Характерно, что подглавка эта входит в главу XI, которая называется "The delusions of world planning", а глава эта, в свою очередь, включена в заключительную, четвертую часть книги. Часть называется "The future of western civilization".
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Man is born an asocial and antisocial being. The newborn child is a savage. Egoism is his nature. Only the experience of life and the teachings of his parents, his brothers, sisters, playmates, and later of other people force him to acknowledge the advantages of social cooperation and accordingly yo change his behavior. The savage thus turns toward civilization and citizenship. He learns that his will is not allmighty, that he has to accommodate himself to others and adjust his actions to his social environment, and that the aims and the actions of other people are facts with which he must recon.
The neurotic lacks this ability to adapt himself to his environment. He is asocial; he never arrives at an adjustment with the facts. But whether he likes it or not, reality has its own way. It is beyond the neurotic's power to eliminate the will and the actions of his fellowmen and to sweep everything before him. Thus he escapes into daydreams. The weakling, lacking the strength to get on with life and reality, indulges in reveries on dictatorship and on power to subdue everybody else. The land of his dreams is the land in which his will alone decides; it is the realm in which he alone gives orders and all others obey. In this paradise only that happens which he wants to happen. Everything is sound and reasonable, i.e., everything corresponds exactly to his ideas and wishes, is reasonable from the viewpoint of his reason.
In the secrecy of these daydreams the neurotic assigns to himself the role of the dictator; he himself is Caesar. When addressing his fellow citizens he must be more modest. He depicts a dictatorship operated by somebody else. But this dictator is only his substitute and handyman; he acts only as the neurotic wants him to act. A daydreamer who refrained from this cautious restriction and proposed himself for the post of the dictator, would risk being considered and treated as a lunatic. The psychiatrists would call his insanity megalomania.
Nobody ever recommended a dictatorship aiming at ends other than those he himself approved. He who advocates dictatorship always advocates the unrestricted rule of his own will, although operated by an intermediary, an amanuensis. He wants a dictator made in his own image.
Now we may grasp the causes of the popularity of planning. Everything that men do has to be planned, is the realization of plans. In this sense all economic activity means planning. But those disparaging anarchic production and advocating planned economy are eager to eliminate the plans of everybody else. One will alone should have the right to will, one plan alone should be realized, namely, the plan which the neurotic approves, the reasonable plan, the only plan. All obstacles should be removed, all other people's power should be broken, nothing should prevent the wretched neurotic from arranging the world according to his whims. Every means is right if it helps to raise the daydreamer's reason to the throne.
The unanimous approval of planning by our contemporaries is only apparent. The supporters of planning disagree with regard to their plans. They agree only in the refutation of the plans brought forward by other people.
Many popular fallacies concerning socialism are due to the mistaken belief that all friends of socialism advocate the same system. On the contrary, every socialist wants his own socialism, not the other fellow's. He disputes the other socialists' right to call themselves socialists. In the eyes of Stalin the Mensheviks and the Trotskyists are not socialists but traitors, and vice versa. The Marxists call the Nazis supporters of capitalism; the Nazis call the Marxists supporters of Jewish capital. If a man says socialism, or planning, he always has in view his own brand of socialism, his own plan. Thus planning does not in fact mean preparedness to cooperate peacefully. It means conflict.