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Word Gems 

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F.A. Hayek

The Road To Serfdom

 

 

 

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"... the single most influential political book published in Britain during this century." History Today

"Nearly half a century ago, most of the smart people sneered when Hayek published The Road to Serfdom. The world was wrong and Hayek was right." Forbes

"The Road to Serfdom has inspired and infuriated politicians, scholars, and general readers for half a century. Originally published in England in the spring of 1944 - when Eleanor Roosevelt supported the efforts of Stalin, Albert Einstein subscribed 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 inevitably lead not to a utopia but to the horrors of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy." - from the 50th anniversary edition

 

 

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

The Abandoned Road

The Great Utopia

Individualism and Collectivism

The "Inevitability" of Planning

Planning and Democracy

Planning and the Rule of Law

Economic Control and Totalitarianism

Who, Whom?

Security and Freedom

Why the Worst Get on Top

The End of Truth

The Socialist Roots of Nazism

The Totalitarians in Our Midst

Material Conditions and Ideal Ends

The Prospects of International Order

Conclusion

 

 

"How sharp a break not only with the recent past but with the whole evolution of Western civilization the modern trend toward socialism means becomes clear if we consider it not merely against the background of the nineteenth century but in a longer historical perspective. We are rapidly abandoning not the views merely of Cobden and Bright, of Adam Smith and Hume, or even of Locke and Milton, but one of the salient characteristics of Western civilization as it has grown from the foundations laid by Christianity and the Greeks and Romans... The Nazi leader who described the National Socialist revolution as a counter-Renaissance spoke more truly than he probably knew."  F. A. Hayek

 

the popular deception, 'fascism is the polar opposite of communism'

For decades, totalitarian propagandists have attempted to define fascism as a capitalist reaction to socialism; that, fascism constitutes a polar opposite to communism.

This nonsense, an attack upon those who promote personal liberties and a free society, among many prevarications of leftists, is addressed and dismantled in Hayek’s book.

Fascism, as the Nobel laureate explains, in fact, is the next stage after communism fails. In other words, when communism’s promised collectivist utopia comes to nothing, open brutality and force is now employed by totalitarians to maintain power and control over the masses.

When open and honest public debate would reveal one's naked quest for dominion, when aims are anti-social, serving private agendas, malfeasance must be cloaked with deception, drawn like a gun - often issuing as redefining common words, selling "evil" as "good."