Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom

20 Oct, 2024 330 Economics

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian-British economist Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (1944) in which Hayek (1899-1992) warned that the way Britain was running its wartime economy would not work in peacetime and could lead to tyranny. His target was centralised planning, arguing this disempowered individuals and wasted their knowledge, while empowering those ill-suited to run an economy. He was concerned about the support for the perceived success of Soviet centralisation, when he saw this and Fascist systems as two sides of the same coin. When Reader’s Digest selectively condensed Hayek’s book in 1945, and presented it not so much as a warning against tyranny as a proof against socialism, it became phenomenally influential around the world.

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Guests

  • Bruce Caldwell No other episodes
    Research Professor of Economics at Duke University and Director of the Center for the History of Political Economy
  • Melissa Lane 11 episodes
    The Class of 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton University and the 50th Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College in London
  • Ben Jackson No other episodes
    Professor of Modern History and fellow of University College at the University of Oxford

Reading list

  • The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets Since the Depression
    Angus Burgin (Harvard University Press, 2012) Google Books →
  • Hayek's Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F.A. Hayek
    Bruce Caldwell (University of Chicago Press, 2004) Google Books →
  • The Road to Serfdom After 75 Years
    Bruce Caldwell (Journal of Economic Literature, 2020) Google Books →
  • Hayek: A Life 1899-1950
    Bruce Caldwell and Hansjoerg Klausinger (University of Chicago Press, 2022) Google Books →
  • Marx's Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism
    M. Desai (Verso, 2002) Google Books →
  • The Cambridge Companion to Hayek
    Edward Feser (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2006) Google Books →
  • Hayek: The Iron Cage of Liberty
    Andrew Gamble (Polity, 1996) Google Books →
  • Collectivist Economic Planning
    Friedrich Hayek (Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2015) Google Books →
  • The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents: The Definitive Edition
    Friedrich Hayek (ed. Bruce Caldwell) (Routledge, 2008) Google Books →
  • The Road to Serfdom: Condensed Version
    Friedrich Hayek (Institute of Economic Affairs, 2005) Google Books →
  • The Use of Knowledge in Society
    Friedrich Hayek (American Economic Review, 1945) Google Books →
  • Individualism and Economic Order
    Friedrich Hayek (University of Chicago Press, 1996) Google Books →
  • The Constitution of Liberty
    Friedrich Hayek (Routledge, 2006) Google Books →
  • Law, Legislation and Liberty: A new statement of the liberal principles of justice and political economy
    Friedrich Hayek (Routledge, 2012) Google Books →
  • Freedom, the Common Good and the Rule of Law: Hayek and Lippmann on Economic Planning
    Ben Jackson (Journal of the History of Ideas, 2012)
  • Hayek: A Collaborative Biography Part I
    Robert Leeson (ed.) (Palgrave, 2013) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m0023x87

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0023x87

Auto-category: 330.15 (Economic theory and philosophy)