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from J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. (rosserjb@JMU.EDU)
I think there is little doubt that _Road to Serfdom_ was Hayek's most influential book, certainly for the trivial reason that it was the most widely read, if for no other reason. However, I personally do not find it his most persuasive or impressive book, far from it. The obvious problem with it, which also was the source of much of the ridicule that it received from those now-ridiculed elites, was his claim in certain places in the book that social democracy would lead to dictatorship. This was ridiculous then and is ridiculous now, unless one takes an ultra-libertarian position that high taxes are "dictatorship," which I know some on this list espouse.

I understand that part of his argument rested on examining the social democratic origins of many of the Nazis, which was valid. But it is one thing to note that former social democrats became Nazis, and quite another to say that later social democrats will also necessarily go on a "road to serfdom." Of course it is ironic that the same book also contains passages where Hayek allowed for the possibility of some policies that might be called social democratic, such as national health insurance, with him later repudiating some of these positions. These passages are among those that have opened him up to criticism from some more libertarian oriented folks. For those who want to say _Road to Serfdom_ deserves praise because Hayek forecast the fall of socialism in it, well, von Mises did that back in 1920 and Hayek himself made his more cogent critiques of socialist planning well before he wrote _Road to Serfdom_. Hayek, of course, significantly extended and expanded von Mises' original critique. Many other of his works are much more impressive to me than this particular wildly oversold volume.

Barkley Rosser Professor of Econ

(posted 8729 days ago)

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