The Road to Serfdom  

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"Plato's "noble lies" and Sorel's "myths" serve the same purpose as the racial doctrine of the Nazis or the theory of the corporative state of Mussolini. They are all necessarily based on particular views about facts which are then elaborated into scientific theories in order to justify a preconceived opinion."--The Road to Serfdom (1944) by Friedrich Hayek


"The development of this strand of thought within Germany has been well traced recently by Mr. R. D. Butler in his study of The Roots of National Socialism."--The Road to Serfdom (1944) by Friedrich Hayek

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The Road to Serfdom (German: Der Weg zur Knechtschaft) is a book written between 1940 and 1943 by Austrian-British economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek. Since its publication in 1944, The Road to Serfdom has been an influential and popular exposition of market libertarianism. It has been translated into more than 20 languages and sold over two million copies (as of 2010). The book was first published in Britain by Routledge in March 1944, during World War II, and was quite popular, leading Hayek to call it "that unobtainable book", also due in part to wartime paper rationing. It was published in the United States by the University of Chicago Press in September 1944 and achieved great popularity. At the arrangement of editor Max Eastman, the American magazine Reader's Digest published an abridged version in April 1945, enabling The Road to Serfdom to reach a wider popular audience beyond academics.

The Road to Serfdom was to be the popular edition of the second volume of Hayek's treatise entitled "The Abuse and Decline of Reason", and the title was inspired by the writings of the 19th century French classical liberal thinker Alexis de Tocqueville on the "road to servitude". In the book, Hayek "[warns] of the danger of tyranny that inevitably results from government control of economic decision-making through central planning." He further argues that the abandonment of individualism and classical liberalism inevitably leads to a loss of freedom, the creation of an oppressive society, the tyranny of a dictator, and the serfdom of the individual. Hayek challenged the view among British Marxists that fascism (including Nazism) was a capitalist reaction against socialism. He argued that fascism, Nazism and socialism had common roots in central economic planning and empowering the state over the individual. This goes against the understanding among scholars and political scientists of fascism being a far-right, not socialist, ideology.

The book has made a significant impact on 20th-century American conservative and libertarian economic and political discourse, being often cited today by commentators. Subject to much praise and criticism, the ideas advocated in The Road to Serfdom have been criticized by many academics and defended by economic liberals.

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Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "The Road to Serfdom" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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