The Road To Serfdom

The University of Chicago has spent many years producing for publication the collected works of F.A. Hayek. The series’ third editor, Bruce Caldwell, has chosen The Road to Serfdom as the eighth work in the series. All the books are in English, and all are in their original British versions except Serfdom (released in an Americanized dialect). Serfdom, the most well-known volume, already has gone through several editions, and this latest version includes material from the earlier versions.

The Road to Serfdom is one of the most influential and controversial books on political economics written in the twentieth century. It warns against the coercive effects of central government planning and argues instead for a free market. First published late in World War II, Serfdom has sold more than 350,000 copies and gone through multiple editions. Reader’s Digest sent out more than one million copies of a condensed version (19). The 2007 edition contains six preambles: two forewords, two introductions, and two prefaces.

Serfdom began as a 1933 lecture delivered in London in the shadow of Hitler’s rise to power. The completed book was published in 1944 in the United Kingdom, America, and Australia, and went through multiple printings.