The Road To Serfdom

The Road to Serfdom
F. A. Hayek
Routledge. (London.) 2001.

CONTENTS
PREFACE Introduction 1 The Abandoned Road 2 The Great Utopia 3 Individualism and Collectivism 4 The “Inevitability” of Planning 5 Planning and Democracy 6 Planning and the Rule of Law 7 Economic Control and Totalitarianism 8 Who, Whom? 9 Security and Freedom 10 Why the Worst Get on Top 11 The End of Truth 12 The SocialistRoots of Nazism 13 The Totalitarians in our Midst 14 Material Conditions and Ideal Ends 15 The Prospects of International Order vii 1 10 24 33 45 59 75 91 105 123 138 157 171 186 207 225

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CONCLUSION BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE INDEX

245 247 251

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PREFACE
When a professional student of social affairs writes a political book, his first duty is plainly to say so. This is a politicalbook. I do not wish to disguise this by describing it, as I might perhaps have done, by the more elegant and ambitious name of an essay in social philosophy. But, whatever the name, the essential point remains that all I shall have to say is derived from certain ultimate values. I hope I have adequately discharged in the book itself a second and no less important duty: to make it clear beyond doubtwhat these ultimate values are on which the whole argument depends.

There is, however, one thing I want to add to this. Though this is a political book, I am as certain as anyone can be that the beliefs set out in it are not determined by my personal interests. I can discover no reason why the kind of society which seems to me desirable should offer greater advantages to me than to the greatmajority of the people of this country. In fact, I am always told by my socialist colleagues that as an economist I should occupy a much more important position in the kind of society to

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which I am opposed-provided, of course, that I could bring myself to accept their views. I feel equally certain that my opposition to these views is not due to their being different from those withwhich I have grown up, since they are the very views which I held as a young man and which have led me to make the study of economics my profession. For those who, in the current fashion, seek interested motives in every profession of a political opinion, I may, perhaps, be allowed to add that I have every possible reason for not writing or publishing this book. It is certain to offend many peoplewith whom I wish to live on friendly terms; it has forced me to put aside work for which I feel better qualified and to which I attach greater importance in the long run; and, above all, it is certain to prejudice the reception of the results of the more strictly academic work to which all my inclinations lead me.

If in spite of this I have come to regard the writing of this book as a duty which Imust not evade, this was mainly due to a peculiar and serious feature of the discussions of problems of future

economic policy at the present time, of which the public is scarcely sufficiently aware. This is the fact that the majority of economists have now for some years been absorbed by the war machine, and silenced by their official positions, and that in consequence public opinion onthese problems is to an alarming extent guided by amateurs and cranks, by people who have an axe to grind or a pet panacea to sell. In these circumstances one who still has the leisure for literary work is hardly entitled to keep to himself apprehensions which current tendencies must create in the minds of many who cannot publicly express them-though in different circumstances I should have gladlyleft the discussion of questions of national policy to those who are both better authorised and better qualified for the task. The central argument of this book was first sketched in an article entitled “Freedom and the Economic System, ” which appeared in the Contemporary Review for April, 1938, and was later

-viiireprinted in an enlarged form as one of the “Public Policy Pamphlets”, edited by...