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

by F. A. Hayek, Bruce Caldwell

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226320557
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	03/15/2007
Series:	Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Series
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	15,604
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

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.

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

Editorial Reviews

"It takes courage, or something like it, to declare one's offering 'The Definitive Edition'. . . . I have no hesitation, though in describing this as an excellent edition."

New Criterion - Roger Kimball

"A version of a recognized classic text that provides a full and rich context from which to understand its emergence and eventual powerful impact on the course of events and ideas in the twentieth century. . . . The University of Chicago Press and Bruce Caldwell have done an excellent job in dressing up this classic book for both the general reader and scholars in a variety of disciplines and the hiostory of ideas."

EH.Net - Steven Horwitz

"In my opinion it is a grand book. . . . Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it: and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement."

John Maynard Keynes

A version of a recognized classic text that provides a full and rich context from which to understand its emergence and eventual powerful impact on the course of events and ideas in the twentieth century. . . . The University of Chicago Press and Bruce Caldwell have done an excellent job in dressing up this classic book for both the general reader and scholars in a variety of disciplines and the hiostory of ideas.

— Steven Horwitz

EH.Net