Hayek, Friedrich on Superphysics

Introduction

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When a professional student of social affairs writes a political book, his first duty is plainly to say so. This is a political book. I do not wish to disguise this by describing it, as I might perhaps have done, by the more elegant and ambitious name of an essay in social philosophy. But, whatever the name, the essential point remains that all I shall have to say is derived from certain ultimate values. I hope I have adequately discharged in the book itself a second and no less important duty: to make it clear beyond doubt what these ultimate values are on which the whole argument depends.

The Abandoned Road

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A programme whose basic thesis is, not that the system of free enterprise for profit has failed in this generation, but that it has not yet been tried. F. D. Roosevelt.

Nazism

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The Nazi leader who described the National-Socialist revolution as a counter-Renaissance spoke more truly than he probably knew.

It was the decisive step in the destruction of that civilisation which modern man had built up from the age of the Renaissance and which was above all an individualist civilisation. Individualism has a bad name to-day and the term has come to be connected with egotism and selfishness. But the individualism of which we speak in contrast to socialism and all other forms of collectivism has no necessary connection with these. Only gradually in the course of this book shall we be able to make clear the contrast between the two opposing principles. But the essential features of that individualism which, from elements provided by Christianity and the philosophy of classical antiquity, was first fully developed during the Renaissance and has since grown and spread into what we know as Western European civilisation-the respect for the individual man qua man, that is the recognition of his own views and tastes as supreme in his own sphere, however narrowly that may be circumscribed, and the belief that it is desirable that men should develop their own individual gifts and bents. “Freedom” and “liberty” are now words so worn with use and abuse that one must hesitate to employ them to express the ideals for which they stood during that period. Tolerance is, perhaps, the only word which still preserves the full meaning of the principle which during the whole of this period was in the ascendant and which only in recent times has again been in decline, to disappear completely with the rise of the totalitarian state. The gradual transformation of a rigidly organised hierarchic system into one where men could at least attempt to shape their own life, where man gained the opportunity of knowing and choosing between different forms of life, is closely associated with the growth of commerce. From the commercial cities of Northern Italy the new view oflife spread with commerce to the west and north, through France and the south-west of Germany to the Low Countries and the British Isles, taking firm root wherever there was no despotic political power to stifle it. In the Low Countries and Britain it for a long time enjoyed its fullest development and for the first time had an opportunity to grow freely and to become the foundation of the social and political life of these countries. And it was from there that in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it again began to spread in a more fully developed form to the West and East, to the New World and the centre of the European continent where devastating wars and political oppression had largely submerged the earlier beginnings of a similar growth. 1

German Ideals

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Because of the growing impatience with the slow advance of liberal policy, the just irritation with those who used liberal phraseology in defence of anti-social privileges, and the boundless ambition seemingly justified by the material improvements already achieved, it came to pass that toward the turn of the century the belief in the basic tenets of liberalism was more and more relinquished. What had been achieved came to be regarded as a secure and imperishable possession, acquired once and for all. The eyes of the people became fixed on the new demands, the rapid satisfaction ofwhich seemed to be barred by the adherence to the old principles. It became more and more widely accepted that further advance could not be expected along the old lines within the general framework which had made past progress pOSSible, but only by a complete remodelling ofsociety. It was no longer a question of adding to or improving the existing machinery, but of completely scrapping and replaCing it. And as the hope of the new generation came to be centred on something completely new, interest in, and understanding of, the functioning of the existing society rapidly declined; and with the decline of the understanding of the way in which the free system worked our awareness of what depended on its existence also decreased.

MATERIAL CONDITIONS AND IDEAL ENDS

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Is it just or reasonable, that most voices against the main end of government should enslave the less number that would be free? More just it is, doubtless, if it come to force, that a less number compel a greater to retain, which can be no wrong to them, their liberty, than that a greater number, for the pleasure of their baseness, compel a less most injuriously to be their fellow slaves. They who seek nothing but their own just liberty, have always the right to win it, whenever they have the power, be the voices never so numerous that oppose it. John Milton.

THE END OF TRUTH

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It is significant that the nationalisation of thought has proceeded everywhere pari passu with the nationalisation of industry. E. H. Carr.

The most effective way of making everybody serve the single system of ends towards which the social plan is directed is to make everybody believe in those ends. To make a totalitarian system function efficiently it is not enough that everybody should be forced to work for the same ends. It is essential that the people should come to regard them as their own ends.

The Socialist Roots Of Nazism

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If Sombart’s outburst was at the time too much even for most Germans, another German professor arrived at essentially the same ideas in a more moderate and more scholarly, but for that reason even more effective, form. ProfessorJohann Plenge was as great an authority on Marx as Sombart. His book on Marx und Hegel marks the beginning of the modern Hegel-renaissance among Marxian scholars; and there can be no doubt about the genuinely socialist nature ofthe convictions with which he started.

THE SOCIALIST ROOTS OF NAZISM

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All anti-liberal forces are combining against everything that is liberal. A. Moeller van den Bruck.

It is a common mistake to regard National-Socialism as a mere:

revolt against reason
irrational movement without intellectual background

If that were so, the movement would be much less dangerous than it is.

The Totalitarians In Our Midst

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When authority presents itself in the guise of organisation it develops charms fascinating enough to convert communities of free people into totalitarian States. The Times.

The very magnitude of the outrages committed by the totalitarian governments, instead of increasing the fear that such a system might one day arise in this country, has rather strengthened the assurance that it cannot happen here.

The Great Utopia

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What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven. F. Hoelderlin.

That socialism has displaced liberalism as the doctrine held by the great majority of progressives does not simply mean that people had forgotten the warnings ofthe great liberal thinkers of the past about the consequences of collectivism. It has happened because they were persuaded of the very opposite of what these men had predicted. The extraordinary thing is that the same socialism that was not only early recognised as the gravest threat to freedom, but quite openly began as a reaction against the liberalism of the French Revolution, gained general acceptance under the flag ofliberty. It is rarely remembered now that socialism in its beginnings was frankly authoritarian. The French writers who laid the foundations of modern socialism had no doubt that their ideas could be put into practice only by a strong dictatorial government. To them socialism meant an attempt to “terminate the revolution” by a deliberate reorganisation of society on hierarchical lines, and the imposition of a coercive “spiritual power”. Where freedom was concerned, the founders of socialism made no bones about their intentions. Freedom of thought they regarded as the root-evil of nineteenth-century society, and the first ofmodern planners, Saint-Simon, even predicted that those who did not obey his proposed planning boards would be “treated as cattle”.

Individualism And Collectivism

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The socialists believe in two things which are absolutely different and perhaps even contradictory: freedom and organisation. Elie Halevy.

Before we can progress with our main problem, an obstacle has yet to be surmounted. A confusion largely responsible for the way in which we are drifting into things which nobody wants must be cleared up. This confusion concerns nothing less than the concept of socialism itself It may mean, and is often used to describe, merely the ideals of social justice, greater equality and security which are the ultimate aims of socialism. But it means also the particular method by which most socialists hope to attain these ends and which many competent people regard as the only methods by which they can be fully and quickly attained.

The Inevitability Of Planning

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We were the first to assert that the more complicated the forms of civilisation, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become. B. Musso/ini.

It is a revealing fact that few planners are content to say that central planning is desirable. Most of them affirm that we can no longer choose but are compelled by circumstances beyond our control to substitute planning for competition. The myth is deliberately cultivated that we are embarking on the new course not out of free will but because competition is spontaneously eliminated by technological changes which we neither can reverse nor should wish to prevent. This argument is rarely developed at any length-it is one ofthe assertions taken over by one writer from another till, by mere iteration, it has come to be accepted as an established fact. It is, nevertheless, devoid of foundation. The tendency towards monopoly and planning is not the result of any “objective facts” beyond our control, but the product of opinions fostered and propagated for half a century till they have come to dominate all our policy.

PLANNING AND DEMOCRACY

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The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himselffit to exercise it. Adam Smith.

Planning And The Rule Of Law

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Recent studies in the sociology of law once more confirm that the fundamental principle of formal law by which every case must be judged according to general rational precepts, which have as few exceptions as possible and are based on logical subsumptions, obtains only for the liberal competitive phase of capitalism. K. Mannheim.

ECONOMIC CONTROL AND TOTALITARIANISM

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The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself. Hilaire Bel/oc.

Most planners who have seriously considered the practical aspects of their task have little doubt that a directed economy must be run on more or less dictatorial lines. That the complex system ofinterrelated activities, ifit is to be consciously directed at all, must be directed by a single staff of experts, and that ultimate responsibility and power must rest in the hands of a commander-in-chief, whose actions must not be fettered by democratic procedure, is too obvious a consequence of underlying ideas of central planning not to command fairly general assent.

WHO, WHOM?

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The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the passion for equality made vain the hope for freedom. Lord Acton.

One of the commonest objections to competition is that it is “blind”. It is not irrelevant to recall that to the ancients blindness was an attribute of their deity of justice. Although competition and justice may have little else in common, it is as much a commendation of competition as of justice that it is no respecter of persons.

Security And Freedom

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The whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory with equality of work and equality of pay. I. Lenin, 1917.

In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat. L. Trotsky, 1937.

WHY THE WORST GET ON TOP

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All power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Lord Acton.

Many people, who regard the advent of totalitarianism as inevitable, derive consolation and which seriously weakens the resistance of many others who would oppose it with all their might ifthey fully apprehended its nature.

Centralized Democracy

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Perhaps the most powerful agent in creating the belief in the possibility of a single central direction by democratic means of the economic life of many different peoples is the fatal delusion that if the decisions were left to the “people” , the community of interest of the working classes would readily overcome the differences which exist between the ruling classes. There is every reason to expect that with world planning the clash of economic interests which arises now about the economic policy of anyone nation would in fact appear in even fiercer form as a clash of interests between whole peoples which could be decided only by force.

CONCLUSION

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The purpose of this book has not been to sketch a detailed programme of a desirable future order ofsociety. If with regard to international affairs we have gone a little beyond its essentially critical task, it was because in this field we may soon be called upon to create a framework within which future growth may have to proceed for a long time to come.

Rebuilding Civilization

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We shall not rebuild civilisation on the large scale. It is no accident that on the whole there was more beauty and decency to be found in the life of the small peoples, and that among the large ones there was more happiness and content in proportion as they had avoided the deadly blight of centralisation. Least of all shall we preserve democracy or foster its growth if all the power and most of the important decisions rest with an organisation far too big for the common man to surveyor comprehend. Nowhere has democracy ever worked well without a great measure oflocal self-government, providing a school of political training for the people at large as much as for their future leaders. It is only where responsibility can be learnt and practised in affairs with which most people are familiar, where it is the awareness of one’s neighbour rather than some theoretical knowledge of the needs of other people which guides action,

The Prospects Of International Order

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Of all checks on democracy, federation has been the most efficacious and the most congenial. … The federal system limits and restrains the sovereign power by dividing it and by assigning to Government only certain defined rights. It is the only method of curbing not only the majority but the power of the whole people. Lord Acton.

The Rights of Small States

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Those who are so ready to ride roughshod over the rights of small states are, of course, right in one thing: we cannot hope for order or lasting peace after this war if states, large or small, regain unfettered sovereignty in the economic sphere. But this does not mean that a new super-state must be given powers which we have not learnt to use intelligently even on a national scale, that an international authority ought to be given power to direct individual nations how to use their resources. It means merely that there must be a power which can restrain the different nations from action harmful to their neighbours, a set of rules which defines what a state may do, and an authority capable of enforcing these rules. The powers which such an authority would need are mainly of a negative kind: it must above all be able to say “no” to all sorts of restrictive measures.