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The Road to Serfdom

The Road to Serfdom

List Price: $9.48
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Socialism a form of slavery
Review: While the rest of the world condemned the Nazis for their racism while fawning over their socialism, Hayek was keen enough to understand that their social policies were a RESULT of their economic policies--that National Socialism necessitated a totalitarian state to enforce its control over the means of production. He sounded a warning to those in England and the U.S. who sought a socialism divorced from the totalitarian strains found in Germany. Such a state, wrote Hayek, is ultimately impossible. His message is still relevant today, as both "liberals" and "conservatives" alike accept (or downright advocate) more and more government intervention in the economy.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Key to Preserving Freedom
Review: This book, better than any other that I have read, demonstrates that economic freedom is a necessary condition to freedom in general. I believe it was one of the Founding Fathers (although I forget who) who said that encroachments to freedom usually begin with attacks on property rights. This book shows how and why that happens.

Socialists (especially Marxists) often deride capitalism as a tyrannical system where employers exploit workers. They overlook the fact that socialism is a system where economic planners exploit the planned. I personally do not consider the sale of my labor for my own enrichment to be exploitation on the part of my employer. Even if my employer treats me unfairly, I can quit my job and go work for someone else. Under socialism, there is only one employer: the state. If I'm not happy with socialist exploitation, I have nowhere else to go.

In this book, Hayek shows that a system of free markets facilitates the existence of a free people. People within that system may use that freedom for good or evil, but the system itself leaves them free. Under socialism, the tyrannical ends are contained within the means. The system itself demands that people not be free. If I cannot plan my own life, then I am not free. How hard is it to understand this simple maxim? I am astounded that there are people who actually want the state, which produces nothing and can only act by use of force, to plan their lives. Just go live in Russia for a while like I did and look around, and you'll see the boons of a socialist state. It's been ten years since communism fell there, and poverty is still the rule rather than the exception. Hayek wasn't just making this stuff up in the abstract--he knew exactly what he was writing about based on the horrible reality of planned economies.

The reviewer who stated that capitalist economies are a dismal failure and implied that it is labor unions which are to thank for prosperity has missed the boat. Labor unions facilitate prosperity only to the degree that they increase the productivity of their members in the workplace (i.e. by improving their health, their skills, and making sure they aren't overworked). But when unions contradict the principles of the free market, they reduce the net prosperity of society as a whole, even if in the short run they win temporary gains for themselves at everyone else's expense. Had there not been a free market, there would have been no prosperity. This point is so axiomatic that it should be unnecessary to even state. If you don't believe it, just take one look at Soviet life and compare it to America, and it's truth should be immediately self-evident.

Hayek hit the nail right on the head and warned us not to kid ourselves about socialism. Socialists can only plan themselves into economic inefficiency and poverty. The free market may not be perfect, but at least it makes prosperity and freedom possible, and it's the closest humanity will ever come to utopia. Hayek understood that and made his case compelling.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Revisit the 20th Century
Review: As all the previous reviewers of this book have noted, this is an historic and notable work. But as Hayek himself clearly says in the introduction (and in his now famous dedication of the book "to the socialists of all parties"), he wrote it specifically for early to mid-20th Century British labour enthusiasts to counter their preoccupation with central economic planning. As such, Hayek's thesis, that a socialist centrally-directed economy leads to oppression, either of the communist or fascist kind, is now largely taken for granted, not least because history has borne out his argument in large measure. So, if you are interested in 20th Century history, particularly western culture's thankfully brief flirtations with socialism at both extremes, then this book will be an excellent historical primary source.

As many authors and journalists have noted since the fall of the Soviet Empire, we are now all capitalists of some kind or another, and so while this book is an expert exposition on the dangers of central economic planning, it does not address the key issues in the current debate over the precise role of central government. Hayek is attacking central economic planning - the direction of when to sow and when to reap, in Jefferson's phrase - not central administration. Hayek is a libertarian, not an anarchist. Like Milton Friedman's "neighborhood effects", Hayek finds valid roles for central action (as distinct from purely economic planning) in regulating the actions of individuals and companies that are "harmful to the public welfare". For instance, in Chapter 5 of the book, Hayek rightly dispels the myth that monopolies inevitably result from the streamlining effects of technology, and replaces that fallacy with two valid reasons for their development: government protection and price collusion. Thus, Hayek recommends replacing public monopolies with strong anti-trust in support of the competitive price system. That would seem to be a valid and limited role for government.

As the author himself points out in the retrospective introduction to the 50th Anniversary edition, he originally saw this text as nothing more than diversion from his "more academic work", rather than as what it became - the first in a long and distinguished line of libertarian ideology. I do not point any of this out - that the book is a fine but dated critique of extreme central economic planning - to disparage the book, but I find that "The Road to Serfdom" is often quoted next to works of extreme parochialism and is done so to carry an ideological argument farther afield than this fine work can support.

Of course, the best recommendation is always this: read it and decide for yourself.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Brilliant, a must read.
Review: The Road To Serfdom is an absolute must for those desiring to learn not just the 'who' and 'what' of politics but, more importantly, the 'why' and the 'how'. Heyek gives us the foundation of political thought as it applies to the preservation of our liberties. The Road To Serfdom is, in my opinion, the front porch to a mansion of Hayek's writings. His philosophy stands firm, supported by the canons of western political thought. I, therefore, find it interesting to see him pegged as 'outdated' or 'no longer relevant'. Because his bibliography reads like a who's who of philosophy, I can't help but think his detractors are merely bugged by the truth that he's not only relevant but prophetic.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Market liberal loves this book!
Review: I want to thank all of the collectivists, central planners, socialists and would be tyrants of both Left and Right affiliations for their low rankings and bad reviews of this book. If my entire worldview was shattered by a single book, I supposed I would be angry and irrational as well.

Anyway, this is a great book to learn not only why central planning and regulation of markets fail, but the mentality behind those type of people. This book exposes the myth that National Socialism and Soviet Communism were somehow radically different, and not in reality just different sides of the same coin. I have had many arguments with Lefists on how different socialism is from National Socialism, but with this book I can show them the error of their ways.

To sum up: If you are a market liberal, a fiscal conservative or libertarian, read this book and buy it for any central planning, anti-market advocates you know. If you are a collectivist or anti-market conserviative or liberal, please read this book and try to convince your fellows of the danger of their actions.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An Analysis of Serfdom Lacking a Road
Review: F.A. von Hayek (1899-1992) is a distinguished 20th century economist of the Austrian School. Hayek claims that economic planning in a centralized style for the enjoyment of the many is a boulevard to despotism. Hayek does not qualify this as periodic, inevitable, or regular; hence, one is left to assume he is critiquing advocates of command economies and not parliamentary welfare-statists.

Hayek achieves numerous effective arguments against planning and centralist direction. He accurately confirms planning it is not inevitable, planning's incompatibility with democracy, loss of freedom as a cost of economic controls, various problems of distribution that exist in command economies, and the hit intellectual freedom should take under such systems. Concomitantly, he contrasts this to what he calls "liberalism." His most important arguments include the Rule of Law -- essential for anyone defending a parliamentary state -- though I think he advocates this more effectively in his book "The Constitution of Liberty."

A few areas in the text would be greatly empowered from improvement.

I understand imperialism as an expected phenomena of the state-nation. Rousseau's general will and Hegel's deification of the behavior of the state-nation in the 19th century are prime examples of this style of state -- the state itself has rights, and a nation(s) serves it. During this period the United States invaded Mexico, Napoleon overran Europe, and the scramble for colonies heated up. The golden age of "liberalism" Hayek expounds is a myth that is not essential to his argument.

What Hayek understands as "collectivism" is really the appearance of the nation-state which appeared mightily in the 1860s. States became legitimate by how well they served the welfare of a particular nation. The United States was no longer a union after the Civil War; it became a nation. Italy and Germany became unified nations. At Versailles -- self-determination became the rule for nation-states, which became the norm by the middle of the 20th century.

Three alternatives appeared: an economic, tabula rasa model of man who is a passive receptacle of his culture; the biological man who only survives through heroism and Darwinist struggle; and the legal, volitional man, capable of choice and responsibility. Fascists grew out the Byronist Romanticism of the 19th century, emphasizing will, ego, irrationalism, contempt for the "mob," and a longing for pastoral life. German law professor Carl Schmitt's notion that legality doesn't exist-- real individuals (note -- not a collective) make decisions is notable in the 1920s. Fascists explicitly said they sought strongmen to make decisions, including a national strongman, hence the lack of a road to that particular brand of serfdom.

Socialism, in contrast, is an over-rationalistic reaction to modernity. They glorify rapid industrialization and economic development. They assume universe to be causal and rational -- including man. Their conclusion: if we want to change man, change his environment! Hence the rejection of legalism and the state as tools for a specific economic class. By adopting an ultra-empirical outlook of man, socialists want to force things around at the aggregate level. Hence the Kantian dictum of treating individuals as ends in themselves is rejected for the greater good of one's specific class.

Hence, Hayek is clearly in error when he claims that socialism is fascism. One can see how a person can make that mistake. Socialists and fascists grew out of a neo-Hegelian tradition that stated that legality was derived from a correspondence between the culture of a society and the legal rule -- a sharp contrast to the propositional neo-Kantian outlook. Also, it isn't clear a "road" exists at all. Welfare statists have been planning for decades without totalitarianism -- some would say this actually avoids it. Hayek's claim about antisemitism being a socialist phenomenon is also weird. Antisemitism has roots in Europe going back for centuries and is difficult to pin down on socialism, a movement historically led by dozens of people from Jewish backgrounds.

This book is very readable; I'd recommend it to all who are interested in the justice of parliamentary states. Though it is limited in many respects, it is a good read.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: As relevant now as in 1947
Review: An inspiring and gifted work on the virtues and primacy of individual freedom over centralized planning and control. Mr. Hayak makes a succinct case against a planned economy and for laissez faire governance. The book was written in 1947 and it drew heavily on the world's recent experience with National Socialism as it ultimately manifested itself in the tyrannies of Germany, Italy and Soviet Russia. While Karl Marx failed in his prediction that Capitalism will succumb to the forces of socialism, Hayak was much more prescient in foretelling the failure of socialism. Karl Marx's failure was due to a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature. After all he couldn't even provide for his own family let alone serve as an inspiration to others. But for some insane reason Marx continues to dominate intellectual thought and Hayak is rarely read or quoted.

Hayak understood human nature intimately. He understood that a free society in which each individual is left unencumbered to pursue his selfish dreams was the only society that would provide the greatest wealth for the most people and satisfy the common good at the same time. And the more laws and the greater the control that the government and its bureaucracy have on the people the less productive the people become and the weaker the economy. With a weaker economy society's needs are not met and instability results leading to greater demand for government to intercede resulting in more power given to the government and setting the stage for tyranny as occurred in Germany, Italy and Russia. The lesson to be learned is that unless we reduce the size of government and reign in its power to dictate economic decisions we will end up with our freedom gone and tyranny in its place.

Although written in 1947 the book is as relevant now as it was then and I highly recommend it to those who are tired of the left's propaganda.

It is also a sad commentary on our higher institutions of learning that more young people graduating from college are familiar with the Communist Manifesto than they are with the Road to Serfdom.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Hayek's warnings are just as pertinent today
Review: Hayek's book is a work of supurb sociological insight equally valid today - in a different way - as it was when it was first written.

In my view Hayek's most important insight was that a plan - whether for social or economic change - cannot, by its nature, be democratic. Furthermore, he was able to show that once the power to plan the lives of others is granted to an elite, it will tend to escalate and become more centralized and authoritarian. Hayek was mainly speaking about socialism, but his views are equally valid for other, newer forms of social planning - multiculturalism, affirmative action, femminism, the welfare state, etc.

Hayek's second most important insight was that planning usually fails - because there will always be unintended consequences that cannot be foreseen, given the complexity of society, because people cannot agree on either their objectives or the ways to get there, and because people change their minds along the way.

Another point Hayek makes is that 'the worst tend to agree' - that is, while those with the lowest intellectual and moral standards are in the minority of any society, they will tend to form the largest group that agree with one another and form a cohesive set of beliefs. This is why extremist groups are often so effective in subverting democratic systems and are able to exert influence beyond their numbers. Those with more integrity are usually less organised as a group.

Political correctness - apparently it existed in the '40s though it was not called that - is explained as propagander to get the approval of enough people in society for the objectives of societal planning ('the vision') and to get agreement with the more specific ways that the elite has decided on achieve those objectives. As Hayek explains, it is not enough that people be made to agree on objectives - it is also necessary that they agree with the methods used, as well as important questions of fact. Hence the corrupting effect of PC on truth in universities and in Western culture generally in the service of progressive objectives.

In short, the worst tend to get to the top; they form a utopian vision of how society ought to be; they conclude that society must be planned to reach the desired state; the plan entails a large degree of centralization and control over people's lives that is undemocratic; the degree of social control tends to rise as the plan runs into difficulties both in the actual implimentation and in getting people to cooperate with it; society becomes less free; finally, the plan fails and people conclude that the fault was with democracy, not with planning as an idea. The society drifts towards totalitatianism.

Hayek's most fascinating arguments were with regards to the growth of Nazism. He suggests that it grew from socialist ideals, or perhaps from the frustration of socialist ideals, and that is entirely logical if you accept its initial premise - that the group comes above the individual.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Political freedom requires economic freedom
Review: This is the Nobel Prize-winning economist's polemic on the dangers of government's encroachment on the economy. Dedicated to the "socialists of all parties," Hayek sees the diminishment of economic freedom leading to the diminishment of political freedom. Road to Serfdom is a foundational text of the modern conservative political movement.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Real Eye-Opener; Extremely Relevent to Our Current Directi
Review: I found this to be an incredible book and a very revealing look behind the curtain of socialism. Looking at the other reviews, I think people should take it as a very positive indication that the person from Moscow and the person from New York submitted such similar, negative reviews. Freedom has been an irrelevant concept in New York for some time now.


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