Ideas and Comments - We deluded ourselves into believing that economic self-interest would ensure peace. But recent conflicts have taught us that we overestimated the role of self-interest—unless it serves everyone’s interests
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on September 2, 2026
In the final pages of his General Theory (1936), the most influential economics book of the 20th century, John M. Keynes wrote: “The most dangerous human tendencies can be channeled into relatively harmless outlets thanks to the existence of opportunities to make money... It is preferable for a man to exercise his tyranny over his own bank account rather than over his fellow citizens.” A sentence that very effectively captures the essence of one of the most radical and important cultural revolutions—when people began to believe that, thanks to the development of markets, human passions—the most impulsive and irrational traits of human beings—would be replaced by economic interests.
In the premodern world, in fact, it was passions, not interests, that governed most actions. And passions—pride, revenge, honor—were and often are destructive; they cause great harm and expense, and yield very few benefits: “Dimitri felt he had lost his honor, and nothing matters to him now” (F. Dostoevsky,The Brothers Karamazov). The Europe of the Ancien Régime had sought to repress and manage passions through force and the fear of punishment (both earthly and heavenly). At a certain point, however, a new and undoubtedly brilliant idea gradually emerged: first Machiavelli, then Vico, and finally the early Enlightenment economists believed that to overcome the chaos of the passions, it would suffice to channel people’s deep-seated energies toward self-interest; thus, “private vices” would become “public virtues” (Mandeville), the “invisible hand” (Smith) or “the supreme hand” (Galiani) of the market would transform private interests into the common good, and the “cunning of reason” (Hegel) would prevail.
The economist A.O. Hirschman, in his excellent essay Passions and Interests (1977), showed us that the fundamental element underlying this great alchemy lies in the semantic shift undergone by the word “interests”—it is no coincidence that “interests” also refers to the return on the use of money. Throughout the Middle Ages, in fact, the pursuit of economic interest was considered by Christian morality to be a wrongful passion, a deadly sin—avarice—and thus an evil that was both private and public: the pursuit of personal interests harmed both the individual and the community. With the birth and development of the “spirit of capitalism,” the great mortal sin of economic interest (the “she-wolf” of the first canto of *Inferno*) underwent an epoch-making evolution: “An increase in wealth is the means by which the majority of men seek and desire to improve their condition. It is the most common and most obvious means” (A. Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776). Channeling individuals’ deepest energies toward economic interests, transforming destructive passions into the civilized pursuit of making money, appeared to be the philosopher’s stone for finally building a peaceful and orderly society: “Regulate, do not coerce, the freedom of individuals. The general interest dictates the laws, which bring harmony between the parts of the state and the whole, and let private interests regulate the provinces, the lands, the families, and the individuals” (A. Genovesi, Lessons in Civil Economy, 1767). And so, for Genovesi as well, interests are a good thing to be encouraged, not a vice to be eradicated: “Not the greed to enrich oneself, but our interests” (Ibid.).
The crucial element for this epochal shift was thus the conviction that interests, unlike the ancient, pre-mercantile passions, are good because they are tamable, calculable, predictable, rational, and therefore, all things considered, harmless—and in any case far less harmful than passions: “Taking their interests into account, it is not difficult to foresee what prudent men have in mind to decide” (Samuel Butler, Erewhon, 1872). In the 21st century, moreover, meritocracy—the new capitalist religion—has convinced us that if success in economic interests meets the criterion of merit, then even inequality becomes just. What has happened in Western history since World War II seemed to have finally vindicated the modern idea that economic interests were good, and that after centuries of civil refinement we had truly entered an era no longer governed by extremely dangerous and pernicious passions; that finally, people and democracy (which was supposed to systematize the realm of interests) would make their choices based on rational calculation, abandoning passions and their unpredictable and often devastating effects. Because if, in a conflict, I believe you are pursuing your economic interests, I can easily predict your next move—a calculation that is impossible if you are driven by irrational passions.
We’d actually already had some doubts in the 20th century about whether this innocent game really worked. But then came the war in Ukraine, followed by the one in Gaza, then in Iran, and those doubts turned into certainty when we realized we’d overestimated the role of interests and underestimated that of passions—both the bad and the good ones. We thought, as good Westerners living in the realm of economic interests, that we would resolve the crises by imposing economic sanctions, and then we realized that those who had truly suffered the greatest damage from the sanctions were we Europeans, too accustomed to economic interests and the resulting lifestyle. We thought that interests would soon lead to peace because wars are “negative-sum” relationships, “hawk-hawk” games, and therefore are not in anyone’s interest—not even the victors’. “Russians are capable of enduring even hunger for years just to save their honor,” a missionary friend of mine who lives in Russia told me four years ago. Tracking the dynamics of interests and the structure of incentives among individuals and peoples is necessary but not sufficient to understand individual and collective choices—especially those of non-Western peoples who are heirs to great empires of the past. Homo sapiens wants much more than economic interests. Hirschman also tells us this on the last page of his essay: “Passions must not be underestimated, even when it seems that behavior dictated by self-interest constitutes the general rule.”
But there is more to it, and it is Hirschman again who suggests this to us: “The total dedication of the majority of citizens to the ‘innocent’ game of profit leaves those few who are not absorbed by self-interest alone—and therefore aim much higher—totally free to cultivate their ambition and their worst passions.” A. de Tocqueville had already intuited this: “A nation that asks of its government only the maintenance of order is already a slave to its own well-being, and the man who will put it in chains may arrive at any moment” (Democracy in America, 1835). These types of “men” have appeared many times over the past two centuries and continue to appear; among peoples numbed by self-interest and economic well-being, they have been able to give free rein to their basest and often destructive passions—and continue to do so. We see this very clearly today, and so we can affirm that the beautiful modern hope of counterbalancing, harnessing, and transforming passions into interests was a comforting illusion—one that, like all collective consolations, captured a part of the truth, but a part too small and frail to withstand the impact of history and its ruthless reality principle. For the “gentle commerce” (Montesquieu) and “perpetual peace” (Kant), the interplay of economic interests alone is not enough. We are learning the hard way that no interest is truly good unless it includes the interests of everyone—those of the planet and of future generations.
