Market Economy, Freedom and Equality: A Critical Assessment of Friedrich August Von Hayek

One of the trademarks of liberalism is to make a linear and strict relation between market economy and notions such as individual freedom, equality and justice. This claim is same for Frierdrich August Von Hayek, one of the pure defenders of market economy. By formulating individual as an ontological category in his premises of social theory, Hayek claims that freedom is nothing but individual freedom, while equality means equality before the law. Justice, on the other hand, consists of criterion of whether the market economy, which paves the way the individuals to act freely, operates under the rule of law. In this sense, the main objective of this study is to draw basic framework of the relation between freedom, equality and market economy that Hayek makes and to seek an answer to the question of ‘Is Hayek’s understanding of freedom nothing but an utopia formulated under the mask of formal equalities?’. The main hypothesis put forward in the study is that; by distorting the concept of private property for the sake of making it immanent to freedom and homogenising artificial inequalities stemmed from market economy under the mask of equality before the law, Hayek’s theory of freedom provides an illusionary-based freedom. More significantly, being prioritized market freedom over political freedom in Hayek’s theory of freedom indicates how Hayekian understanding of freedom leads to unfreedom for masses.