The Road to Serfdom

A polemical book, written in Britain during the Second World War and dedicated to the socialists of all parties, arguing that central economic planning leads toward tyranny. Hayek contends that Nazism and fascism grew out of collectivist ideas of the kind then gaining ground among British progressives. Because a central plan requires agreement on a single scale of values that does not exist, planners must eventually impose their own choices, and democracy gives way to coercion. Chapters such as 'Planning and the Rule of Law', 'Why the Worst Get on Top' and 'The End of Truth' argue that planning undermines general rules, rewards the ruthless and subordinates truth to propaganda. Hayek does not defend pure laissez-faire: he accepts some regulation, a guaranteed minimum income and social insurance, provided government acts through known, general rules rather than discretionary direction. Even Keynes, who admired the book, asked where the line between acceptable and dangerous planning falls, and critics point out that post-war mixed economies did not slide into tyranny as he feared.

It is the clearest short statement of the classical liberal case against central planning, and it explains much of the modern argument between markets and state direction.