The cult book by the renowned economist and intellectual opponent of John Maynard Keynes. "Rarely does an economist manage to awaken a broad audience with a book. A major exception is The Road to Serfdom, the legendary book by the later Nobel laureate Friedrich A. v. Hayek. One year before the end of the war, Hayek popularized in London exile his convictions gained in the twenties and thirties, especially the thesis that every planned economy has a tendency toward totalitarianism and that there can be no middle ground between socialism and a market economy. The Road to Serfdom is of central importance for the ideas that today are, somewhat misleadingly, called neoliberalism; the belief that economic problems are best solved through free markets and that the role of the state should be reduced. Particularly memorable is Hayek's reasoning why planned economies and democracy are incompatible."