation, its ideological core bears an uncomfortable resemblance to fascism. It promotes a vision of national socialism for a black nation where the individual must submit to the collective. Power is concentrated in the hands of one man, and Julius Malema, like Adolf Hitler before him, thrives on absolute authority, militant posturing, and the performance of mass loyalty. His leadership is unquestioned, his word is final, and his towering image is ever-present. The party’s rhetoric is laced with militarism and racial hostility, and it routinely scapegoats Indians and Whites as obstacles to “transformation”.

What makes the movement especially dangerous is the way it cloaks its ambitions in the language of justice. Drawing from the same playbook as the late Zimbabwean dictator, Robert Mugabe, Malema masks kleptocratic populism in revolutionary garb. He speaks of the poor while surrounding himself with symbols of excess. His calls for nationalisation and land seizure are guaranteed to harm people and wreck the economy. And yet, many black academics in the academy continue to romanticise his party’s agenda, and frame it as a legitimate response to historical injustice. They see in it the promise of redress and dignity, while overlooking its authoritarian logic. Once again, the intellectual class has been captivated by the dream of utopian transformation and blinded to the ruin it so often has brought.

When planning becomes power

Hayek’s great insight was not simply that tyranny arrives with force, but that it often begins with ideas that sound noble. Planning, in theory, promises order. It offers fairness, direction, and justice. But what he saw, and what many still fail to grasp, is that to plan society is to concentrate power. And power, once centralised, does not remain benign. Even if those at the top begin with good intentions, they eventually face a choice: to abandon the plan or compel the people. They almost always choose the latter.

Hayek warned that economic planning inevitably leads to the erosion of freedom because it overrides the decisions of individuals in favour of a single, enforced vision. “The more the state plans” he writes, “the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.” In a market, coordination happens without coercion. People make decisions based on dispersed knowledge and local realities that no government planner can fully understand. He believed this spontaneous order, though messy and imperfect, was far more human and far more just than any grand design imposed from above.

This belief wasn’t grounded in blind faith in capitalism. It was rooted in a deep respect for the limits of human knowledge. Central planning demands a level of foresight that no person or institution can possess. When the state claims to know what is best for millions of lives, it must eventually silence those who disagree. There is no room for dissent when a single plan governs all. And so, repression becomes a feature and not a bug.

That’s what makes the EFF’s policies so dangerous. Behind the revolutionary slogans is an old idea, the belief that if only the right people take control of the economy, justice will follow. But as Hayek warned, justice imposed from the top rarely ends in freedom. Instead, it creates a new elite with unchecked authority, while the ordinary citizen is reduced to a pawn in someone else’s design. The EFF’s proposals, which include, nationalising industries, seizing land, and centralising economic power, would place enormous control in the hands of a few. And like all planners before them, they would have to decide who benefits, who is punished, and who is left behind.

What Hayek feared most was not dictatorship in its most visible form, but the slow and subtle collapse of liberty under the weight of promises. The descent is gradual and always framed as a moral necessity. That is why the role of intellectuals is so crucial. When they refuse to question the logic of centralisation and trade in ideals without consequences, they make possible the very oppression that they claim to resist.

In a world hungry for justice, the temptation to turn to the state is strong. But Hayek reminds us that freedom cannot be engineered. It must be protected, preserved, and, above all, understood.

Ayanda Sakhile Zulu holds a BSocSci in Political Studies from the University of Pretoria and is an intern at the Free Market Foundation.