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    Hayek's The Road to Serfdom: A Brief Introduction
    Hayek's The Road to Serfdom: A Brief Introduction
    Hayek's The Road to Serfdom: A Brief Introduction
    Ebook70 pages1 hour

    Hayek's The Road to Serfdom: A Brief Introduction

    By Bruce Caldwell

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    The Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek’s 1944 warning against the dangers of government control, continues to influence politics more than seventy years after it was turned down by three American publishers and finally published by the University of Chicago Press. A classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, the definitive edition of The Road to Serfdom included this essay as its Introduction. Here, acclaimed Hayek biographer and general editor of the Collected Works of F. A. Hayek series, Bruce Caldwell explains how Hayek came to write and publish the book, assesses misunderstandings of Hayek’s thought, and suggests how Hayek’s fears of Socialism lead him to abandon the larger scholarly project he had planned in 1940 to focus instead on a briefer, more popular and political tract—one that has influenced political and economic discourse ever since.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateDec 13, 2013
    ISBN9780226146744
    Hayek's The Road to Serfdom: A Brief Introduction

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      Book preview

      Hayek's The Road to Serfdom - Bruce Caldwell

      Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom: A Brief Introduction

      Bruce Caldwell

      Chicago Shorts

      Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom: A Brief Introduction was first published in The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, Vol 2: The Road to Serfdom, © 2007 by the Estate of F.A. Hayek.

      All rights reserved.

      Chicago Shorts edition, 2014

      ISBN: 978-0-226-14674-4

      CONTENTS

      Prelude: The British, Naziism, and Socialism

      Hayek’s War Effort

      Finding an American Publisher

      Publication: From Minor Hit to Cultural Icon

      Some Prominent Criticisms

      The Continuing Relevance of The Road to Serfdom

      The Road to Serfdom is F. A. Hayek’s most well-known book, but its origins were decidedly inauspicious. It began as a memo to the director of the London School of Economics, Sir William Beveridge, written by Hayek in the early 1930s and disputing the then-popular claim that fascism represented the dying gasp of a failed capitalist system. The memo grew into a magazine article, and parts of it were supposed to be incorporated into a much larger book, but during World War II he decided to bring it out separately. Though Hayek had no problem getting Routledge to publish the book in England, three American publishing houses rejected the manuscript before the University of Chicago Press finally accepted it.

      The book was written for a British audience, so the director of the Press, Joseph Brandt, did not expect it to be a big seller in the States. Brandt hoped to get the well-known New York Herald Tribune journalist and author Walter Lippmann to write the foreword, noting in an internal memo that if he did, it might sell between two and three thousand copies. Otherwise, he estimated, it might sell nine hundred. Unfortunately, Lippmann was busy with his own work and so turned him down, as did the 1940 Republican presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie, whose 1943 book One World had been a best-seller.¹ John Chamberlain, the book review editor for the New York Times, was ultimately recruited for the job.

      One hopes for his sake that Brandt was not the sort who bet money on his hunches. Since its first publication in 1944, the University of Chicago Press estimates that more than 350,000 copies of The Road to Serfdom have been sold. Routledge added many thousands more, but we do not know how many exactly: that press was unable to come up with any reliable numbers. There is also no good count on the number of copies that appeared in translation, not least because a portion were samizdat copies produced and distributed behind the Iron Curtain during the cold war.²

      Not everyone, of course, liked (or likes) the book. The intelligentsia, particularly in the United States, greeted its publication with condescension and, occasionally, vitriol. Then a diplomat in the British Embassy in Washington, Isaiah Berlin wrote to a friend in April 1945 that he was still reading the awful Dr. Hayek.³ The economist Gardiner Means did not have Berlin’s fortitude; after reading 50 pages he reported to William Benton of the Encyclopaedia Britannica that he couldn’t stomach any more.⁴ The philosopher Rudolf Carnap, writing to Hayek’s friend Karl Popper, apparently could not muster even the stamina of Means: I was somewhat surprised to see your acknowledgement of von Hayek. I have not read his book myself; it is much read and discussed in this country, but praised mostly by the protagonists of free enterprise and unrestricted capitalism, while all leftists regard him as a reactionary.⁵

      Those who, like Carnap, have not read Hayek but think that they already know what he is all about should be prepared for some surprises. Those on the left might preview their reading with a peek at chapter 3, where Hayek expounds on some of the government intervention that he was prepared to accept, at least in 1944.⁶ Those on the right might want to have a look at his distinction between a liberal and a conservative in his 1956 foreword to the American paperback edition. Both will be surprised by what they find.

      In this introduction I trace the origins of Hayek’s little book, summoning up the context in which it was produced and showing how it gradually came to its final form. The reactions, both positive and negative, that ultimately turned it into a cultural icon will then be documented. Because it is a controversial work, I will comment upon some of the most persistent criticisms that have been levied against it. Not all of these, I argue, are warranted: Hayek’s book may have been widely, but it was not always carefully, read. In my conclusion I will reflect briefly on its lasting messages.⁷

      ¹ Wendell Wilkie, One World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1943).

      ² In his Note on Publishing History prepared for the fiftieth anniversary edition of the book, Milton Friedman noted that by 1994 Chicago had sold approximately 250,000 copies, and that nearly twenty authorized translations had been published. The 350,000 figure is

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