The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

by Friedrich A. Hayek

For mere abstract knowledge of the general structure of such entities is insufficient to enable us literally to ‘build’ them (that is, to put them together from known pieces), or to predict the particular form they will assume. At best, it can indicate under what general conditions many such orders or systems will form themselves, conditions that we may sometimes be able to create. This sort of problem is familiar to the chemist concerned with similarly complex phenomena but usually unfamiliar to the kind of scientist accustomed to explaining everything in terms of simple connections between a few observable events. The result is that such persons are tempted to interpret more complex structures animistically as the result of design, and to suspect some secret and dishonest manipulation – some conspiracy, as of a dominant ‘class’ – behind ‘designs’ whose designers are nowhere to be found. This in turn helps to reinforce their initial reluctance to relinquish control of their own products in a market order. For intellectuals generally, the feeling of being mere tools of concealed, even if impersonal, market forces appears almost as a personal humiliation.