The Essence of The Road to Serfdom

Friedrich Hayek  (1899 – 1992) was an economist and philosopher, author of seminal works that changed intellectual history, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena. He taught in Vienna, London, and Chicago. 

In 1944, F.A. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom rocked the English-speaking world. The book argued that there can be no political or civil liberty without economic liberty as a first principle. Every step away from economic liberty takes us closer to authoritarian control over the whole of society. With central control comes corruption, servitude, and relative impoverishment. The difference between the Reds and Browns, Hayek argued, matters in theory but not in practice: both paths lead to serfdom.