Chapter 9. The Role of Ideas
1. Human Reason
Reason is man's particular and characteristic feature.
There is no need for praxeology to raise the question
whether reason is a suitable tool for the cognition of ultimate and absolute truth.
It deals with reason only as far as it enables man to act.
All those objects which are the substratum of human sensation, perception and observation, also pass before the senses of animals.
But man alone has the faculty of transforming sensuous stimuli into observation and experience.
And man alone can arrange his various observations and experiences into a coherent system.
Action is preceded by thinking.
Thinking is to deliberate beforehand over future action and to reflect afterward upon past action.
Thinking and acting are inseparable. Every action is always based on a definite idea about causal relations.
He who thinks a causal relation thinks a theorem. Action without thinking, practice without theory, are unimaginable.
The reasoning may be faulty and the theory incorrect, but thinking and theorizing are not lacking in any action.
On the other hand, thinking is always thinking of a potential action.
Even he who thinks of a pure theory assumes that the theory is correct,
that is, that action complying with its content would result in an effect to be expected from its teachings.
It is of no relevance for logic whether such action is feasible or not.
It is always the individual who thinks.
Society does not think any more than it eats or drinks.
The evolution of human reasoning from the naive thinking of primitive man to the more
subtle thinking of modern science took place within society.
However, thinking itself is always an achievement of individuals.
There is joint action, but no joint thinking.
There is only tradition, which preserves thoughts and communicates them to others as a stimulus
to their thinking.
However, man has no means of appropriating the thoughts of his precursors other than
to think them over again.
Then, of course, he is in a position to proceed farther on the basis of his forerunner's
Thoughts.
The foremost vehicle of tradition is the word.
Thinking is linked up with language and vice versa.
Concepts are embodied in terms.
Language is a tool of thinking, as it is a tool of social action.
The history of thought and ideas is a discourse carried on from generation to generation.
The thinking of later ages grows out of the thinking of earlier ages.
Without the aid of this stimulation, intellectual progress would have been impossible.
The continuity of human evolution, sowing for the offspring and harvesting on land cleared
and tilled by the ancestors, manifests itself also in the history of science and ideas.
We have inherited from our forefathers not only a stock of products of various orders
of goods which is the source of our material wealth.
We have no less inherited ideas and thoughts, theories and technologies to which our thinking
owes its productivity.
But thinking is always a manifestation of individuals.
2.
Worldview and Ideology
The theories directing action are often imperfect and unsatisfactory.
They may be contradictory and unfit to be arranged into a comprehensive and coherent
system.
If we look at all the theorems and theories guiding the conduct of certain individuals
and groups as a coherent complex, and try to arrange them as far as is feasible into
to a system, that is, a comprehensive body of knowledge, we may speak of it as a worldview.
A worldview is, as a theory, an interpretation of all things, and, as a precept for action,
an opinion concerning the best means for removing uneasiness as much as possible.
A worldview is thus, on the one hand, an explanation of all phenomena, and, on the other hand,
A Technology, both these terms being taken in their broadest sense.
Religion, metaphysics and philosophy aim at providing a worldview.
They interpret the universe and they advise men how to act.
The concept of an ideology is narrower than that of a worldview.
In speaking of ideology, we have in view only human action and social cooperation, and disregard
the problems of metaphysics, religious dogma, the natural sciences and the technologies
derived from them.
Ideology is the totality of our doctrines concerning individual conduct and social relations.
Both, worldview and ideology, go beyond the limits imposed upon a purely neutral and academic
study of things as they are.
They are not only scientific theories, but also doctrines about the ought, that is, about
the ultimate ends which man should aim at in his earthly concerns.
Asceticism teaches that the only means open to man for removing pain and for attaining
complete quietude, contentment and happiness is to turn away from earthly concerns and
to live without bothering about worldly things.
There is no salvation other than to renounce striving after material well-being, to endure
submissively the adversities of the earthly pilgrimage and to dedicate oneself exclusively
to the preparation for eternal bliss.
However, the number of those who consistently and unswervingly comply with the principles
of asceticism is so small that it is not easy to instance more than a few names.
It seems that the complete passivity advocated by asceticism is contrary to nature.
The enticement of life triumphs.
The ascetic principles have been adulterated.
Even the most saintly hermits make concessions to life and earthly concerns, which did not
agree with their rigid principles.
But as soon as a man takes into account any earthly concerns, and substitutes for purely
Human thoughts about things of which neither pure reasoning nor experience provides any
Many knowledge may differ so radically that no agreement can be reached.
In this sphere, in which the free reverie of the mind is restricted neither by logical
thinking nor by sensory experience, man can give vent to his individuality and subjectivity.
Nothing is more personal than the notions and images about the transcendent.
Linguistic terms are unable to communicate what is said about the transcendent.
One can never establish whether the hearer conceives them in the same way as the speaker.
With regard to things beyond, there can be no agreement.
Religious wars are the most terrible wars because they are waged without any prospect
of conciliation.
But where earthly things are involved, the natural affinity of all men and the identity
of the biological conditions for the preservation of their lives come into play.
The higher productivity of cooperation under division of labor makes society the foremost
means of every individual for the attainment of his own ends, whatever they may be.
The maintenance and further intensification of social cooperation become a concern of everybody.
Every world view and every ideology which is not entirely and unconditionally committed
to the practice of asceticism, and to a life in anchoritic reclusion, must pay heed to
the fact that society is the great means for the attainment of earthly ends.
But then a common ground is one to clear the way for an agreement concerning minor social
problems and the details of society's organization.
However various ideologies may conflict with one another, they harmonize in one point,
The Acknowledgement of Life in Society
People fail sometimes to see this fact, because in dealing with philosophies and ideologies,
they look more at what these doctrines assert with regard to transcendent and unknowable
things, and less at their statements about action in this world.
Between various parts of an ideological system, there is often an unbridgeable gulf.
For acting man, only those teachings are of real importance which result in precepts for
action, not those doctrines which are purely academic and do not apply to conduct within
the frame of social cooperation.
We may disregard the philosophy of adamant and consistent asceticism because such a rigid
asceticism must ultimately result in the extinction of its supporters.
All other ideologies in approving of the search for the necessities of life are forced in
some measure to take into account the fact that division of labor is more productive
than isolated work.
They thus admit the need for social cooperation.
Praxeology and economics are not qualified to deal with the transcendent and metaphysical
Social Aspects of Any Doctrine, but, on the other hand, no appeal to any religious or
metaphysical dogmas and creeds can invalidate the theorems and theories concerning social
cooperation as developed by logically correct praxeological reasoning.
If a philosophy has admitted the necessity of societal links between men, it has placed
itself, as far as problems of social action come into play, on ground from which there
is no escape into personal convictions and professions of faith not liable to a thorough
examination by methods of science.
This fundamental fact is often ignored.
People believe that differences in worldview create irreconcilable conflicts.
The basic antagonisms between parties committed to different worldviews, it is contended,
cannot be settled by compromise.
They stem from the deepest recesses of the human soul, and are expressive of a man's
innate communion with supernatural and eternal forces.
There can never be any cooperation between people divided by different worldviews.
However, if we pass in review the programs of all parties, both the cleverly elaborated
and publicized programs, and those to which the parties really cling when in power, we
can easily discover the fallacy of this interpretation.
All present-day political parties strive after the earthly well-being and prosperity of their
supporters.
They promise that they will render economic conditions more satisfactory to their followers.
With regard to this issue, there is no difference between the Roman Catholic Church and the
various Protestant denominations as far as they intervene in political and social questions,
between Christianity and the non-Christian religions, between the advocates of economic
freedom and the various brands of Marxian materialism, between nationalists and internationalists,
and Racists and the Friends of Interracial Peace.
It is true that many of these parties believe that their own group cannot prosper except
at the expense of other groups, and even go so far as to consider the complete annihilation
of other groups or their enslavement as the necessary condition of their own group's prosperity.
Yet extermination or enslavement of others is for them not an ultimate end, but a means
for the attainment of what they aim at as an ultimate end, their own group's flowering.
If they were to learn that their own designs are guided by spurious theories and would
not bring about the beneficial results expected, they would change their programs.
The pompous statements which people make about things unknowable and beyond the power of
of the Human Mind, their cosmologies, worldviews, religions, mysticisms, metaphysics and conceptual
fantasies differ widely from one another.
But the practical essence of their ideologies, that is, their teachings dealing with the
ends to be aimed at in earthly life and with the means for the attainment of these ends,
show much uniformity.
There are, to be sure, differences and antagonisms both with regard to ends and means.
Yet the differences with regard to ends are not irreconcilable.
They do not hinder cooperation and amicable arrangements in the sphere of social action.
As far as they concern means and ways only, they are of a purely technical character,
and as such open to examination by rational methods.
Even in the heat of party conflicts, one of the factions declares,
Here we cannot go on in our negotiations with you, because we are faced with a question
touching upon our world view.
On this point, we must be adamant, and must cling rigidly to our principles, whatever
may result.
One need only scrutinize matters more carefully, to realize that such declarations describe
describe the antagonism as more pointed than it really is.
In fact, for all parties committed to pursuit of the people's earthly welfare and thus approving
social cooperation, questions of social organization and the conduct of social action are not problems
of ultimate principles and of worldviews, but ideological issues.
They are technical problems, with regard to which some arrangement is always possible.
No party would wittingly prefer social disintegration, anarchy and a return to primitive barbarism
to a solution which must be bought at the price of the sacrifice of some ideological
points.
In party programs, these technical issues are, of course, of primary importance.
A party is committed to certain means.
It recommends certain methods of political action, and rejects utterly all other methods
and policies as inappropriate.
A party is a body which combines all those eager to employ the same means for common
action.
The principle which differentiates men and integrates parties is the choice of means.
Thus, for the party, as such, the means chosen are essential.
A party is doomed if the futility of the means recommended becomes obvious.
Party chiefs, whose prestige and political career are bound up with the party's program,
may have ample reasons for withdrawing its principles from unrestricted discussion.
They may attribute to them the character of ultimate ends, which must not be questioned
because they are based on a world view.
But for the people as whose mandataries the party chiefs pretend to act, for the voters
whom they want to enlist and for whose votes they canvass, things offer another aspect.
They have no objection to scrutinizing every point of a party's program.
They look upon such a program only as a recommendation of means for the attainment of their own ends,
Namely, Earthly Well-Being.
What divides those parties which one calls today worldview parties, that is, parties
committed to basic philosophical decisions about ultimate ends, is only seeming disagreement
with regard to ultimate ends.
Their antagonisms refer either to religious creeds, or to problems of international relations,
or to the problem of ownership of the means of production or to problems of political
organization.
It can be shown that all of these controversies concern means and not ultimate ends.
Let us begin with the problems of a nation's political organization.
There are supporters of a democratic system of government, of hereditary monarchy, of
The Rule of a Self-Styled Elite and of Caesarist Dictatorship
Caesarism is today exemplified by the Bolshevik, Fascist or Nazi type of dictatorship.
It is true that these programs are often recommended by reference to divine institutions, to the
eternal laws of the universe, to the natural order, to the inevitable trend of historical
evolution and to other objects of transcendent knowledge.
But such statements are merely incidental adornment.
In appealing to the electorate, the parties advance other arguments.
They are eager to show that the system they support will succeed better than those advocated
by other parties in realizing those ends which the citizens aim at.
They specify the beneficial results achieved in the past or in other countries.
They disparage the other parties' programs by relating their failures.
They resort both to pure reasoning and to an interpretation of historical experience
in order to demonstrate the superiority of their own proposals and the futility of those
of their adversaries.
Their main argument is always, the political system we support will render you more prosperous
and more content.
In the field of society's economic organization, there are the liberals advocating private
Ownership of the Means of Production, the Socialists Advocating Public Ownership of
the Means of Production, and the Interventionists Advocating a Third System, which, they contend,
is as far from socialism as it is from capitalism.
In the clash of these parties there is again much talk about basic philosophical issues.
People speak of true liberty, equality, social justice, the rights of the individual, community,
Solidarity and Humanitarianism.
But each party is intent upon proving by ratiocination and by referring to historical experience
that only the system it recommends will make the citizens prosperous and satisfied.
They tell the people that realization of their program will raise the standard of living
to a higher level than realization of any other party's program.
They insist upon the expediency of their plans and upon their utility.
It is obvious that they do not differ from one another with regard to ends, but only
as to means.
They all pretend to aim at the highest material welfare for the majority of citizens.
The nationalists stress the point that there is an irreconcilable conflict between the
and the interests of various nations, but that, on the other hand, the rightly understood
interests of all the citizens within the nation are harmonious.
A nation can prosper only at the expense of other nations.
The individual citizen can fare well only if his nation flourishes.
The liberals have a different opinion.
They believe that the interests of various nations harmonize no less than those of the
and various groups, classes and strata of individuals within a nation.
They believe that peaceful international cooperation is a more appropriate means than conflict
for attainment of the end which they and the nationalists are both aiming at, their own
nation's welfare.
They do not, as the nationalists charge, advocate peace and free trade in order to betray their
own nation's interests to those of foreigners.
On the contrary, they consider peace and free trade the best means to make their own nation
wealthy.
What separates the free traders from the nationalists is not ends, but the means recommended for
attainment of the ends common to both.
Dissension with regard to religious creeds cannot be settled by rational methods.
Religious conflicts are essentially implacable and irreconcilable.
But as soon as a religious community enters the field of political action and tries to
deal with problems of social organization, it is bound to take into account earthly concerns.
However, this may conflict with its dogmas and articles of faith.
No religion, in its exoteric activities, ever ventured to tell people frankly, the realization
One of our plans for social organization will make you poor and impair your earthly well-being.
Those consistently committed to a life of poverty withdrew from the political scene
and fled into anchoritic seclusion.
But churches and religious communities which have aimed at making converts and at influencing
political and social activities of their followers have espoused the principles of secular conduct.
In dealing with questions of man's earthly pilgrimage, they hardly differ from any other
political party.
In canvassing, they emphasize the material advantages which they have in store for their
brothers in faith, more than bliss in the beyond.
Only a world view whose supporters renounce any earthly activity whatever could neglect
to pay heed to the rational considerations which show that social cooperation is the
be great means for the attainment of all human ends.
Because man is a social animal that can thrive only within society, all ideologies are forced
to acknowledge the preeminent importance of social cooperation.
They must aim at the most satisfactory organization of society and must approve of man's concern
for an improvement of his material well-being.
Thus, they all place themselves upon a common ground.
They are separated from one another not by world views and transcendent issues, not subject
to reasonable discussion, but by problems of means and ways.
Such ideological antagonisms are open to a thorough scrutiny by the scientific methods
of praxeology and economics.
The Fight Against Error
A critical examination of the philosophical systems constructed by mankind's great thinkers
has very often revealed fissures and flaws in the impressive structure of those seemingly
consistent and coherent bodies of comprehensive thought.
Even the genius in drafting a worldview sometimes fails to avoid contradictions and fallacious
syllogisms.
The ideologies accepted by public opinion are still more infected by the shortcomings of
the human mind.
They are mostly an eclectic juxtaposition of ideas utterly incompatible with one another.
They cannot stand a logical examination of their content.
Their inconsistencies are irreparable and defy any attempt to combine their various
parts into a system of ideas compatible with one another.
Some authors try to justify the contradictions of generally accepted ideologies by pointing
out the alleged advantages of a compromise, however unsatisfactory from the logical point
of view, for the smooth functioning of inter-human relations.
They refer to the popular fallacy that life and reality are not logical.
They contend that a contradictory system may prove its expediency, or even its truth, by
by working satisfactorily, while a logically consistent system would result in disaster.
There is no need to refute anew such popular errors. Logical thinking and real life are
not two separate orbits. Logic is, for man, the only means to master the problems of reality.
What is contradictory in theory is no less contradictory in reality. No ideological inconsistency
can provide a satisfactory, that is, working, solution for the problems offered by the facts
of the world.
The only effect of contradictory ideologies is to conceal the real problems and thus to
prevent people from finding in time an appropriate policy for solving them.
Inconsistent ideologies may sometimes postpone the emergence of a manifest conflict, but
But they certainly aggravate the evils which they mask and render a final solution more
difficult.
They multiply the agonies, they intensify the hatreds and make peaceful settlement impossible.
It is a serious blunder to consider ideological contradictions harmless or even beneficial.
The main objective of praxeology and economics is to substitute consistent, correct ideologies
for the contradictory tenets of popular eclecticism.
There is no other means of preventing social disintegration and of safeguarding the steady
improvement of human conditions than those provided by reason.
Men must try to think through all the problems involved up to the point beyond which a human
mind cannot proceed farther.
They must never acquiesce in any solutions conveyed by older generations.
They must always question anew every theory and every theorem.
They must never relax in their endeavors to brush away fallacies and to find the best
possible cognition.
They must fight error by unmasking spurious doctrines and by expounding truth.
The problems involved are purely intellectual and must be dealt with as such.
It is disastrous to shift them to the moral sphere and to dispose of supporters of opposite
ideologies by calling them villains.
It is vain to insist that what we are aiming at is good and what our adversaries want is
bad.
The question to be solved is precisely what is to be considered as good and what as bad.
The rigid dogmatism peculiar to religious groups and to Marxism results only in irreconcilable
Social Conflict.
It condemns beforehand all dissenters as evildoers.
It calls into question their good faith.
It asks them to surrender unconditionally.
No social cooperation is possible where such an attitude prevails.
No better is the propensity, very popular nowadays, to brand supporters of other ideologies
as lunatics.
Psychologists are vague in drawing a line between sanity and insanity.
It would be preposterous for laymen to interfere with this fundamental issue of psychiatry.
However, it is clear that if the mere fact that a man shares erroneous views and acts
according to his errors qualifies him as mentally disabled, it would be very hard to discover
an individual to which the epithet sane or normal could be attributed.
Man we are bound to call the past generations lunatic because their ideas about the problems
of the natural sciences and concomitantly their techniques differed from ours.
Coming generations will call us lunatics for the same reason.
Man is liable to error.
If to error were the characteristic feature of mental disability, then everybody should
be called mentally disabled.
Neither can the fact that a man is at variance with the opinions held by the majority of
his contemporaries qualify him as a lunatic.
Were Copernicus, Galileo and Lavoisier insane?
It is the regular course of history that a man conceives new ideas, contrary to those
of other people.
Some of these ideas are later embodied in the system of knowledge accepted by public
opinion as true.
Is it permissible to apply the epithet sane only to boors who never had ideas of their
own and to deny it to all innovators?
The procedure of some contemporary psychiatrists is really outrageous.
They are utterly ignorant of the theories of praxeology and economics.
Their familiarity with present-day ideologies is superficial and uncritical.
that they blithely call the supporters of some ideologies, paranoid persons.
There are men who are commonly stigmatized as monetary cranks.
The monetary crank suggests a method for making everybody prosperous by monetary measures.
His plans are illusory.
However, they are the consistent application of a monetary ideology entirely approved by
by Contemporary Public Opinion and espoused by the policies of almost all governments.
The objections raised against these ideological errors by the economists are not taken into
account by the governments, political parties and the press.
It is generally believed by those unfamiliar with economic theory that credit expansion
and an increase in the quantity of money in circulation are efficacious means for lowering
Building the rate of interest permanently below the height it would attain on a non-manipulated
capital and loan market.
This theory is utterly illusory.
But it guides the monetary and credit policy of almost every contemporary government.
Now, on the basis of this vicious ideology, no valid objection can be raised against the
plans advanced by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Ernest Solvay, Clifford Hugh Douglas and a
and a host of other would-be reformers.
They are only more consistent than other people are.
They want to reduce the rate of interest to zero and thus to abolish altogether the scarcity
of capital.
He who wants to refute them must attack the theories underlying the monetary and credit
policies of the great nations.
The psychiatrist may object that what characterizes a man as a lunatic is precisely the fact that
And he lacks moderation and goes to extremes.
While normal man is judicious enough to restrain himself, the paranoid person goes beyond all
bounds.
This is quite an unsatisfactory rejoinder.
All the arguments advanced in favor of the thesis that the rate of interest can be reduced
by credit expansion from 5 or 4 percent to 3 or 2 percent are equally valid for a reduction
to zero.
The monetary cranks are certainly right from the point of view of the monetary fallacies
approved by popular opinion.
There are psychiatrists who call the Germans who espouse the principles of Nazism lunatics
and want to cure them by therapeutic procedures.
Here again we are faced with the same problem.
The doctrines of Nazism are vicious, but they do not essentially disagree with the ideologies
of Socialism and Nationalism as approved by other people's public opinion.
What characterized the Nazis was only the consistent application of these ideologies
to the special conditions of Germany.
Like all other contemporary nations, the Nazis desired government control of business and
economic self-sufficiency, that is, autarky, for their own nation.
The distinctive mark of their policy was that they refused to acquiesce in the disadvantages
which the acceptance of the same system by other nations would impose upon them.
They were not prepared to be forever imprisoned, as they said, within a comparatively over-populated
area in which physical conditions render the productivity of labor lower than in other
countries.
They believed that their nation's great population figures, the strategically propitious geographic
situation of their country, and the inborn vigor and gallantry of their armed forces,
provided them with a good chance to remedy by aggression the evils they deplored.
Now whoever accepts the ideology of nationalism and socialism as true, and as the standard
of his own nation's policy is not in a position to refute the conclusions drawn from them
by the Nazis.
The only way for a refutation of Nazism left for foreign nations which have espoused these
two principles is to defeat the Nazis in war.
And as long as the ideology of socialism and nationalism is supreme in the world's public
opinion, the Germans or other peoples will try again to succeed by aggression and conquest
should the opportunity ever be offered to them.
There is no hope of eradicating the aggression mentality if one does not explode entirely
the ideological fallacies from which it stems.
This is not a task for psychiatrists, but for economists.
What is wrong with the Germans is certainly not that they do not comply with the teachings
of the Gospels.
No nation ever did.
With the exception of the small and uninfluential groups of the Friends, practically all Christian
churches and sects blessed the arms of warriors.
The most ruthless among the older German conquerors were the Teutonic Knights, who fought in the
name of the Cross.
The source of present-day German aggressiveness is the very fact that the Germans have discarded
liberal philosophy and substituted the ideology of nationalism and socialism for the liberal
principles of free trade and peace.
If mankind does not return to the ideas today disparaged as orthodox, Manchester philosophy
and laissez-faire, the only method to prevent a new aggression is to render the Germans
innocuous by depriving them of the means of waging war.
Man has only one tool to fight error, reason.
3.
Might Society is a product of human action.
Human action is directed by ideologies.
This society and any concrete order of social affairs are an outcome of ideologies.
Ideologies are not, as Marxism asserts, a product of a certain state of social affairs.
To be sure, human thoughts and ideas are not the achievement of isolated individuals.
Thinking too succeeds only through the cooperation of the thinkers.
No individual would make headway in his reasoning if he were under the necessity of starting
from the beginning.
A man can advance in thinking only because his efforts are aided by those of older generations
who have formed the tools of thinking, the concepts and terminologies, and have raised
the problems.
Any given social order was thought out and designed before it could be realized.
This temporal and logical precedence of the ideological factor does not imply the proposition
that people draft a complete plan of a social system as the utopians do.
What is and must be thought out in advance is not the concerting of individuals' actions
into an integrated system of social organization, but the actions of individuals with regard
to their fellow men, and of already formed groups of individuals with regard to other
groups.
Before a man aids his fellow in cutting a tree, such cooperation must be thought out.
Before an act of barter takes place, the idea of mutual exchange of goods and services must
be conceived.
It is not necessary that the individuals concerned become aware of the fact that such mutuality
Society results in the establishment of social bonds and in the emergence of a social system.
The individual does not plan and execute actions intended to construct society.
His conduct and the corresponding conduct of others generate social bodies.
Any existing state of social affairs is the product of ideologies previously thought out.
In society, new ideologies may emerge and may supersede older ideologies, and thus transform
the social system.
However, society is always the creation of ideologies temporally and logically anterior.
Action is always directed by ideas.
It realizes what previous thinking has designed.
If we hypothesize or anthropomorphize the notion of ideology, we may say that ideologies have
might over men.
Might is the faculty or power of directing actions.
As a rule, one says only of a man or of groups of men that they are mighty.
Then the definition of might is, might is the power to direct other people's actions.
He who is mighty owes his might to an ideology.
Only ideologies can convey to a man the power to influence other people's choices and conduct.
One can become a leader only if one is supported by an ideology which makes other people tractable
and accommodating.
Might is thus not a physical and tangible thing, but a moral and spiritual phenomenon.
A king's might rests upon the recognition of the monarchical ideology on the part of
his subjects.
He who uses his might to run the state, that is, the social apparatus of coercion and compulsion,
rules.
Rule is the exercise of might in the political body.
Rule is always based upon might, that is, the power to direct other people's actions.
Of course it is possible to establish a government upon the violent oppression of reluctant people.
It is the characteristic mark of state and government that they apply violent coercion
or the threat of it against those not prepared to yield voluntarily.
Yet such violent oppression is no less founded upon ideological might.
He who wants to apply violence needs the voluntary cooperation of some people.
An individual entirely dependent on himself can never rule by means of physical violence
only.
A gangster may overpower a weaker or unarmed fellow, however this has nothing to do with
life in society, it is an isolated anti-social occurrence.
He needs the ideological support of a group in order to subdue other groups.
The tyrant must have a retinue of partisans who obey his orders of their own accord.
Their spontaneous obedience provides him with the apparatus he needs for the conquest of
other people.
Whether or not he succeeds in making his sway last depends on the numerical relation of
the two groups, those who support him voluntarily and those whom he beats into submission.
Though a tyrant may temporarily rule through a minority, if this minority is armed and
the majority is not, in the long run a minority cannot keep the majority in subservience.
The oppressed will rise in rebellion and cast off the yoke of tyranny.
A durable system of government must rest upon an ideology acknowledged by the majority.
The real factor, the real forces that are the foundation of government and convey to
the rulers the power to use violence against renatant minority groups, are essentially
ideological, moral and spiritual.
Rulers who fail to recognize this first principle of government, and relying upon the alleged
irresistibility of their armed troops, disdained the spirit and ideas, have finally been overthrown
by the assault of their adversaries.
The interpretation of might as a real factor, not dependent upon ideologies, quite common
to many political and historical books, is erroneous.
The term realpolitik makes sense only if used to signify a policy taking account of generally
accepted ideologies as contrasted with a policy based upon ideologies not sufficiently acknowledged
and therefore unfit to support a durable system of government.
He who interprets might as physical or real power to carry on and considers violent action
as the very foundation of government, sees conditions from the narrow point of view of
subordinate officers in charge of sections of an army or police force.
To these subordinates, a definite task within the framework of the ruling ideology is assigned.
Their chiefs commit to their care troops which are not only equipped, armed and organized
for combat, but no less imbued with the spirit which makes them obey the orders issued.
The commanders of such subdivisions consider this moral factor a matter of course because
they themselves are animated by the same spirit and cannot even imagine a different ideology.
The power of an ideology consists precisely in the fact that people submit to it without
any wavering and scruples.
However, things are different for the head of the government.
He must aim at preservation of the morale of the armed forces and of the loyalty of
the rest of the population.
For these moral factors are the only real elements upon which continuance of his mastery
rests.
This power dwindles if the ideology that supports it disappears.
Minorities too can sometimes conquer by means of superior military skill and can thus establish
minority rule.
But such an order of things cannot endure.
If the victorious conquerors do not succeed in subsequently converting the system of rule
by violence into a system of rule by ideological consent on the part of those ruled, they will
will succumb in new struggles.
All victorious minorities who have established a lasting system of government have made their
sway durable by means of a belated ideological ascendancy.
They have legitimized their own supremacy, either by submitting to the ideologies of
the defeated or by transforming them.
Where neither of these two things took place, the oppressed many dispossessed the oppressing
Many of the great historical conquests were able to endure because the invaders entered
into alliance with those classes of the defeated nation which were supported by the ruling
ideology and were thus considered legitimate rulers.
This was the system adopted by the Tartars in Russia, by the Turks in the Danube principalities,
and by and large in Hungary and Transylvania, and by the British and the Dutch in the Indies.
A comparatively insignificant number of Britons could rule many hundred millions of Indians
because the Indian princes and aristocratic landowners looked upon British rule as a means
for the Preservation of Their Privileges, and supplied it with the support which the
generally acknowledged ideology of India gave to their own supremacy.
England's Indian Empire was firm as long as public opinion approved of the traditional
social order.
The Pax Britannica safeguarded the princes' and the landlords' privileges and protected
the masses against the agonies of wars between the principalities and of succession wars
is within them.
In our day, the infiltration of subversive ideas from abroad has undermined British rule
and at the same time threatens the preservation of the country's age-old social order.
Victorious minorities sometimes owe their success to their technological superiority.
This does not alter the case.
In the long run, it is impossible to withhold the better arms from the members of the majority.
Not the equipment of their armed forces, but ideological factors safeguarded the British
in India.
A country's public opinion may be ideologically divided in such a way that no group is strong
enough to establish a durable government.
Then anarchy emerges.
Revolutions and civil strife become permanent.
Traditionalism as an Ideology Traditionalism is an ideology which considers
loyalty to valuations, customs and methods of procedure handed down or allegedly handed
down from ancestors, both right and expedient.
It is not an essential mark of traditionalism that these forefathers were the ancestors
in the biological meaning of the term, or can be fairly considered such.
They were sometimes only the previous inhabitants of the country concerned, or supporters of
the same religious creed, or only precursors in the exercise of some special task.
Who is to be considered an ancestor and what is the content of the body of tradition handed
down are determined by the concrete teachings of each variety of traditionalism.
The ideology brings into prominence some of the ancestors and relegates others to oblivion.
It sometimes calls ancestors people who had nothing to do with the alleged posterity.
It often constructs a traditional doctrine which is of recent origin and is at variance
with the ideologies really held by the ancestors.
Traditionalism tries to justify its tenets by citing the success they secured in the
past. Whether this assertion conforms with the facts is another question. Research could
sometimes unmask errors in the historical statements of a traditional belief. However,
this did not always explode the traditional doctrine. For the core of traditionalism is
is not real historical facts, but an opinion about them, however mistaken, and a will to
believe things to which the authority of ancient origin is attributed.
4.
Meliorism and the Idea of Progress
The notions of progress and retrogression make sense only within a teleological system
of thought.
In such a framework, it is sensible to call approach toward the goal aimed at progress
and a movement in the opposite direction, retrogression.
Without reference to some agent's action and to a definite goal, both these notions
are empty and void of any meaning.
It was one of the shortcomings of 19th century philosophies to have misinterpreted the meaning
of Cosmic Change, and to have smuggled into the theory of biological transformation the
idea of progress. Looking backward from any given state of things to the states of the
past, one can fairly use the terms development and evolution in a neutral sense. Then, evolution
signifies the process which led from past conditions to the present. But one must guard
against the fatal error of confusing change with improvement and evolution with evolution
toward higher forms of life, neither is it permissible to substitute a pseudo-scientific
anthropocentrism for the anthropocentrism of religion and the older metaphysical doctrines.
However, there is no need for praxeology to enter into a critique of this philosophy.
This task is to explode the errors implied in current ideologies.
Eighteenth-century social philosophy was convinced that mankind has now finally entered the age
of reason.
While in the past theological and metaphysical errors were dominant, henceforth reason will
be supreme.
People will free themselves more and more from the chains of tradition and superstition,
will dedicate all their efforts to the continuous improvement of social institutions.
Every new generation will contribute its part to this glorious task.
With the progress of time, society will more and more become the society of free men, aiming
at the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
Temporary setbacks are, of course, not impossible, but finally the good cause will triumph because
it is the cause of reason.
People called themselves happy in that they were citizens of an age of enlightenment,
which through the discovery of the laws of rational conduct, paved the way toward a steady
amelioration of human affairs.
What they lamented was only the fact that they themselves were too old to witness all
the beneficial effects of the new philosophy.
I would wish, said Bentham to Filaret-Shall, to be granted the privilege to live the years
All these hopes were founded on the firm conviction, proper to the age, that the masses are both
morally good and reasonable.
The upper strata, the privileged aristocrats living on the fat of the land, were thought
depraved.
The common people, especially the peasants and the workers, were glorified in a romantic
mood as noble and unerring in their judgment.
Thus the philosophers were confident that democracy, government by the people, would
bring about social perfection.
This prejudice was the fateful error of the humanitarians, the philosophers and the liberals.
Men are not infallible.
They err very often.
It is not true that the masses are always right and know the means for attaining the
ends aimed at.
Belief in the common man is no better founded than was belief in the supernatural gifts
of kings, priests and noblemen.
Democracy guarantees a system of government in accordance with the wishes and plans of
the majority.
But it cannot prevent majorities from falling victim to erroneous ideas and from adopting
and State render men more satisfied, although not happy in a metaphysical sense.
Whether or not this condition is given, only the unknown future can reveal.
There is no room within a system of praxeology for meliorism and optimistic fatalism.
Man is free in the sense that he must daily choose anew between policies that lead to success
Progress and those that lead to disaster, social disintegration and barbarism.
The term progress is nonsensical when applied to cosmic events or to a comprehensive worldview.
We have no information about the plans of the prime mover.
But it is different with its use in the frame of an ideological doctrine.
The immense majority strives after a greater and better supply of food, clothes, homes
and other material amenities.
In calling a rise in the masses standard of living, progress and improvement, economists
do not espouse a mean materialism.
They simply establish the fact that people are motivated by the urge to improve the material
conditions of their existence.
They judge policies from the point of view of the aims men want to attain.
He who disdains the fall in infant mortality and the gradual disappearance of famines and
plagues may cast the first stone upon the materialism of the economists.
There is but one yardstick for the appraisal of human action, whether or not it is fit
to attain the ends aimed at by acting men.