The Intellectual Context of F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom

Abstract

Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom is often read as a policy book and a political tract for its time. It is also often read as little more than a “slippery slope” argument, leading inevitably down a road from a free society to the gulag. In this paper, we counter the claim that The Road to Serfdom provides a slippery slope argument and explain that, while it was often read and used as a political tract for its time, Hayek's book is part of a broader project dealing with the institutional infrastructure within which economic activity takes place.

Keywords: Hayek, Road to Serdom, political economy of socialism

JEL Classification: B2, B3, B53, P51