The Condemnation of Profit and the Contempt for Trade
The objections of [intellectuals to capitalism ...] do not differ so very much from the objections of members of primitive groups; and it is this that has inclined me to call their demands and longings atavistic.
What intellectuals ... find most objectionable in the market order, in trade, in money and the institutions of finance, is that producers, traders, and financiers are not concerned with concrete needs of known people but with abstract calculation of costs and profit. But they forget, or have not learned, the arguments that we have just rehearsed. Concern for profit is just what makes possible the more effective use of resources. ...
The high-minded socialist slogan, ‘Production for use, not for profit’, which we find in one form or another from Aristotle to Bertrand Russell, from Albert Einstein to Archbishop Camara of Brazil (and often, since Aristotle, with the addition that these profits are made at the expense of others), betrays ignorance of [how economic activity functions].*
We could postulate, instead, that socialist intellectuals have a dislike for the market order because it allows some people to become rich and, in some cases, very rich. Socialists may dislike people becoming rich because they are aware that money provides freedom, and because they are envious of this freedom.
We could also consider the following possibility:
Socialist intellectuals would prefer a situation in which they, and like-minded people, had complete control of the economy, the government, the media, and the educational spheres. They are motivated by desire for power, just like people in any other profession.
Christine Fulcher
* Hayek, The Fatal Conceit, Routledge, 1990, p.104.