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book1944

The Road to Serfdom

Disciplines:
economics
political philosophy
liberalism
economics/planned economy

Summary

F.A. Hayek's 1944 argument that central economic planning inevitably leads to totalitarianism — that the administrative apparatus needed to implement a planned economy requires concentrating power that will eventually be abused regardless of the planners' intentions.

Core Contribution

Creates the argument that planning and liberty are incompatible — Hayek's argument (that economic planning requires the suppression of individual freedom even when well-intentioned, because implementing plans requires coercion against those who prefer different outcomes) became the foundational text of postwar economic liberalism.

Historical Influences

Ludwig von Mises John Stuart Mill

Intellectual Lineage

Written while Hayek was at LSE during WWIIPublished by University of Chicago PressReader's Digest condensation made it a bestseller

Allied Works

The Constitution of Liberty The Use of Knowledge in SocietyCapitalism and Freedom

Contemporaries & Peers

No recorded contemporaries.

Minds Influenced

Postwar economic liberalismReagan-Thatcher economic programs

Intellectual Posterity

Road to Serfdom Economic liberalism revivalHayek as Thatcher's Bible

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