Epistemological Problems of Economics
Medens jeg sad og ventede pÃ¥ bussen kom jeg til at læse en passage i Ludwig von Mises‘ bog om økonomisk videnskabsteori og mere eller mindre snublede over følgende, sprogligt vidunderlige, passage om, hvorfor “kollektivisme” (som det modsatte af individualisme) lider af den grundlæggende fejlopfattelse, at der er en forskel pÃ¥ “samfundets interesse” pÃ¥ den ene side, og “individuets interesse” pÃ¥ den anden.
Iøvrigt kan man se lidt pÃ¥ bogen som en art meta-udgave af Murray Rothbards The Ethics of Liberty; en del af de samme temaer behandles og en række af de samme konklusioner nÃ¥s — dog i et ikke helt sÃ¥ brugervenligt engelsk.
Selve passagen er ikke en dybere argumentation for påstanden (den kommer først senere i bogen), men den ridser meget fint problemstillingen op:
Are there not various factions fighting today on German soil with bitter anger, each of which claims to represent the only true collectivism? And do not the Marxian socialists, the national socialists, the church, and many other parties approach every individual with the demand: join us, for you belong in our ranks, and fight to the death the “false” forms of collectivism? A collectivist social philosophy that did not designate a definite form of collectivism as true and either treat all others as subordinate to it or condemn them as false would be meaningless and vain. It must always tell the individual: Here you have an unquestionably given goal, because an inner voice has revealed it to me; to it you must sacrifice everything else, yourself above all. Fight to victory or death under the banner of this ideal, and concern yourself with nothing else.
Collectivism, in fact, can be stated in no other way than as partisan dogma in which the commitment to a definite ideal and the condemnation of all others are equally necessary. … Church, nation, state in abstracto are concepts of nominalistic science. The collectivists idolize only the one true church, only the “great” nation, the “chosen” people who have been entrusted by Providence with a special mission, only the true state; everything else they condemn.
For that reason all collectivist doctrines are harbingers of irreconcilable hatred and war to the death.
Især opsummeringen af “kirke, nation og stat in abstracto” er spot on.
Klodens befolkninger lever i samfundet. Disse samfund er, ifølge Mises, ikke skabt eller udviklet af en mystisk “Ã¥nd”, dyd eller moralsk mentalitet, der kræver individets (selv)undertrykkelse til fordel for samfundet og samfundsinteressen. Samfundet er heller ikke “bare” en sum af antallet af individer og sÃ¥ intet andet (sÃ¥dan som socialisterne ellers pÃ¥stÃ¥r, vi liberalister ser pÃ¥ det); nej:
[Society comes into being and develops] through the action of individuals cooperating in the attainment of ends that they severally aim at, in order to take advantage of the higher productivity brought about by the division of labor.
