Totalitarianism Begins with a Denial of Economics

(Mises)—In the history of the social sciences, no other field of study has attracted so great a level of hostility as the science of economics. Since the inception of the science, the onslaught against it has been on the rise, extending across individuals and groups. And the outlook for a favorable reception of the science is bleak, given that a significant number of people are incapable of following through the extended chains of reasoning required for comprehending economic arguments.

Economics takes ends and goals of action as a given and—in matters of value judgments—it assumes neutrality (i.e., non-normativity), which is characteristic of a science. However, questions of suitability of means and various policies adopted to attain chosen ends are not beyond the scope of economic analysis.

The “Dismal” Task of the Economist

The competent economist—when presented with a proposed plan of action—always asks: Is the means adopted suitable for the attainment of the end in view? He critically analyzes the means in question and declares their fitness or unfitness on the basis of logical demonstrations that are unassailable and apodictly true. This peculiar task of the economist is often misapprehended as an expression of his value judgments and an attempt to frustrate the attainment of ends chosen. Thus, the economist is often met with disapproval.

More significant in the history of the science are the several attempts to discredit the economists through a denial of economics as a universally-valid science, applicable for all peoples, times, and places. This is a pernicious attempt because the social, political, and economic consequences tend to be disastrously far-reaching. This article attempts to establish a connection between a denial of economics and the emergence of totalitarianism.

Historicism as a Precursor of Totalitarianism

Historicism was one of such concerted attempts at denying the universal validity of the body of economic theorems. The historicists advanced the view that economic theories are not valid for all peoples, places, and times; and thus, are only relevant to the specific historical conditions of their authors. The German Historical School’s rejection of the free trade theories, propounded by the classical economists, was not on grounds of inherent inadequacies in these theories—given that they never unmasked any logical errors as to the untenability of these theories—but motivated by ideological pre-possessions. Mises puts it very succinctly in Epistemological Problems of Economics:

The historian must never forget that the most momentous occurrence in the history of the last hundred years, the attack launched against the universally valid science of human action and its hitherto best developed branch, economics, was motivated from the very beginning not by scientific ideas but by political considerations.

Historicism is bound to lead to some form of logical relativism, and it is not surprising that the doctrine of racial polylogism gained a general acceptance among many Germans in the early twentieth century. In order to invalidate the relevance of a theory on grounds of historical or racial origins of the author, one has to proceed with the indefensible assumption of differences in the logical character of the human mind amongst different peoples and within the same people at different historical epochs. But in fact, there is no scientific evidence as to the existence of these differences in the logical structure of the human mind. Thus the historicists’ arguments against the universal validity of economic theory are unfounded.

The social, economic, and political significance of a denial of economics would also imply the denial of insights from economics about the preservation of society—concerted action in voluntary cooperation. Economic theory asserts that there is greater productivity to be obtained from social organization under the division of labor than would be obtained in individual self-sufficiency. The Ricardian Law of Association explains the tendency of humans to intensify cooperation given a rightly-understood interest in better satisfying wants under the social order of the division of labor. While there are many ways for people to coexist in the world, there are fewer ways for them to coexist peacefully and prosperously. This is the central lesson of classical economics about human society.

Historicism’s denial of the universal validity of these theories on non-logical grounds betrays a prejudice for policies aimed at attaining the alternative of autarkic self-sufficiency and the substitution of the social apparatus with coercion and compulsion. In fact, the Nazi totalitarian regime, whose intellectual precursor was German historicism, never relented in applying force to induce cooperation while simultaneously pursuing autarkic self-sufficiency by means of disastrous policies. Thus, German historicism, in denying the universal validity of economic theory and the general laws of human action as advanced by praxeology, played a causal role by creating a favorable intellectual climate for arbitrariness and the subsequent emergence of Nazi totalitarianism.

Marxism as Pseudo-Economics

Marxist socialism, on the other hand, denies the validity of economic theories on grounds of the “class origins” of the economists. Like historicism, it subscribes to a variant of polylogism in which it asserts the existence of a difference in the logical structure of mind for the respective social classes—even though Marx never defined what he meant by “class.” Consequently, for the Marxians, the science of economics becomes mere ideological expression of the class interest of the exploiting class—the bourgeoisie.

It is precisely the fact that Marxism rejects the essential teachings of economics in favor of utopian ideas which fail to achieve the ends sought wherever it was tried. The ultimate goals of Marxians—improvement in material and social conditions of its adherents—are no different from those of their liberal counterparts of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries who enjoyed considerable improvements in standard of living; it is in the choices of means that they differ. But it is the unsuitability of the means adopted by the Marxians that always and everywhere frustrated the attainment of ends sought by Marxism.

Furthermore, as with the capitalist system, based on private ownership of the means of production, the pure socialist commonwealth must be faced with the problem of allocation of resources in view of satisfying the most urgent wants of its citizens. And in this regard, Mises, in his irrefutable criticism of the socialist commonwealth, exposes the impossibility of socialism. He argues that, given the absence of a price structure for factors of production, the problem of impracticality of economic calculation must emerge in a socialist community. The planner, without recourse to tools of economic calculation, would be lost amid the sea of economic possibilities.

That capitalism has succeeded in improving the lives of men wherever its institutions are left unhampered is because those societies recognize the validity of economic theory about the potential benefits of the free market. They did not adopt arbitrary policies that economists declared unfit for the ends they sought to attain. Thus, the horrors brought about by the series of abortive attempts to implement the utopian ideas of socialist thinkers are the logical consequences of a denial of economics.

The Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads to Totalitarianism

The doctrine of interventionism wrongly conceives of a compatibility of the market and violent interventions by the state, between social cooperation and the apparatus of coercion and compulsion. It purports to be a third economic system—a compromise between capitalism and socialism. But, as the logical demonstrations of the economists show us over and over, interventionism, so-called middle-of-the-road policy, inevitably leads to socialism. Interventionism is, in fact, a denial of economics in that economics recognizes that interventions of any sort in the market tend to produce outcomes that—judged from the point of view of their initiators—are even more dissatisfactory than the previous problems that they pretend to fix.

Mises clearly remarks in his short book The Historical Setting of the Austrian School of Economics that “the worst illusion of our age is the superstitious confidence placed in panaceas, which—as the economists have irrefutably demonstrated—are contrary to purpose.” Interventionism, carried to its logical conclusion, is bound to lead to totalitarianism, given that the more its policies fail to produce the desired outcomes, the more the statesmen who wrongly believe in the appropriateness of interventionist measures find it necessary to employ the coercive state apparatus to compensate for their failures.

Economics and the Free-Market System

The science of economics is a rational science that recognizes the primacy of the laws of human society. Economics teaches that the market is a system of logically necessary relations brought about by the actions of individuals seeking to satisfy their most urgent wants. It teaches that any instance of coercion aimed at influencing the actions of individuals is disruptive to the market process. A denial of these teachings would inevitably lead to the state of affairs in which force becomes the only means of eliciting the cooperation of individuals in society.

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