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Politics & Society

The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich A Hayek
Buy now

The Road to Serfdom

by Friedrich A Hayek

Recommendations from our site

“Hayek believed—and Mrs Thatcher believed all this, as well—that socialism was about control and liberalism, in its true sense, was about letting people fend for themselves, to make their own decisions and go as they wished.” Read more...

The best books on Margaret Thatcher

Simon Heffer,

“The Road to Serfdom is a very polemical book. It was published in 1944. It’s a warning not exactly about Communism, but about the coming of statism in the West, about the ways that some of the governing élites that Hayek saw, especially in Britain, thought about governing. The book is really mostly about Britain. He talks about the dangers of central planning, of the attempt to take over the economic life of a society and to try and control it from the centre. It’s a book that is properly understood as a libertarian book, but it’s not libertarian in the way that a lot of contemporary libertarians would define themselves. It is a very, very sceptical book, and a very modest book. In a way, Hayek argues for limited government because he has a very limited view of human nature and human knowledge.” Read more...

The best books on Freedom Isn’t Enough

Yuval Levin, Political Commentator

“This book convincingly demonstrated what was already intuitive to me: namely, the utter futility, the illusion of government planning as a mechanism for uplifting those less fortunate.” Read more...

The best books on How Libertarians Can Govern

Mitch Daniels, Politician

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  • Nineteen Eighty-Four
    by George Orwell

  • Democracy in America
    by Alexis de Tocqueville

  • On War
    by Carl von Clausewitz

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