Mises’s “Fourier Complex” and Anticapitalist Thought

Ludwig von Mises, the Austrian economist and classical liberal, coined the term Fourier complex in his 1927 book Liberalism: A Socio-Economic Exposition, in a chapter tellingly titled “The Psychological Roots of Antiliberalism.” The phrase was his attempt to name a peculiar psychological syndrome that, in his view, explained the enduring attraction of utopian socialism.

Socialism as Consolation - a “Saving Lie” Against Life’s Disappointments

Borrowing the name from Charles Fourier — the early 19th-century French utopian thinker famous for his visions of cooperative “phalansteries” and bizarre prophecies of a harmonious new world — Mises argued that anti-capitalist sentiment was rarely grounded in sober economic critique. Instead, it was rooted in envy, resentment, and ultimately in neurotic illusions about a world of effortless equality.

Mises treated the Fourier complex not as an intellectual mistake but as a form of psychological pathology: a “saving lie” that individuals embraced to protect themselves against life’s frustrations. Across three major works — Socialism (1922/1936), Liberalism (1927), and The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality (1956) — he returned to this theme, presenting socialism less as a consolatory framework.

The Fourier Complex in Liberalism (1927)

In Liberalism, Mises laid out the distinction most clearly. He separated two psychological roots of anti-capitalism.

The first was envy. Many critics of capitalism, he noted, understood perfectly well that they were materially better off under capitalism than they would be under socialism. Yet, resentful of the rich, they still preferred socialism because it promised that others would be brought down to their level:

“Resentment is at work when one so hates somebody for his more favorable circumstances that one is prepared to bear heavy losses if only the hated one might also come to harm. Many of those who attack capitalism know very well that their situation under any other economic system will be less favorable. Nevertheless…they advocate socialism, because they hope that the rich, whom they envy, will also suffer under it.” (Liberalism, p. 14)

This kind of resentment, Mises thought, could in principle be corrected by rational argument. One can point out, after all, that harming others does not improve one’s own lot.

But the Fourier complex, he insisted, ran deeper:

“The Fourier complex is much harder to combat. What is involved in this case is a serious disease of the nervous system, a neurosis, which is more properly the concern of the psychologist than of the legislator.” (Liberalism, p. 15)

Here Mises leaned on Freud, whose psychoanalysis had revealed how delusions can function as “saving lies” — indispensable illusions that shield the neurotic from despair. Socialism, Mises argued, operated in precisely this way:

“The neurotic clings to his ‘saving lie,’ and when he must make the choice of renouncing either it or logic, he prefers to sacrifice logic. For life would be unbearable for him without the consolation that he finds in the idea of socialism.” (Liberalism, p. 17)

In this framing, anti-capitalist ideology becomes less an intellectual doctrine than a form of emotional compensation: it supplies both a scapegoat (“capitalism is to blame for my failures”) and a promise of vindication (“socialism will bring me the success and recognition I deserve”).

Fourier’s Utopia in Socialism (1922/1936)

Although Mises only coined the “Fourier complex” phrase later, his earlier Socialism had already treated Fourier as the exemplar of utopian delusion. He recounted Fourier’s extravagant predictions — “anti-lions” to be domesticated for riding, “anti-whales” to tow ships, work transformed into play for children — and concluded memorably that Fourier had “introduced the fairies into social science.”

The real issue, Mises argued, was not Fourier’s colorful imagination but the assumptions beneath it: Unlimited resources — the fantasy that nature would provide boundless abundance without scarcity. And Work as pleasure — the belief that labor would cease to be burdensome and become “life’s prime want.”

These assumptions, Mises argued, did not disappear with Fourier. They resurfaced, dressed in pseudo-scientific garb, in Marxism itself. Engels’s promises of liberated labor and Marx’s claim that under higher communism “labour has become the first need of life” echoed Fourier’s dreamworld.

As Mises put it:

“Marxism…never has anything different to advance from what Fourier, the ‘utopian,’ had to offer.”

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality (1956): Extending the Diagnosis

Nearly thirty years later, Mises revisited the idea in The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality. By then, his focus was less on Fourier himself and more on contemporary intellectuals and artists hostile to capitalism. His verdict was the same: resentment and wounded pride.

The market, Mises noted, often failed to reward intellectuals with the recognition they believed they deserved. Rather than accept this, they consoled themselves with the belief that capitalism was corrupt and that socialism would restore them to their rightful place.

Intellectuals, he observed, “dismiss the activities of businessmen as unintellectual money-making” while overlooking the rational, inventive skill required for entrepreneurial success. Like Fourier’s disciples, they clung to a saving lie: their failure was capitalism’s fault, and socialism would redeem them.

Thus, the Fourier complex became a broader diagnosis of the cultural hostility to capitalism: an explanation for why those who materially benefited from the system so often despised it.

Mises’s account was deliberately provocative. By pathologizing socialism as a neurosis, perhaps as a provocation, he suggested that rational economic argument alone could never fully defeat it. Its resilience lay not in logic but in psychology.

This insight continues to resonate. In today’s political climate, many egalitarian movements appeal less to reasoned visions of prosperity than to visceral desires for leveling: taxing or dismantling wealth even at the cost of growth. The willingness to prefer equality in poverty over inequality in abundance mirrors the very attitude Mises described:

“Socialists say that even material want will be easier to bear in a socialist society because people will realize that no one is better off than his neighbor.” (Liberalism, p. 14)

Whether one agrees with Mises’s diagnosis or not, the Fourier complex remains a powerful frame for understanding the emotional appeal of radical egalitarianism.

Mises’s idea of the Fourier complex was not a passing insult but a sustained attempt to unite economics, psychology, and cultural criticism. In Socialism, he dismantled Fourier’s utopian visions as delusional; in Liberalism, he gave the pathology a name and linked it to Freud’s theory of neurosis; and in The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, he extended it to modern intellectual discontent.

His unsettling conclusion was this: socialism thrives less because of its logic than because it consoles the discontented, offering them a “saving lie” against life’s disappointments. That claim remains controversial — but it continues to illuminate the psychological undercurrents of anticapitalist thought, and explains why egalitarian fantasies, however often discredited, never fully fade from view.

Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition (1927), in The Psychological Roots of Antiliberalism, esp. pp. 13–17. https://cdn.mises.org/Liberalism%20In%20the%20Classical%20Tradition_3.pdf

Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis (1922, 1936 ed.), Part II, Chapter 8, “The Social Order and the Family,” on Fourier’s utopia and labor, esp. pp. 204–211.

Ludwig von Mises, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality (1956), on the resentment of intellectuals and the psychological critique of anti-capitalism.