The Intellectuals and Socialism (learn what motivates Obama and his socialist administration)
The Intellectuals and Socialism: As Seen from a Post-Communist Country Situated in Predominantly Post-Democratic Europe
English Pages, 22. 8. 2005
1.
I take it for granted that this audience knows the slightly provocative
(because mercilessly generalizing) but very powerful and important, now
already 56 years old article
“The Intellectuals and Socialism”.
This audience certainly knows as well that it was written by F. von
Hayek and that it was published in the very confused and very
pro-socialist post-second world war era, when the overall belief in the
benefits of social engineering and of economic planning and, at the same
time, the disbelief in free markets were at their heights.
I
suppose that many of us still remember Hayek’s definition of
intellectuals (we would probably say public intellectuals nowadays) as
“the professional second-hand dealers in ideas”, who are proud of not
“possessing special knowledge of anything in particular”, who do not
take “direct responsibility for practical affairs” and who need not
“even be particularly intelligent” to perform their “mission”. Hayek
argued that they are satisfied with being “intermediary in the spreading
of ideas” of original thinkers to the common people, whom they consider
not being their equals.
Hayek was – more than half a century ago,
which means before the current prevalence of electronic media – aware
of the enormous power of intellectuals to shape public opinion and
warned us that “it is merely a question of time until the views held by
the intellectuals become the governing force of politics”. This is as
valid today as it was when he wrote it.
The question is what kind
of ideas is favoured by the intellectuals. The question is whether the
intellectuals are neutral in their choice of ideas with which they are
ready to deal with. Hayek argued that they are not. They do not hold or
try to spread all kinds of ideas. They have very clear and, in some
respect, very understandable preferences for some of them.
They prefer ideas, which give them jobs and income and which enhance their power and prestige.
They, therefore, look for ideas with specific characteristics.
They look for ideas, which enhance the role of the state because the state is usually their main employer, sponsor or donator.
That is not all. According to Hayek “the power of ideas grows in
proportion to their generality, abstractness, and even vagueness”. Hence
it is not surprising that
the intellectuals are mostly interested in abstract, not directly implementable ideas.
This is also the way of thinking, in which they have comparative
advantage. They are not good at details. They do not have ambitions to
solve a problem. They are not interested in dealing with the everyday’s
affairs of common citizens. Hayek put it clearly: “the intellectual, by
his whole disposition, is uninterested in technical details or practical
difficulties.”
He is interested in visions and utopias and
because “socialist thought owes its appeal largely to its visionary
character” (and I would add lack of realism and utopian nature), the
intellectual tends to become a socialist.
In a similar way, Raymond Aron, in his famous essay
“The Opium of Intellectuals”,
analyzed not only the well-known difference between the revolutionary
and reformist way of thinking but also – and this is more relevant in
this context –
the difference between “prosaic” and “poetry”.
Whereas “the prosaic model of thinking lacks the grandeur of utopia”
(Roger Kimball), the socialist approach is – in the words of Aron –
based “on the poetry of the unknown, of the future, of the absolute”. As
I understand it, this is exactly the realm of intellectuals. Some of us
want to immediately add that “the poetry of the absolute is an inhuman
poetry”.
2. As I said, the intellectuals want to increase their
own prestige and power. When we, in the communist countries, came across
the ideas of Hayek and Aron, we had no problems to understand their
importance. They gave us the much needed explanation of
the somewhat peculiar prominence of intellectuals in our own society of that time.
Our intellectuals, of course, did not like to hear it and did not want
to recognize it because their peculiar prominence coexisted with the
very debilitating absence of intellectual freedom, which the
intellectuals value very highly. That was, however, not the only
argument.
The communist politicians needed their intellectual fellow-travelers.
They needed their “dealings in ideas”, their “shaping of public
opinion”, their apology of the inhuman, irrational and inefficient
regime. They needed their ability to supply them with general, abstract
and utopian ideas. They especially needed their willingness to deal with
the hypothetical future instead of criticising the very much less rosy
reality.
The intellectuals at that time, and I do not have in mind
the life in the years of Stalin’s terror, were not happy. They were
deeply disappointed with their own economic well-being. They were
frustrated by many constraints they had to face and follow. Their
position in the communist society was, nevertheless, relatively high
and, paradoxically, very prestigious (I have, of course, in mind their
relative position). The communist rulers, in their arbitrary and
voluntaristic way of dealing with people, used and misused the
intellectuals and were able to make them up for it. This brought the
intellectuals in a very tricky position.
They were not “valued” (or
evaluated) by the invisible hand of the market but by the very visible
hand of the rulers of that society. To my great regret many
intellectuals were not able (or did not want) to understand the
dangerous implications of such an arrangement.
As a result of
this, and, again, it was no great surprise to me, after the fall of
communism, in our suddenly free society, where many (if not all)
previous constraints were removed practically over night, the first
frustrated and openly protesting group were the intellectuals –
“journalists, teachers, publicists, radio commentators, writers of
fiction, and artists” (to quote Hayek).
They were protesting against the unpleasant constraints created by the market.
They found out very rapidly that the free society (and free markets)
may not need so much of their service as they were used to in the past.
They especially understood that their valuation by the impersonal forces
of supply and demand may be not only less favorable than their own
self-valuation (and Robert Nozick is right when he says that
“intellectuals feel they are the most valuable people”) but even less
favorable than that of politicians and bureaucrats of the old regime.
They became, therefore, the first visible and noisy critics of our new
free society we had been dreaming of having for decades.
In their
elitist criticism of the market, of the insufficiently “human” laws of
supply and demand and of the prices, which were the outcome of nobody’s
explicit decision and deliberation, they were – I have to admit –
relatively successful. It should be made known that – especially at the
beginning, but I am afraid it has not changed much –
they have been
more critical of the market economy (and of the lack of redistribution
in their favour) than the rest of our society because – to their
great surprise – the standard of life of ordinary people has been
raised, at least relatively, more than theirs. Schumpeter was right when
he, in 1942, in his
“Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy”, made
his well-known point that “the capitalist achievement does not typically
consist in providing more silk stockings for queens, but in bringing
them within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing
amounts of effort.” That simple truth is something many intellectuals
have not been ready or willing to accept.
We, who are here today,
know that the free market system does not reward most neither “the best
nor the brightest” (John K. Williams), but those who – in whatever way
and form – satisfy the tastes and preferences of others. We agree with
Hayek that “nobody can ascertain, save through the market, the size of
an individual’s contribution to the overall product”. And we know that
the free market system does not typically reward those who are – in their own eyes – the most meritorious.
Because the intellectuals value themselves very highly, they disdain
the marketplace. Markets value them differently than their own eyes and,
in addition to it, markets function nicely without their supervision.
As a result, the intellectuals are suspicious of free markets and prefer
being publicly funded. That is another reason, why they are in favour
of socialism.
These arguments are not new but our experience in
the first days after our – so called – Velvet Revolution was in this
respect more than instructive. What actually happened was more
textbook-like than anyone of us would had expected.
3. In the
first decade of the 21th century we should not concentrate exclusively
on socialism. There is a well-known saying that we should not fight the
old, already non-existent battles. I find this point worth stressing
even if I do not want to say that socialism is definitely over. There
are, I believe, at least two arguments, which justify looking at other
ideologies as well. The first is the difference between the hard and
soft version of socialism and the second is the emergence of new “isms”
based on similar illiberal or antiliberal views.
As regards the first problem
we can probably confidently say that its “hard version” – communism – is over.
It is a great victory for us, but this victory should not demotivate us
because the fall of communism does not automatically lead to a system
we would like to have and live in. It is not a victory of ideas of
classical (or European) liberalism. Fifteen years after the collapse of
communism I am afraid, more than at the beginning of its softer (or
weaker) version, of
social-democratism, which has become – under
different names, e.g. the welfare state or the soziale Marktwirtschaft –
the dominant model of the economic and social system of current Western
civilization. It is based on big and patronizing government, on
extensive regulating of human behavior, and on large-scale income
redistribution.
As we see both in Europe and in America, the
intellectuals love such a system. It gives them money and an easy life.
It gives them an opportunity to be influential and to be heard. The
Western world is still affluent enough to be able to support and finance
many of their unpractical and directly unpurposeful activities. It can
afford the luxury of employing herds of intellectuals to use “poetry”
for praising the existing system, for selling the concept of positive
rights, for advocating constructivist human designs (instead of
spontaneous human action), for promoting other values than freedom and
liberty.
We need to understand this contemporary version of
world-wide socialism, because our old concepts may omit some of the
crucial features of what is around us just now. We may even find out
that the continuous use of the term socialism can be misleading.
4.
This brings me to another problem. After the complete discrediting of
communism and in the moment of the undeniable crisis of the European
social-democratism
the explicit socialism has become insufficiently attractive for most intellectuals.
Nowadays, it is difficult to find – in the West – an intellectual, who
wants to be “in” and to have an influence, who would call himself a
socialist. The explicit socialism has lost its appeal and we should not
have it as the main rival to our ideas today.
Illiberal ideas
are becoming to be formulated, spread and preached under the name of
ideologies or “isms”, which have – at least formally and nominally –
nothing in common with the old-styled, explicit socialism. These
ideas are, however, in many respects similar to it. There is always a
limiting (or constraining) of human freedom, there is always ambitious
social engineering, there is always an immodest “enforcement of a good”
by those who are anointed (T. Sowell) on others against their will,
there is always the crowding out of standard democratic methods by
alternative political procedures, and there is always the feeling of
superiority of intellectuals and of their ambitions.
I have in mind
environmentalism (with its Earth First, not Freedom First principle),
radical humanrightism (based – as de Jasay precisely argues – on not distinguishing rights and rightism),
ideology of “civic society”
(or communitarism), which is nothing less than one version of
post-Marxist collectivism which wants privileges for organized groups,
and in consequence, a refeudalization of society. I also have in mind
multiculturalism,
feminism,
apolitical technocratism (based on the resentment against politics and politicians),
internationalism (and especially its European variant called Europeanism) and a rapidly growing phenomenon I call
NGOism.
All
of them represent substitute ideologies for socialism. All of them give
intellectuals new possibilities, new space for their activities, new
niches in the market of ideas. To face these new isms, to reveal their
true nature, and to be able to get rid of them, may be more difficult
than in the past. It may be more complicated than fighting the old,
explicit socialism. Everyone wants to have healthy environment; everyone
wants to overcome loneliness of the fragmented post-modern society and
to participate in positive activities of various clubs, associations,
foundations and charity organizations; almost everyone is against
discrimination based on race, religion or gender; many of us are against
the extensive power of the state, etc. To demonstrate the dangers of
these approaches, therefore, very often means blowing against the wind.
5.
These alternative ideologies, in their unclear, unstable and yet
undescribed potential synergy, are successful especially where there is
no sufficient resistance to them, where they find a fertile soil for
their flourishing, where they find a country (or the whole continent)
where freedom (and free markets) have been heavily undermined by long
lasting collectivistic dreams and experiences and where intellectuals
have succeeded in getting and maintaining a very strong voice and social
status. I have in mind, of course, rather Europe, than America.
It is Europe, where we witness the crowding out of democracy by post democracy,
where the EU dominance replaces democratic arrangements in the EU
member countries, where the Hayek’s “paragovernment”, connected with
organized (because organizable) interests is successful in guiding
policy, and where even some of the liberals – in their justified
criticism of the state – do not see the dangers of empty Europeanism and
of a deep (and ever deeper) but only bureaucratic unification of the
whole European continent. They applaud the growing formal opening of the
continent, but do not see that
the elimination of some of the
borders without actual liberalization of human activities “only” shifts
governments upwards, which means to the level where there is no
democratic accountability and where the decisions are made by
politicians appointed by politicians, not elected by citizens in free
elections.
The European constitution was an attempt to set up
and consolidate such a system in a legal form. It was an attempt to
constitute it. It is, hence, more than important that the French and
Dutch referenda made an end to it, that they interrupted the seemingly
irreversible process toward “ever-closer Europe” and that they set into
motion a hopefully serious discussion – in Eurospeak it is called “a
reflection period”. I do not assume that this permitted reflection
organized from above will go far enough to reveal deeply rooted causes
of the current European problems. It, nevertheless, opened the door. We
should use this opportunity for reminding our fellow citizens what makes
our society free, democratic and prosperous.
It is a political system,
which must not be destroyed by a postmodern interpretation of human
rights (with its stress on positive rights, with its dominance of group
rights and entitlements over individual rights and responsibilities and
with its denationalization of citizenship), by weakening of democratic
institutions, which have irreplaceable roots exclusively on the
territory of the states, by the “multiculturally” caused loss of a
needed coherence of various social entities, and by continental-wide
rent-seeking (made possible when decision-making is done at a level
which is very far from the individual citizens and where the dispersed
voters are even more dispersed than in sovereign countries).
It is an economic system,
which must not be damaged by excessive government regulation, by fiscal
deficits, by heavy bureaucratic control, by attempts to perfect markets
by means of constructing the “optimal” market structures, by huge
subsidies to privileged or protected industries and firms, by labor
market rigidities, etc.
It is a social system, which must
not be wrecked by all imaginable kinds of disincentives, by more than
generous welfare payments, by large scale redistribution, by many forms
of government paternalism.
It is a system of ideas, which
will be based on freedom, personal responsibility, individualism,
natural caring for others and genuine moral conduct of life.
It is a system of relations and relationships of individual countries,
which must not be based on false internationalism, on supranational
organizations and on misunderstanding of globalization and of
externalities but which will be based on good neighborliness of free,
sovereign countries and on international pacts and agreements.
The
founding fathers of the Mont Pelerin Society, Hayek and Friedman,
together with others, always insisted on fighting for what seemed
politically impossible. We should keep doing the same.
Bibliography
1. Aron, R., The Opium of the Intellectuals, London, Secker & Wartburg, 1957
2. Barry N., The European Constitution: a requiem? The Freeman, Ideas on Liberty
, October 2004
3. Fonte J., Democracy´s Trojan Horse, The National Interest, Number 76, Summer 2004
4. von Hayek, F., The Intellectuals and Socialism, The University of Chicago Law Review, Spring 1949
5. von Hayek, F., Law, Legislation and Liberty, vol. 3, Routledge et Kegan Paul, London and Henley, 1979
6. von Hayek, F., The Fatal Conceit (The Errors of Socialism), Routledge, London, 1990
7. de Jasay, A., Free-Riding on the Euro, The Library of Economics and Liberty, September 17, 2003
8. Kimball, R., Raymond Aron and the Power of Ideas, The New Criterion Vol. 19, No. 9, May 2001
9. Klaus, V., The Third Way and Its Fatal Conceits, Speech at the Mont
Pelerin Society Regional Meeting,Vancouver, Canada, August 30,1999
10. Klaus, V., Back to Europe or Avanti Into the European Union?, Speech
at the Mont Pelerin Society Regional Meeting, Bratislava, Slovak
Republic, September 10, 2001
11. Klaus, V., Reflections on the
Current Situation in Europe, Speech at the Mont Pelerin Society Meeting,
Chattanooga, U.S.A., September 18, 2003
12. Klaus, V., The Czech
Republic’s Transition, European Problems, and the Fraser Institute, in
“Celebrating Freedom”, Fraser Institute, Vancouver, Canada, 2005
13.
Klaus, V., On the Road to Democracy: The Czech Republic from Communism
To Free Society, National Center for Policy Analysis, 2005
14. Nozick, R., Why do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?, CATO Policy Report, No. 1, 1998
15. Schumpeter, J. A., Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, New York, Harper & Row, 1942
16. Sowell, T., The Vision of the Anointed, New York, Basic Books, 1995
17. Williams, J. K., Intellectuals, Moralists and The Free Market, The Freeman, February 1982, Vol. 32, No. 2
Václav Klaus, Remarks prepared for the Mont Pelerin Society Regional Meeting, Reykjavik, Iceland, August 22, 2005
by 
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