Friedrich A. von Hayek

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.

The Road to Serfdom

Rules and Order

Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 1

Bruce Caldwell

Market and Other Orders

The Political Order of a Free People

Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 3

A free-market monetary system

Der Weg zur Knechtschaft

Kölelik yolu

Questo volume – considerato ormai un classico delle scienze sociali – contiene saggi scritti da Hayek nei vent’anni successivi alla Seconda guerra mondiale. Nella prima parte, vengono trattati temi di teoria della conoscenza, carichi di implicazioni etiche e politiche: il problema dei fenomeni complessi, la critica del «costruttivismo», la distinzione tra il razionalismo cartesiano e il razionalismo critico, e così via. Nella seconda parte, vengono delineati i princìpi di un ordine sociale liberale e si individuano gli errori di quegli intellettuali che hanno ceduto alla mitologia collettivistica. La terza parte è invece dedicata al rapporto tra politica ed economia e a tematiche più specificamente economiche, come per esempio il pieno impiego e l’inflazione. La consapevolezza dei limiti della ragione è lo strumento con cui Hayek combatte contro ogni terrorismo intellettuale, basato sulla «presunzione fatale» di una conoscenza superiore. La nostra conoscenza, per Hayek come per Popper, è fallibile, ma Hayek sottolinea un altro grande principio gnoseologico: quello della dispersione delle nostre conoscenze relative a situazioni particolari di tempo e di luogo. «Fallibilità» e «ignoranza» diventano in tal modo i fondamenti della libertà individuale e della società aperta.

Studi di filosofia, politica ed economia

los errores del socialismo

La fatal arrogancia

Full Employment at Any Price?

English summary: In this work, which is presented in German for the first time and which Hayek published in 1941 while he was teaching at the London School of Economics, he develops - based on the 'Austrian' tradition - a three-dimensional idea of capital by analyzing possible variations of the input-output structure of production and outlines the nonmonetary fundamentals of establishing interest rates. This book deals with a central issue in an international discussion on concepts of the theory of capital, a discussion which began almost a century ago. In the present-day world, Hayek's theory would provide a very suitable method for investigating problems, especially those of human capital. In the afterword, Erich W. Streissler takes a critical look at Hayek's assumptions and establishes the position of this work in the context of the history of theories. This volume has been translated into German so that the German edition of Hayek's works will be complete. German description: Das hier erstmals auf Deutsch vorgelegte Werk aus dem Jahr 1941 kann zum einen - biographisch - als Haupt- und Schlusspunkt der konjunktur- und kapitaltheoretischen Forschungen Hayeks gesehen werden, zum anderen - dogmengeschichtlich - als Angelpunkt in einer beinahe ein Jahrhundert wahrenden internationalen Diskussion kapitaltheoretischer Konzepte. Aus der osterreichischen Tradition Bohm-Bawerks herkommend, entwickelt Hayek in grundlicher, auch graphisch veranschaulichter Analyse moglicher Varianten der Einsatz-Ausstoss-Struktur der Produktion im Zeitablauf eine dreidimensionale Vorstellung von Kapital und erarbeitet im Rahmen eines intertemporalen Gleichgewichtsmodells die guterwirtschaftlichen Grundlagen der Zinsbildung. Auf den heutigen, in der Regel anglo-amerikanisch geschulten Leser kann vieles aus Hayeks Gedankenwelt neu und verstandnisvertiefend wirken, wenn auch die dem Werk zugrundeliegende Idee der Knappheit realen Kapitals in gegenwartigen westlichen Wirtschaften nicht das zentrale okonomische Problem ist. Anwendbar und durchaus aktuell hingegen ist das Knappheitskonzept, sobald nicht von Kapital allgemein gesprochen wird, sondern spezifisch von Humankapital. Angesichts des grossen Zeitbedarfes von dessen Produktion werden die von Hayek analysierten Wirkungen der Verlangerung und Verkurzung von Investitionsperioden zu entscheidungsbestimmenden Grossen. Im Nachwort sichtet Erich W. Streissler die Hayekschen Annahmen kritisch und bestimmt die Stellung des Werkes im theoriegeschichtlichen Zusammenhang - durch Bezugnahme auf einschlagige Untersuchungen von Bohm-Bawerk, Schumpeter, Keynes, J. Robinson, Sraffa und Hicks.

Die reine Theorie des Kapitals

Essays on Liberalism and the Economy

Friedrich A. von Hayek

Books

Your next favorite book is out there