In the book, Hayek "[warns] of the danger of tyranny that inevitably results from government control of economic decision-making through central planning.

At the arrangement of editor Max Eastman, the American magazine Reader's Digest published an abridged version in April 1945, enabling The Road to Serfdom to reach a wider non-academic audience.

While a professor at the London School of Economics in the early 1930s – in the era of the Great Depression, the rise of autocracies in Russia, Italy and Germany, and World War II – Hayek wrote a memo to William Beveridge, then the director there, to dispute the then-popular claim that fascism represented the dying gasp of a failed capitalist system.

[20] The power of these minorities to act by taking money or property in pursuit of centralized goals, destroys the Rule of Law and individual freedoms.

[26] Hayek argues that the roots of National Socialism lie in socialism,[27] and then draws parallels to the thought of British leaders: The increasing veneration for the state, the admiration of power, and of bigness for bigness' sake, the enthusiasm for "organization" of everything (we now call it "planning") and that "inability to leave anything to the simple power of organic growth" ... are all scarcely less marked in England now than they were in Germany.

Nor is there any reason why the state should not help to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance in providing for those common hazards of life against which few can make adequate provision.

"[36] Since publication, Hayek has offered a number of clarifications on words that are frequently misinterpreted: In 2007[update], the University of Chicago Press estimated that more than 350,000 copies of The Road to Serfdom have been sold.

The Labour leader Clement Attlee responded in his election broadcast by claiming that what Churchill had said was the "second-hand version of the academic views of an Austrian professor, Friedrich August von Hayek".

[43] The Conservative Central Office sacrificed 1.5 tons of their precious paper ration allocated for the 1945 election so that more copies of The Road to Serfdom could be printed, although to no avail, as Labour won a landslide victory.

[44] Political historian Alan Brinkley had this to say about the impact of The Road to Serfdom:[45] The publication of two books ... helped to galvanize the concerns that were beginning to emerge among intellectuals (and many others) about the implications of totalitarianism.

It was placed fourth on the list of the 100 best non-fiction books of the 20th century[46] compiled by National Review magazine, was ranked number 16 in reader selections of the hundred best non-fiction book of the twentieth century administered by Modern Library,[47] and appears on a recommended reading list for the libertarian right hosted on the Political Compass test website.

"[50] George Orwell responded with both praise and criticism, stating, "in the negative part of Professor Hayek's thesis there is a great deal of truth.

"[51][52] Milton Friedman described The Road to Serfdom as "one of the great books of our time", and said of it: I think the Adam Smith role was played in this cycle [i.e. the late twentieth century collapse of socialism in which the idea of free-markets succeeded first, and then special events catalyzed a complete change of socio-political policy in countries around the world] by Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.

[55] Mises Institute economist Walter Block has observed critically that while The Road to Serfdom makes a strong case against centrally planned economies, it appears only lukewarm in its support of a free market system and laissez-faire capitalism, with Hayek even going so far as to say that "probably nothing has done so much harm to the liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some liberals on certain rules of thumb, above all the principle of laissez-faire capitalism".

In the book, Hayek writes that the government has a role to play in the economy through the monetary system (a view that he later withdrew),[56] work-hours regulation, social welfare, and institutions for the flow of proper information.

[57] Jeffrey Sachs argues that empirical evidence suggests welfare states, with high rates of taxation and social outlays, outperform the comparatively free-market economies.

[60] Gordon Tullock has argued Hayek's analysis incorrectly predicted governments in much of Europe in the late 20th century would descend into totalitarianism.

He uses Sweden, in which the government at that time controlled 63 percent of GNP, as an example to support his argument that the basic problem with The Road to Serfdom is "that it offered predictions which turned out to be false.

We can, if we wish, deliberately plan so as to give the fullest possible scope for the pursuit by individuals and social groups of cultural ends which are in no way state-determined.

She argues that "there seems hardly better case for taking for granted that planning will bring the worst to the top than for the opposite assumption that the seats of office will be filled with angels".

"[68] However, Frank Knight, founder of the Chicago school of economics, disputes the claim that Freedom under Planning contradicts The Road to Serfdom.