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The Road to Serfdom

Text and Documents--The Definitive Edition

Edited with a Foreword and Introduction by Bruce Caldwell

The Road to Serfdom

Text and Documents--The Definitive Edition

Edited with a Foreword and Introduction by Bruce Caldwell
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.

Read an excerpt.
An audiobook version is available.


304 pages | 6 x 9 | © 2007

The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek

Economics and Business: Economics--General Theory and Principles, Economics--History

Political Science: Classic Political Thought

Table of Contents

Editorial Foreword
Introduction

THE ROAD TO SERFDOM

Preface to the Original Editions
Foreword to the 1956 American Paperback Edition
Preface to the 1976 Edition
Introduction

One                        The Abandoned Road
Two                       The Great Utopia
Three                     Individualism and Collectivism
Four                       The "Inevitability" of Planning
Five                        Planning and Democracy
Six                         Planning and the Rule of Law
Seven                     Economic Control and Totalitarianism
Eight                       Who, Whom?
Nine                       Security and Freedom
Ten                        Why the Worst Get on Top
Eleven                    The End of Truth
Twelve                   The Socialist Roots of Naziism
Thirteen                  The Totalitarians in Our Midst
Fourteen                 Material Conditions and Ideal Ends
Fifteen                    The Prospects of International Order
Sixteen                   Conclusion

Bibliographical Note

APPENDIX: RELATED DOCUMENTS

Nazi-Socialism (1933)
Reader’s Report by Frank Knight (1943)
Reader’s Report by Jacob Marschak (1943)
Foreword to the 1944 American Edition by John Chamberlain
Letter from John Scoon to C. Hartley Grattan (1945)
Introduction to the 1994 Edition by Milton Friedman
Acknowledgments
Index

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