±1±: Now is the time The Road to Serfdom: A Classic Warning against the Dangers to Freedom Inherent in Social Planning Order Today!
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Over All Rating Reviews : Great Deal : $19.77
Date Created : Jun 25, 2010 08:15:12
Originally published in 1944, The Road to Serfdom has profoundly influenced many of the world's great leaders: from Orwell and Churchhill in the mid-forties, to Reagan and Thatcher in the 80's. The book offers persuasive warnings against the dangers of central planning, along with what Orwell described as ''an eloquent defense of laissez-faire capitalism.'' Hayek shows that the idea that ''under a dictatorial government you can be free inside,'' is nothing less than a grievous fallacy. Such dictatorial governments prevent individual freedoms and they often use psychological measures to perform ''an alteration of the character of the people.'' Gradually, the people yield their individuality to the point where they become part of the collectivist mass.
±1±: Now is the time The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents--The Definitive Edition (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek) (Volume 2) Order Today!
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Over All Rating Reviews : Great Deal : $9.35
Date Created : Jun 16, 2010 05:37:25
An unimpeachable classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, The Road to Serfdom has inspired and infuriated politicians, scholars, and general readers for half a century. Originally published in 1944—when Eleanor Roosevelt supported the efforts of Stalin, and Albert Einstein subscribed lock, stock, and barrel to the socialist program—The Road to Serfdom was seen as heretical for its passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of production. For F. A. Hayek, the collectivist idea of empowering government with increasing economic control would lead not to a utopia but to the horrors of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
First published by the University of Chicago Press on September 18, 1944, The Road to Serfdom garnered immediate, widespread attention. The first printing of 2,000 copies was exhausted instantly, and within six months more than 30,000 books were sold. In April 1945, Reader’s Digest published a condensed version of the book, and soon thereafter the Book-of-the-Month Club distributed this edition to more than 600,000 readers. A perennial best seller, the book has sold 400,000 copies in the United States alone and has been translated into more than twenty languages, along the way becoming one of the most important and influential books of the century.
With this new edition, The Road to Serfdom takes its place in the series The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek. The volume includes a foreword by series editor and leading Hayek scholar Bruce Caldwell explaining the book's origins and publishing history and assessing common misinterpretations of Hayek's thought. Caldwell has also standardized and corrected Hayek's references and added helpful new explanatory notes. Supplemented with an appendix of related materials ranging from prepublication reports on the initial manuscript to forewords to earlier editions by John Chamberlain, Milton Friedman, and Hayek himself, this new edition of The Road to Serfdom will be the definitive version of Friedrich Hayek's enduring masterwork.
±1±: Best Buy Not long ago I reached the realization that all forms of tyranny: Nazism, fascism, whatever it is that Chavez calls what he is doing, the lunatic in North Korea, Communism, etc. are one and the same: excuses for a small group of people headed by an 'enlighten' leader, to take away the freedom, to control, to grab most of the money and all the power of a nation. One thing in common, the word 'socialism' is present in most of their systems, from National Socialism (Hitler) or all flavors and intensities of Communism at the different stages. Basically, the 'good of the people' is only an excuse for a bunch of greedy and unscrupulous men to grab and hold to power, eliminating all dissent. Well, Hayek preceded me by decades, and he quotes others (Tocqueville, etc.) saying basically the same much before him. Unsurprisingly, his analysis and predicted consequences, are proven right on, as we speak in Europe and right here in America. I think this book should be suggested reeding in every high school, on Citizenship tests for new immigrants, and wherever possible. You see, I started the previous phrase with 'required' reading, instead of 'suggested'. It is so easy to fall for socialistic, community-planning thinking. It is always with good intentions that peoples start the road to their demise towards any form of socialism, as it necessarily implies overriding some or all of the individual's will and choices for what is 'best' for the 'greater good'. How striving for what we understand to be the best for a community, actually slaves and dooms it. How any attempt, as noble and well inspired, to control, direct or determine what other people should do, it carries its own demise. How there is no substitute to freedom in its purest form (not the 'higher' level of freedom advertised by socialists of all flavors), how nobody has the right to chose for others, how the common good is only the sum of individuals freely choosing their own good according to their own values, how a 'planned society' is a slaved society, how governing to satisfy people's needs and happiness does not accomplish either one. How we need the threat of failure as much as the promise of success to get up from our butts and do something (like work, for instance). How people that are 'taken care off' lost their freedom and their motivation, and their societies are doomed. on Sale!
