Roads to Serfdom
Economics Nobelist Friedrich Hayek's book The Road to Serfdom is one of the sacred texts of modern conservatism and libertarianism. If you are too cheap to buy the Amazon edition above, or check it out of the library there is a free Reader's Digest condensed version here or you can get a cartoon version from the freepers here.
Hayek was annoyed with the totalitarian Communism of the Soviet Union, and concerned with the potential of wartime controls in Britain to morph into a Communist or Nazi style totalitarianism. He also feared that socialism or government planning would have the same effect.
The sixty odd years since its publication revealed some ironies in his thesis, though. For one thing, neither the Soviet Union nor the Nazi regime arose through the kind of socialist transformation of a republic that he envisioned. Neither does his book concern itself with how actual medieval and modern serf based economies arose - essentially through debt peonage and the increasing power of an oligarchy. Since the war, numerous Western democracies have experimented with socialism (largely unsuccessfully), but none has yet led to serfdom. Finally, the methods Hayek show totalitarian governments use to establish their power have been much in use lately by that Neocon saint and posterboy, George Bush.
Hayek was annoyed with the totalitarian Communism of the Soviet Union, and concerned with the potential of wartime controls in Britain to morph into a Communist or Nazi style totalitarianism. He also feared that socialism or government planning would have the same effect.
The sixty odd years since its publication revealed some ironies in his thesis, though. For one thing, neither the Soviet Union nor the Nazi regime arose through the kind of socialist transformation of a republic that he envisioned. Neither does his book concern itself with how actual medieval and modern serf based economies arose - essentially through debt peonage and the increasing power of an oligarchy. Since the war, numerous Western democracies have experimented with socialism (largely unsuccessfully), but none has yet led to serfdom. Finally, the methods Hayek show totalitarian governments use to establish their power have been much in use lately by that Neocon saint and posterboy, George Bush.
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