------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------
Published by EH.NET (June 2007)

F. A. Hayek, _The Road to Serfdom: Texts and Documents -- The 
Definitive Edition_, Bruce J. Caldwell, editor. Chicago: University 
of Chicago Press, 2007. xi +268 pp. $15 (paperback), ISBN: 
0-226-32055-3.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Steven Horwitz, Department of Economics, St. 
Lawrence University


This reissue, which is Volume II (though about the eighth to appear) 
of the University of Chicago Press's _Collected Works of F. A. Hayek_ 
under the General Editorship of Bruce Caldwell, contains an editor's 
introduction by Caldwell, who also serves as this volume's editor, as 
well as several additional documents relevant to the book's history. 
As has been the case with all of the releases in the _Collected 
Works_ series, the text itself is enhanced by detailed editor's notes 
correcting, clarifying, and explaining more fully Hayek's references. 
The result is a version of a recognized classic text that provides a 
full and rich context from which to understand its emergence and 
eventual powerful impact on the course of events and ideas in the 
twentieth century.

The core argument of _The Road to Serfdom_ is that attempts to put 
economic planning into practice while still maintaining a commitment 
to democracy and respect for the individual would inevitably face a 
dilemma. Because such attempts to plan would eventually require that 
the planners act according to a scale of values that was unlikely to 
command unanimous agreement, the planners would either have to give 
up their commitment to democracy and individual rights by using 
propaganda or force to garner "agreement" on those values, or, if 
they wished to keep those commitments, they would have to give up on 
their attempts to plan. Much of the first half of the book covers 
this ground. Given that Hayek (like Mises before him) had argued for 
the impossibility of rational calculation under socialism, and that 
he therefore believed planning could not achieve its goals, and given 
that institutions of power would then lack a coherent rationale, 
leading to the "worst getting on top," (as he titled chapter 10) one 
can see how Hayek would view the rejection of the liberal, market 
order underway in Italy, Germany and the Soviet Union in the 1930s 
and 40s as "the road to serfdom."

A second strand of Hayek's argument was that the fascist movements in 
Italy and Germany were _not_ capitalist reactions to headway made by 
socialism, but simply a nationalist variant of that very socialism. 
He provides a brief overview of the development of ideas in Germany, 
including the elements of the Nazi Party program that were rooted in 
the socialism of a generation before. (Many of these arguments were 
developed at more length in his later book, _The Counter-Revolution 
of Science_.) More to the point, he argues convincingly that what 
Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy shared with Stalin's Russia was a deep 
and abiding hatred of "Manchester" liberalism. The chapter entitled 
"The Socialist Roots of Nazism" tackles this argument powerfully, if 
quickly.

These two strands of argument comprise the theoretical and historical 
core of the book and provide the sense in which it was a "warning" 
about what could happen if Great Britain, the U.S. and others were to 
reject uncritically the liberal market order in favor of some form of 
planning. The chapter on "The Totalitarians in Our Midst" provides 
textual evidence of the sorts of arguments being raised in Great 
Britain in the 1940s that Hayek saw as providing the first steps down 
precisely the road that he was warning against. In some ways, his 
"warning" anticipates that of Orwell a few years later.

_The Road to Serfdom_ was a sensation when it was published, both in 
Britain and the U.S. In his introduction, Caldwell provides some 
background on the process by which it came to print, and the 
additional materials include referee reports by Frank Knight ("I 
doubt whether it would have a very wide market in [the U.S.], or 
would change the position of many readers") and Jacob Marschak 
("Hayek's book may start in this country a more scholarly kind of 
debate ... This book cannot be by-passed"). For a generation of 
readers, as Milton Friedman notes in his here-reprinted introduction 
to 1994's fiftieth anniversary edition, this was "the" book that led 
people to the somewhat forgotten tradition of classical liberalism 
(much as Friedman's own books would do for many in the next 
generation).

In retrospect, the success is fascinating. The book is very much 
scholarly, though with the ideas applied to then-current events. 
Nonetheless, it was condensed in _Reader's Digest_ and transformed 
into a cartoon summary in _Look_ magazine. The _Reader's Digest_ 
condensation was significantly responsible for the book being noticed 
by a more general audience, causing the University of Chicago Press 
all kinds of problems keeping up with demand.

Like many "classic" books, its core ideas have been consistently 
misread over the years, perhaps because more people talk about the 
book than actually read it. Caldwell's introduction does a masterful 
job in responding to several of those misinterpretations, especially 
the one that reads the book as saying that totalitarianism is an 
"inevitable" outcome of any step away from classical liberalism. As 
Caldwell notes, even Hayek himself explicitly argued to the contrary, 
but that did not stop the "inevitability thesis" from becoming 
canonized in the 11th edition of Paul Samuelson's _Economics_ (which 
led to a strongly-worded letter from Hayek and an apology from 
Samuelson) as well as numerous other secondary sources.

Re-reading the book in 2007, I am struck by how far the debate has 
moved in Hayek's direction. Hayek's positions in the book are hardly 
of the more radical sort often associated with some of those who 
invoke his name today. This book is not an argument for contemporary 
libertarianism, as Hayek gives the state a significant role to play 
in economic life. However, in 1944, Hayek was branded the worst sort 
of reactionary, such as Herman Finer's reference to his supposed, 
"thoroughly Hitlerian contempt for democratic man." That Hayek's mild 
classical liberalism would generate such venom sixty-three years ago, 
while it would today be seen as utterly middle of the road, is a 
testimony to the impact _The Road to Serfdom_ (and Hayek's later 
work) had in changing the nature of the intellectual debate in the 
Western world in the direction of that classical liberalism.

The University of Chicago Press and Bruce Caldwell have done an 
excellent job in dressing up this classic book for both the general 
reader and scholars in a variety of disciplines and the history of 
ideas.


Steven Horwitz is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics at St. 
Lawrence University in Canton, NY and has written extensively on 
Hayek, Austrian economics, and the history of economic thought.

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