The Road To Serfdom unravels the downsides of socialism, why it's prone to turning into totalitarianism, and why economic freedom is essential.

In the 20th century, totalitarian ideologies nearly tore the world apart.

But while fascism is considered unacceptable in most polite society, socialism still enjoys support despite its massive casualty count.

For Friedrich Hayek, the failures of socialism were not incidental excesses, but built into its very ideology.

An Austrian-born British economist and winner of the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economics, Hayek was known as a champion of free markets and classical liberalism.

First published in 1944, The Road to Serfdom is Hayek's classic treatise against socialism and in defense of individual economic freedom, written in response to what he saw as an alarming shift towards economic planning among the world's leading governments.