14 Material Conditions and Ideal Ends

Hayek mentions that his generation likes to flatter itself that it give less weight to economic matters than previous generations. But the current clamor for social reconstruction is nearly all economic in character. The beliefs and aspirations of men today are more than ever governed by economic doctrines, by the carefully fostered belief in the irrationality of our economic system, by the false assertions about potential plenty, pseudo-theories about the inevitable trend towards monopoly, and impression created by certain much-advertised occurrences such as the destruction of stocks of raw materials ore the suppression of inventions, for which competition is blamed, though they are precisely the sort of thing that could not happen under competition and which are made possible only by monopoly, and usually by government supported monopoly.

While it is true that our generation is less willing to listen to economic considerations, it is really just unwilling to sacrifice any of its demands to what are called economic arguments. It is impatient and intolerant of all restraints on its immediate ambitions and unwilling to bow to economic necessities. It is not contempt for material welfare; it is the refusal to recognize any obstacles which might impede the fulfillment of its own desires. Econophobia is a better term for our condition.

The revolt is an instance of a more general phenomenon, an unwillingness to submit to any rule or necessity of rationale which man does not understand. But there are fields where this intelligibility can’t be fully satisfied. A complex system like ours is necessarily based on the individual’s adjusting himself to changes whose cause and nature he can’t understand. We will always be connected with such a multitude of circumstances that no single mind can possibly grasp them all.

It was men’s submission to the impersonal forces of the market that made the growth of civilization possible. The refusal of this generation to yield to forces we can neither understand, nor recognize as the conscious decisions of a rational being, is the product of an incomplete and erroneous rationalism.

It fails to comprehend that the coordination of the multifarious individual efforts in a complex society must take account of facts no individual can completely survey. But the only alternative is to submit to the even worse arbitrary power of men. In his desire to escape the irksome restraints he now feels, man does not realize the new authoritarian restraints that will have to be put on him will be even worse.

Individual freedom can’t be reconciled with the supremacy of a single purpose to which the whole of society must be subordinated. In a wartime setting, we may temporarily set aside freedoms in order to make it secure in the future, but we can’t sacrifice our freedoms as a permanent arrangement.

One thing our democracy will not bear without cracking is the necessity of substantially lowering the standards of living.

What our generation is in danger of forgetting is not only that morals are of necessity a phenomenon of individual conduct but also that they can exist only in the sphere in which the individual is free to decide for himself and is called upon voluntarily to sacrifice personal advantage to the observance of a moral rule. Outside the sphere of individual responsibility there is neither goodness nor badness. Only where we ourselves are responsible for our own interests and are free to sacrifice them, do our decisions have moral value.

A system whose promise is the relief from responsibility will be anti-moral in its effects, no matter how lofty the ideals to which it owes its birth. It may even be that the passion for collective action is a way in which we can now engage collectively in that selfish indulgence which we had to restrain as individuals.

Compulsion destroys moral values and replaces them with obedience.

The main cause of the ineffectiveness of British propaganda is that those directing it seem to have lost their own belief in the peculiar values of English civilization. The Left intelligentsia have so long worshiped foreign gods that they seem to have become almost incapable of seeing any good in the characteristic English institutions and traditions. If the democracies themselves abandon the supreme ideal of freedom and happiness of the individual, if they implicitly admit that their civilization is not worth preserving, and that they know nothing better than to follow the path along which the Germans have led, they indeed have nothing to offer.