The Definitive Edition of F.A. Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents"

Sempai: lesen, lesen, lesen.
alles was ich jetzt sage, ist zu wenig und würde es nicht wiedergeben können.
Was für Gedanken und wie wahr ist dieser Inhalt.
Lesen, bevor solche Bücher verschwinden

Germany on Mar 01, 2023

Henry J: If you believe that stripping people of their freedoms and enslaving them makes for a great society, then you’ll find Hayek’s “The Road To Serfdom” to be a wonderful ‘how-to’ manual. Otherwise, if you think people should be left to maintain their individual rights and freedoms and have minimal constraints laid upon them, then this work will help you to recognize the threats - under the guise of justice and equality - that gather against them.

Hayek’s book can be read from three perspectives: as a piece of history, as a piece about history, and as a reasoned argument on why socialism fails.

As a piece of history, Hayek (Nobel prize in economics 1974) wrote this book during the second world war while living in England. Having grown up and been educated in Austria, and teaching at the London School of Economics, he was concerned that the British (and the Americans) were moving toward post-war socialism. This was his warning of the dangers that socialism posed.

That Hayek had personally observed the development of socialism in Austria and Germany, this book is much about the history of socialism, from its origins in the early 19th century up to the...

United States on Aug 30, 2018

Gabriel Dal' Fabbro: "E, se criticar uma religião não é um crime, discriminar alguém por causa da sua afiliação religiosa o é, sem sombra de dúvidas."

Essa frase está corretíssima, mas existe ateus em Meca ? Igrejas em Medina ? Ou agnósticos em Kabul ?

Muçulmanos tentando dar uma de santos que tratam a mulher como um "diamantes" mas a coitadas muçulmanos, não podem dirigir carros, não podem escolher com qual homem quer se casar, quando meninas que mestruam aos 7, 9 ou 13 anos, elas viram mulheres - segunda a jurisprudência islâmica - e são casadas a se casar com homens mais velho, beeeem mais velho, e isso não é barbárie ?

Quantas pessoas não foram mortas na Síria pela guerra civil na cristãos foram degolados, igrejas destruídas, monumento milenares destruídos, até livros antiguíssimos queimados por Jihadistas sobre a vida do próprio profeta Maomé, por um simples mentira !

O rei da Arábia Saudita acabou de decretar que ateus são terroristas e criaram leis para persegui-los, isso que nos chamamos de politicamente corretos, ira destruir a civilização ocidental.... Opa ! e sem contar que Muçulmanos querem tirar a cruz da bandeira da Suíça,...

Brazil on Dec 08, 2015

W. David McGuinn Jr.: I sincerely believe that in the future, “The Road to Serfdom “will rank alongside works of the John Locke, Adam Smith, Edmond Burke, Alexis De Tocqueville, and Ludwig von Mises in defining human freedom. Its insights inspire me to read it again at least every few years. And that is easy to do because it is a brief, well written book that explains how essential the freedom and dignity of each human individual are to the formation of a prosperous, good and just society.

Like many young, intelligent, concerned people, Hayek started his adult life as a democratic socialist, the trendy thing for young people then and now. But World War I caused him to questions the assumptions he had made about the social order. In conversations with his cousin Ludwig Wittgenstein, he developed a strong desire to discover ways that humanity might avoid the tragedy of the War in future. He studied with numerous academic luminaries in Vienna after the war including the renowned economist and powerful anti-socialist Ludwig von Mises. Then, in 1931, he wrote a book that earned him an invitation to join the London School of Economics where he famously debated the demand-side guru, John Maynard...

United States on May 20, 2015

Serenus Zeitblom: Rund 200 Seiten zählt der eigentliche Text in dieser Ausgabe. Sie ist prägnant und mit unverhohlener Sympathie von Herausgeber Bruce Caldwell eingeleitet und eingeordnet. Hilfreich sind dessen zusätzliche erklärende Fußnoten im Text (wobei z.B. George Orwell zumindest Nicht-US-Amerikanern wohl bekannt sein dürfte). Der Haupttext schließt diverse lotsende Vorworte Hayeks ein. 20 Seiten bieten einen schlanken Dokumentenanhang (Briefe, M.-Friedman-Vorwort). Auch ein Index ist vorhanden. Der Text ist schön eng gesetzt, dadurch leichter im Reisegepäck und dünner im Regal. Ich wollte das Buch bewusst in der einflussreicheren englischen Fassung statt in der ersten deutschen lesen. Schönheitsfehler: Der Herausgeber eines ursprünglich deutschsprachigen Werks kann allen Ernstes offensichtlich kaum Deutsch _und der Verlag auch nicht, sonst wären die Tippfehler bei Deutschem nicht dermaßen Legion. Leider wurde auch die zugrundeliegende US-Ausgabe nicht wieder zurück ins Britische übertragen. ;-)

NB: Ich bewerte hier bewusst die Ausgabe, das Buch selbst kann zu sehr polarisieren. Für die einen hat "The Road to Serfdom" vielleicht den Rang einer "Freiheits"-Bibel, einer...

Germany on Jun 02, 2014

Penguin: During the 2010 general election campaign in the UK, there was a lot of talk about "fairness", which no one quite knew what it meant. "Fairness" sounded good and was an indisputable virtue - who would challenge the notion of "fairness"? That made "fairness" a supreme soundbite for the campaign. It was also a time when anticapitalist sentiments were strong in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008-9, the banking sector was under ferocious attack which turned hysterical, developed countries were trapped in the longest and deepest recession known since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and government debt spiraled out of control to crisis point in many rich countries on the back of a weak economy. The public was angry; there were immediate economic and financial hardships that individuals did not want to face or take responsibility for. Blames were disproportionately levied on the banks, and the political rhetoric fuelled that sentiment; what could have drawn more public support and sympathy than sharing a identified common enemy and promising to put it in rein? The pubic hatred towards the bankers was frightening because it was beyond rationality. The public wanted...

United Kingdom on Aug 12, 2013

R. J. Farrer: If you are considering buying Friedrich Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom”, make sure to get this definitive edition. Bruce Caldwell’s excellent introduction and scholarly footnotes provide insight and context essential for understanding this important work.
So, it’s five stars for Caldwell’s editorship.
What of the book itself? Four stars, I think.

Hayek came to the LSE from Vienna in the early 1930’s. He was already making a reputation as an economist and he was soon offered a visiting professorship at LSE. The ideas that gave rise to this work, first published in England in book form in March 1944, began as a memo to Lord Beveridge (his LSE director) ten years earlier. Hayek was convinced that Beveridge and many British intellectuals were hopelessly naïve about the true nature of National Socialism in Germany and were equally unable to comprehend the extreme authoritarianism of Stalin’s form of communism. Hayek, whose political philosophy might be characterised as ‘Whig’ in English terms, was fearful that the liberal cultures and widely cherished assumptions of post-enlightenment Europe were rapidly giving way to brutalising and authoritarian regimes....

United Kingdom on Jun 29, 2013