May, 2017
The Intellectual Context of F. A. Hayeks 'The Road to Serfdom'
Peter J. Boettke
Director, F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and EconomicsRosolino A. Candela
Program Director, Academic and Student Programs
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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.