The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents--The Definitive Edition

Front Cover
University of Chicago Press, May 15, 2009 - Political Science - 304 pages
An unimpeachable classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, The Road to Serfdom has inspired and infuriated politicians, scholars, and general readers for half a century. Originally published in 1944—when Eleanor Roosevelt supported the efforts of Stalin, and Albert Einstein subscribed lock, stock, and barrel to the socialist program—The Road to Serfdom was seen as heretical for its passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of production. For F. A. Hayek, the collectivist idea of empowering government with increasing economic control would lead not to a utopia but to the horrors of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

First published by the University of Chicago Press on September 18, 1944, The Road to Serfdom garnered immediate, widespread attention. The first printing of 2,000 copies was exhausted instantly, and within six months more than 30,000 books were sold. In April 1945, Reader’s Digest published a condensed version of the book, and soon thereafter the Book-of-the-Month Club distributed this edition to more than 600,000 readers. A perennial best seller, the book has sold 400,000 copies in the United States alone and has been translated into more than twenty languages, along the way becoming one of the most important and influential books of the century.

With this new edition, The Road to Serfdom takes its place in the series The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek. The volume includes a foreword by series editor and leading Hayek scholar Bruce Caldwell explaining the book's origins and publishing history and assessing common misinterpretations of Hayek's thought. Caldwell has also standardized and corrected Hayek's references and added helpful new explanatory notes. Supplemented with an appendix of related materials ranging from prepublication reports on the initial manuscript to forewords to earlier editions by John Chamberlain, Milton Friedman, and Hayek himself, this new edition of The Road to Serfdom will be the definitive version of Hayek's enduring masterwork.

From inside the book

Contents

Introduction
1
THE ROAD TO SERFDOM
35
Preface to the Original Editions
37
Foreword to the 1956 American Paperback Edition
39
Introduction
57
One The Abandoned Road
65
Two The Great Utopia
76
Three Individualism and Collectivism
83
Twelve The Socialist Roots of Naziism
181
Thirteen The Totalitarians in Our Midst
193
Fourteen Material Conditions and Ideal Ends
210
Fifteen The Prospects of International Order
223
Sixteen Conclusion
237
Bibliographical Note
239
Related Documents
243
NaziSocialism 1933
245

Four The Inevitability of Planning
91
Five Planning and Democracy
100
Six Planning and the Rule of Law
112
Seven Economic Control and Totalitarianism
124
Eight Who Whom?
134
Nine Security and Freedom
147
Ten Why the Worst Get on Top
157
Eleven The End of Truth
171
Readers Report by Frank Knight 1943
249
Readers Report by Jacob Marschak 1943
251
Foreword to the 1944 American Edition by John Chamberlain
253
Letter from John Scoon to C Hartley Grattan 1945
255
Introduction to the 1994 Edition by Milton Friedman
259
Acknowledgments
267
Index
269
Copyright

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Page 32 - But apart from this contemporary mood, the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.
Page 100 - The statesman, who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.
Page 112 - Stripped of all technicalities, this means that government in all its actions is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand...
Page 49 - After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute 7*3 and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.
Page 58 - When one hears for a second time opinions expressed or measures advocated which one has first met twenty or twentyfive years ago, they assume a new meaning as symptoms of a definite trend. They suggest, if not the necessity, at least the probability, that developments will take a similar course.
Page 32 - Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any Intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices In the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.
Page 104 - ... the tasks on which we can agree but are forced to produce agreement on everything in order that any action can be taken at all, is one of the features which contributes more than most to determining the character of a planned system. It may be the unanimously expressed will of the people that its parliament should prepare a comprehensive economic plan, yet neither the people nor its representatives need therefore be able to agree on any particular plan. The inability of democratic assemblies...
Page 105 - ... continuance of parliamentary government would depend on its [ie, the Labour government's] possession of guarantees from the Conservative party that its work of transformation would not be disrupted by repeal in the event of its defeat at the polls"!
Page 47 - But in normal times, the people of a democratic country will not give up their freedom of choice to their Government. A democratic Government must therefore conduct its economic planning in a manner which preserves the maximum possible freedom of choice to the individual citizen.
Page 127 - Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends. And whoever has sole control of the means must also determine which ends are to be served, which values are to be rated higher and which lower — in short, what men should believe and strive for.

About the author (2009)

F. A. Hayek (1899-1992), recipient of the Medal of Freedom in 1991 and co-winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1974, was a pioneer in monetary theory and a leading proponent of classical liberalism in the twentieth century. He taught at the University of London, the University of Chicago, and the University of Freiburg.

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