The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek)
by F. A. Hayek

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Book Reviews of The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek)

Book Review: A brilliant but flawed jewel
Summary: 5 Stars

The book was the first volume of a major publishing program at the University of Chicago Press. The ten-year plan was to bring out a uniform set of twenty or more volumes of Hayek's collected works. The senior editor for the venture was William W Bartley who died shortly after this book appeared.

The main concern of the book is the continuing appeal of socialism among Western intellectuals despite its theoretical shortcomings and its failure in practice. Hayek defines the basic problem of the book as 'how does our morality emerge, and what implications may its mode of coming into being have for our economic and political life'.

Central to his case is the notion of an extended order of civilisation that is held together by the largely unconscious influence of traditional moral codes and practices. He has deployed the 'extended moral order' concept in his critique of socialists and central planners and their 'constructivist rationalism'. He proceeds by way of a reconstruction of Western history to explain the function of a number of moral rules, especially those that regulate dealings in private property, which he calls "several property". Other important rules concern honesty, contracts, exchange, trade and privacy. He undertakes some "conjectural history" to chart the origins of liberty, property and justice and the linked evolution of markets and civilisation.

With his conjectural history in place, Hayek then describes the revolt of the modern socialists against the discipline (and the opportunities) of the extended order. This revolt has two bases; one is instinctive or 'atavistic', the other is a perversion of reason that Hayek calls 'constructivist rationalism'. He claims that the instinctive resistance to the extended order of capitalism arises from the conflict between the "old" and "new" moral codes. However, against this essentially psychological thesis it is more likely that the attraction of socialism comes from the conjunction of several strands of thought. One of these is the tradition of utopian social thought which can be traced from Plato. Second is the tradition of helping the weak, which in the West is essentially the moral legacy of Christianity. Third, a cluster of ideas in political economy including the utopianism and centralism noted above, combined with the egalitarian aim of shifting wealth from the haves to the have-nots (inspired partly by the Christian ethos of helping the poor).

While the ideas of the first and third kind are well worthy of criticism the tradition of helping the weak is important and valuable, and needs to be sustained. Unfortunately there has been a growing movement in modern times to recruit the state to perform this function, in place of private charity. Therefore it is plausible to argue, against Hayek, that the moral force of socialism derives not from primitive emotional sources but from the fact that it recruits the power of Christian charity with its drive to help the poor and the weak. The tragedy of socialism is that the means do not achieve the objective.

Hayek's critique of reason is distinctly ambiguous and it is no more satisfactory than his psychological critique of socialism. His target is "constructivist rationalism", expressed in the view that blueprints for social engineering can be derived from concepts of society and its destination which form by a rational process in the minds of individuals or members of elite groups. An earlier critique of this stance occurs in "The errors of constructivism", a 1970 paper reprinted in his "New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas". At this stage in his thinking the individual still retained a high degree of autonomy and the critical function assigned to human reason was compatible with an evolutionary approach that recognized the significance of tradition.

This view of the critical role of reason is restated very briefly in "The Fatal Conceit", but so briefly and adjacent to so much argument in favour of the benefits of submitting to tradition that the impression is one of confusion. This is unfortunate because a very important (and reasonable) conception of the function of moral and political philosophy emerges from Hayek's work, and from that of Popper in "The Open Society and its Enemies". This is the view that the task of moral and political philosophers is to discover, formulate and critically probe the implications of those principles which function as the "rules of the game" in social life.

This approach would supplement the methods of conceptual analysis and crude 'positivist' empirical description of social and political systems. It would have the theoretical advantage of linking disciplines and the practical merit of being continually in touch with problems and their possible solutions. This is consistent with the thrust of Hayek's previous work. In view of the dubious critique of the 'atavistic' roots of socialism and the ambiguous critique of reason, "The Fatal Conceit" is a brilliant but flawed jewel.

Summary of The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek)

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