… is from page 26 of the late Tom Wolfe’s brilliant 1981 book, From Bauhaus to Our House:
In fact, here was the great appeal of socialism to architects in the 1920s. Socialism was the political answer, the great yea-saying, to the seemingly outrageous and impossible claims of the compound architect, who insisted that the client keep his mouth shut. Under socialism, the client was the worker. Alas, the poor devil was only just now rising out of the ooze. In the meantime, the architect, the artist, and the intellectual would arrange his life for him. To use Stalin’s phrase, they would be the engineers of his soul.
DBx: Collectivists of whatever stripe are marked by their arrogance, by their imagined superiority to ordinary people. They, the collectivists, know how income should be distributed. They, the collectivists, know just what kinds of jobs ordinary people should hold. They, the collectivists, know how best to provide schooling for the children of ordinary people. They, the collectivists, know what is the minimum hourly monetary wage ordinary people should be allowed to accept in exchange for labor services. They, the collectivists, know how political campaigns should be funded. They, the collectivists, know what goods and services, and in what quantities, are best for ordinary people to purchase from foreigners. They, the collectivists, know which medicines and medical devices peaceful people should be prevented from consuming. They, the collectivists, know what are ‘the industries of the future’ and how best to ensure that the domestic economy has a comparative advantage in those industries. They, the collectivists, know how best to arrange for the provision and payment of health care.
They, the collectivists, are nothing if not arrogant.
……
Although Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead is no brief for collectivism, I must say that I’ve never liked that novel. I first read it only after learning economics. And so the architect Howard Roark’s refusal to design a building according to the preferences of the persons who pay for his services and for the building immediately struck me as arrogant. The fictional Mr. Roark and his real-world counterparts certainly have a right to regard themselves as brilliant artists who never stoop to satisfy the tastes of hoi polloi and to refuse to design anything except that which they – the architects – fancy. But it’s a darn good thing that the profit motive is powerful enough to enable people spending their own money to get supplied with whatever peaceful goods and services they desire.
