F. A. Hayek on individualism's pessimistic view of man
And the need to find a social system that take that into account
A Nobel Prize winner in economics in 1974, Friedrich, or F. A., Hayek called himself a “classical liberal” and wrote an essay declaring “Why I Am Not a Conservative.“ The Road to Serfdom was his most famous book, but also influential were The Constitution of Liberty and his addresses and essays. This is taken from his “Individualism: True and False,” a lecture delivered at University College, Dublin, in 1948 and published in The Essence of Hayek.
Speaking of Adam Smith and his “group,” Hayek writes:
In their view man was by nature lazy and indolent, improvident and wasteful, and that it was only by the force of circumstances that he could be made to behave economically or carefully to adjust his means to his ends. . . .
Smith’s chief concern was not so much with what man might occasionally achieve when he was at his best but that he should have as little opportunity as possible to do harm when he was at his worst. It would scarcely be too much to claim that the main merit of the individualism which he and his contemporaries advocated is that it is a system under which bad men can do least harm.
It is a social system which does not depend for its functioning on our finding good men for running it, or on all men becoming better than they now are, but which makes use of men in all their given variety and complexity, sometimes good and sometimes bad, sometimes intelligent and more often stupid. Their aim was a system under which it should be possible to grant freedom to all, instead of restricting it, as their French contemporaries wished, to “the good and the wise.”
The chief concern of the great individualist writers was indeed to find a set of institutions by which man could be induced, by his own choice and from the motives which determined his ordinary conduct, to contribute as much as possible to the need of all others; and their discovery was that the system of private property did provide such inducements to a much greater extent than had yet been understood.
They did not contend, however, that this system was incapable of further improvement and, still less . . . that there existed a “natural harmony of interests” irrespective of the positive institutions.
They were more than merely aware of the conflicts of individual interests and stressed the necessity of “well-constructed institutions” where the “rules and principles of contending interests and compromised advantages” would reconcile conflicting interests without giving any one group power to make their views and interests always prevail over those of all others.
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