Hayek Manufactures Freedom...

[Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>]

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Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 13:18:41 -0500
Reply-To: Hayek Related Research <HAYEK-L@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU>
Sender: Hayek Related Research <HAYEK-L@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU>
From: Greg Ransom <Gregransom@AOL.COM>
Subject:      HAYEKWEB:  J Powel on _The Road to Serfdom_
To: HAYEK-L@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU

>>  Hayek on the Web  <<

"The Road to Serfdom� Inside story of a 50-year phenomenon"
(by Jim Powell, July 1994), on the Web at:

  http://www.lfb.org/fa7139.html

>From "The Road to Serfdom� Inside story of a 50-year phenomenon"
by Jim Powell:

"This year, much has been written about F.A. Hayek's enormously
influential classic, _The Road to Serfdom_. But until now, no one has
reported the inside story of how a few devoted friends of freedom
helped get the book published in America, despite overwhelming hostility
from publishers and the media.

"Friedrich A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom," political science professor
 Herman Finer fumed in 1946, reflecting collectivist orthodoxy of the time,
"constitutes the most inopportune offensive against democracy to emerge
from a democratic country for many decades." No doubt about it, _The
Road to Serfdom_ was explosively controversial from the beginning,
especially his case that all forms of collectivism lead to tyranny. The book
was first published a half-century ago in Britain by Routledge, March 1944.
Nobel Prize winning economist Ronald Coase recalls that during Britain's
July 1945 parliamentary election campaign Winston Churchill cited Hayek
in his dramatic campaign speeches, to help show that a Labor Party win
would mean tyranny. Labor Party leader Clement Atlee ridiculed Hayek
and defeated Churchill. Soon afterwards, Atlee began seizing coal, steel,
railroads and other businesses ....

Opposition to Hayek's ideas was fierce in the United States, and a number
of publishers rejected the book. But there were friends of freedom who
worked wonders. Hayek authorized fellow Austrian economist Fritz Machlup,
 then working in Washington, to try to find an American publisher, but he
was unsuccessful. He gave a copy of the Routledge page proofs to
University of Chicago economics professor Aaron Director who met Hayek
in 1943 when both were teaching at the London School of Economics.
Director passed the page proofs to Frank Knight, founding father of the
"Chicago School." Knight apparently gave them to William T. Couch, a
classical liberal friend at the University of Chicago Press which agreed to
publish the book on September 18, 1944. But since nobody expected it
would sell many copies, the initial printing was only 2,000. It was a little
wartime edition about 4-7/8ths by 6-3/4 inches.

To help the book gain a hearing, the publishers asked John Chamberlain,
respected book editor for Harper's magazine and a devout libertarian, to
write a foreword. His name appeared prominently on the cover. The initial
reception was cool. On September 20, 1944, New York Times daily book
reviewer Orville Prescott called it a "sad and angry little book."

But then New York Times economics editorial writer Henry Hazlitt weighed
in with a home run:  a 1,500 word blockbuster review on the front page of
the Sunday New York Times Book Review, September 24, 1944. Hazlitt
declared that "Friedrich Hayek has written one of the most important books
of our generation." The University of Chicago Press ordered another
printing. The book sold 22,000 copies by year-end and sold this much
again by spring 1945.

Meanwhile, Reader's Digest editors DeWitt and Lila Acheson Wallace
expressed interest in publishing an excerpt from the book, and the
University of Chicago Press, eager to reach a popular audience, seems
to have given away those rights for nothing�Hayek later remarked
he never got a penny. In any case, The Road to Serfdom filled the first
20 pages of the April 1945 Reader's Digest under a banner headline drawn
 from Hazlitt's review: "One of the Most Important Books of Our Generation."
This brought Hayek's story to about 8 million people in the U.S. alone.
Subsequently, Book-of-the-Month Club distributed some 600,000 copies
of a condensed edition.

Sales records are incomplete, but there were a good many more printings
after that, and the book eventually sold at least 230,000 copies in the U.S.
Hayek went on a U.S. lecture tour, including prestigious places like Harvard
University, and he decided he rather liked being a lightning rod for freedom.

He expressed his views in popular publications like the Chicago Sun, Boston
Traveler and New York Times Magazine. He met many friends of freedom
with whom he was to collaborate in later years. Three dozen friends joined
him to found the international Mont Pelerin Society.
...

Today people around the world appreciate Hayek's profound truths
which seemed so shocking half-century ago. We at Laissez Faire
are proud to help distribute it in several dozen countries ...

Contents:
Introduction
1. The Abandoned Road
2. The Great Utopia
3. Individualism and Collectivism
4. The "Inevitability" of Planning
5. Planning and Democracy
6. Planning and the Rule of Law
7. Economic Control and Totalitarianism
8. Who, Whom?
9. Security and Freedom
10. Why the Worst Get on Top
11. The End of Truth
12. The Socialist Roots of Naziism
13. The Totalitarians in Our Midst
14. Material Conditions and Ideal Ends
15. The Prospects of International Order
16. Conclusion

 FA7139W The Road to Serfdom (paperback) 248p. $10.95"



Hayek on the Web is a regular feature of the Hayek-L list.


>>  END  <<

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Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
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