Hayek, who taught at the Fabian-founded London School of Economics, reflected that his Fabian colleague Harold Laski was 'frightfully offended' by The Road to Serfdom, which he believed was written specifically against him. Laski was not entirely mistaken. Hayek wrote the book with one clear purpose, he recalled later: to persuade his 'Fabian colleagues that they were wrong'. In the book itself, he criticised the imperialism of the Fabians, arguing that their enthusiasm for planning went along with a veneration of large states and a 'glorification of power' that was akin to that of the Nazis.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 239