Mises, Ludwig von. Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution

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172 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

at last reason has burst its chains and a new age has

been inaugurated. Henceforth every generation will

surpass its predecessors in wisdom, virtue, and success

in improving earthly conditions. Progress toward per-

fection will continue forever. Reason, now emancipated

and put in its right place, will never again be relegated

to the unseemly position the dark ages assigned to it.

All "reactionary" ventures of obscurantists are doomed

to failure. The trend toward progress is irresistible.

Only in the doctrines of the economists did the notion

of progress have a definite, unambiguous meaning. All

men are striving after survival and after improvement

of the material conditions of their existence. They want

to live and to raise their standard of living. In employ-

ing the term "progress" the economist abstains from

expressing judgments of value. He appraises things

from the point of view of acting men. He calls better

or worse what appears as such in their eyes. Thus capi-

talism means progress since it brings about progressive

improvement of the material conditions of a continually

increasing population. It provides people with some sat-

isfactions which they did not get before and which

gratify some of their aspirations.

But to most of the eighteenth-century champions of

meliorism this "mean, materialistic" content of the econ-

omists' idea of progress was repulsive. They nurtured

vague dreams of an earthly paradise. Their ideas about

the conditions of man in this paradise were rather nega-

tive than affirmative. They pictured a state of affairs free

of all those things which they found unsatisfactory in

their environment: no tyrants, no oppression or perse-

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 173

cution, no wars, no poverty, no crime; liberty, equality,

and fraternity; all men happy, peacefully united, and

cooperating in brotherly love. As they assumed that

nature is bountiful and all men were good and reason-

able, they could see no cause for the existence of all

that they branded evil but inherent deficiencies in man-

kind's social and political organization. What was

needed was a constitutional reform that would substi-

tute good laws for bad laws. All who opposed this re-

form dictated by reason were considered hopelessly de-

praved individuals, enemies of the common weal, whom

the good people were bound to annihilate physically.

The main defect of this doctrine was its incompre-

hension of the liberal program as developed by the econ-

omists and put into effect by the harbingers of capital-

istic private enterprise. The disciples of Jean Jacques

Rousseau who raved about nature and the blissful con-

dition of man in the state of nature did not take notice

of the fact that the means of subsistence are scarce and

that the natural state of man is extreme poverty and in-

security. They disparaged as greed and predatory sel-

fishness the businessmen's endeavors to remove need

and want so far as possible. Witnesses to the inaugura-

tion of new ways of economic management that were

destined to provide unprecedented improvement in the

standard of living for an unprecedented increase of

population, they indulged in daydreams about a return

to nature or to the alleged virtuous simplicity of early

republican Rome. While manufacturers were busy im-

proving the methods of production and turning out

more and better commodities for the consumption of

174 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

the masses, the followers of Rousseau perorated about

reason and virtue and liberty.

It is vain to talk about progress pure and simple. One

must first clearly designate the goal one has chosen to

attain. Only then is it permissible to call an advance

on the way that leads to this goal progress. The philos-

ophers of the Enlightenment entirely failed in this re-

gard. They did not say anything definite about the char-

acteristics of the goal they had in mind. They only

glorified this insufficiently described goal as the state

of perfection and the realization of all that is good.

But they were rather hazy in employing the epithets

perfect and good.

As against the pessimism of ancient and modern au-

thors who had described the course of human history as

the progressive deterioration of the perfect conditions

of the fabulous golden age of the past, the Enlighten-

ment displayed an optimistic view. As has been pointed

out above, its philosophers derived their belief in the

inevitability of progress toward perfection from the con-

fidence they placed in man's reason. By dint of his rea-

son man learns more and more from experience. Every

new generation inherits a treasure of wisdom from its

forbears and adds something to it. Thus the descendents

necessarily surpass their ancestors.

It did not occur to the champions of this idea that

man is not infallible and that reason can err in the

choice both of the ultimate goal to be aimed at and

of the means to be resorted to for its attainment. Their

theistic faith implied faith in the goodness of almighty

Providence that will guide mankind along the right

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 175

path. Their philosophy had eliminated the Incarnation

and all the other Christian dogmas but one: salvation.

God's magnificence manifested itself in the fact that

the work of his creation was necessarily committed to

progressive improvement.

Hegel's philosophy of history assimilated these ideas.

Reason (Vernunft) rules the world, and this cognition

is tantamount to the insight that Providence rules it.

The task of philosophy of history is to discern the plans

of Providence.

The ultimate foundation of the opti-

mism that Hegel displayed with regard to the course

of historical events and the future of mankind was his

firm faith in God's infinite goodness. God is genuine

goodness. "The cognition of philosophy is that no power

surpasses the might of the good, i.e., God, and could pre-

vent God from asserting himself, that God is right at the

last, that human history is nothing else than the plan of

Providence. God rules the world; the content of his

government, the realization of his plan, is the history of

mankind."

In the philosophy of Comte as well as in that of Marx

there is no room left for God and his infinite goodness.

In the system of Hegel it made sense to speak of a nec-

essary progress of mankind from less to more satisfac-

tory conditions. God had decided that every later stage

of human affairs should be a higher and better stage.

No other decision could be expected from the almighty

and infinitely good Lord. But the atheists Comte and

Hegel, Vorlesungen uber die

PhUosophie

der Weltgeschichte, U

17-18.

Ibid., p. 55.

176 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

Marx should not have simply assumed that the march

of time is necessarily a march toward ever better condi-

tions and will eventually lead to a perfect state. It was

up to them to prove that progress and improvement are

inevitable and a relapse into unsatisfactory conditions

impossible. But they never embarked upon such a dem-

onstration.

If for the sake of argument one were prepared to ac-

quiesce in Marx's arbitrary prediction that society is

moving "with the inexorability of a law of nature" to-

ward socialism, it would still be necessary to examine

the question whether socialism can be considered as a

workable system of society's economic organization and

whether it does not rather mean the disintegration of

social bonds, the return to primitive barbarism, and

poverty and starvation for all.

The purpose of Marx's philosophy of history was to

silence the critical voices of the economists by pointing

out that socialism was the next and final stage of the

historical process and therefore a higher and better

stage than the preceding stages; that it was even the

final state of human perfection, the ultimate goal of

human history. But this conclusion was a non sequitur

in the frame of a godless philosophy of history. The

idea of an irresistible trend toward salvation and the

establishment of a perfect state of everlasting bliss is

an eminently theological idea. In the frame of a system

of atheism it is a mere arbitrary guess, deprived of any

sense. There is no theology without God. An atheistic

system of philosophy of history must not base its opti-

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 177

mism upon confidence in the infinite goodness of God

Almighty.

Activistic Determinism and

Fatalistic Determinism

Every philosophy of history is an instance of the pop-

ular idea, mentioned above,

that all future events are

recorded in advance in the great book of fate. A special

dispensation has allowed the philosopher to read pages

of this book and to reveal their content to the unini-

tiated.

This brand of determinism inherent in a philosophy

of history must be distinguished from the type of deter-

minism that guides man's actions and search for knowl-

edge.

The latter type—we may call it activistic deter-

minism—is the outgrowth of the insight that every

change is the result of a cause and that there is a regu-

larity in the concatenation of cause and effect. However

unsatisfactory the endeavors of philosophy to throw

light upon the problem of causality may have been

hitherto, it is impossible for the human mind to think of

uncaused change. Man cannot help assuming that every

change is caused by a preceding change and causes

further change. Notwithstanding all the doubts raised

by the philosophers, human conduct is entirely and in

every sphere of life—action, philosophy and science

—directed by the category of causality. The lesson

brought home to man by activistic determinism is: If

See above, p. 79.

178 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

you want to attain a definite end, you must resort to

the appropriate means; there is no other way to success.

But in the context of a philosophy of history deter-

minism means: This will happen however much you

may try to avoid it. While activistic determinism is a

call to action and the utmost exertion of a man's physi-

cal and mental capacities, this type of determinism—we

may call it fatalistic determinism—paralyzes the will

and engenders passivity and lethargy. As has been

pointed out,

it is so contrary to the innate impulse to-

ward activity that it never could really get hold of the

human mind and prevent people from acting.

In depicting the history of the future the philosopher

of history as a rule restricts himself to describing big-

scale events and the final outcome of the historical

process. He thinks that this limitation distinguishes his

guesswork from the augury of common soothsayers who

dwell upon details and unimportant little things. Such

minor events are in his view contingent and unpredicta-

ble.

He does not bother about them. His attention is ex-

clusively directed toward the great destiny of the whole,

not to the trifle which, as he thinks, does not matter.

However, the historical process is the product of all

these small changes going on ceaselessly. He who claims

to know the final end must necessarily know them too.

He must either take them all in at a glance with all their

consequences or be aware of a principle that inevitably

directs their result to a preordained end. The arrogance

with which a writer elaborating his system of philosophy

of history looks down upon the small fry of palmists

See above, pp. 79 ff.

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 179

and crystal gazers is therefore hardly different from the

haughtiness which in precapitalistic times wholesalers

displayed toward retailers and peddlers. What he sells

is essentially the same questionable wisdom.

Activistic determinism is by no means incompatible

with the—rightly understood—idea of freedom of the

will. It is, in fact, the correct exposition of this often

misinterpreted notion. Because there is in the universe a

regularity in the concatenation and sequence of phe-

nomena, and because man is capable of acquiring

knowledge about some of these regularities, human

action becomes possible within a definite margin. Free

will means that man can aim at definite ends because

he is familiar with some of the laws determining the

flux of world affairs. There is a sphere within which

man can choose between alternatives. He is not, like

other animals, inevitably and irremediably subject to

the operation of blind fate. He can, within definite nar-

row limits, divert events from the course they would

take if left alone. He is an acting being. In this consists

his superiority to mice and microbes, plants and stones.

In this sense he applies the—perhaps inexpedient and

misleading—term "free will."

The emotional appeal of the cognizance of this free-

dom, and the idea of moral responsibility which it

engenders, are as much facts as anything else called by

that name. Comparing himself with all other beings,

man sees his own dignity and superiority in his will.

The will is unbendable and must not yield to any

violence and oppression, because man is capable of

choosing between life and death and of preferring

180 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

death if life can be preserved only at the price of sub-

mitting to unbearable conditions. Man alone can die for

a cause. It was this that Dante had in mind: "Che

volonta, se non vuol, non s'ammorza."

One of the fundamental conditions of man's existence

and action is the fact that he does not know what will

happen in the future. The exponent of a philosophy of

history, arrogating to himself the omniscience of God,

claims that an inner voice has revealed to him knowl-

edge of things to come.

Dante, Paradiso, IV, 76: 'The will does not die if it does not

will."

PART THREE. EPISTEMOLOGICAL

PROBLEMS OF HISTORY