Caldwell Bruce - The road to serfdom: text and documents

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF

F. A. Hayek

VOLUME II

THE ROAD TO SERFDOM

Text and Documents

The Definitive Edition

PLAN OF THE COLLECTED WORKS
Edited by Bruce Caldwell

The plan is provisional. Minor alterations may occur in titles of individual books, and several additional volumes may be added.

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF

F. A. Hayek

VOLUME II

THE ROAD TO SERFDOM

Text and Documents

The Definitive Edition

EDITED BY
BRUCE CALDWELL

The University of Chicago Press

BRUCE CALDWELL is the Joe Rosenthal Excellence Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and author of Beyond Positivism: Economic Methodology in the Twentieth Century and Hayeks Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F. A. Hayek, the latter also published by the University of Chicago Press. He is a past president of the History of Economics Society.

The University of Chicago Press
Routledge, London

2007 by the Estate of F. A. Hayek
Original text 1944 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2007
Printed in the United States of America

16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-32054-0 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-32055-7 (paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-32054-5 (cloth)
ISBN-10: 0-226-32055-3 (paper)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hayek, Friedrich A. von (Friedrich August), 18991992.

The road to serfdom : text and documents / F. A. Hayek ; edited by Bruce Caldwell. Definitive ed.
p. cm. (The collected works of F. A. Hayek ; v. 2)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-32054-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-32055-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-32054-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-32055-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Economic policy. 2. Totalitarianism. I. Caldwell, Bruce. II. Title. III. Series: Hayek, Friedrich A. von (Friedrich August), 18991992. Works. 1989 ; v. 2.

HB171 .H426 1989 vol. 2
[HD82]
330.1 sdc22
[338.9] 2006012835

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF F. A. HAYEK

Founding Editor: W. W. Bartley III
General Editor: Bruce Caldwell

Published with the support of

The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace
Stanford University

The Earhart Foundation

The Pierre F. and Enid Goodrich Foundation

The Morris Foundation, Little Rock

CONTENTS

THE ROAD TO SERFDOM

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 volumesat 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 Bartleys 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 DocumentsThe 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 throughoutin 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 originally wrote stands.