Reading Thoughts: The Road to Serfdom (1944) by Friedrich Hayek

I’ve decided to start making mini articles whenever I read a new book, both as a diary of my thoughts, and as a way to chart how I change over time.

I accidentally bought a second copy of this book, so I thought that I may as well finally read it.

My impressions of the book before starting were that it ‘felt important’ — I’m not sure if I heard the name of the book a bunch prior in some capacity, or what, but ‘The Road to Serfdom’ is a pretty catchy title.

Reading took place between 9 Aug 2025 and 10 Aug 2025 (for context in case my opinions change, or so you can situate when these were my feelings). I was on a camping trip in Cornwall.

Before starting the read, I did some pre-research. I usually do this for context of when something was written. While doing this, I learnt that the book was popular with liberals and conservatives, which worried me to be honest!

Something which immediately irked me when reading the book, was that Hayek writes phrases like “this country”, which makes me flip to the front of the book and go “ah, New York, of course”. Apologies America, but your nation does this so often. Your works are exported everywhere, with the assumption that everyone engaging with them is a ‘local’.

I have always found this interesting. World domination via memetics. Not only random elements like the pronunciation of tomato, or spelling of colour, or that we (the world) can name so many of your cities, but you can name barely any of ours, but also many of my biases I have are because of your media. I’m South African, and I have never met a Mexican in person, but because of your media ‘sleepy’ is one of the words that floats into my word cloud, among many other examples. It is something I feel that Americans struggle to comprehend, which I can understand, I guess. Most of what you see is what is made for you, and the rest of the world is culturally bilingual.

This book really has some good 20:20 hindsight moments. Saying phrases like it’s ‘unlikely that America will become like Nazi Germany’ — funny how wrong that feels today. Though, I think it is valuable to see how much the world can change in under 100 years.

Hayek brings forward an interesting idea — internationally prolific influencers becoming corrupted. Germans influencing the world because they are ‘leaders’ in ideas of philosophy, child-rearing, science, etc. A mirroring here with the United States, Israel too. Maybe ego causes this? It would make sense that egotism causes nationalism. ‘We are thought leaders, therefore all we do is good’.

In terms of useful perspectives, I think Hayek was well situated, being from Austria and living in America. This type of ‘double life’ is something I am familiar with, having been born in South Africa and living in the United Kingdom. I genuinely believe that this situation brings forward unique experiences and takes which can be helpful (and sometimes less helpful) to the new society one finds themselves in. Overall, I believe this type of cultural exchange should happen more. Often a problem can be harder to understand from the inside, with a fresh pair of eyes allowing the alien to emerge from the mundane.

There’s a line in the book that stuck out to me: “our most cherished hopes and ambitions if they should prove to be the source of the danger”. Pretty much the same as “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. I do think this is an important sentiment to think about, but there is a part of me that feels like ‘we can fix it later’ or that ‘how will we learn if we don’t do?’. Conservative sentiment in general does feel like ‘it’s not broken to us, so why would we change it for the better, because that may screw us in the future’ while others are currently suffocating in the current circumstances, but also make the circumstances possible (i.e. cheap labour). It just seems like a privileged position.

What feels like Hayek’s main point of the book was pissing me off so much while reading! I think they’re full of shit to say that socialism inherently leads to fascism because of how socialism is set up. To be more exact, I think unchecked power, mixed with nationalism, can lead to fascism. They lump all forms of socialism together, ignoring that democratic institutions can be implemented alongside socialist systems (such as the NHS in the UK).

Also, we live in a hyper capitalist state now. Older capitalism (pre-neoliberal capitalism, i.e. stronger labour protections, welfare provisions, and public services) in a way can be seen as more akin to Socialism compared to what we have now.

It’s funny that Hayek writes “Scarcely anyone doubts that we must continue to move towards Socialism”. I do wonder how truly that was a sentiment of the time. Ever since the fears around the Cold War, socialism has been taught as a ‘bad word’ or a sign that someone is ‘working for the other side’. In the US, it really feels like when socialism is brought up, critical thinking goes down. Even if people want the ideals of socialism, they are scared of the package.

Even in this book, he uses the words ‘our enemy’ when talking about systems that use socialism. An ‘us vs them’ mentality, like all political parties with those ideals lead to Nazism…

I will say that it is good (the bar feels low) that Hayek is not anti-German people (as a race). He makes lots of good arguments to support this too. That German people have been a fundamental part of many nations via immigration, and that they have made positive impacts towards democratic values. Additionally, that a handful of the Nazi higher ups were originally from Western democracies. People are people. I am happy that this book puts that plainly at least. However… he has a really bad habit of making generalisations via anecdotal evidence. He also does a lot of ‘I heard a German guy’ and ‘British journalists are like’ and then applies that to the entire situation. The same with him saying ‘some of the greatest thinkers believe Socialism equals slavery’. Very Trump-y language. Calling people you side with ‘the greatest’. It rubs me the wrong way.

The book has some cringe, and annoying rhetoric. “Non-Nazi socialists, when moving to other countries, if they do not abandon their views, are planting the seeds of Nazism”… I can see why conservatives like this shit.

The inevitability, that socialism leads to Nazism, is crazy, biased, and so non-nuanced. It really makes me surprised that this book is so popular. Then again, I’m also not surprised that today it can be used by modern republicans (and the like) as a tool of indoctrination. If your populace lacks critical thinking skills, and believes that ‘because it is written in a book, it must have some weight of truth’ well then of course people would use this.

I find it so interesting how often it feels like Hayek’s ‘mask’ slips. For example, to say that individualism has roots in Christianity, which ‘is Western Society’ (very debatable), and that Socialism is at odds with individualism. Therefore, you now have a talking point straight from ‘right wing media’ that socialism is inherently anti-Christian ideals.

Instead of socialism, Hayek argues that we should ‘give capitalism a go, because we have not given it a proper shot’. This argument could have easily been applied to socialism as well. He says that capitalism allows people to choose what they do in life, but wouldn’t democratic socialism be the same? It really feels like you want people to be able to exploit people and situations, using progress as a shield.

Overall, I’m not a fan of this book and the ideas it puts forward, but I think it is an interesting nugget of context for the USA in 1944. There is a part of me that is disappointed that the ideas in this are still echoing around the room today, bouncing all over the walls. The irony of seeing the USA today, a capitalist powerhouse, becoming one of the world’s largest threats (climate, militarism, democratic backsliding), makes me really wonder if all roads lead to Serfdom.