Background Image

...

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.

-Friedrich August Von Hayek

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Humiliating To Human Pride

Friedrich August Von Hayek

...

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.

Views: 6

Topic

More From Friedrich August Von Hayek

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

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

Perhaps Even More Than Elsewhere Current Notions Of What Is Desirable And Practicable Are Here Still Of A Kind Which May Well Produce The Opposite Of What They Promise.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Future Of Mankind

Capitalism Created The Possibility Of Employment.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

In Abbreviated Form, By A Kind Of Symbol, Only The Most Essential Information Is Passed On And Passed On Only To Those Concerned. It Is More Than A Metaphor To Describe The Price System As A Kind Of Machinery For Registering Change, Or A System Of Telecommunications Which Enables Individual Producers To Watch Merely The Movement Of A Few Pointers, As An Engineer Might Watch The Hands Of A Few Dials, In Order To Adjust Their Activities To Changes Of Which They May Never Know More Than Is Reflected In The Price Movement.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 Confidence In The Unlimited Power Of Science Is Only Too Often Based On A False Belief That The Scientific Method Consists In The Application Of A Ready-made Technique, Or In Imitating The Form Rather Than The Substance Of Scientific Procedure, As If One Needed Only To Follow Some Cooking Recipes To Solve All Social Problems. It Sometimes Almost Seems As If The Techniques Of Science Were More Easily Learnt Than The Thinking That Shows Us What The Problems Are And How To Approach Them.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

... 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.

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.

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

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

The Importance Of Our Being Free To Do A Particular Thing Has Nothing To Do With The Question Of Whether We Or The Majority Are Ever Likely To Make Use Of That Particular Possibility. To Grant No More Freedom Than All Can Exercise Would Be To Misconceive Its Function Completely. 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.

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

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 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 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.

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.

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.

The Chief Difference [between Totalitarian And Free Countries] Is That Only The Totalitarians Appear Clearly To Know How They Want To Achieve That Result, While The Free World Has Only Its Past Achievements To Show, Being By Its Very Nature Unable To Offer Any Detailed "plan" For Further Growth.

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.

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.

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.

This Means That To Entrust To Science - Or To Deliberate Control According To Scientific Principles - More Than Scientific Method Can Achieve May Have Deplorable Effects.

Scientific Method

Many Who Think Themselves Infinitely Superior To The Aberrations Of Nazism, And Sincerely Hate All Manifestations, Work At The Same Time For Ideals Whose Realization Would Lead Straight To The Abhorred Tyranny.

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.

There Is Perhaps No Single Factor Contributing So Much To People's Frequent Reluctance To Let The Market Work As Their Inability To Conceive How Some Necessary Balance, Between Demand And Supply, Between Exports And Imports, Or The Like, Will Be Brought About Without Deliberate Control. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

It May Indeed Prove To Be Far The Most Difficult And Not The Least Important Task For Human Reason Rationally To Comprehend Its Own Limitations. It Is Essential For The Growth Of Reason That As Individuals We Should Bow To Forces And Obey Principles Which We Cannot Hope Fully To Understand, Yet On Which The Advance And Even The Preservation Of Civilization Depend.

In Government, The Scum Rises To The Top.

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.

[socialistic] Economic Planning, Regulation, And Intervention Pave The Way To Totalitarianism By Building A Power Structure That Will Inevitably Be Seized By The Most Power-hungry And Unscrupulous.

There Can Be Little Doubt That Man Owes Some Of His Greatest Successes In The Past To The Fact That He Has Not Been Able To Control Social Life. His Continued Advance May Well Depend On His Deliberately Refraining From Exercising Controls Which Are Now In His Power.

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

Each Member Of Society Can Have Only A Small Fraction Of The Knowledge Possessed By All, And...each Is Therefore Ignorant Of Most Of The Facts On Which The Working Of Society Rests...civilization Rests On The Fact That We All Benefit From Knowledge Which We Do Not Possess. And One Of The Ways In Which Civilization Helps Us To Overcome That Limitation On The Extent Of Individual Knowledge Is By Conquering Intelligence, Not By The Acquisition Of More Knowledge, But By The Utilization Of Knowledge Which Is And Which Remains Widely Dispersed Among Individuals.

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

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

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.

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.

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

..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

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

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.

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.

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

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!

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Competition Means Decentralized Planning By Many Separate Persons.

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

Least Of All Shall We Preserve Democracy Or Foster Its Growth If All The Power And Most Of The Important Decisions Rest With An Organization Far Too Big For The Common Man To Survey Or Comprehend.

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

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

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.

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 Centralization.

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.

And Who Will Deny That A World In Which The Wealthy Are Powerful Is Still A Better World Than One In Which Only The Already Powerful Can Acquire Wealth?

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'.

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

To Discover The Meaning Of What Is Called "social Justice" Has Been One Of My Chief Preoccupations For More Than 10 Years. I Have Failed In This Endeavour Or Rather, Have Reached The Conclusion That, With Reference To Society Of Free Men, The Phrase Has No Meaning Whatever.

We Must Shed The Illusion That We Can Deliberately "create The Future Of Mankind." This Is The Final Conclusion Of The Forty Years Which I Have Now Devoted To The Study Of These Problems

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Liberty And Responsibility Are Inseparable.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Every Change In Conditions Will Make Necessary Some Change In The Use Of Resources, In The Direction And Kind Of Human Activities, In Habits And Practices. And Each Change In The Actions Of Those Affected In The First Instance Will Require Further Adjustments That Will Gradually Extend Through The Whole Of Society. Every Change Thus In A Sense Creates A "problemfor Society, Even Though No Single Individual Perceives It As Such; It Is Gradually "solvedby The Establishment Of A New Overall Adjustment.

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

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.

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.

To Rest The Case For Equal Treatment Of National Or Racial Minorities On The Assumption That They Do Not Differ From Other Men Is Implicitly To Admit That Factual Inequality Would Justify Unequal Treatment, And The Proof That Some Differences Do, In Fact, Exist Would Not Be Long In Forthcoming. 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.

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

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

The Nobel Prize Confers On An Individual An Authority Which In Economics No Man Ought To Possess.

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

In The United States, Where It Has Become Almost Impossible To Use "liberal" In The Sense In Which I Have Used It, The Term "libertarian" Has Been Used Instead. It May Be The Answer; But For My Part I Find It Singularly Unattractive. For My Taste It Carries Too Much The Flavor Of A Manufactured Term And Of A Substitute. What I Should Want Is A Word Which Describes The Party Of Life, The Party That Favors Free Growth And Spontaneous Evolution. But I Have Racked My Brain Unsuccessfully To Find A Descriptive Term Which Commends Itself.

Fascism Is The Stage Reached After Communism Has Proved An Illusion.

If This Is The Degree Of Inflation Planned For In Advance, The Real Outcome Is Indeed Likely To Be Such That Most Of Those Who Will Retire At The End Of The Century Will Be Dependent On The Charity Of The Younger Generation. And Ultimately Not Morals But The Fact That The Young Supply The Police And The Army Will Decide The Issue: Concentration Camps For The Aged Unable To Maintain Themselves Are Likely To Be The Fate Of An Old Generation Whose Income Is Entirely Dependent On Coercing The Young.

Wherever Liberty As We Understand It Has Been Destroyed, This Has Almost Always Been Done In The Name Of Some New Freedom Promised To The People

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.

Conservatism Is Only As Good As What It Conserves.

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

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

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.

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

It May Be That A Free Society... Carries In Itself The Forces Of Its Own Destruction, That Once Freedom Has Been Achieved It Is Taken For Granted And Ceases To Be Valued, And That The Free Growth Of Ideas Which Is The Essence Of A Free Society Will Bring About The Destruction Of The Foundations On Which It Depends.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Without A Theory The Facts Are Silent.

We Know, In Other Words, The General Conditions In Which What We Call, Somewhat Misleadingly, An Equilibrium Will Establish Itself: But We Never Know What The Particular Prices Or Wages Are Which Would Exist If The Market Were To Bring About Such An Equilibrium.

If Most People Are Not Willing To See The Difficulty, This Is Mainly Because, Consciously Or Unconsciously, They Assume That It Will Be They Who Will Settle These Questions For The Others, And Because They Are Convinced Of Their Own Capacity To Do This.

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

The Power Which A Multiple Millionaire, Who May Be My Neighbor And Perhaps My Employer, Has Over Me Is Very Much Less Than That Which The Smallest "functionaire" Possesses Who Wields The Coercive Power Of The State, And On Whose Desecration It Depends Whether And How I Am Allowed To Live Or To Work.

Socialism Constitutes A Threat To The Present And Future Welfare Of The Human Race, In The Sense That Neither Socialism Nor Any Other Known Substitute For The Market Order Could Sustain The Current Population Of The World.

The History Of Government Management Of Money Has, Except For A Few Short Happy Periods, Been One Of Incessant Fraud And Deception.

I Am Certain, However, That Nothing Has Done So Much To Destroy The Juridical Safeguards Of Individual Freedom As The Striving After This Mirage Of Social Justice.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

By Giving The Government Unlimited Powers, The Most Arbitrary Rule Can Be Made Legal; And In This Way A Democracy May Set Up The Most Complete Despotism Imaginable.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

It Is Only Because The Majority Opinion Will Always Be Opposed By Some That Our Knowledge And Understanding Progress... It Is Always From A Minority Acting In Ways Different From What The Majority Would Prescribe That The Majority In The End Learns To Do Better.

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

It Can Hardly Be Denied That Such A Demand Quite Arbitrarily Limits The Facts Which Are To Be Admitted As Possible Causes Of The Events Which Occur In The Real World.

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.

Social Justice Rests On The Hate Towards Those That Enjoy A Comfortable Position, Namely, Upon Envy.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

The Discussions Of Every Age Are Filled With The Issues On Which Its Leading Schools Of Thought Differ. But The General Intellectual Atmosphere Of The Time Is Always Determined By The Views On Which The Opposing Schools Agree. They Become The Unspoken Presuppositions Of All Thought, And Common And Unquestioningly Accepted Foundations On Which All Discussion Proceeds.

As Long-term Institutions, I Am Totally Against Dictatorships. But A Dictatorship May Be A Necessary System For A Transitional Period... Personally I Prefer A Liberal Dictator To Democratic Government Lacking Liberalism. My Personal Impression - And This Is Valid For South America - Is That In Chile, For Example, We Will Witness A Transition From A Dictatorial Government To A Liberal Government.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

We Did Not Realise How Fragile Our Civilisation Was.

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.

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.

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.

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

That There Is Little Hope Of International Order Or Lasting Peace So Long As Every Country Is Free To Employ Whatever Measures It Thinks Desirable In Its Own Immediate Interest, However Damaging They May Be To Others, Needs Little Emphasis Now.

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.

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.

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.

It Is True That The Virtues Which Are Less Esteemed And Practiced Now--independence, Self-reliance, And The Willingness To Bear Risks, The Readiness To Back One's Own Conviction Against A Majority, And The Willingness To Voluntary Cooperation With One's Neighbors--are Essentially Those On Which The Of An Individualist Society Rests. Collectivism Has Nothing To Put In Their Place, And In So Far As It Already Has Destroyed Then It Has Left A Void Filled By Nothing But The Demand For Obedience And The Compulsion Of The Individual To What Is Collectively Decided To Be Good.

[the] Impersonal Process Of The Market ... Can Be Neither Just Nor Unjust, Because The Results Are Not Intended Or Foreseen.

Trending Author

Iain Duncan Smith

Category