'A careful and brilliant statement of the conditions of human freedom. It is a major work of political and economic philosophy which sets terms that neither its friends or critics can ignore.' - THES

At last this work can appear in the form it was intended to take when I started on it nearly twenty years ago. Half way through this period, when a first draft was nearly completed, a weakening of my powers, which fortunately proved to be temporary, made me doubt whether I should ever be able to complete it and led me to publish in 1973 a fully completed part of what were to become three separate volumes. When a year later I found my powers returning I discovered that various circumstances made substantial revisions necessary of even those further parts of the draft which I had thought to be in fairly finished state. As I explained in the preface to the second volume, which appeared in 1976, the chief reason was my dissatisfaction with that central chapter which gave that volume its sub-title The Mirage of Social Justice.