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| | The Road to Serfdom : Text and Documents : Text and Documents the Definitive Edition€ 10.17- 3 Bewertungen: 5.0
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The Road to Serfdom : Text and Documents : Text and Documents - the Definitive Edition (Collected Works of F.A. Hayek)
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| | | | those who predict correctly deserve to be read
For a small book it is a masterpiece of objective economic-political analysis. It is also a tour de force, written with passion, conviction and justified concern. Published in '44 while Hayek taught economics at the London School of Economics, he shrewdly observed that the British government and economic planners were falsely conceptualizing post-war policies to retain war-time centralized control. After all, so it seemed, war-time production was boosted tremendously under central governmental control of the economy. So why not retain and expand it after the war is over to boost the living standard.
This was either spelled out or implied in various White Papers or reports which drew inspirations from the theory of Hayek's chief opponent, John Maynard Keynes. Hayek warned that such dangerous policies, which he thought emulated too much German National Socialist economic policies, would fail and jeopardize liberty.
Unfortunately, his warnings were disregarded by the British post-war governments and the subsequent evolution of the British economy relative to the German one tells the story. The British centralized, nationalized industries as well as the Bank of England, passed the Town and Country Planning Act, created a national health system, etc. while the Germans decentralized, freed the central bank from political control, denationalized industries and restored private initiatives, relatively speaking. The British developed the British economic disease while the Germans pulled off one of the world's most stunning economic miracle. It was all in compliance with Hayek's profound analysis and prediction. One could almost cynically says that the British in enacting National Socialist economic policies fought the Nazis to have the right to adopt Nazi economic policies. Compare for example, the British nationalizing the Bank of England much like Hitler taking over the German central bank in '38 or, for more shocking comparison, read the British labor party platform of '45 and compare it with the socio-economic policies advocated in the l921 Twenty-Five Point Nazi party program.
Beyond this, Hayek's book is also a wonderful analysis of how knowledge pulsates throughout the economy, how economic progress is achieved, how, above all, liberty can be preserved and how the "worst wind up on top" (the title of chapter ten) of a political hierarchy. This chapter can be used to explain in part the rise of Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Saddam Hussain, Castro, and so on down to even LBJ, Nixon, Clinton, Sharon and Bush, etc.
This book has had a long life and deservedly so. All undergraduates and anyone interested in profound philosophical-economic analysis should read it, especially those interested in preserving liberty and preventing serfdom. One of the primary elements for this, according to Hayek, is to deny centralized planning. Ironically, Hayek's chief opponent, John Maynard Keynes who influenced post-war centralized economic planning tremendously, reviewed the book favorably before his death and and said something to the effect that morally and philosophically he found himself in agreement with nearly all of it and not just in agreement but in heartfelt agreement. Too bad the politicians did not heed the change of mind Keynes had just before he died. Had they followed Hayek, the corrosive consequences of politicized Keynesianism in terms of the inflation, centralized planning and other results could have been prevented. By l969, Nixon publicly stated "we're all Keynesians now."
George Orwell, a socialist, was also favorably impressed by this book and most likely was inspired by it when he wrote in 1948 his famous "1984."
But by l974, Hayek received, belatedly, the Nobel Economics Prize (though he shared it with Gunnar Myrdal) and wise scholars and graduate students in communist nations in Eastern Europe started to disseminate and read this book with vigorous enthusiasm. Though it is not well known, this book, along with others Hayek wrote, helped considerably in counteracting Communism. By the early l990s, several editorials in the Wall Street Journal paid tribute to Hayek and the favorable impact his publications had on eroding communism.
| | "All that is gold does not glitter"
This definitive edition has been edited and provided with a Foreword and Introduction by Bruce Caldwell who retained the prefaces and forewords of earlier editions. The text has been enhanced by explanatory notes and new appendices that are listed at the end of this review.
Even after six decades, The Road To Serfdom remains essential for understanding economics, politics and history. Hayek's main point, that whatever the problem, human nature demands that government provide the solution and that this is the road to hell, remains more valid than ever. He demonstrated the similarities between Soviet communism and fascism in Germany and Italy.
The consensus in post-war Europe was for the welfare state which seemed humane and sensible for a long time. Now it is clear that this has led to declining birth-rates amongst native Europeans, mass immigration from North Africa and the Middle East, and a tendency to exchange their ancient cultural values for multiculturalism and moral relativism which is just another form of nihilism as the French philosopher Chantal Delsol observes.
In this timeless classic, Hayek examines issues like planning and power, the fallacy of the utopian idea, state planning versus the rule of law, economic control, totalitarianism, security and economic freedom. He brilliantly explains how we are faced with two irreconcilable forms of social organization. Choice and risk either reside with the individual or s/he is relieved of both. Societies that opt for security instead of economic freedom will in the long run have neither.
Complete economic security is inseparable from restrictions on liberty - it becomes the security of the barracks. When the striving for security becomes stronger than the love of freedom, a society gets into deep, deep trouble. The way to prosperity for all is to remove the obstacles of bureaucracy in order to release the creative energy of individuals.
The government's job is not to plan for progress but to create the conditions favorable to progress. This has been proved by the impressive economic expansion under Reagan and Thatcher and by the amazing growth of the Asian Tiger economies, and most recently India since it started implementing sensible economic policies. Everywhere entrepreneurial energy is unshackled, massive improvements follow.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the contrast between phenomenal growth in formerly communist countries like Estonia or Poland or even the economic health of the UK as measured against the stagnant economies of Germany and France during the first years of the millennium. Old Europe would have benefited by a Thatcher and the French would have welcomed Polish plumbers instead of being resentful.
Hayek warns against utopian yearnings that are exploited by politicians, the stealthy way in which welfarism diminishes individual freedom, the totalitarian impulse and different types of propaganda. As pointed out by Chantal Delsol in Icarus Fallen, lack of personal responsibility leads to perpetual adolescence where citizens conflate desires with rights. Defining this process as the "sacralization" of rights, she shows that freedoms are then transformed into entitlements.
What a pity people don't learn; what a blessing we have in The Road to Serfdom as a reminder and a warning. The new Appendix of Related Documents include: Nazi-Socialism (1933), Reader's Report by Frank Knight (1943), Reader's Report by Jacob Marschak (1943), Foreword to the 1944 American Edition by John Chamberlain, Letter from John Scoon to C. Hartley Grattan (1945) and Introduction to the 1994 Edition by Milton Friedman. The book concludes with an index.
| Essential reading for the independent thinker
Hayek's masterpiece has appreciated in value since its first publication some 60 to 70 years ago. In fact, it is scary how much further down the path to serfdom we have gone over the past decades.
So, what is it all about?
In an intellectual but easily readable way Hayek explains that any sort of "planning" or "government intervention" is necessarily arbitrary by nature and a clear threat to democracy, liberty and individualism. The world we have been heading to is a collectivist authocracy, which always will be ruled by the worst characters amongst us.
Having written the book in the 30s of this century, Hayek does provide sufficient evidence that the emergence of collectivist tyrannies in Russia and Germany does not have their roots in the "bad genes of their peoples", but was a necessary by-product of their collectivist economic policies. Being an Austrian he nevertheless also traces back the roots of German National Socialism to both Germany's militarist history and the fathers of socialism, i.e. Marx, Engels, Bebel, Sombart, etal.
I highly recommend this book to everyone. No matter what your current perspective on the issues discussed, the book will give you new insight and foster a flow of new debates.
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