Hayek’s Thesis Is That Socialism Is a Lethal Scientific Error Resulting from Intellectual Arrogance

Since Keynes’s economic theory has been proven to be incorrect on purely scientific grounds, it is permissible to analyze the factors that made him susceptible to error. The ultimate source of Keynes’s error is captured by the title of Friedrich Hayek’s final book, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988). What exactly did Hayek mean by the expression “the fatal conceit”? Conceit is defined as an exaggerated estimate of one’s own intellectual abilities. Thus, the expression “fatal conceit” connotes deadly intellectual pride. As the book’s subtitle indicates, Hayek directs the term to the advocates of socialism. Here then is Hayek’s thesis: socialism is a lethal scientific error resulting from intellectual arrogance. Jesús Huerta de Soto, a leading Hayek scholar, explains:

In the most intimate part of our nature lies the risk of succumbing to socialism, because its ideal tempts us, because humans rebel against their own nature. To live in a world with an uncertain future disturbs us, and the possibility of controlling that future, of eradicating uncertainty, attracts us. In The Fatal Conceit, Hayek writes that socialism is actually the social, political and economic manifestation of humankind’s original sin, pride. Humankind wants to be God, that is, omniscient… . The socialist considers him- or herself as overcoming this problem of radical ignorance which fundamentally discredits his (or her) social system. Hence, socialism is always a result of the sin of intellectual pride. Within every socialist there lies a pretentious person, a prideful intellectual.

—Edward W. Fuller, “Keynes's Fatal Conceit,” Procesos de Mercado: Revista Europea de Economía Política 15, no. 2 (Autumn 2018): 15-16.