The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents–The Definitive Edition
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- ISBN13: 9780226320557
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An unimpeachable classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, The Road to Serfdom has inspired and up in arms politicians, scholars, and all-purpose 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 Marxist thought 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 straight away, 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 apt one of the most vital 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.
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 straight away, 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 apt one of the most vital 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.
Buy Cheap The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents–The Definitive Edition Online
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Hayek’s philosophical bent is to justify maintenance a life of privilege and prosperity for a few built on the backs, blood, sweat and tears of the majority. Same as James Madison when he framed the US constitution to perpetuate and protect the estates of the “luxurious minority” from the democratic will of the majority. The ONLY check and balance Madison incorporated in the US constitution was a triple veto in the hands of the rich to stifle any just leveling demanded by a majority of the people.
Toward an American Revolution
Exposing the Constitution and additional Illusions
Jerry Fresia Chapter 3
The Constitution: Resurrection of An Imperial System
[...]
The so-called “free market” comes with baggage, otherwise known as fascism. You cannot have inequitable distribution of wealth/property lacking a coercive police state. Even Hayek bases his economic plot on having a socialized, public subsidized system of ‘law and order’ to protect the purloined ‘private’ property.
The unseemly redistribution of wealth, from the workers/producers to the parasitic middlemen employer/investor/landlord class is now being exposed for what it is, an one-sided system where greed and unearned income is protected more than earned, honest income.
Suggested alternative reading:
First – the book Chavez gifted Obama:
* Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo H. Galeano, Introduction by Isabel Allende
* From Freedom To Slavery: The Rebirth of Tyranny in America by Gerry Spence
* One-sided Deserts: How The Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take It Back by Gar Alperovitz
* Give Me Liberty: Freeing Ourselves in the Twenty-First Century by Gerry Spence
* Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance by Noam Chomsky
* Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World
by Jack Weatherford
* Fleeting Account of the Destruction of the Indies by Bartolome de Las Casas
The system allowing ‘officially authorized’ but immoral, one-sided privatization of common knowledge and common natural resources cannot be sustained lacking a draconian fascist police state as we are now seeing built in the USA. Unbridled bone idle unfair (oft spelled laissez faire) capitalism cannot exist and expand lacking protection of a coercive police state.
The time of the ‘luxurious minority’ who’s right motto is “In Gold We Trust” is running out. It’s high time the wage slaves were set free from the control of others, from the rich who declare ‘their’ money gives them the right as ‘employers’ to choose who eats and who will be eaten. It’s time humans are allowed the basic rights all additional animals delight in – free access to scenery’s gift, restoration of the commons.
Benjamin Franklin, arguably the most able and intellectual of all the USA’s ‘founding fathers’, recognizable the real source of wealth:
“Superfluous Property is the Creature of Society. Simple and mild Laws were sufficient to guard the Property that was merely necessary. The Savage’s Bow, his Hatchet, and his Coat of Skins, were sufficiently secured lacking Law by the Dread of personal Resentment and Revenge. When by virtue of the first Laws Part of the Society accumulated Wealth and grew Powerful, they enacted others more severe, and would protect their Property at the Expence of Humanity. This was abusing their Powers, and commencing a Tyranny. If a Savage before he enter’d into Society had been told, Your Neighbour by this Means may become Owner of 100 Deer, but if your Brother, or your Son, or yourself, having no Deer of your own, and being hungry should kill one of them, an infamous Death must be the Consequence; he would probably have prefer’d his Liberty, and his common Right of killing any Deer, to all the Advantages of Society that might be propos’d to him.”
Franklin thus noted a tyrannical police state was in inextricably linked to the accumulation and maintenance of disparate shares of wealth while candidly admitting such ‘one-sided deserts’ were the product of all society, not the loudmouthed greedy individuals that espoused the lie that THEY earned it. Franklin stated further:
“…the Accumulation therefore of Property in such a Society, and its Security to Individuals in every Society must be an Effect of the Protection afforded to it by the joint Might of the Society, in the Execution of its Laws; private Property therefore is a Creature of Society and is theme to the Calls of that Society whenever its Necessities shall require it, even to its last Farthing; its Contributions therefore to the public Exigencies are not to be considered as conferring a Benefit on the Public, entitling the Contributors to the Distinctions of Honour and Power; but as the Return of an Obligation previously received or the Payment of a just Debt.”
So while returning such unearned wealth to the rightful owners, the effective class, is redistribution, it is not charity. It in reality is the return of stolen property to its rightful owners. Franklin opined that the estates of the rich, being ‘one-sided deserts’, could be called on for the common excellent, down to the last farthing, the last dollar.
There is a reason the IRS classifies capital gains as ‘unearned income’ – they are UNJUST DESERTS!
Much of the disparity in sharing the wealth of productivity comes from the legalized theft made possible by wide privatization of ‘intellectual property’, a system of copyrights and patents that now has no relationship to the promotion of the science for the common excellent envisioned by some of the founding fathers and enshrined in the constitution. Originally proposed for society to grant provision and protection of a fleeting marketing monopoly to an leader, artist, inventor or creator in exchange for eventual addition to the public domain, at the urging of Disney Corp., Congress passed the infamous Mickey Mouse Protection Act which prevents such creations as “Steanboat Willie”/”Mickey Mouse” from being brilliant in the public domain as called for in the constitution at any reasonable current, useful time, extending copyright monopoly from 28 years to ‘life plus 70 years’. That recently gave birth to the more draconian Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 and the ’secret’ Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement now being proposed, which would make criminals of children who do what is natural, share things.
Here again, Franklin enters the fray. As one of the most prolific inventors of his day, Franklin disdained the concept of ownership of thoughts. the fact that he formed both the first public lending library in America and first fire department in Pennsylvania exposed his socialist/communist bent eh?
When he was offered a patent on the legendary oven that has since borne his name, Franklin placed the design in the public domain, as he did with all of his additional inventions, and refused offers by others to take patents for him. He clearly indicated in his Autobiography his inclination in such matters: “As we delight in fantastic advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.”
Thomas Jefferson too spoke to how privatization of the commons and the establishment of coercive authoritarian governments to protect such one-sided accumulations of property were detrimental to the happiness and freedom of the people as he acknowledged alternative societies:
“I am convinced that persons societies (as the Indians) which live lacking government delight in in their all-purpose mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than persons who live under the European governments. Among the ex-, public opinion is in the place of law, & restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere.”
‘That, on the principle of a communion of property, tiny societies (again, such as the Indians) may exist in habits of virtue, order, industry, and peace, and consequently in a state of as much happiness as Heaven has been pleased to deal out to imperfect humanity, I can readily conceive, and indeed, have seen its proofs in various tiny societies which have been constituted on that principle.’
But after giving such glowing attribution to the wonderful life available to persons that choose, and are ALLOWED, to live in tiny, communal, sharing autonomous societies, Jefferson nonstop:
“But I do not feel authorized to conclude from these that an extended society, like that of the United States or of an individual State, could be governed happily on the same principle.”
Well, maybe that is the lesson! That happiness does not issue from states and empires but rather is the exclusive domain of tiny autonomous communal societies!
That utopia or nirvana comes from an egalitarian being, a foreign concept to the predictable European mind and culture. Said Sitting Bull:
“The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it”.
Sharing the planet’s gift is natural and necessary if happiness is to prevail. On his arrival, Christopher Columbus noted the un-European scenery of the Americans (the Indians):
“[The Indians are] so free with all they possess, that no one would judge it lacking having seen it. Of anything they have, if you question them for it, they never say no; rather they invite the person to share it, and show as much like as if they were giving their hearts.”
So in the face of such natural generosity and beauty, Columbus reacted as only the greedy, authoritarian European culture enabled him to:
“These people are very unskilled in arms … with 50 men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished.”
A few decades later as these so-called? Christians invaded the part of North America now occupied by the British, and de Soto sent overtures promising a better life in submission to his king and church, an astute spokesmen for the Indians answered:
“I have long since learned who you [European Christians] are through others of you who came years ago to my land; and I already know very well what your customs and behavior are like. To me you are professional vagabonds who wander from place to place, gaining your livelihood by robbing, sacking and murdering people who have agreed you no offense. *** I regard persons men as vile and contemptible who theme themselves to the yoke of a name else when they can live as free men. Accordingly, I and all of my people have vowed to die a hundred deaths to maintain the freedom of our land. This is our answer, both for the present and forevermore.”"
On such a culture of systemic theft and plunder is Hayek’s Paradise built. Nothing has changed since Columbus stumbled upon America except for the redistribution of wealth from the people to the elite economic royalists.
In Gold you trust.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potos%C3%AD
Exactly what are the benefits of living under the umbrella of a large state/nation/empire, permanently coercive as that is a characteristic ingrained in such forms? Participation in the redistribution of spoils of war and corporate conquest? Living parasitically on ‘one-sided deserts’ while lying to yourself, your children and others that you ‘earned it’?
Or would you wish your grandchildren live in a world that nourishes the tiny, autonomous communal societies that alone can offer what Jefferson described as “a state of as much happiness as Heaven has been pleased to deal out to imperfect humanity”?
“Let is place our minds together and see what life we can make for our children.” — Sitting Bull
To the seventh generation and beyond…
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
The citizens were weary with the Socialist government’s insistence on “More equality!” “Less Elitism!” and the constant flow of new regulations governing the proper procedure for composting fruit peelings, the maximum number of times each citizen could belch each day, proper disposal of the mortal remains of houseflies, etc. If this trend nonstop, the country would evidently wind up under the control of a handful of hard-line bureaucrats. Totalitarianism was only a step away.
So when the next elections came, a majority of voters voted for the Right. Then the Socialist cabinet had to resign and a Conservative-Farmer coalition government was installed.
The new government immediately set about getting rid of the odious restrictions and paralyzing red tape.
The Socialist Party learned from its defeat and control of the party passed to a more moderate wing. A few years later the Socialists again won the elections and formed the government. Their regulatory policy was much less bossy than before. They took care to sound out public opinion before instituting broad policy changes.
And they all lived happily on for ever after.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Economics in a Changed Universe: Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization, and the Death of Free endeavor
I have gone through more than a couple of readings of Hayek’s manuscript.
The best way to remember him now, and probably his only dying twitch of significance, is that he was William F. Buckley’s favorite economic theorist. Appendix D of my recent book, “Economics in a Changed Universe,” demonstrates the irrelevance of Hayek today, in the past, and permanently. None of his programmatic assertions have any might in light of the work of Stiglitz and others in information economics, which completely disprove all of Hayek’s economic principles, but the Vienna School was already tottering and weak long before 1986, the date of publication of the Stiglitz-Greenwald article which utterly ruined his market thesis. Hayek’s work is a past relic, nothing more; and most of us concerned with political economy today, it can be assumed, have small time for this thing. All of us know and accept(except perhaps for the far Right), for example, that Hitler and Stalin were terrible.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
In my review of Hayek’s well loved Road to Serfdom, I will first respond to some of the reviewers. I see this as a necessity because I doubt they are giving you a clear interpretation of this book. It is akin to news media outlets having a “no-spin” zone. The review of the actual book is the last two paragraphs***, if you want to simply skip to it.
Dear beloved MacKenzie,
First, I want to make an apology about my tone before editing this. It was uncalled for, and I have become less inclined to strike out as such after seeing its degenerative effects first hand. That does not, but, mean that your post gains any ground in my opinion. That is because I judge that this book, hence your review, is a superficial explanation of the Soviet Union and the catastrophe that it endured. The evolution of the capitalist mode of production spans centuries and has been solidified through both war and peace, failure and success. On the additional hand, the Soviet Union broke any institutional continuity. Let me clarify what this means – the continuation of institutions, like the institution of law for example, would be an essential part of any type of socialist order as it is THE essential part of the capitalist counterpart. The capitalist mode of production in its modern guise, which we currently delight in, was not a spontaneous event. The precursors – the molding of institutions and the development of immature mercantilism – had been accompanied by extreme degradation and repression of the majority of people as in any additional economic system. capitalist production is no exception, as I am sure (though Hayek seems to be reasonably pleased to forget) the history of Britain. You aver to have read Schumpeter, yet you snub the whole evolution of capitalist production because it suits your propaganda arm. Continuing then, you seem to judge that things are the way they are magically, and forget that the building of the foundations of systems which you now take for granted claimed more lives than any socialist conduct experiment. It is hard to see how any break in continuity, in ANY system, carrying ANY goals of progress can make it lacking major external and internal pressures and problems. This being the case in purely ‘economic’ terms – when the artificially separated international political relations are thrown back in the mix, it becomes an even more futile argument. You are an ideologue to aver otherwise. What I find reasonably ironic about your all-purpose stance is that noone expects the innate goodness of people to make a socialist mode of production to work additional than the people who attempt to shatter the socialist theories.
***About the book then. This book attempts to show how centralization leads to more centralization until all freedom is taken away by a police state. . By centralization, of course, Hayek is attacking ‘public’ as opposed to ‘private’ ownership. More public ownership = more bureaucracy = more public ownership to feed the bureaucracy…and on and on. Churchill’s legendary ‘Gustapo’ line, which among additional things lost him election to office after WWII, played off of this dread (i.e. the left wing parties would expand government in Britain the product of which would be a police state. Of course, the left won and brought health services and social security programs as a replacement for…). This is a very one dimensional view that can only be defended on subjective grounds – or by recognizing that class interests exist objectively, a leap that Hayek will never make as it would be in consensus with Marx. Accordingly, as also with Schumpeter, his view on society is that it is and must be dominated by ‘a few’ political elites. In contrast, but, and building off his exhaustive use of simple cause and effect relationships as an explanation for everything, his solution is to abolish society and all social inclination; abolish political relations as they are perverting the functioning of his glorious world of individual liberty. There is no discussion of power relationships that underlay the political structure of developed countries; and therefore no discussion of what most likely would take place by limiting the role of imperfect government additional than implicit fantasy. That is the bulk of it. It is a simple linear progression, just as simple as the last sentences illustrate.
This book is a direct shot at Hayek’s conception of Socialism first and foremost. Hayek’s whole argument rests on this interpretation from his own mind that can easily be turned the additional way around due to its lack of a socio-historic basis. This work is purely subjective; it has no objective basis.It is thus, in my opinion, a 173 page straw man argument. He is in the mindset of right and incorrect, excellent and evil; when the point of the whole of progressive learning is about what is and will (may) be. In this sense, Hayek’s whole diatribe has done more to take the ’science’ out of social science than any additional work. But, if you have not yet read this…whatever you may agree with…you should certainly pick it up due to the impact it has had on contemporary thought. It has been transformative in regards to the political philosophy of the right, and a reading of this will help one know the core and fundamentalism of all right wing propaganda (note – propaganda is not derogatory, all ‘movements’ or ‘political parties’ must utilize it in some form or another). Additionally, it is vital to read and learn things which you chat about, not just pretend you know enough about it to chat about. Who knows, he may even convince you and set you on your transformation to conservatism. Permanently be wary of conclusiveness in regards to this theme lacking reading Marx, i.e. putting the concept of socialism in its proper past context as opposed to sinking it to a question of subjective philosophical dogma.
1 star because of its detrimental impact on politics and utter uselessness as political economy and philosophy. The United States is a prime example of the political degeneration caused by the ridiculous opinion propagated by this work.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of persons who have some property against persons who have none at all.”
–Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (Book 5)
Hayek continually tries to prove that everything that is not classically liberal is socialism. Therefore, National Socialism, Fascism, Communism, Democratic Socialism and every additional political/economic system is inherently the same: Totalitarian. Anything that is not the personification of classical liberalism will gravitate, slowly at first and then more rapidly, towards totalitarianism. Western socialism (circa 1944) is, according to Hayek, one evolutionary step away from being Nazism. This conclusions is a ridiculous fake dichotomy on both theoretical and empirical grounds. To Hayek your either with us or against us.
YES, Hitler and Stalin were terrible guys. Democracy is better than Totalitarianism. The free market is usually better then a state monopoly and/or regulation. That doesn’t mean that we must submit to laissez-faire dogma. To Hayek Keynesianism, and anything else that doesn’t agree with his philosophy, is on ‘The Road to Serfdom’. (It is vital to note that he doesn’t present Keynes by name but only by policy)
Anything that conflicts with his political theory is quietly not mentioned. To Hayek the 19th century was a bastion of wealth and excellent times for all. It is nearly comical when he talks about how Manufacturing progress helped everyone while forgetting to mention the drastic effect it had on millions of lives. It is even more comical when he talks about how terrible centrally plotted economies would be for international peace while forgetting about the atrocious history of Western colonialism due to Western capitalism.
The last nail in the coffin is the perfect failure of his predictions. Directly after this book was written a socialist government run by Pleasant Attlee governed for 6 years in Britain. Britain, even though it controlled employment and national output, did not become totalitarian. It democratically reverted back to the conservative party. In fact, nearly every 21st century nation would be considered by ‘The Road to Serfdom’ as being socialist.
A far superior philosophical discussion on the development of Fascism and Leninism/Stalinism would be Albert Camus’ ‘The Rebel’. A far superior economic explanation of limited ‘central preparation’ would come from John Maynard Keynes’ ‘The All-purpose Theory of Unemployment, Interest and Money’.
This text is as tired as they get. It has no modern relevancy. Sorry to say, ‘The Road to Serfdom’ will live on as a reactionary defense of the wealthy.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5