The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism

By F. A. Hayek.

Edited by W. W. Bartley Iii.. From the foreword: The reader who is struck by the pace and freshness of the argument of this new book, its vigorous application to specific cases, and its occasionally polemical thrust will want to know something of its background. In 1978, at the age of nearly eighty, and after a lifetime of doing battle with socialism in its many manifestations, Hayek wanted to have a showdown. He conceived of a grand formal debate, probably to be held in Paris, in which the leading theorists of socialism would face the leading intellectual advocates of the market order. They would address the question: ‘Was Socialism a Mistake?'. The advocates of the market order would argue that socialism was - and always had been - thoroughly mistaken on scientific and factual, even logical grounds, and that its repeated failures, in the many different practical applications of socialist ideas that this century has witnessed, were, on the whole, the direct outcome of these scientific errors.

London. Routledge. 1998. 186p.