Hayek makes the point that while socialism does not, in principle, require a totalitarian regime, it leads to one.

The first problem is that once you try to direct one aspect of the economy, it becomes necessary to start fiddling with another. Since the assumption of socialism is that the power of government is necessary to solve problems, once a problem is discovered, new government rules and institutions have to be put into play. Since a good socialist could not imagine that government might, in fact, create more problems than it solves, you end up with an ever increasing spiral of regulation and bureaucratic oversight.

This leads to the second problem. Law tends to operate in the abstract; it is difficult, if not impossible, to write laws that will deal with every contingency. The need to “get things done” under Socialism, however, leads towards solutions that cannot possibly stand up to close legal scrutiny. Actions are either arbitrary or ad hoc; either way, under a Socialist system notions like “rights” and “constitutional provisions” begin to mean less and less for the citizens and are transformed into rationales for even greater government intervention in daily life.

The final problem is choice. Who chooses? You or the collective? Socialism would say “the collective” since the Common Good is the ultimate goal. In theory, if the Common Good is ensured, the Individual Good will necessarily follow. But that requires that one surrender one’s own sense of what is Good to the collective. And the collective, Hegel’s “General Will” is ultimately a meaningless abstraction (or, as Hamilton supposedly put it, a Great Beast). There is no clearly discernible “General Will”; rather, there is the State, and it sets itself up as a proxy for the General Will and thus makes the decisions in the name of Society. Under such a way of thinking, there can be no room for individual choice since the individual cannot possibly (or be trusted to) make choices that serve the good of the collective.

Hegelians and Marxians have a nice term for individuals who think they know better than the “General will” what is good for them: “false consciousness.” The term on its own demonstrates the utter contempt in which anyone who claims to be a morally autonomous individual is held under Socialism.

Unless you’re part of the Vanguard Elite (vide Lenin), but that’s a different matter.