The Road to Serfdom: Friedrich Hayek’s Warning That Central Planning Leads to the Loss of Freedom
The advance of economic planning goes hand in hand with the loss of freedom and the rise of totalitarianism. That is the thesis of The Road to Serfdom, written with intellectual honesty, logical rigour and reliable information.
Author: Friedrich A. Hayek (1899–1992), Nobel Prize in Economics 1974
Title: The Road to Serfdom (1944)
Format: English paperback (Routledge Classics), 272 pages
Scope: Economics and political philosophy
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/0415253896 (ASIN 0415253896)
History and Planning
Hayek analyses the development of economic thinking since the late nineteenth century. Writing during the Second World War, he argues that the dangers of planned economies had become plain to see.
Money, Power and Ideals
Money moves people: it is a livelihood and brings peace of mind to those who have it. Designing a sustainable, functional economy has been a puzzle for scholars. The economic system, in all its complexity, is hard to predict, and many agree that money and power can destroy a set of ideals, and with them a country. Dictatorships, in the reviewer’s words, are the wounds of a declining economy and of citizens abandoned in a corrupt system.
The Unsolved Problem
Many people have designed methods, some fairer than others, for distributing wealth; even so, social inequality and the distribution of resources remain unsolved problems. When the state controls people through their wages, ordinary citizens have no time to stop and think: they must work and earn money to eat.
Written in Wartime London
Friedrich Hayek, an Austrian economist teaching at the London School of Economics, wrote the book during the Second World War. It was published in Britain in March 1944 and, after several American publishers had turned it down, by the University of Chicago Press later that year. A condensed version in Reader’s Digest in 1945 brought it to millions of readers, and it became an unexpected bestseller. Hayek dedicated it "to the socialists of all parties", a sign that he meant it as an argument with people of good will rather than an attack.
Why the Worst Get on Top
The most famous chapter argues that central planning tends to bring the most ruthless people to power. Once the state decides what is produced and who gets what, agreement on a single plan must be imposed, and those most willing to use coercion and propaganda rise to the top. Hayek’s examples came from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, but his warning was aimed at Britain and the democracies, where he feared that wartime controls might become permanent.
Reactions
The book provoked fierce debate. John Maynard Keynes, with whom Hayek disagreed on economics, wrote to him that morally and philosophically he found himself in agreement with virtually the whole of it, while warning that some planning was inevitable. Critics on the left argued that Hayek underestimated the ability of democracies to combine markets with a welfare state. In 1974 Hayek shared the Nobel Prize in Economics with Gunnar Myrdal, whose views were very different from his.
A Lasting Influence
Decades later, the book became a key text for the politicians and thinkers who promoted market reforms in the 1980s, and it remains one of the most cited works of political economy. Whatever one’s own views, it is a clear, forceful argument that deserves to be read in full rather than through its reputation.
The Routledge Classics edition is affordable and reliable.
It is short enough to read in a weekend.
Why Read It
Hayek’s short, passionate book became one of the most influential political works of the twentieth century. Whether one agrees or not, it is essential for understanding the debate between planning and markets.
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