The Road to Serfdom
1944
- economic policy
- institute of economic affairs
- totalitarianism
- political aspects
- political aspects of central planning
- central planning
- open_syllabus_project
- long now manual for civilization
- fascism & nazism
- marxism & communism
The story
A 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 England in the spring of 1944 - when the Labour party ruled in Britain, Eleanor Roosevelt supported the efforts of Stalin, and Albert Einstein subscribed 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 inevitably lead not to a utopia but to the horrors of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. After thirty-two printings in the United States, The Road to Serfdom has established itself alongside the works of de Tocqueville, Mill, and Orwell for its timeless meditation on the relation between individual liberty and government authority. This fiftieth anniversary edition, with a new introduction by Milton Friedman, commemorates the enduring influence of The Road to Serfdom on the ever-changing political and social climates of the twentieth century - from the rise of socialism after World War II to the Reagan and Thatcher "revolutions" in the 1980s and the transitions in Eastern Europe from communism to capitalism in the 1990s.
What it’s like
Dense, unhurried argument written in measured English prose, with no illustrations, no dialogue scenes and no atmosphere beyond the sober texture of a 1940s political treatise: long chapters that build one claim on another, a reasoned voice that sounds more like a lecture delivered calmly across a desk than a story. The mood is cool and contemplative, the register earnest and at times impassioned, with a steady undertow of warning about where well-meaning planning might lead. Reading it feels like sitting in a library reading room under a lamp, pencil in hand, turning pages slowly on a weekday afternoon or during a long wintry evening. There is no violence or sensuality on the page, only the intellectual intensity of a writer taking opposing ideas seriously and pressing them to their conclusions, with historical references to wartime Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union used as evidence rather than dramatised. It suits readers who enjoy political philosophy, economic history and debate about the limits of state power, and those curious about the intellectual currents of the twentieth century. It is best approached slowly, in short sittings, by people who want their reading to provoke argument with themselves rather than carry them away.
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