• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Eight: Who, Whom?

Nine: Security and Freedom

Ten: Why the Worst Get on Top

Eleven: The End of Truth

Twelve: The Socialist Roots of Naziism

Thirteen: The Totalitarians in Our Midst

Fourteen: Material Conditions and Ideal Ends

Fifteen: The Prospects of International Order

Sixteen: Conclusion

Bibliographical Note

Appendix: Related Documents

Nazi-Socialism (1933)

Reader’s Report by Frank Knight (1943)

Reader’s Report by Jacob Marschak (1943)

Foreword to the 1944 American Edition by John Chamberlain

Letter from John Scoon to C. Hartley Grattan (1945)

Introduction to the 1994 Edition by Milton Friedman

Acknowledgments

EDITORIAL FOREWORD

The first volume in The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek was the last book that Hayek wrote, The Fatal Conceit. It was the first volume in two respects: it was volume 1 in the series, and it was the first published, in 1988. The founding general editor was the philosopher W. W. Bartley III, and he initially envisioned that the series would contain twenty-two volumes—at least, that was what was noted in the material describing the planned series in The Fatal Conceit. Wisely, Bartley added the proviso that “the plan is provisional.” It is now anticipated that there will be nineteen volumes in all, but the original proviso still applies.

Much has happened since 1988. A second volume produced under Bartley’s editorship was published in 1991, but it was a posthumous contribution, Bartley having succumbed to cancer in February 1990. Soon thereafter Stephen Kresge took over the position of general editor, and under him five more volumes were produced. The volumes in the series did not appear in numerical order: to date, volumes 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, and 10 have been published.

In spring 2002 Stephen Kresge asked me whether I might be interested in becoming the next general editor. I was, and after the Hayek family and representatives from the University of Chicago Press and Routledge all signed off, my work began. The first year or so was taken up with getting editorial material shifted from California to North Carolina, rethinking the ordering of the volumes, establishing relationships with existing and potential volume editors, and seeking funds to support the project.

The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents—The Definitive Edition is the first volume to appear under the new general editorship. Others are on the way. I anticipate fairly steady progress over the next few years as the project moves toward completion.

In the first volume Bill Bartley briefly stated the editorial policy for the series as follows: “The texts of subsequent volumes will be published in corrected, revised and annotated form” and “essays which exist in slightly variant forms, or in several different languages, will be published always in English or in English translation, and only in their most complete and finished form unless some variation, or the timing thereof, is of theoretical or historical significance.” These policies will continue to be followed in the present volume and those to come.

For The Road to Serfdom the following editorial decisions were made. The British edition came out in March 1944, and the American in September of that year. The text for the American edition was reset, principally to replace phrases like “this country” with “England.” Because the American edition is accordingly clearer (that is, it does not presume that the reader knows that “this country” refers to England), it was chosen for the text. Accordingly, “American English” is used throughout—in this regard this volume differs from others in the series, in which “British English” has mainly been used. Typographical errors were silently corrected, except where Hayek provided an incorrect citation. In those cases the correction is made and noted. At many points in the book Hayek quotes others, and his quotations do not always exactly duplicate the original. However, only when his misquoting might affect the meaning of the passage is this noted; in any event, what Hayek