The Freedom of the Prices: Hayek's Road to Serfdom Reassessed

Michael Makovi

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Recent debate has centered around the contemporary relevance and even the original validity of F. A. Hayek's Road to Serfdom. Was it directed against command socialism only or against welfare-state interventionism as well? Should the book even be read anymore? This essay takes a step back from the dichotomy between socialism and interventionism and explores two specific ideas of Hayek's which deserve renewed attention: first, his claim that economic liberty is the fundamental liberty and that political liberty is merely secondary in value. Second, Hayek's conception of the rule-of-law, which has implications for contemporary command-and-control regulation. Furthermore, that Hayek's philosophical conception of the rule-of-law in the Road to Serfdom is related to his economic theory of prices in “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” While Hayek's specific target in the Road to Serfdom was command socialism, his book embodied arguments which are more widely applicable and relevant today.

Keywords: rule of law; liberty; freedom; rights; price system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A12 B24 B25 B31 B53 D70 D82 K00 P10 P20 P50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-06-17
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hme, nep-hpe and nep-net
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https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/72360/1/MPRA_paper_72360.pdf revised version (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:72071

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