The power of ideas.


” . . . the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.”

The last half of the last paragraph in John Maynard Keynes’s book General Theory of Employment Interest and Money.

That ideas rules the world is one of the very few correct ideas that John Maynard Keynes probably ever had.


Human Action:

“The nineteenth-century success of free trade ideas was effected by the theories of classical economics. The prestige of these ideas was so great that those whose selfish class interests they hurt could not hinder their endorsements by public opinion and their realization by legislative measures. It is ideas that make history, and not history that makes ideas.”

Ludwig von Mises

http://www.mises.org/humanaction/chap3sec3.asp#p84

A hereby quote a proposition made by Hans-Hermann Hoppe:
"States, as powerful and invincible as they might seem, ultimately owe their existence to ideas and, since ideas can in principle change instantaneously, states can be brought down and crumble practically overnight."
http://www.freelythinking.com/quotes.htm


I hereby quote from the book “The Ethics of Liberty”, by Murray Rothbard:

“Ideology has always been vital to the continued existence of the State, as attested by the systematic use of ideology since the ancient Oriental empires. The specific content of the ideology has, of course, changed over time, in accordance with changing conditions and cultures. In the Oriental despotisms, the Emperor was often held by the Church to be himself divine; in our more secular age, the argument runs more to “the public good” and the “general welfare.”But the purpose is always the same: to convince the public that what the State does is not, as one might think, crime on a gigantic scale, but something necessary and vital that must be supported and obeyed. The reason that ideology is so vital to the State is that it always rests, in essence, on the support of the majority of the public. This support obtains whether the State is a “democracy,” a dictatorship, or an absolute monarchy. For the support rests in the willingness of the majority (not, to repeat, of every individual) to go along with the system: to pay the taxes, to go without much complaint to fight the State’s wars, to obey the State’s rules and decrees. This support need not be active enthusiasm to be effective; it can just as well be passive resignation. But support there must be. For if the bulk of the public were really convinced of the illegitimacy of the State, if it were convinced that the State is nothing more nor less than a bandit gang writ large, then the State would soon collapse to take on no more status or breadth of existence than another Mafia gang. Hence the necessity of the State’s employment of ideologists; and hence the necessity of the State’s age-old alliance with the Court Intellectuals who weave the apologia for State rule”.
http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/twentytwo.asp

“Human history is in essence a history of ideas.” (H.G. Wells)

“In every great time there is some one idea at work which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issues.” - Francis Bacon

Because of the power of ideas, the following can be concluded:

If an amount of people that supports the state is great enough, the state will be powerful.

If an amount of people that supports the democratic principle is great enough, the democratic principle will be powerful.

If an amount of people that supports communism is great enough, communism will be powerful.

If an amount of people that supports religion is great enough, religion will be powerful.

If an amount of people that supports libertarian ethics is great enough, libertarian ethics will be powerful.

Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sweden