Synopses & Reviews
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, Readers 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.
Review
"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
Review
"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
Review
"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." EH.Net
Review
“A profound diagnosis of the sickness of our culture.”
Review
“Brilliantly written, daring, and radical. . . . it will shock, and philosophical shock is the beginning of wisdom.”
Review
“Richard M. Weaver’s book is important; his explanation of the breakdown of modern man is the best in years.”
Review
“This deeply prophetic book not only launched the renaissance of philosophical conservatism in this country, but in the process gave us an armory of insights into the diseases besetting the national community that is as timely today as when it first appeared.
Ideas Have Consequences is one of the few authentic classics in the American political tradition.”
Synopsis
Originally published in 1948, at the height of post–World War II optimism and confidence in collective security,
Ideas Have Consequences uses “words hard as cannonballs” to present an unsparing diagnosis of the ills of the modern age. Widely read and debated at the time of its first publication,the book is now seen asone of the foundational texts of the modern conservative movement.
In its pages, Richard M. Weaver argues that the decline of Western civilization resulted from the rising acceptance of relativism over absolute reality. In spite of increased knowledge, this retreat from the realist intellectual tradition has weakened the Western capacity to reason, with catastrophic consequences for social order and individual rights. But Weaver also offers a realistic remedy. These difficulties are the product not of necessity, but of intelligent choice. And, today, as decades ago, the remedy lies in the renewed acceptance of absolute reality and the recognition that ideas—like actions—have consequences.
This expanded edition of the classic work contains a foreword by New Criterion editor Roger Kimball that offers insight into the rich intellectual and historical contexts of Weaver and his work and an afterword by Ted J. Smith III that relates the remarkable story of the book’s writing and publication.
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.
Bruce Caldwell is the Joe Rosenthal Excellence Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and author of
Beyond Positivism: Economic Methodology in the Twentieth Century. He is past president of the History of Economics Society and the general editor of
The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, copublished by the University of Chicago Press.
Bruce Caldwell is the Joe Rosenthal Excellence Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and author of
Beyond Positivism: Economic Methodology in the Twentieth Century. He is past president of the History of Economics Society and the general editor of
The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, copublished by the University of Chicago Press.
Bruce Caldwell is the Joe Rosenthal Excellence Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and author of
Beyond Positivism: Economic Methodology in the Twentieth Century. He is past president of the History of Economics Society and the general editor of
The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, copublished by the University of Chicago Press.
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