Die falsche Priesterherrschaft der Intellektuellen und die Macht der Ideen

Ludwig von Mises-Institut Deutschland, the podcast. The false priesthood of the intellectuals and the power of ideas. By Torsten Polleit. 4th August 2023. This article was presented at the Mises-Karma-Event in the Bitcoin Hotel Princess in Plochingen on 8th July 2023. Introduction. To make it clear in advance, this article is not a mockery of the intellectuals. It is a theoretical criticism of intellectuals on the side, i.e. of intellectuals who allow themselves to be politically entrenched, or who swim on the wave of false science, and also of those who, coming from a false priesthood, want to realize their own interests at the expense of others and thus cause great damage. And since I mean to recognize that there is this problem with some, not all, intellectuals, I consider this to be a reference. It is divided into five steps. In a first step, I show with logical means that human action is driven by ideas. In a second step, I claim that some people want to gain and consolidate power over others, and I make assumptions about the role of the intellectuals. In a third step, I go back to the work of Helmut Schelsky, who offers a theory on how the intellectuals are quasi-self-employed, act against the interests of the general public, want to rise to the priesthood or ruler caste themselves, and pave the way for freedom. In the fourth step, I give an application example, and that is based on the Great Reset. At the end, in the fifth step, I make suggestions for the solution to the problem posed by me. Step 1. In the broadest sense, human action means replacing a state with another, a state that is perceived as comparatively better. What determines human action? Answer? It is ideas or theories. For example, you have an idea about how things are connected or whether the result of a certain action is desirable for you or not. That it is ideas that determine your and my action is not a random statement, it can be theoretically justified as knowledge. The statement that ideas, i.e. something spiritual, determine our action cannot be argued in a meaningful way at first. If one argues it, one must introduce another explanation for the last cause of human action, but which could that be? Well, one would have to argue that human action is determined by objective, external factors, i.e. physical, chemical or biological type. But one would have to prove that, for example in the form that the external factor x always and everywhere produces a certain human action y. Such a proof could not be brought up so far, and it cannot be brought up either. Because with logical means it can be shown that human action cannot be explained and prognosticated with external factors. The acting person is learnable, and that is an a priori valid statement, a statement that cannot be disputed with logical means. A priori statement is a non-empirical statement that is necessarily true and demands general validity, so that no exception is allowed. A priori statement cannot be denied without contradiction, because this would already require its validity. One example for a priori statement is the sentence from the third, tertium non datur, in the logic. A statement cannot be true and false at the same time. In short, if one is learnable, then one cannot already know the future knowledge that the future action determines. The statement that human action is determined by ideas is no longer accessible as a final justification. It can be classified as an ultimate given. You will ask, where do our, your and my ideas come from? Most of the ideas that are literally in our heads have been taken over by others, by friends, parents, teachers. Only very few of us come up with new ideas, most of us follow the ideas of others. The meaning of the ideas for our actions cannot be emphasized strongly enough. If people, for example, attach themselves to the idea of building socialism, then they will try to achieve this goal. The ideas that you and I, the people, carry within us are of the greatest importance for the formation of our co-existence. Step 2. There are only two ways in which you and I can form a relationship. Either by volition or by coercion and violence. Volition means that I offer you something that you accept or reject out of free will. I offer you, for example, an apple in exchange for a euro and you buy or do not buy. Or by coercion and violence. I force you to do something that you do not want to do voluntarily. And if you reject my will, I punish you. The history of mankind shows painfully that there are always people who do not rely on volition to live with their fellow humans, but rather wish to practice coercion and violence that want to rule over their fellow humans. This leads to the question, how is it possible that those who strive for domination, usually a relatively small group of people, can bring coercion and violence over the many others? One way to do this is the use of brute force. With sword and fire, so to speak, the others are subdued and subdued against their will. But this is for those who strive for domination a somewhat dangerous subjugation. After all, in the course of such a principle of violence, he cannot be sure that not an even more inconsiderate one will come and overcome him. Another way is to find supporters for his cause for those who strive for domination. For example, by taking something away from one person and then sharing the loot with others, making them accomplices. Another way is that those who want to rule over others bring those who are supposed to be ruled over to agree to their domination. It is best to even watch them. How, however, can this be achieved? It can be achieved by convincing the rulers that it is good and right for them to be ruled if one makes them believe that it is not possible without rulers, that the community would otherwise sink into chaos. And if the rulers do not even recognize that they are being ruled, then the resistance against domination remains. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe knew about this when he wrote that no one is more of a slave than the one who frees himself without being one. At this point I bring the state, as we know it today, into the game. The term state usually has different meanings for different people. Many people think of the state as we all do, as the community of people, as the protective hand of the father state. However, I use another, positive definition of the state here, a definition that says what the state really is, what it actually does. After that, the state can be understood as a territorial monopolist who makes the final decision about all conflicts in his area and who has the right to raise taxes. Accordingly, the state may do something that is forbidden to any other person. It may deduct other amounts of money that do not have a direct return. This is called raising taxes. One can only be amazed if I take 100 euros from your stock exchange against your will and without direct return. What would you call that? And the state is the referee over all conflicts that occur between its subjects and also those that inevitably arise between it, the state, and its subjects. Now, hardly anyone will claim that everyone who lives in or under such a defined state would voluntarily give their consent to it. For example, there is no corresponding contract that they or I would have signed. To keep it short at this point, the state, as we know it today, did not emerge from the principle of voluntariness, but from the principle of compulsion and violence. And its continuation is also based on compulsion and violence. Interestingly, socialist and communist thinkers have openly expressed this. Lenin wrote, Do not forget that the state is also in the most democratic republic and not only in a monarchy It is nothing more than a machine to suppress a class through a mandate. End of quote. Probably, some in the audience will now say, the state as a control apparatus? But not with us. After all, we govern ourselves. This answer would not surprise me. Because the state, whether as a feudal system, as a monarchy, or as a modern democracy, has always made a lot of effort to conceal the knowledge about its true essence. To do this, it uses the help of the intellectuals. Thoughts by Mary Rothbard. He writes, quote, that since the earliest beginnings of the state, its rulers, as necessary support of their rule, have been striving for an alliance with the social class of the intellectuals. The masses do not create their own abstract ideas or think independently about these ideas. They passively follow the ideas that are accepted and spread by the intellectual circles, the influential opinion makers in society. And because it is precisely this generation of opinions in the sense of the rulers that the state urgently needs, this forms the ancient alliance between the intellectuals and the ruling classes of the state. The alliance is based on a quid pro quo. On the one hand, the intellectuals spread among the masses that the state and its ruling way are good, sometimes divine, and above all indispensable and better than any conceivable alternative. As a counter-performance for the disclosure of its ideology, the state makes the intellectuals part of the ruling elite. It gives them power, social status, reputation and material security. End of quote. But who are these intellectuals? A question that is not at all easy to answer. There have been some attempts in the literature. Not all of them are convincing. For our purposes, however, it may be sufficient to understand the group of intellectuals as persons that have one or more of the following characteristics. First, the intellectuals are or think they are relatively well educated. Second, they practice a leadership of opinion. Their statements, their ideas are seen by many other people as directional. Third, they judge which ideas find spread and which do not, which existing ideas can be replaced by other ideas. The intellectuals are not always the creators of new ideas. Often they are just something like second-hand dealers of ideas, as Friedrich August von Hayek called them. The group of intellectuals includes, for example, teachers, educated people like professors, nature, medicine and economics scholars, writers, journalists, TV and radio hosts, musicians, actors, but nowadays also some business leaders and influencers in the social media. The fact that politicians, governments and states, as well as special interest groups, have a very special preference for the intellectual developments, is obvious. Because, as Rothbard has already said, whoever influences ideas to a large extent, also influences the actions of people. In politics, government circles and in special interest groups, the intellectuals are particularly popular, because their ideas help to legitimize rule, or to legitimize appearance. This is especially true when the intellectuals from science, from the public as independent, as neutral, as trustworthy, as flawless, selfless instances are considered, to whom one can and should give faith without criticism. And since many intellectuals, especially those who work in science, are on the government's payroll, it is not surprising that those of them who are allowed to hope for generous funding, in the form of income, research funds, reputation and status, bring what is necessary from the point of view of politics and special interest groups to the public. But one is too short-sighted when one thinks that the intellectuals could, in an unfavorable case, only or exclusively, be a plaything of the powerful and special interest groups. And by that I do not mean that there is such a thing as independence from research and teaching, which protects the scientists from the intellectuals from being distracted by external interest groups from their search for truth. What I mean much more is that the intellectuals themselves can strive for an active role and take it on, in order to influence economic and social skills according to their own interests. This is exactly a thought that the German sociologist Helmut Schelsky, born in 1912, died in 1984, in his book published in 1975, The Work Do the Others, Class Struggle and Priesthood of the Intellectuals, has spread. But before I present Schelsky's thoughts, the critical contention with the role of the intellectuals that exists in the economic literature should come to the fore. The intellectuals are classified here as something like pathfinders of socialism, like Joseph Aloys Schumpeter, born in 1833, died in 1950. In his book Capitalism, Socialism, Democracy, Schumpeter sketches the problem with the intellectuals as follows. Capitalism brings prosperity, which in turn causes an increased public provision of education. However, too many intellectuals are drawn to it. Many of them do not find a job in their field of expertise, they have to make a living with another, non-professional bread business. This makes them dissatisfied, they turn against the capitalist system, then try to get rid of it. Friedrich August von Hayek, born in 1899, died in 1992, argued that intellectuals tend to great, high-spirited, fantastic social designs, and that they can therefore make friends with socialist healing promises. Many intellectuals, says Hayek, are therefore at home in the socialist idea camp. Ludwig von Mises, born in 1881, died in 1973, spoke of an anti-capitalist mentality, which is mainly empowered by the intellectuals. The intellectuals feel a rejection of capitalism, because they think that they are not paid for their own value, which they themselves claim to be rewarded and valued. They feel envy and disgust in the capitalist system, in which the hard-working and productive merchant is valued more than themselves. They therefore want to abolish capitalism. These explanations about the role of the intellectuals can not only be integrated into the considerations of Helmut Schelsky, but can also be dramatized by Schelsky's theory, stripped of all remaining harmlessness. Step 3. In his book published in 1975, Die Arbeit tun die Anderen, Schelsky addresses the following thesis. In the modern, technically scientific societies, a class struggle of its own kind emerges. The front line runs between the intellectual and the working population. It is a struggle for domination, which is not led by physical, but by mental force, in which it is about the exercise of power through meaning. In opposition to the religious sociology of Max Weber, born in 1864, died in 1920, Schelsky's starting point is that people are essentially looking for a foundation of meaning in their worldly existence, for a promise of salvation. This is especially true in highly developed, secularized societies, in which a demand for a social religion arises. It forms the foundation for the intellectuals, the reflection elite, to whom the intellectuals also count in the broadest sense. They engage in the growing functional areas of the communication of information, scientific knowledge, and orientation knowledge. They develop, so Schelsky, into a priest's box. Its self-sufficient goal is, in the words of Friedrich Schleiermacher, to create a sense of belonging in the general population, which, in turn, creates a need for protection and patronage for the social-religious, and in this way makes them receptive to the proclamations of a better world, after a life in harmony and order and justice, a heavenly socialism on earth. The preachers of salvation have an interest in, how their everyday life is perceived as misery, as an emergency and as unbearable, because this depends on their possibility of influence. They never proclaim only salvation, but preach and promote at the same time the consciousness of misery. They are not only the helpers of emergency, but at the same time emergency propagandists, because just as their salvation is a good in the imagination of people, so is the basic need for salvation in the preservation of an awareness of emergency and misery, regardless of the real conditions and circumstances. The means that the preachers of salvation use is not, as I said, the physical use of violence, but the relieving and relieving sense. It is an exercise of power through sense. The preachers of salvation are against the productive population, but literally live from it, i.e. from the people, so Schelsky, who accept the management of practical tasks in a society. They do something like priest deception. They keep the image of the old class struggle upright, so they do something that does not correspond to the interests of the working classes in any way. Quote The image of left-wing extremism offers a curtain behind which an autonomous claim to dominion is built up and a new class interest can come into play, which at least temporarily believes to be able to secure the side of the old class front. The extraordinarily grown importance of the communication of information, of news, scientific findings, training and orientation knowledge in a complex and large organizational society enables this group, as long as they combine these new forms of production knowledge and the means of domination with their own social and political objectives, to implement a new claim to domination and to establish a new class in the monopolization of these means of production and domination. On the basis of the domination of economic possibilities and in connection with a new teaching of salvation, a new class of politically and economically self-implementing mediators and teachers of salvation emerges, who find themselves in an interesting class contrast to all those who serve the production of goods in the sense of the satisfaction of life, of prosperity and of the functioning of society. It is a class contrast that we want to bring to the formula of the discussion between the class of the mediators of meaning and salvation with the producers of goods of life. It is about whether the mediators of meaning have the ability to implement their own goals of domination or the serving self-understanding of the mediators of meaning. End of quote. How do the economists, who I would like to represent here as representatives of the mediators of meaning intellectual class, fit into this idea? What role do they play? What is their own interest? The role of the economist in a free market system would be quite insignificant, because the application in practice is small. The earning possibilities of the economist are comparatively small compared to a situation in which the state, more precisely the net tax payers are forced to finance the economic teaching and research. In order to get into the enjoyment of state applications, it is especially necessary to provide a seemingly legitimate state, as we know it today, with scientific means. In addition, it also requires an economic legitimation that assigns tasks to the state and which can only be supposedly satisfactorily fulfilled. For example, the state should have the authority to operate with a partial reserve, that the state has to provide streets and schools and universities, that it should regulate the care of the elderly, and so on and so forth. And the more tasks the state can take on, the greater the influence of the economists. The economists must explain convincingly that the system of free markets is indispensable to the regulation of the state, which must be regulated if a peaceful and productive coexistence of people in the community should be possible. For example, they lead to market failures, monopolies, external effects, market power, public goods and more, which make existence or state activity of the economists unscathed supporters of the system of free markets. They must at least position themselves as interventionists, i.e. support that the state at least intervenes in the economic and social life in order to achieve certain goals. This basic position becomes the teaching activity of these economists in schools and universities in administration, state departments, media, etc. It is certainly not too far-fetched to assume that the economists of the experiment are not only teaching and researching intelligence, but also rising to the healing intelligence. Especially the scientific discourse climate offers manifold opportunities for this. Because here it is already possible to solve any dispute whether in economy, society, health or environment based on scientifically justified findings. Often, however, it is only personal assumptions that are highly stylized to scientific questions. This in turn leads to the fact that the one whose arguments are most closely connected to the established scientific findings, seems to have a solution. But this cannot convince without further ado. Consequently, the question of who is right and who is not is shifted to a theoretical level of knowledge. It remains unclear, the matter becomes complicated, the discourse becomes difficult. And just because there is a dominant opinion in a dispute does not mean that it is the right one. The truth does not depend on a dominant opinion. There are two ways for the economist to rise to a healing intelligence. First, the economists problematize the prevailing conditions, whether justified or not, engage themselves as misery propagandists. They say, for example, that the economy is too crisis-prone, that the income of the workers is too low, that the differences between the rich and the poor are insufficient, that the environment is too heavily polluted, etc. Of course, this makes those who take these messages and give them faith receptive to solutions of the promising economists, who then say that with these or those political measures of the state, everything will get better in the future. The economists must therefore be interventionist in their own way. They interpret the causes of the complained abuses. For example, financial and economic crises are explained as a result of the unrestrained free markets, capitalism, the greed of financial investors, the unregulated globalization, etc. It is implicitly silenced that the state is responsible for the indisputably existing abuses, the state interventionism, and not the system of free markets. Especially the anti-capitalist criticism, which today falls on fertile ground, must be admired, because in the western world there is simply no system of free markets, no capitalism. There is much more interventionism. Consequently, all abuses to be observed cannot be attributed to capitalism, but the cause of the problems is to be sought and to be found. If, however, the economists penetrate the public with their misinterpretation, then the state, as we know it today, is its representative and the special interest groups that want to incite the state for their purposes, as good as safe. Not only praise and reward are given to such type-oriented economists, such as seats in government new research assignments, etc., they also rise up to proclaim salvation. They are spoken to on the basis of their supposed competence as cause-explainer of the problems, now also to suggest the correct problem-solving with care and foresight. Those who dress up the positions in the state, be it as government or opposition politicians, bureaucrats, who live off the state, as public employees, companies that receive state commissions, or who want to incite it for their purposes, keyword lobby groups or big business, big banking, big tech, or big pharma, will applaud. All these special interest groups benefit from it when the salvation proclamation of the economists is, the state must be commissioned and empowered to ensure good, because the system of free markets is the problem, and the state and its power of action are the solution. Ludwig von Mises has clearly formulated where this leads with his Critique of Interventionism in 1929. If the state intervenes to solve problems and to achieve certain desirable goals, it will either not achieve these goals or it will achieve them only by creating problems that were not there before, or that were there, but are now magnified and worsened by the state intervention. This, on the other hand, resolves further interventions. An intervention spiral comes into play. If it is not brought to a standstill, it is screwed back, then sooner or later the economic and social system will be controlled. The remains of the free market system that still exist today will also be destroyed. A state-driven economy will take its place. However, the economists do not rise to the status of the preacher of salvation if they conceptualize the popular economy purely logically, i.e. as so-called a priori action science. Then basically all kinds of state-applicable measures can be recommended for implementation if they sound good and meaningful, such as, for example, the central bank must push the interest rate into the negative range, which supports production and employment, or the expansion of the economic growth is much more helpful to promote it. In addition, experiential facts can be easily reinterpreted according to political gusto. Not the state central bank ensures inflation, but rising energy prices. Or capitalism causes financial and economic crises, not interventionism, and so on. The interventionist-minded economists do not have a serving self-understanding but a dominant one. And in their hands the popular economy becomes a sharp instrument to justify existing governance relations or to legitimize new ones. Helmut Zelsky named the problem of the intellectual in the role of the preacher of salvation, quote, machine-to-machine communication, smart contracts, internet of things, internet of bodies, augmented reality, virtual reality, the metaverse, etc. quote, quote, quote,