Meindert Hobbema, The Avenue at Middelharnis, 1689. via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
University of Chicago Press
The Road to Serfdom
The case against central planning, made as it was happening.
$20.00
Available · worldwide delivery
- Author
- F.A. Hayek
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- January 2007
- Pages
- 0
- Format
- Paperback
- Size
- Standard
- Language
- English
The Library Essay
Planning Ends Somewhere Unplanned
Friedrich Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom in wartime London, watching an England that expected to keep its wartime planning in peace, and dedicated it to the socialists of all parties. His argument was not that welfare spending enslaves but something more precise, that comprehensive economic planning must concentrate discretion over people's lives in ways no parliament can supervise, and that the worst then tend to rise to the top.
Published in 1944, the book found a mass American audience through a Reader's Digest condensation the following year, and it has remained the most read statement of the liberal case against central planning. Hayek received the Nobel memorial prize in economics in 1974, and the University of Chicago's definitive edition keeps the text in print with its history attached.
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