… is from pages 95-96 of Bertrand de Jouvenel’s 1954 essay “The Treatment of Capitalism by Continental Intellectuals,” which is Chapter 3 of F.A. Hayek’s 1954 edited collection, Capitalism and the Historians:
To the intellectual the social device of capitalism offers a displeasing picture. Why? In his own terms, here are self-seeking men in quest of personal aggrandizement. How? By providing consumers with things they want or can be induced to want. The same intellectual, puzzlingly, is not shocked by the workings of hedonist democracy; here also self-seeking men accomplish their aggrandizement by promising other men things they want or are induced to demand.
DBx: Yes.
The same intellectual who self-righteously condemns the seeking of profit in markets praises the seeking of power in politics. This intellectual also looks with contempt upon individuals spending their own money in markets on goods and services that they believe will improve their lives, yet looks with favor upon these same individuals using the political process to gather in to themselves as much as they can get the political process to seize on their behalf.
Puzzling indeed.
