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From The Fact That People Are Very Different It Follows That, If We Treat Them Equally, The Result Must Be Inequality In Their Actual Position, And That The Only Way To Place Them In An Equal Position Would Be To Treat Them Differently. Equality Before The Law And Material Equality Are Therefore Not Only Different But Are In Conflict With Each Other; And We Can Achieve Either One Or The Other, But Not Both At The Same Time.

-Friedrich August Von Hayek

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From The Fact That

Friedrich August Von Hayek

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From The Fact That People Are Very Different It Follows That, If We Treat Them Equally, The Result Must Be Inequality In Their Actual Position, And That The Only Way To Place Them In An Equal Position Would Be To Treat Them Differently. Equality Before The Law And Material Equality Are Therefore Not Only Different But Are In Conflict With Each Other; And We Can Achieve Either One Or The Other, But Not Both At The Same Time.

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I Use Throughout The Term 'liberal' In The Original, Nineteenth-century Sense In Which It Is Still Current In Britain. In Current American Usage It Often Means Very Nearly The Opposite Of This. It Has Been Part Of The Camouflage Of Leftish Movements In This Country, Helped By Muddleheadedness Of Many Who Really Believe In Liberty, That 'liberal' Has Come To Mean The Advocacy Of Almost Every Kind Of Government Control.

The Central Problem Of Management Is How Spontaneous Interaction Of People Within A Firm, Each Possessing Only Bits Of Knowledge, Can Bring About The Competitive Success That Could Only Be Achieved By The Deliberate Direction Of A Senior Management That Possesses The Combined Knowledge Of All Employees And Contractors

If We Can Reduce The Risk Of Friction Likely To Lead To War, This Is Probably All We Can Reasonably Hope To Achieve.

It Seems To Me That Socialists Today Can Preserve Their Position In Academic Economics Merely By The Pretense That The Differences Are Entirely Moral Questions About Which Science Cannot Decide.

It Used To Be The Boast Of Free Men That, So Long As They Kept Within The Bounds Of The Known Law, There Was No Need To Ask Anybody's Permission Or To Obey Anybody's Orders. It Is Doubtful Whether Any Of Us Can Make This Claim Today.

Conservatism, Though A Necessary Element In Any Stable Society, Is Not A Social Program; In Its Paternalistic, Nationalistic And Power Adoring Tendencies It Is Often Closer To Socialism Than True Liberalism; And With Its Traditionalistic, Anti-intellectual, And Often Mystical Propensities It Will Never, Except In Short Periods Of Disillusionment, Appeal To The Young And All Those Others Who Believe That Some Changes Are Desirable If This World Is To Become A Better Place.

When It Becomes Dominated By A Collectivist Creed, Democracy Will Inevitably Destroy Itself.

Planning Leads To Dictatorship Because Dictatorship Is The Most Effective Instrument Of Coercion And The Enforcement Of Ideals And, As Such, Essential If Central Planning On A Large Scale Is To Be Possible.

Unlike The Position That Exists In The Physical Sciences, In Economics And Other Disciplines That Deal With Essentially Complex Phenomena, The Aspects Of The Events To Be Accounted For About Which We Can Get Quantitative Data Are Necessarily Limited And May Not Include The Important Ones.

Unlike The Rationalism Of The French Revolution, True Liberalism Has No Quarrel With Religion, And I Can Only Deplore The Militant And Essentially Illiberal Antireligionism Which Animated So Much Of Nineteenth-century Continental Liberalism. ... What Distinguishes The Liberal From The Conservative Here Is That, However Profound His Own Spiritual Beliefs, He Will Never Regard Himself As Entitled To Impose Them On Others And That For Him The Spiritual And The Temporal Are Different Sphere Which Ought Not To Be Confused.

Without A Theory The Facts Are Silent.

Nothing Is More Securely Lodged Than The Ignorance Of The Experts.

There Is All The Difference In The World Between Treating People Equally And Attempting To Make Them Equal.

From The Saintly And Single-minded Idealist To The Fanatic Is Often But A Step.

Road To Serfdom

It Is Rather A Problem Of How To Secure The Best Use Of Resources Known To Any Of The Members Of Society, For Ends Whose Relative Importance Only Those Individuals Know.

It Is, Indeed, Part Of The Liberal Attitude To Assume That, Especially In The Economic Field, The Self-regulating Forces Of The Market Will Somehow Bring About The Required Adjustments To New Conditions, Although No One Can Foretell How They Will Do This In A Particular Instance. There Is Perhaps No Single Factor Contributing So Much To People

The Mischievous Idea That All Public Needs Should Be Satisfied By Compulsory Organization And That All The Means That Individuals Are Willing To Devote To Pubic Purposes Should Be Under The Control Of Government, Is Wholly Alien To The Basic Principles Of A Free Society.

I Can Have Little Patience With Those Who Oppose ... The Theory Of Evolution Or What Are Called "mechanistic" Explanations Of The Phenomena Of Life Because Of Certain Moral Consequences Which At First Seem To Follow From These Theories, And Still Less With Those Who Regard It As Irrelevant Or Impious To Ask Certain Questions At All. By Refusing To Face The Facts , The Conservative Only Weakens His Own Position.

Theory Of Evolution

There May Be Few Instances In Which The Superstition That Only Measurable Magnitudes Can Be Important Has Done Positive Harm In The Economic Field: But The Present Inflation And Employment Problems Are A Very Serious One.

The Effect Of The People's Agreeing That There Must Be Central Planning, Without Agreeing On The Ends, Will Be Rather As If A Group Of People Were To Commit Themselves To Take A Journey Together Without Agreeing Where They Want To Go; With The Result That They May All Have To Make A Journey Which Most Of Them Do Not Want At All.

Our Faith In Freedom Does Not Rest On The Foreseeable Results In Particular Circumstances, But On The Belief That It Will, On Balance, Release More Forces For The Good Than For The Bad ... Freedom Granted Only When It Is Known Beforehand That Its Effects Will Be Beneficial Is Not Freedom.

Even The Striving For Equality By Means Of A Directed Economy Can Result Only In An Officially Enforced Inequality - An Authoritarian Determination Of The Status Of Each Individual In The New Hierarchical Order.

Liberty Not Only Means That The Individual Has Both The Opportunity And The Burden Of Choice; It Also Means That He Must Bear The Consequences Of His Actions. Liberty And Responsibility Are Inseparable.

Hayek Was Making Us Think Of The Productive Process As A Process In Time, Inputs Coming Before Outputs.

It Is Not The Source But The Limitation Of Power Which Prevents It From Being Arbitrary.

To Undertake The Direction Of The Economic Life Of People With Widely Divergent Ideals And Values Is To Assume Responsibilities Which Commit One To The Use Of Force; It Is To Assume A Position Where The Best Intentions Cannot Prevent One From Being Forced To Act In A Way Which To Some Of Those Affected Must Appear Highly Immoral. This Is True Even If We Assume The Dominant Power To Be As Idealistic And Unselfish As We Can Possibly Conceive. But How Small Is The Likelihood That It Will Be Unselfish, And How Great Are The Temptations!

If I Am Not Mistaken, Psychology, Psychiatry And Some Branches Of Sociology, Not To Speak About The So-called Philosophy Of History, Are Even More Affected By What I Have Called The Scientistic Prejudice, And By Specious Claims Of What Science Can Achieve.

Humiliating To Human Pride As It May Be, We Must Recognize That The Advance And Even The Preservation Of Civilization Are Dependent Upon A Maximum Of Opportunity For Accidents To Happen.

To Combat The Depression By A Forced Credit Expansion Is To Attempt To Cure The Evil By The Very Means Which Brought It About.

'emergencies' Have Always Been The Pretext On Which The Safeguards Of Individual Liberty Have Been Eroded.

The [classical] Liberal, Of Course, Does Not Deny That There Are Some Superior People -- He Is Not An Egalitarian -- But He Denies That Anyone Has Authority To Decide Who These Superior People Are.

Unlike Proportionality, Progression Provides No Principle Which Tells Us What The Relative Burden Of Different Persons Ought To Be The Argument Based On The Presumed Justice Of Progression Provides No Limitation, As Has Often Been Admitted By Its Supporters, Before All Incomes Above A Certain Figure Are Confiscated, And Those Below Left Untaxed.

With The Exception Only Of The Period Of The Gold Standard, Practically All Governments Of History Have Used Their Exclusive Power To Issue Money To Defraud And Plunder The People.

Independence Of Mind Or Strength Of Character Is Rarely Found Among Those Who Cannot Be Confident That They Will Make Their Way By Their Own Effort.... Indeed, When Security Is Understood In Too Absolute A Sense, The General Striving For It, Far From Increasing The Chances Of Freedom, Becomes The Greatest Threat To It.

The Curious Task Of Economics Is To Demonstrate To Men How Little They Really Know About What They Imagine They Can Design.

We Shall Never Prevent The Abuse Of Power If We Are Not Prepared To Limit Power In A Way Which Occasionally May Prevent Its Use For Desirable Purposes.

Liberty And Responsibility Are Inseparable.

The Chief Point We Must Remember Is That The Great And Rapid Advance Of The Physical Sciences Took Place In Fields Where It Proved That Explanation And Prediction Could Be Based On Laws Which Accounted For The Observed Phenomena As Functions Of Comparatively Few Variables - Either Particular Facts Or Relative Frequencies Of Events.

There Exists No Third Principle For The Organisation Of The Economics Process Which Can Be Rationally Chosen To Achieve Any Desirable Ends, In Addition To Either A Functioning Market In Which Nobody Can Conclusively Determine How Well-off Particular Groups Or Individuals Will Be, Or A Central Direction Where A Group Organised For Power Determines It.

What A Free Society Offers To The Individual Is Much More Than What He Would Be Able To Do If Only He Were Free.

The Idea That Human Kind Can Shape The World According To Wish Is What I Call The Fatal Conceit

Any Man Who Is Only An Economist Is Unlikely To Be A Good One.

Economic Transactions Between National Bodies Who Are At The Same Time The Supreme Judges Of Their Own Behavior, Who Bow To No Superior Law, And Whose Representatives Cannot Be Bound By Any Considerations But The Immediate Interest Of Their Respective Nations, Must End In Clashes Of Power.

Socialism Has Never And Nowhere Been At First A Working-class Movement. It Is By No Means An Obvious Remedy For The Obvious Evil Which The Interests Of That Class Will Necessarily Demand. It Is A Construction Of Theorists.

Our Submission To General Principles Is Necessary Because We Cannot Be Guided In Our Practical Action By Full Knowledge And Evaluation Of The Consequences. So Long As Men Are Not Omniscient, The Only Way In Which Freedom Can Be Given To The Individual Is By Such General Rules To Delimit The Sphere In Which The Decision Is His. There Can Be No Freedom If The Government Is Not Limited To Particular Kinds Of Action But Can Use Its Powers In Any Ways Which Serve Particular Ends.

Socialism Has Never And Nowhere Been At First A Working-class Movement.

We Did Not Realise How Fragile Our Civilisation Was.

This Is Not A Dispute About Whether Planning Is To Be Done Or Not. It Is A Dispute As To Whether Planning Is To Be Done Centrally, By One Authority For The Whole Economic System, Or Is To Be Divided Among Many Individuals.

The Socratic Maxim That The Recognition Of Our Ignorance Is The Beginning Of Wisdom Has Profound Significance For Our Understanding Of Society. Most Of The Advantages Of Social Life, Especially In The More Advanced Forms That We Call "civilization" Rest On The Fact That The Individual Benefits From More Knowledge Than He Is Aware Of. It Might Be Said That Civilization Begins When The Individual In The Pursuit Of His Ends Can Make Use Of More Knowledge Than He Has Himself Acquired And When He Can Transcend The Boundaries Of His Ignorance By Profiting From Knowledge He Does Not Himself Possess.

You Can Have Economic Freedom Without Political Freedom, But You Cannot Have Political Freedom Without Economic Freedom.

And It's A Necessity [for Journalists] To Pretend To Be Competent On Every Subject, Some Of Which They Really Do Not Understand. They Are Under That Necessity, I Regret; I'm Sorry For Them. But To Pretend To Understand All The Things You Write About, And Habitually To Write About Things You Do Not Understand, Is A Very Corrupting Thing.

No Human Mind Can Comprehend All The Knowledge Which Guides The Actions Of Society.

There Is Only One '' Principle That Can Preserve A Free Society: Namely, The Strict Prevention Of All Coercion Except In The Enforcement Of General Abstract Rules Equally Applicable To All.

By The Time Any View Becomes A Majority View, It Is No Longer The Best View: Somebody Will Already Have Advanced Beyond The Point Which The Majority Have Reached.

To Combat Depression By A Forced Credit Expansion Is To Attempt To Cure The Evil By The Very Means Which Brought It About; Because We Are Suffering From A Misdirection Of Production, We Want To Create Further Misdirection -- A Procedure Which Can Only Lead To A Much More Severe Crisis As Soon As The Credit Expansion Comes To An End.

If Democracy Is A Means Rather Than An End, Its Limits Must Be Determined In The Light Of The Purpose We Want It To Serve.

Once Politics Become A Tug-of-war For Shares In The Income Pie, Decent Government Is Impossible.

To Create Conditions In Which Competition Will Be As Effective As Possible, To Prevent Fraud And Deception, To Break Up Monopolies- These Tasks Provide A Wide And Unquestioned Field For State Activity.

Our Freedom Of Choice In A Competitive Society Rests On The Fact That, If One Person Refuses To Satisfy Our Wishes, We Can Turn To Another. But If We Face A Monopolist We Are At His Absolute Mercy. And An Authority Directing The Whole Economic System Of The Country Would Be The Most Powerful Monopolist Conceivable…it Would Have Complete Power To Decide What We Are To Be Given And On What Terms. It Would Not Only Decide What Commodities And Services Were To Be Available And In What Quantities; It Would Be Able To Direct Their Distributions Between Persons To Any Degree It Liked.

...the Case For Individual Freedom Rests Largely On The Recognition Of The Inevitable And Universal Ignorance Of All Of Us Concerning A Great Many Of The Factors On Which The Achievements Of Our Ends And Welfare Depend.

The Conservatives Have Already Accepted A Large Part Of The Collectivist Creed-a Creed That Has Governed Policy For So Long That Many Of Its Institutions Have Come To Be Accepted As A Matter Of Course And Have Become A Source Of Pride To "conservative" Parties Who Created Them. Here The Believer In Freedom Cannot But Conflict With The Conservative And Take An Essentially Radical Position, Directed Against Popular Prejudices, Entrenched Positions, And Firmly Established Privileges. Follies And Abuses Are No Better For Having Long Been Established Principles Of Folly.

We Must Face The Fact That The Preservation Of Individual Freedom Is Incompatible With A Full Satisfaction Of Our Views Of Distributive Justice.

There Is Nothing In The Basic Principles Of Liberalism To Make It A Stationary Creed; There Are No Hard-and-fast Rules Fixed Once And For All. ... 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.

Socialism Is Simply A Re-assertion Of That Tribal Ethics Whose Gradual Weakening Had Made An Approach To The Great Society Possible.

Money Is One Of The Greatest Instruments Of Freedom Ever Invented By Man. It Is Money Which In Existing Society Opens An Astounding Range Of Choice To The Poor Man, A Range Greater Than That Which Not Many Generations Ago Was Open To The Wealthy

If The Resources Of Different Nations Are Treated As Exclusive Properties Of These Nations As Wholes, If International Economic Relations, Instead Of Being Relations Between Individuals, Become Increasingly Relations Between Whole Nations Organized As Trading Bodies, They Inevitably Become The Source Of Friction And Envy Between Whole Nations.

It Seems To Be Almost A Law Of Human Nature That It Is Easier For People To Agree On A Negative Program - On The Hatred Of An Enemy, On The Envy Of Those Better Off - Than On Any Positive Task.

It Is One Of The Saddest Spectacles Of Our Time To See A Great Democratic Movement Support A Policy Which Must Lead To The Destruction Of Democracy And Which Meanwhile Can Benefit Only A Minority Of The Masses Who Support It. Yet It Is This Support From The Left Of The Tendencies Toward Monopoly Which Make Them So Irresistible And The Prospects Of The Future So Dark.

... That Order Generated Without Design Can Far Outstrip Plans Men Consciously Contrive

Our Moral Traditions Developed Concurrently With Our Reason, Not As Its Product.

It Is Rarely Remembered Now That Socialism In Its Beginnings Was Frankly Authoritarian. It Began Quite Openly As A Reaction Against The Liberalism Of The French Revolution. The French Writers Who Laid Its Foundation Had No Doubt That Their Ideas Could Be Put Into Practice Only By A Strong Dictatorial Government. The First Of Modern Planners, Saint-simon, Predicted That Those Who Did Not Obey His Proposed Planning Boards Would Be 'treated As Cattle'.

Socialist Thought Owes Its Appeal To The Young Largely To Its Visionary Character; The Very Courage To Indulge In Utopian Thought Is In This Respect A Source Of Strength For Socialism Which Traditional Liberalism Sadly Lacks. Speculation About General Principles Provides An Opportunity For The Play Of The Imagination Of Those Who Are Unencumbered By Much Knowledge Of The Facts Of Present-day Life. Their Ideas Suffer From Inherent Contradictions, And Any Attempt To Put Them Into Practice Must Produce Something Utterly Different From What They Expect.

If Freedom Is To Flourish The Philosophic Foundations Of A Free Society Must Be Kept A Living Intellectual Issue And Its Implementation A Task Which Challenges The Ingenuity And Imagination Of The Liveliest Minds.

Freedom Necessarily Means That Many Things Will Be Done Which We Do Not Like.

It Is Of The Essence Of The Demand For Equality Before The Law That People Should Be Treated Alike In Spite Of The Fact That They Are Different.

All Political Theories Assume, Of Course, That Most Individuals Are Very Ignorant. Those Who Plead For Liberty Differ From The Rest In That They Include Among The Ignorant Themselves As Well As The Wisest.

A General Flat Minimum-wage Law For All Industry Is Permissible, But I Do Not Think That It Is A Particularly Wise Method Of Achieving The End. I Know Much Better Methods Of Providing A Minimum For Everybody. But Once You Turn From Laying Down A General Minimum For All Industry To Decreeing Particular And Different Minimum For Different Industries, Then, Of Course, You Make The Price Mechanism Inoperative, Because It Is No Longer The Price Mechanism Which Will Guide People Between Industries And Trades.

In Government, The Scum Rises To The Top.

I Was Quite Depressed Two Weeks Ago When I Spent An Afternoon At Brentano's Bookshop In New York And Was Looking At The Kind Of Books Most People Read. That Seems To Be Hopeless; Once You See That You Lose All Hope.

Nothing Distinguishes More Clearly Conditions In A Free Country From Those In A Country Under Arbitrary Government Than The Observance In The Former Of The Great Principles Known As The Rule Of Law.

Economic Control Is Not Merely Control Of A Sector Of Human Life Which Can Be Separated From The Rest; It Is The Control Of The Means For All Our Ends. And Whoever Has Sole Control Of The Means Must Also Determine Which Ends Are To Be Served, Which Values Are To Be Rates Higher And Which Lower, In Short, What Men Should Believe And Strive For.

When We Ask What Ought To Be The Relative Remunerations Of A Nurse Or A Butcher, Or A Coal Miner And A Judge At A High Court, Of The Deep Sea Diver Of The Cleaner Of Sewers, Of The Organiser Of A New Industry And A Jockey, Of The Inspector Of Taxes And The Inventor Of A Life-saving Drug, Of The Jet-pilot Or The Professor Of Mathematics, The Appeal To 'social Justice' Does Not Give Us The Slightest Help In Deciding.

Freedom Can Be Preserved Only If It Is Treated As A Supreme Principle Which Must Not Be Sacrificed For Particular Advantages.

The Conservative Feels Safe And Content Only If He Is Assured That Some Higher Wisdom Watches And Supervises Change, Only If He Knows That Some Authority Is Charged With Keeping The Change "orderly.

[t]hose Who Are Willing To Surrender Their Freedom For Security Have Always Demanded That If They Give Up Their Full Freedom It Should Also Be Taken From Those Not Prepared To Do So.

The Mind Cannot Foresee Its Own Advance.

Many Of The Greatest Things Man Has Achieved Are Not The Result Of Consciously Directed Thought, And Still Less The Product Of A Deliberately Coordinated Effort Of Many Individuals, But Of A Process In Which The Individual Plays A Part Which He Can Never Fully Understand.

It Is Because Every Individual Knows Little And, In Particular, Because We Rarely Know Which Of Us Knows Best Best That We Trust The Independent And Competitive Efforts Of Many To Induce The Emergence Of What We Shall Want When We See It.

It Would Clearly Not Be An Improvement To Build All Houses Exactly Alike In Order To Create A Perfect Market For Houses, And The Same Is True Of Most Other Fields Where Differences Between The Individual Products Prevent Competition From Ever Being Perfect.

The Younger Generation Of Today Has Grown Up In A World In Which In School And Press The Spirit Of Commercial Enterprise Has Been Represented As Disreputable And The Making Of Profit As Immoral, Where To Employ A Hundred People Is Represented As Exploitation But To Command The Same Number As Honorable.

I Have Come To Feel Strongly That The Greatest Service I Can Still Render To My Fellow Men Would Be That I Could Make The Speakers And Writers Among Them Thoroughly Ashamed Ever Again To Employ The Term "social Justice.

Through The Inevitable Mismanagement Of Resources And Goods At The Disposal Of The State, All Forms Of Collectivism Lead Eventually To Tyranny.

The State Itself Becomes More And More Identified With The Interests Of Those Who Run Things Than With The Interests Of The People In General.

A Society That Does Not Recognise That Each Individual Has Values Of His Own Which He Is Entitled To Follow Can Have No Respect For The Dignity Of The Individual And Cannot Really Know Freedom.

We Know: Of Course, With Regard To The Market And Similar Social Structures, A Great Many Facts Which We Cannot Measure And On Which Indeed We Have Only Some Very Imprecise And General Information.

Competition Is Like Experimentation In Science, A Discovery Process, And It Must Rely On The Self Interest Of Producers, It Must Allow Them To Use Their Knowledge For Their Purposes, Because Nobody Else Possesses The Information

One Need Not Be A Prophet To Be Aware Of Impending Dangers. An Accidental Combination Of Experience And Interest Will Often Reveal Events To One Man Under Aspects Which Few Yet See.

To Be Controlled In Our Economic Pursuits Means To Be Controlled In Everything.

It Is Indeed Probable That More Harm And Misery Have Been Caused By Men Determined To Use Coercion To Stamp Out A Moral Evil Than By Men Intent On Doing Evil.

... I Prefer True But Imperfect Knowledge, Even If It Leaves Much Undetermined And Unpredictable, To A Pretense Of Exact Knowledge That Is Likely To Be False.

If The Human Intellect Is Allowed To Impose A Preconceived Pattern On Society, If Our Powers Of Reasoning Are Allowed To Lay Claim To A Monopoly Of Creative Effort... Then We Must Not Be Surprised If Society, As Such, Ceases To Function As A Creative Force.

At A Time When Most Movements That Are Thought To Be Progressive Advocate Further Encroachments On Individual Liberty, Those Who Cherish Freedom Are Likely To Expend Their Energies In Opposition. In This They Find Themselves Much Of The Time On The Same Side As Those Who Habitually Resist Change.

Human Reason Can Neither Predict Nor Deliberately Shape Its Own Future. Its Advances Consist In Finding Out Where It Has Been Wrong.

The Greatest Danger To Liberty Today Comes From The Men Who Are Most Needed And Most Powerful In Modern Government, Namely, The Efficient Expert Administrators Exclusively Concerned With What They Regard As The Public Good.

Without The Rich - Without Those Who Accumulated Capital - Those Poor Who Could Exist At All Would Be Very Much Poorer Indeed, Scratching A Livelihood From Marginal Lands On Which Every Drought Would Kill Most Of The Children They Would Be Trying To Raise.

In No Other Field Has The World Yet Paid So Dearly For The Abandonment Of Nineteenth-century Liberalism As In The Field Where The Retreat Began: In International Relations. Yet Only A Small Part Of The Lesson Which Experience Ought To Have Taught Us Has Been Learned.

The Advantage Of A Free Market Is That It Allows Millions Of Decision-makers To Respond Individually To Freely Determined Prices, Allocating Resources - Labor, Capital And Human Ingenuity - In A Manner That Can't Be Mimicked By A Central Plan, However Brilliant The Central Planner.

The Credit Which The Apparent Conformity With Recognized Scientific Standards Can Gain For Seemingly Simple But False Theories May, As The Present Instance Shows, Have Grave Consequences.

Socialism Can Only Be Put Into Practice Only By Methods Which Most Socialists Disapprove.

Unlike Liberalism, With Its Fundamental Belief In The Long-range Power Of Ideas, Conservatism Is Bound By The Stock Of Ideas Inherited At A Given Time. And Since It Does Not Really Believe In The Power Of Argument, Its Last Resort Is Generally A Claim To Superior Wisdom, Based On Some Self-arrogated Superior Quality.

Is There A Greater Tragedy Imaginable Than That, In Our Endeavour Consciously To Shape Our Future In Accordance With High Ideals, We Should In Fact Unwittingly Produce The Very Opposite Of What We Have Been Striving For?

All Political Theories Assume, Of Course, That Most Individuals Are Very Ignorant. Those Who Plead For Liberty Differ From The Rest In That They Include Among The Ignorant Themselves As Well As The Wisest. Compared With The Totality Of Knowledge Which Is Continually Utilized In The Evolution Of A Dynamic Civilization, The Difference Between The Knowledge That The Wisest And That The Most Ignorant Individual Can Deliberately Employ Is Comparatively Insignificant.

It Is Perhaps The Most Characteristic Feature Of The Intellectual That He Judges New Ideas Not By Their Specific Merits But By The Readiness With Which They Fit Into His General Conceptions, Into The Picture Of The World Which He Regards As Modern Or Advanced.

The Great Aim Of The Struggle For Liberty Has Been Equality Before The Law.

We Shall All Be The Gainers If We Can Create A World Fit For Small States To Live In.

The More I Learn About The Evolution Of Ideas, The More I Have Become Aware That I Am Simply An Unrepentant Old Whig-with The Stress On The "old.

We Must Not Forget That … Monetary Policy All Over The World Has Followed The Advice Of The Stabilizers. It Is High Time That Their Influence, Which Has Already Done Harm Enough, Should Be Overthrown.

We Have Indeed At The Moment Little Cause For Pride: As A Profession We Have Made A Mess Of Things.

Our Hopes Of Avoiding The Fate Which Threatens Must...[be To Make]adjustments That Will Be Needed If We Are To Recover And Surpass Our Former Standards...and Only If Every One Of Us Is Ready To Individually Obey The Necessities Of Readjustment Shall We Be Able To Get Through A Difficult Period As Free Men Who Can Choose Their Own Way Of Life. Let A Uniform Minimum Be Secured To Everybody By All Means; But Let Us Admit At The Same Time That With This Assurance Of A Basic Minimum All Claims For A Privileged Security For Particular Classes Must Lapse.

Whatever Men Live For, Today Most Live Only Because Of The Market Order.

The Chief Evil Is Unlimited Government, And Nobody Is Qualified To Wield Unlimited Power.

As Is True With Respect To Other Great Evils, The Measures By Which War Might Be Made Altogether Impossible For The Future May Well Be Worse Than Even War Itself.

If We Wish To Preserve A Free Society, It Is Essential That We Recognize That The Desirability Of A Particular Object Is Not Sufficient Justification For The Use Of Coercion.

To Live And Work Successfully With Others Requires More Than Faithfulness To One's Concrete Aims. It Requires An Intellectual Commitment To A Type Of Order In Which, Even On Issues Which To One Are Fundamental, Others Are Allowed To Pursue Different Ends. It Is For This Reason That To The Liberal Neither Moral Nor Religious Ideals Are Proper Objects Of Coercion, While Both Conservatives And Socialists Recognize No Such Limits.

The Word "truth" Itself Ceases To Have Its Old Meaning. It Describes No Longer Something To Be Found, With The Individual Conscience As The Sole Arbiter Of Whether In Any Particular Instance The Evidence (or The Standing Of Those Proclaiming It) Warrants A Belief; It Becomes Something To Be Laid Down By Authority, Something Which Has To Believed In The Interest Of Unity Of The Organized Effort And Which May Have To Be Altered As The Exigencies Of This Organized Effort Require It.

There Is, In A Competitive Society, Nobody Who Can Exercise Even A Fraction Of The Power Which A Socialist Planning Board Would Possess.

It Is Neither Necessary Nor Desirable That National Boundaries Should Mark Sharp Differences In Standards Of Living, That Membership Of A National Group Should Entitle To A Share In A Cake Altogether Different From That In Which Members Of Other Groups Share.

Never Will Man Penetrate Deeper Into Error Than When He Is Continuing On A Road Which Has Led Him To Great Success

It Is Only Because The Majority Opinion Will Always Be Opposed By Some That Our Knowledge And Understanding Progress. In The Process By Which Opinion Is Formed, It Is Very Probable That, By The Time Any View Becomes A Majority View, It Is No Longer The Best View: Somebody Will Already Have Advanced Beyond The Point Which The Majority Have Reached. It Is Because We Do Not Yet Know Which Of The Many Competing New Opinions Will Prove Itself The Best That We Wait Until It Has Gained Sufficient Support.

Freedom Granted Only When It Is Known Beforehand That Its Effects Will Be Beneficial Is Not Freedom.

What Our Generation Has Forgotten Is That The System Of Private Property Is The Most Important Guarantee Of Freedom, Not Only For Those Who Own Property, But Scarcely Less For Those Who Do Not. It Is Only Because The Control Of The Means Of Production Is Divided Among Many People Acting Independently That Nobody Has Complete Power Over Us, That We As Individuals Can Decide What To Do With Ourselves.

The Argument For Liberty Is Not An Argument Against Organization, Which Is One Of The Most Powerful Tools Human Reason Can Employ, But An Argument Against All Exclusive, Privileged, Monopolistic Organization, Against The Use Of Coercion To Prevent Others From Doing Better.

While An Equality Of Rights Under A Limited Government Is Possible And An Essential Condition Of Individual Freedom, A Claim For Equality Of Material Position Can Be Met Only By A Government With Totalitarian Powers.

The Task Of The Political Philosopher Can Only Be To Influence Public Opinion, Not To Organize People For Action. He Will Do So Effectively Only If He Is Not Concerned With What Is Now Politically Possible But Consistently Defends The "general Principles Which Are Always The Same." In This Sense I Doubt Whether There Can Be Such A Thing As A Conservative Political Philosophy. Conservatism May Often Be A Useful Practical Maxim, But It Does Not Give Us Any Guiding Principles Which Can Influence Long-range Developments.

Guiding Principles

In The Small Group The Individual Can Know The Effects Of His Actions On His Several Fellows, And The Rules May Effectively Forbid Him To Harm Them In Any Manner And Even Require Him To Assist Them In Specific Ways. In The Great Society Many Of The Effects Of A Person's Actions On Various Fellows Must Be Unknown To Him. It Can, Therefore, Not Be The Specific Effects In The Particular Case, But Only Rules Which Define Kinds Of Actions Prohibited Or Required, Which Must Serve As Guides To The Individual.

I Must Confess That If I Had Been Consulted Whether To Establish A Nobel Prize In Economics, I Should Have Decidedly Advised Against It.

I Do Not Think It Is An Exaggeration To Say History Is Largely A History Of Inflation, Usually Inflations Engineered By Governments For The Gain Of Governments.

Exaggeration Is

That Democratic Socialism, The Great Utopia Of The Last Few Generations, Is Not Only Unachievable, But That To Strive For It Produces Something So Utterly Different That Few Of Those Who Wish It Would Be Prepared To Accept The Consequences, Many Will Not Believe Until The Connection Has Been Laid Bare In All Its Aspects.

Democratic Socialism

It Is One Of The Most Fatal Illusions That, By Substituting Negotiations Between States Or Organized Groups For Competition For Markets Or For Raw Materials, International Friction Would Be Reduced. This Would Merely Put A Contest Of Force In The Place Of What Can Only Metaphorically Be Called The "struggle" Of Competition And Would Transfer To Powerful And Armed States, Subject To No Superior Law, The Rivalries Which Between Individuals Had To Be Decided Without Recourse To Force.

Though Freedom And Wealth Are Both Good Things Which Most Of Us Desire And Though We Often Need Both To Obtain What We Wish, They Still Remain Different. Whether Or Not I Am My Own Master And Can Follow My Own Choice And Whether The Possibilities From Which I Must Choose Are Many Or Few Are Two Entirely Different Questions. The Courtier Living In The Lap Of Luxury But At The Beck And Call Of His Prince May Be Much Less Free Than A Poor Peasant Or Artisan, Less Able To Live His Own Life And To Choose His Own Opportunities For Usefulness.

The Ultimate Decision About What Is Accepted As Right And Wrong Will Be Made Not By Individual Human Wisdom But By The Disappearance Of The Groups That Have Adhered To The "wrong" Beliefs.

The More The State "plans" The More Difficult Planning Becomes For The Individual.

A Claim For Equality Of Material Position Can Be Met Only By A Government With Totalitarian Powers.

..where Effective Competition Can Be Created, It Is A Better Way Of Guiding Individual Efforts Than Any Other... Regards Competition As Superior Not Only Because It Is In Most Circumstances The Most Efficient Method Known But Even More Because It Is The Only Method By Which Our Activities Can Be Adjusted To Each Other Without Coercive Or Arbitrary Intervention Of Authority.

Individual Effort

Everything Which Might Cause Doubt About The Wisdom Of The Government Or Create Discontent Will Be Kept From The People. The Basis Of Unfavorable Comparisons With Elsewhere, The Knowledge Of Possible Alternatives To The Course Actually Taken, Information Which Might Suggest Failure On The Part Of The Government To Live Up To Its Promises Or To Take Advantage Of Opportunities To Improve Conditions--all Will Be Suppressed. There Is Consequently No Field Where The Systematic Control Of Information Will Not Be Practiced And Uniformity Of Views Not Enforced.

The Principle That The End Justifies The Means Is In Individualist Ethics Regarded As The Denial Of All Morals. In Collectivist Ethics It Becomes Necessarily The Supreme Rule.

In Any Society Freedom Of Thought Will Probably Be Of Direct Significance For A Small Minority. But This Does Not Mean That Anyone Is Competent, Or Ought To Have Power, To Select Those To Whom This Freedom Is To Be Reserved.

I Have Arrived At The Conviction That The Neglect By Economists To Discuss Seriously What Is Really The Crucial Problem Of Our Time Is Due To A Certain Timidity About Soiling Their Hands By Going From Purely Scientific Questions Into Value Questions.

Capitalism Created The Possibility Of Employment.

The Successful Politician Owes His Power To The Fact That He Moves Within The Accepted Framework Of Thought, That He Thinks And Talks Conventionally. It Would Be Almost A Contradiction In Terms For A Politician To Be A Leader In The Field Of Ideas. His Task In A Democracy Is To Find Out What The Opinions Held By The Largest Number Are, Not To Give Currency To New Opinions Which May Become The Majority View In Some Distant Future.

He Will Therefore Have To Use What Knowledge He Can Achieve, Not To Shape The Results As The Craftsman Shapes His Handiwork, But Rather To Cultivate A Growth By Providing The Appropriate Environment, In The Manner In Which The Gardener Does This For His Plants.

Nowhere Has Democracy Ever Worked Well Without A Great Measure Of Local Self-government, Providing A School Of Political Training For The People At Large As Much As For Their Future Leaders.

This Is The Constitutional Limitation Of Man's Knowledge And Interests, The Fact That He Cannot Know More Than A Tiny Part Of The Whole Of Society And That Therefore All That Can Enter Into His Motives Are The Immediate Effects Which His Actions Will Have In The Sphere He Knows.

To Act On The Belief That We Possess The Knowledge And The Power Which Enable Us To Shape The Processes Of Society Entirely To Our Liking, Knowledge Which In Fact We Do Not Possess, Is Likely To Make Us Do Much Harm.

From The Fact That People Are Very Different It Follows That, If We Treat Them Equally, The Result Must Be Inequality In Their Actual Position, And That The Only Way To Place Them In An Equal Position Would Be To Treat Them Differently. Equality Before The Law And Material Equality Are Therefore Not Only Different But Are In Conflict With Each Other; And We Can Achieve Either One Or The Other, But Not Both At The Same Time.

We Must Make The Building Of A Free Society Once More An Intellectual Adventure, A Deed Of Courage. Unless We Can Make The Philosophic Foundations Of A Free Society Once More A Living Intellectual Issue, And Its Implementation A Task Which Challenges The Ingenuity And Imagination Of Our Liveliest Minds, The Prospects Of Freedom Are Indeed Dark. But If We Can Regain That Belief In The Power Of Ideas Which Was The Mark Of Liberalism At Its Best, The Battle Is Not Lost.

We Must Shed The Illusion That We Can Deliberately 'create The Future Of Mankind'

Future Of Mankind

The Idea Of Social Justice Is That The State Should Treat Different People Unequally In Order To Make Them Equal.

It Is Possible For A Dictator To Govern In A Liberal Way. And It Is Also Possible For A Democracy To Govern With A Total Lack Of Liberalism. Personally I Prefer A Liberal Dictator To Democratic Government Lacking Liberalism.

It Is Tempting To Believe That Social Evils Arise From The Activities Of Evil Men And That If Only Good Men (like Ourselves, Naturally) Wielded Power, All Would Be Well. That View Requires Only Emotion And Self-praise - Easy To Come By And Satisfying As Well. To Understand Why It Is That 'good' Men In Positions Of Power Will Produce Evil, While The Ordinary Man Without Power But Able To Engage In Voluntary Cooperation With His Neighbors Will Produce Good, Requires Analysis And Thought, Subordinating Emotions To The Rational.

Position Of Power

Civilization Enables Us Constantly To Profit From Knowledge Which We Individually Do Not Possess And Because Each Individual's Use Of His Particular Knowledge May Serve To Assist Others Unknown To Him In Achieving Their Ends That Men As Members Of Civilized Society Can Pursue Their Individual Ends So Much More Successfully Than They Could Alone.

Ever Since The Beginning Of Modern Science, The Best Minds Have Recognized That "the Range Of Acknowledged Ignorance Will Grow With The Advance Of Science." Unfortunately, The Popular Effect Of This Scientific Advance Has Been A Belief, Seemingly Shared By Many Scientists, That The Range Of Our Ignorance Is Steadily Diminishing And That We Can Therefore Aim At More Comprehensive And Deliberate Control Of All Human Activities. It Is For This Reason That Those Intoxicated By The Advance Of Knowledge So Often Become The Enemies Of Freedom.

Democracy Is Essentially A Means, A Utilitarian Device For Safeguarding Internal Peace And Individual Freedom. As Such It Is By No Means Infallible Or Certain. Nor Must We Forget That There Has Often Been Much More Cultural And Spiritual Freedom Under An Autocratic Rule Than Under Some Democracies And It Is At Least Conceivable That Under The Government Of A Very Homogeneous And Doctrinaire Majority Democratic Government Might Be As Oppressive As The Worst Dictatorship.

Conservatives Are Inclined To Use The Powers Of Government To Prevent Change Or To Limit Its Rate To Whatever Appeals To The More Timid Mind. In Looking Forward, They Lack The Faith In The Spontaneous Forces Of Adjustment Which Makes The Liberal Accept Changes Without Apprehension, Even Though He Does Not Know How The Necessary Adaptations Will Be Brought About.

Liberty'''.that Condition Of Man In Which Coercion Of Some By Others Is Reduced As Much As Possible In Society

Whenever It Is Necessary That One Of Several Conflicting Opinions Should Prevail And When One Would Have To Be Made To Prevail By Force If Need Be, It Is Less Wasteful To Determine Which Has The Stronger Support By Counting Numbers Than By Fighting.

The Freedom That Will Be Used By Only One Man In A Million May Be More Important To Society And More Beneficial To The Majority Than Any Freedom That We All Use.

Should Our Moral Beliefs Really Prove To Be Dependent On Factual Assumptions Shown To Be Incorrect, It Would Be Hardly Moral To Defend Them By Refusing To Acknowledge The Facts.

We Must Show That Liberty Is Not Merely One Particular Value But That It Is The Source And Condition Of Most Moral Values. What A Free Society Offers To The Individual Is Much More Than What He Would Be Able To Do If Only He Were Free. We Can Therefore Not Fully Appreciate The Value Of Freedom Until We Know How A Society Of Free Men As A Whole Differs From One In Which Unfreedom Prevails.

The Attitude Of The Liberal Towards Society Is Like That Of The Gardener Who Tends A Plant And, In Order To Create The Conditions Most Favorable To Its Growth, Must Know As Much As Possible About Its Structure And The Way It Functions.

Liberty Is An Opportunity For Doing Good, But This Is Only So When It Is Also An Opportunity For Doing Wrong.

It Is Also True That The Less Possible It Becomes For A Man To Acquire A New Fortune, The More Must The Existing Fortunes Appear As Privileges For Which There Is No Justification. Policy Is Then Certain To Aim At Taking These Fortunes Out Of Private Hands, Either By The Slow Process Of Heavy Taxation Of Inheritance Or By The Quicker One Of Outright Confiscation. A System Based On Private Property And Control Of The Means Of Production Presupposes That Such Property And Control Can Be Acquired By Any Successful Man.

The System Of Private Property Is The Most Important Guaranty Of Freedom, Not Only For Those Who Own Property, But Scarcely Less For Those Who Do Not.

I Am Convinced That If The Market System Were The Result Of Deliberate Human Design, And If The People Guided By The Price Changes Understood That Their Decisions Have Significance Far Beyond Their Immediate Aims, This Mechanism Would Have Been Acclaimed As One Of The Greatest Triumphs Of The Human Mind.

Once Wide Coercive Powers Are Given To Governmental Agencies For Particular Purposes, Such Powers Cannot Be Effectively Controlled By Democratic Assemblies.

The Germans Would Appear As The Disturbers Of Peace, As They Already Do To Some People, Merely Because They Were The First To Take The Path Along Which All The Others Were Ultimately To Follow.

It Is When It Is Contended That "in A Democracy Right Is What The Majority Makes It To Be" That Democracy Degenerates Into Demagoguery.

The Moral Consequences Of Totalitarian Propaganda...are Destructive Of All Morals Because They Undermind One Of The Foundations Of All Morals: The Sense Of And Respect For Truth.

We Shall Not Grow Wiser Before We Learn That Much That We Have Done Was Very Foolish.

The Progress Of The Natural Sciences In Modern Times Has Of Course So Much Exceeded All Expectations That Any Suggestion That There May Be Some Limits To It Is Bound To Arouse Suspicion.

Conservatism Is Only As Good As What It Conserves.

Justice, Like Liberty And Coercion, Is A Concept Which, For The Sake Of Clarity, Ought To Be Confined To The Deliberate Treatment Of Men By Other Men.

Perhaps The Fact That We Have Seen Millions Voting Themselves Into Complete Dependence On A Tyrant Has Made Our Generation Understand That To Choose One's Government Is Not Necessarily To Secure Freedom.

I Regard It In Fact As The Great Advantage Of The Mathematical Technique That It Allows Us To Describe, By Means Of Algebraic Equations, The General Character Of A Pattern Even Where We Are Ignorant Of The Numerical Values Which Will Determine Its Particular Manifestation.

Mathematical Equations

The Social Sciences, Like Much Of Biology But Unlike Most Fields Of The Physical Sciences, Have To Deal With Structures Of Essential Complexity, I.e. With Structures Whose Characteristic Properties Can Be Exhibited Only By Models Made Up Of Relatively Large Numbers Of Variables.

If We Were To Make No Better Use Of Victory Than To Countenance Existing Trends In This Direction, Only Too Visible Before 1939, We Might Indeed Find That We Have Defeated National Socialism Merely To Create A World Of Many National Socialisms, Differing In Detail, But All Equally Totalitarian, Nationalistic, And In Recurrent Conflict With Each Other.

Unless We Can Make The Philosophic Foundations Of A Free Society Once More A Living Intellectual Issue, And Its Implementation A Task Which Challenges The Ingenuity And Imagination Of Our Liveliest Minds, The Prospects Of Freedom Are Indeed Dark. But If We Can Regain That Belief In Power Of Ideas Which Was The Mark Of Liberalism At Its Best, The Battle Is Not Lost.

Once You Admit That The Individual Is Merely A Means To Serve The Ends Of The Higher Entity Called Society Or The Nation, Most Of Those Features Of Totalitarianism Which Horrify Us Follow Of Necessity

Nobody With Open Eyes Can Any Longer Doubt That The Danger To Personal Freedom Comes Chiefly From The Left.

The Guiding Principle That A Policy Of Freedom For The Individual Is The Only Truly Progressive Policy Remains As True Today As It Was In The Nineteenth Century.

Road To Serfdom

The Conception That Government Should Be Guided By Majority Opinion Makes Sense Only If That Opinion Is Independent Of Government. The Ideal Of Democracy Rests On The Belief That The View Which Will Direct Government Emerges From An Independent And Spontaneous Process. It Requires, Therefore, The Existence Of A Large Sphere Independent Of Majority Control In Which The Opinions Of The Individuals Are Formed.

Why Should We, However, In Economics, Have To Plead Ignorance Of The Sort Of Facts On Which, In The Case Of A Physical Theory, A Scientist Would Certainly Be Expected To Give Precise Information?

The Problems Raised By A Conscious Direction Of Economic Affairs On A National Scale Inevitably Assume Even Greater Dimensions When The Same Is Attempted Internationally. The Conflict Between Planning And Freedom Cannot But Become More Serious As The Similarity Of Standards And Values Among Those Submitted To A Unitary Plan Diminishes.

Inflation Is Probably The Most Important Single Factor In That Vicious Circle Wherein One Kind Of Government Action Makes More And More Government Control Necessary. For This Reason All Those Who Wish To Stop The Drift Toward Increasing Government Control Should Concentrate Their Effort On Monetary Policy.

Capitalism Is Not Only A Better Form Of Organizing Human Activity Than Any Deliberate Design, Any Attempt To Organize It To Satisfy Particular Preferences, To Aim At What People Regard As Beautiful Or Pleasant Order, But It Is Also The Indispensable Condition For Just Keeping That Population Alive Which Exists Already In The World. I Regard The Preservation Of What Is Known As The Capitalist System, Of The System Of Free Markets And The Private Ownership Of The Means Of Production, As An Essential Condition Of The Very Survival Of Mankind.

Personally I Prefer A Liberal Dictator To Democratic Government Lacking Liberalism.

We Can Either Have A Free Parliament Or A Free People. Personal Freedom Requires That All Authority Is Restrained By Long-run Principles Which The Opinion Of The People Approves.

It Is Not Difficult To Deprive The Great Majority Of Independent Thought. But The Minority Who Will Retain An Inclination To Criticize Must Also Be Silenced....public Criticism Or Even Expressions Of Doubt Must Be Suppressed Because They Tend To Weaken Pubic Support....when The Doubt Or Fear Expressed Concerns Not The Success Of A Particular Enterprise But Of The Whole Social Plan, It Must Be Treated Even More As Sabotage.

We Must Raise And Train An Army Of Fighters For Freedom.

If Socialists Understood Economics, They Wouldn't Be Socialist.

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James Bryant Conant

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