The Road to Serfdom ( German: Der Weg zur Knechtschaft) is a book written by the Austrian-born economist and philosopher Friedrich von Hayek (1899–1992) between 1940–1943, in which he "[warns] of the danger of tyranny that inevitably results from government control of economic decision-making through central planning." [1] He further argues that the abandonment of individualism and classical liberalism inevitably leads to a loss of freedom, the creation of an oppressive society, the tyranny of a dictator, and the serfdom of the individual. Significantly, Hayek challenged the general view among British academics that fascism(and National Socialism) was a capitalist reaction against socialism. He argued that fascism, National Socialism and socialism had mon roots in central economic planning and empowering the state over the individual.

Since its publication in 1944, The Road to Serfdom has been an influential and popular exposition of market libertarianism. It has sold over two million copies. [2] [3

Milton Friedman (July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the complexity of stabilization policy. [3] With George Stigler and others, Friedman was among the intellectual leaders of the second generation of Chicago price theory, a methodological movement at the University of Chicago's Department of Economics, Law School, and Graduate School of Business from the 1940s onward. Several students and young professors that were recruited or mentored by Friedman at Chicago went on to become leading economists; they include Gary Becker, Robert Fogel, and Robert Lucas, Jr.. [4]

Friedman's challenges to what he later called "naive Keynesian" theory [5] began with his 1950s reinterpretation of the consumption function. In the 1960s, he became the main advocate opposing Keynesian government policies, [6] and described his approach (along with mainstream economics) as using "Keynesian language and apparatus" yet rejecting its "initial" conclusions. [7] He theorized that there existed a "natural" rate of unemployment, and argued that employment above this rate would cause inflation to accelerate. [8] He argued that the Phillips curve was, in the long run, vertical at the "natural rate" and predicted what would come to be known as stagflation. [9] Friedman promoted an alternative macroeconomic viewpoint known as " monetarism", and argued that a steady, small expansion of the money supply was the preferred policy. [10] His ideas concerning monetary policy, taxation, privatization and deregulation influenced government policies, especially during the 1980s. His monetary theory influenced the Federal Reserve's response to the global financial crisis of 2007–08. [11