By F. A. Hayek, John Blundell, Edwin J. Feulner
Within the final years of global struggle II, Friedrich Hayek wrote the line to Serfdom. He warned the allies that coverage proposals which have been being canvassed for the post-war international ran the danger of destroying the very freedom for which they have been combating. at the foundation of 'as in conflict, so in peace', economists and others have been arguing that the govt. may still plan all fiscal job. Such making plans, Hayek argued, will be incompatible with liberty, and have been on the very center of the activities that had confirmed either communism and Nazism.
On its book in 1944, the ebook triggered a sensation. Neither its British nor its American writer may possibly stay alongside of call for, because of wartime paper rationing. Then, in 1945, Reader's Digest released the line to Serfdom because the condensed e-book in its April variation. For the 1st and nonetheless the single time, the condensed publication used to be put on the entrance of the journal rather than the again. Hayek stumbled on himself a celeb, addressing a mass industry.
The condensed variation was once republished for the 1st time via the IEA in 1999 and has been reissued to satisfy the continued call for for its enduringly appropriate and obtainable message.
Read Online or Download The Road to Serfdom: The Condensed Version As It Appeared in the April 1945 Edition of Reader's Digest PDF
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Additional info for The Road to Serfdom: The Condensed Version As It Appeared in the April 1945 Edition of Reader's Digest
Sample text
It is planning for security of the second kind which has such an insidious effect on liberty. It is planning designed to protect individuals or groups against diminutions of their incomes. If, as has become increasingly true, the members of each trade in which conditions improve are allowed to exclude others in order to secure to themselves the full gain in the form of higher wages or profits, those in the trades where demand has fallen off have nowhere to go, and every change results in large unemployment.
Socialist economic planning necessarily involves the very opposite of this. The planning authority cannot tie itself down in advance to general rules which prevent arbitrariness. When the government has to decide how many pigs are to be raised or how many buses are to run, which coal-mines are to operate, or at what prices shoes are to be sold, these decisions cannot be settled for long periods in advance. They depend inevitably on the circumstances of the moment, and in making such decisions it will always be necessary to balance, one against the other, the interests of various persons and groups.
There is no justification for the widespread belief that, so long as power is conferred by democratic procedure, it cannot be arbitrary; it is not the source of power which prevents it from being arbitrary; to be free from dictatorial qualities, the power must also be limited. A true ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, even if democratic in form, if it undertook centrally to direct the economic system, would probably destroy personal freedom as completely as any autocracy has ever done. Individual freedom cannot be reconciled with the supremacy of one single purpose to which the whole of society is permanently subordinated.