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 Friedrich Hayek's enduring masterwork.
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