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The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek
By jbcobb | November 19, 2009
I just finished F. A. Hayek’s monumental work, The Road to Serfdom. Every libertarian and anti-socialist/anti-statist should take a few days to read Hayek’s book. Reading the book will either reinforce your fear of powerful governments, or it will convince you that your pro-statist views are very dangerous. Unbelievably, Hayek was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics, primarily for this book. He is the only economist of the “Austrian school” to have been so “honored”.
The book is a full frontal intellectual assault on the bases and premises of the centralized state, primarily a state which has taken over complete economic control of its citizens. However, Hayek also addresses the slow drift of modern democracies into a “soft fascism”. It is a shame that the citizens of the United States did not read an heed the warnings of Hayek when they were first published. America has not only forgotten the dangers of economically centralized states, but has elected leaders who openly praise the greater centralization of powers in Europe. It seems that American individualism has given way to dependence on the nanny state.
I do not know if we are past the point of return, but I seem to think we are in a hopeless situation. Nothing less than an intellectual revolution following a governmental collapse will save us. I truly believe that it is impossible to nudge our present political machine to reverse the creep of centralization. Part of the intellectual foundation of that revolution is in Hayek’s masterpiece, The Road to Serfdom.
JB
Topics: Big Brother, Communism, Fascism, Socialism, and the Battle for American Liberty, Economics, Literature | No Comments »