Atavism

 

Atavism

Atavism, in biology, is defined as 'recurrence of traits of an ancestor in a subsequent generation.'

From Jane Stroup on Hayek:

'While he didn’t specifically try to figure out why civilized people become barbarous, Hayek learned it as he went along. He was trying to understand why leftist policies are so appealing. That is the case even though they damage the economy they are supposed to guide and they tend toward totalitarianism. He developed what some call the “atavism thesis.”

Hayek concluded that humans have instincts that evolved genetically, starting with humans’ predecessors, animals in a pack, and continuing when humans lived together in small bands. This evolution ended only about 12,000 years ago.

Those instincts weren’t inherently bad. In fact, they included essential emotions, such as solidarity and compassion, that kept the band alive. But they were beneficial only when people lived in small groups. The growth of what Hayek called the “extended order”—trade and communication outside the band, the modern economy—required people to act differently.

“Mankind achieved civilization by developing and learning to follow rules (first in territorial tribes and then over broader reaches) that often forbade him to do what his instincts demanded, and no longer depended on a common perception of events.”

Humans have never entirely given up their early instincts,  however, and that draws them to socialism and fascism, said Hayek. Socialism and fascism give them the “visible common purpose” so essential in the distant past. But forcing people to share a visible common purpose is not compatible with freedom.

The wars and other horrors of the twentieth century revealed what can happen when people go back to these old instincts, Hayek wrote.

“Most people are still unwilling to face the most alarming lesson of modern history: that the great crimes of our time have been committed by governments that had the enthusiastic support of millions of people who were guided by moral impulses. It is simply not true that Hitler or Mussolini, Lenin or Stalin, appealed only to the worst instincts of their people: they also appealed to some of the feelings which also dominate contemporary democracies.”

Contemporary democracies can seek the goals of socialism. But if they allow those goals to obliterate the workings of the market they may find they are planting the seeds of totalitarianism. And that is barbarity.'