Answer: Friedrich Hayek’s work The Road to Serfdom argued that centralized Economic Planning ultimately threatened liberty. Conservatives used this book to justify a reduced role for the state in the economy, by equating fascism and socialism with the New Deal.
Explanation: Frederick Hayek in his book The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, criticized government involvement in the market seeing it as a system that leads to loss of individual freedom.
Centralized Economic planning is key to socialism as a method to ensure equality, but Hayek argued that central planning forces the will of a few people on the public. This is not socialism but dictatorship.
Conservatives, who favored a reduced government role in economic planning quoted this book and equated the New deal with fascism. The New Deal was a program designed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to revive the economy after the Great Depression.