One area of Hayek's thought that is less investigated than any other is his theory of cultural evolution and his general anthropology. In large part this may be because Hayek developed this set of ideas only later in his life, most fully in his 1988 work The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism. Essentially, Hayek presents the view that the structure of liberal capitalism is the result of a long period of cultural evolution occurring through group selection. After establishing that the morality of the hunter-gatherer tribe is truly collectivist, he goes on to suggest that the market order is created through the unintentional imitation of learned rules (that is, tradition) which benefit one group. As a result of tradition, and crucially for Hayek tradition is not a product of reason, the population of the group grows, becomes richer, and displaces less successful groups. From this Hayek concludes that socialism is the ultimate rejection of tradition and the final embrace of what he would regard as unjustifiable rationalism.
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