Rating: 
Summary: The most important liberal since J.S. Mill.
Review: This book is a must read for anyone interested in the workings of civilization. He takes the view, which I believe is correct, that our belief that we can plan a society is the best evidence of our lack of understanding of human nature. If there is an important book in political economics that is accessible to the layman this is it. Hayek was subject to much unfounded criticism in his day, and in this day too. His argument is for the rights of people to choose for themselves, and against the idea that others can make the right choices for the individual. In these days of corporate hatred and tobbaco taxes Road to Serfdom should be read. It should be read so that we realize that laws against corporations and industries are simply laws against the people who work in them. The chapter on Planning and the Rule of Law is the single best work that I have read on any subject. Enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: Reactionary propaganda
Review: Von Hayek was for the welfare of the capitalist class and against the welfare of ordinary people. His concept of freedom is freedom for only the capitalist class.Market forces which he loves so much only give freedom to the big players, that is those with market power.Von Hayek was against economist John M. Keynes and the welfare state because they curbed the power of the capitalist class.His ideas are in vogue with the capitalists today because his ideology justifies their exploitation.This book is pure propaganda.
Rating:
Summary: This will change your whole outlook on life - for the better
Review: I was a totalitarian. I didn't know it at the time. I simply believed that there ought to be a strong government - made up of persons like myself, of course - which made good decisions on behalf of everyone else. I did not believe that so complex a world could be left to be run by the people as individuals, one part of it at a time. Sound familiar? Then read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Hayek is a hero!
Review: I found this book in Amazon, read the reviews and bought it. At the end, I was very embarassed by the fact that I had a Master degree and yet I lacked the knowledge that this work existed. I had heard of Hayek, but this book alone, with the most wonderful words on freedom and common sense, turned me into a very big Hayek fan. Buy your copy and read it right now, for if you do it later you will regreat.
Rating:
Summary: One of the great books of the 20th century
Review: Von Hayek was one of the first writers to argue against statism in all its forms (nazism, fascism, socialism, communism, American liberalism) and to do so in an even-tempered way, using general principles of economics and politics. I realize I'm echoing the other fine reviews, but let me encourage all who believe that the State can ever be benign to read this book. Von Hayek showed the ultimate consequences of power in the hands of those who think they're better and smarter than you are. History has vindicated Von Hayek; if only we could learn from history we could finally lay to rest the ill-conceived notion that the State is the key to our collective betterment.
Rating:
Summary: Hayek's TRTS - A money wrench in the gears of the State
Review: This seminal work was, at the time, analogous to a kid throwing a rock at an F-15 in full flight. Few doubted the ability of the State to improve the lives of its subject through total control of its economic and social institutions. "Scientific" management would bring about Heaven on Earth. That one such society, Nazi Germany, had degenerated into a repressive and genocidal hell-hole was simply evidence of moral and ethical failings of the German people. Hayek dashed all of these fantasies with this work, whom he dedicated to 'socialists of all parties." He showed why, contrary to popular belief, such control inevitably led to such repression, though the character of it may vary by culture. When the plans of those in power went awry, or when significant portions of the population balked at being forced to comply, the State would respond with compulsion. I once had the opportunity to interview Phyllis Schlafly and asked her a question which referred to Hayek. She said that she had been at Harvard when he was invited to speak, and that her professors had spent the two weeks prior to his speech explaining why he was wrong. They were terrified. Today, Hayek's book can be seen as one of the first philosophical and political salvos launched against the Leviathan State. It cannot be omitted from any reader interested in the cause of human liberty.
Rating:
Summary: A political and social classic
Review: A passionate and persuasive book written during the dark days of World War II when Communism and Fascism seemed ascendant and liberty a disappearing hope, The Road to Serfdom takes several of the themes that were to dominate Hayek's political writings and illustrates them through an examination of the rise of Fascism in Germany and Italy. Hayek himself was an Austrian who fled the rising fascist threat by moving to the London School of Economics in the early 1930's. He was intimately familiar with the intellectual currents in Germany early in the 20th century and saw how the rise of socialism led to the removal of all restrictions on the power of the state; and how, once it was agreed that the state should control much of life, democracy became impossible because, with so many diverse views of how society should be organized, it became impossible for parliaments ever to achieve majorities. Agreeing only on the need for government to control society but not on the detailed ordering of society, parliament delegated to the executive branch the authority to determine the details of laws. Soon the law was formulated by the executive branch; soon parliament itself was merely an obstacle on the way to efficient government, it was impossible to for parliament to agree upon budgets or anything else, and many Germans were pleased when Hitler did away with the organization.
If you need to be reminded why democracy can survive only where government is limited in power, if you wish to know how democracies fall, this is your book. If you wish to know the history of Nazi Germany, this is the place to start. If you want to understand the meaning of the term "rule of law," begin here. If you love liberty, read this book!
Rating:
Summary: The Corporation Bible
Review: If you love Enron and Halliburton, and you support corporate opression of the middle-class, read this hogwash. If capitalism is so great, why is it easier to get health care in former Communist countries like Poland? Why does Cuba have a lower infant mortality rate than the United States?
Rating:
Summary: A Snapshot of History - A Profile in Intellectual Courage
Review: The late Professor Hayek's book is one of the most important books of the twentieth century. It is dedicated to "the socialists of all parties". When Hayek wrote the book, virtually no one was left believing in a competitive market economy in mainstream English politics. The book was utterly defiant in terms of the zeitgeist. Indeed, the Attlee Labour government in England was elected not long after the book's publication and Hayek had long enjoyed a substantial connection with the London School of Economics. A wave of socializations followed - coal, steel, electricity, gas, water utilities, etc. Whilst Hayek's arguments are valuable and important and should not be forgotten, because we are doomed to repeat history that we forget, the world has moved on. The truths Hayek had to argue for trenchantly are today commonplace. No one of any political significance in the English speaking Western world believes that he or she can secure election by promising to end private property and inheritance rights, for example. The Holocaust, which was not fully appreciated in 1944 by the public and the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 have concretely made Hayek's points. However, Hayek's surmounting of the vilification that he suffered for writing this important work and and his having the courage to speak against "the powers that be in academia" who expected an ocean of jobs from the socialization of the economy mark him as a man of profound intellectual courage, vigour and honesty. It is noteworthy that Professor Hayek lived to see the fall of the Berlin Wall. This is an important book written by a Nobel economics laureate at the height of his intellectual powers, against the impending death camp of a totalitarian future. We are all in his debt for his courage. That one can read the book today in horror that his arguments were arrogantly dismissed shows how far the world has come.
Rating:
Summary: Fifth-rate rhetorical fallacies & pseudo-intellectual tripe
Review: It is unfortunate that Amazon doesn't have a 0 star rating. This book is so full of downright historical inaccuarcies, logical fallacies, and bad scholarship, I am amazed by the number of people duped by its message.
Hayek's book is one more shrill voice used by neocons to bully and silence, with cheap rhetoric and falsehoods, those who disagree with their views. It is the epitome of the nineteenth century utopia that neocons would like to see, a world of grinding poverty, abysmal living conditions, and social injustice & inequality. All of this is promoted by Hayek under the banner of "freedom," which really means the freedom for the rich to get richer without any concern for social justice, workers' rights, the environment, or the like. Don't let his condescending words fool you -- he may make concessions to the effect that these things do have to be addressed, but once they start interfering with the making of serious money, well, they just need to be tossed aside, in his view.
This book was so bad I couldn't even finish it -- four painful chapters into the book, I finally had to give up. Someone suggested it to me, hoping to convert me to libertarianism. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect, showing me that libertarianism is merely a smokescreen to hide the destruction of freedom and the dismemberment of the Constitution.
The only redeeming feature of this book is that I know now that it is a neocon weapon of mass deception, and will be able to warn others against its lame "arguments." Caveat emptor!
|
