The Constitution of Liberty.

the cornerstone of neo-liberalism

The first edition of this foundational work of neo-liberal thought by the economist and philosopher Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992), made famous by the oft repeated anecdote that Margaret Thatcher, to cut short a presentation by a 'wet' member of the Conservative Research Department, slammed her copy of The Constitution of Liberty down on the table, declaring 'This is what we believe!'

Where The Road to Serfdom contained a sustained attacked on the malign forces of totalitarianism and the enchroaching-state, The Constitution of Liberty, published to coincide with the centenary of J.S. Mill's On Liberty, offered a positive vision of what a low-interventionist government may look like: 'to picture an ideal, to show how it can be achieved, and to explain what its realization would mean in practice' (Preface).

The resultant work contains a discussion of ethics, jurisprudence, the history of ideas and economics of the modern welfare state, analysing the ethical foundations of what a 'free' society might look like where individual liberty is the prized-basis of morality.

First edition, first impression; 8vo (24 x 16 cm); slight offsetting to front free endpapers, light spotting to fore-edge and endpapers; publisher's ochre cloth, lettered in gold on blue ground to spine, upper cover slightly soiled, publisher's unclipped salmon-pink dustjacket lettered in blue, a little spotted, very good; x, 569, [1]pp.