B A U M A N R A R E B O O K S S U M M E R 2 0 2 3 22 “ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT BOOKS OF OUR GENERATION”: RARE FIRST EDITION OF HAYEK’S THE ROAD TO SERFDOM 22. (ECONOMICS) HAYEK, Friedrich A. The Road to Serfdom. London: George Routledge, (1944). Slim octavo, original black cloth. $8500 First edition of Hayek’s classic defense of free enterprise, “a major event in the intellectual history of the United States." Arriving in London in 1931 to join the faculty of the London School of Economics, Hayek remained in England throughout the war and, as a naturalized émigré, was frustrated in his attempts to serve the Allied cause in a governmental capacity. In time, Hayek came to believe that his contribution to the Allied war e#ort would be in the writing of The Road to Serfdom: "since I can do nothing to help winning the war my concern is for the more distant future…I am doing what little I can to open people's eyes." The book was published in March of 1944; the small press run of perhaps 2000 copies sold out within a month and, due to wartime paper rationing, it was di$cult to supply the demand for more copies (Hayek himself called it "that unobtainable book") (see Bruce Caldwell, intro to The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents). "The fuse lit by The Road to Serfdom was slow-burning. Published in 1944, its message that all forms of socialism and economic planning lead inescapably to tyranny was sensational enough to make it a bestseller…[after the war, however] with Labour in power in Britain and the New Dealers in the United States, the book then seemed to die a natural death. An expanded government role in the economy seemed perfectly compatible with the maintenance of traditional liberties. Keynes was the name to conjure with, not Hayek. The Road to Serfdom !nally took o# in the 1970s, when the Keynesian system ran into crisis. Margaret Thatcher reread it in 1974, and the scales fell from her eyes. Ronald Reagan spun his famous line about people having to work more and more of each day for the federal government than for themselves. "Hayek has written one of the most important books of our generation. It restates for our time the issue between liberty and authority with the power and rigor of reasoning that John Stuart Mill stated… in his great essay, 'On Liberty" (Hazlitt, 82). Hayek's analysis of the link between planning and totalitarianism and his moral defense of capitalism caused a sensation when it was published. Because of its enduring in"uence, The Road to Serfdom is considered "a major event in the intellectual history of the United States" (Gottfried, 10). Without the extremely scarce original dust jacket. Owner signature. Interior !ne, corners a bit rounded, faintest stain to front board. A near-!ne copy.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDg3OTM=