Still, it’s possible to reconstruct an argument out of what Hayek did say. And it is an argument that ought to be of special interest to libertarians. Not just because Hayek was himself a libertarian – though the fact that one of the most important libertarians of the 20th century supported a basic income is by itself certainly worthy of note. No, the reason libertarians should pay special attention to Hayek’s argument is that it is based on concepts that are absolutely central to libertarian thought – the twin ideas of freedom and coercion.

Like other libertarians, Hayek saw the protection of individual liberty as one of the most basic and important political ideals. And like other libertarians, Hayek thought what freedom meant, at least in its relevant political sense, was essentially negative at its core. Political freedom for Hayek was essentially a kind of freedom from, not a freedom to. More precisely, political freedom mean freedom from coercion by the arbitrary will of others. (See his Constitution of Liberty, p. 58 )

A slave is unfree because his every decision is subject to interference at the will of his master. To be free, in contrast, is to be able to act according to one’s own decisions and plans, without having to seek the approval of any higher authority (CL p. 59). When others threaten to harm our vital interests unless we act as they wish, or are in a position to do so at their whim, our freedom is threatened. In such cases, our actions are guided by the will of the coercer, not our own.

This is why Hayek saw a powerful regulatory state as a threat to individual freedom. The state’s regulations are always implicitly or explicitly backed by threats – “Do this or else!” – and thereby coerce citizens into acting in accordance with the will of the regulator (or the will of the special interests served by the regulator), instead of their own. And in the pure socialist society where the state is the only employer, the individual’s condition is reduced to one of almost complete dependence (CL p. 187). Even if such a state were to keep its power largely in check, refraining for the most part from actually interfering with individuals’ decisions, the mere fact that it has the unconstrained power to do so means that its citizens would exist in a condition of domination – their fates subject to the arbitrary will of the ruling classes.

Hayek’s commitment to freedom and opposition to coercion also explains his libertarian belief that free markets and private property are a necessary precondition of political freedom. After all, one of the most important functions that rights of property serve is to provide individuals with a domain in which they need not seek the approval of any other person in order to act as they wish. Property rights provide individuals with a kind of jurisdiction over which their own will is law.

And competitive markets serve as a check against any particular individual’s desire to use the power their property gives them as a way of exercising dominance over others. The shop owner might like to use the fact that he owns the food that you need to reduce you to a condition of dependency. And the employer who has a job that you need might like to do the same. But so long as there are other shops, and other employers, who are willing to make you a better offer in order to obtain your business or labor for themselves, their desire for dominance is one they cannot hope to realize in practice. Market freedom, as Robert Taylor has recently argued, is often an effective form of antipower.

Hayek’s account of freedom and coercion is not uncontroversial among libertarians. But it is an account that has deep affinities with the classical republican tradition of thinking about liberty, as expressed in the writings of Algernon Sydney and James Madison, among others. And it is a view that is in many ways quite powerful and plausible – if not as the sole, exhaustive account of What Freedom Really Is, then at least as an account of a kind of freedom about which we as libertarians have good reason to care.

But while a concern for freedom in this sense lends strong support to a system of free markets and private property, as well as to a healthy skepticism of big government, it can also lead to worries about certain forms of coercion within the market. To see why, consider this impressive essay written about a year and a half ago by Chris Bertram, Corey Robin, and Alex Gourevitch, in which the authors document many ways in which employers in the United States appear to stand in a position to arbitrarily impose their will upon their employees. For example: