I
Within liberal doctrines, there is no question
about the originality of Hayek's approach.[4]
Distancing himself from "continental"
liberalism (with the exception of that of
Tocqueville and Benjamin Constant), Hayek
seeks to return to the original Anglo-Scottish
individualism and liberalism (Hume, Smith,
Mandeville, Ferguson), while restricting
notions such as reason, pure equilibrium,
natural order and social contract. To do
this, he paints a broad picture. Accordingly,
throughout history humanity has adopted two
socially and morally opposed systems. The
first, the "tribal order," reflects
"primitive" conditions of life.
It denotes a closed system whose members
know one another and organize their conduct
in terms of concrete objectives determined
in a relatively homogeneous manner. In this
society of face to face interactions arranged
in terms of collective goals, human relations
are largely determined by "instinct"
and are essentially based on solidarity,
reciprocity, and group altruism.
This "tribal order" gradually unravelled
as personal ties dissolved into more impersonal
social structures. It gave way to modem society,
which Hayek first called a "grand society"
and then an "extensive order" --something
corresponding more or less to Popper's "open
society." This modern society (where
liberalism, capitalism, free exchange, individualism
etc. are the predominant ideological forms)
knows no limits. Thus social relations can
no longer be regulated according to the face
to face model. Within such a society, "instinctual"
behavior becomes useless and is replaced
by abstract contractual arrangements (except,
perhaps, within very small groups such as
families). Order does not come about as a
result of wishes or intentions, but spontaneously
and in the abstract, under the impact of
multiple interrelations among the various
agents. The "grand society" is
a social system which spontaneously manages
without a common goal.
While Mises regarded liberal institutions
as the product of a conscious choice predicated
on abstract rationality, Hayek claims that
in the "grand society" these institutions
were slowly selected by habit. In other words,
men did not gradually master their environment
and develop new institutions through logical
deduction or even rational analysis. Rather,
they did so by means of rules (Hayek defines
man as a "role following animal")
acquired by experience and sanctified by
time. Reason is not the cause but the product
of culture. Use is not sanctioned. It is
imminent to the state of things. Thus it
is impossible to locate the origin of institutions
which have persisted over time. Culture results
from the transmission of rules learned from
the appropriate behavior-rules which were
never invented and whose function remains
uncomprehended by those who follow them.
For Hayek, modern society constitutes a "spontaneous
order" which no human will could ever
reproduce or surpass, which came into being
according to a Darwinian model. Modern civilization
is neither a product of nature nor an artifice
but the result of cultural evolution where
selection operates automatically. From this
viewpoint, social rules play the role attributed
to mutations in neo-Darwinian theory: certain
rules are retained because they are "more
efficient" and provide an advantage
to those who adopt them ("rules of correct
behavior"), while others are abandoned.
According to Philippe Nemo, "rules are
not invented apriori, but selected a posteriori,
in terms of a process of trial and error
and stabilization."[5] A role will be
retained or rejected according to whether,
through experience, it proves useful to the
whole system constituted by already existing
rules. Hayek writes: "It is the gradual
selection of increasingly impersonal and
abstract behavioral rules liberating individual
free will while insuring a further domestication
of instinct and drives inherited from preceding
phases of social development which have permitted
the coming into being of the "grand
society," rendering possible spontaneous
coordination of the ever more widespread
activities of human groups." In fact,
"if freedom has become a political morality,
it follows from a natural selection, which
means that society has gradually selected
the value system responding best to the constraints
of survival, which were those of the biggest
number." After all, before anything,
culture is "memory of beneficial behavioral
rules selected by the group."[6]
The emergence of modernity is thus presented
as the "natural" result of the
evolution of a civilization which has gradually
established individual freedom as both an
abstract and general principle of collective
discipline, i. e., as emancipation from traditional
society and as a passage to "a system
of abstract disciplines where the actions
of each person toward others are guided by
obedience, no longer with known goals, but
with general and impersonal rules which were
not deliberately established by man, and
whose role is to allow for the construction
of orders more complex than we can understand."
This Darwinian social vision is closely related
to the ideology of progress. It implies an
optimistic and utilitarian reading of history:
"grand society" is worth more that
the "tribal order," and the proof
that it is better is that it has displaced
it.
After having posed diachronically, i. e.,
historically, the distinction between his
two great models of society, Hayek redeploys
it in synchronically by contraposing taxis
and kosmos. The first of these terms, taxis,
defines consciously instituted orders --
all political projects associating collectivism
with a common goal, all forms of planning,
state intervention, the administered economy,
etc. For Hayek, this is obviously a resurgence
of the "tribal order." The word
kosmos, on the contrary, refers to "spontaneous,"
self-engendered order, i. e., "naturally"
stemming from the practices which characterize
the "grand society." This spontaneous
order does not exist in relation to any goal.
Its members participate in it while pursuing
only their individual objectives, the interaction
of their particular strategies determining
mutual adjustment. Thus the kosmos comes
about independently of human intentions and
projects. According to the famous formula
of Adam Ferguson (1723-1816), it "results
from the actions of man, but not of his projects."[7]
This definition of modem society as fundamentally
and necessarily opaque leads Hayek to reject
the classical definition of competition as
a phenomenon presupposing, for its proper
functioning, that economic and social players
have information as complete as possible.
Hayek rejects the idea of a transparent market:
pertinent information can never be completely
at the disposal of its agents. On the contrary,
he claims that the best argument for the
market economy is that information is always
incomplete and imperfect, because in such
conditions it is best to always leave each
person to fend for himself with what he knows.
Here competition is the result of laissez-faire,
whereas in the classical model laissez-faire
is implied by the hypothesis of pure and
perfect competition.
The typical trait of the "grand society"
is the structural excess of pertinent compared
to available information. The so-called "synoptic"
illusion consists in believing in the possibility
of perfect information. Hayek's reasoning
is as follows: knowledge of social processes
is necessarily limited because it is in a
permanent state of collective formation.
No individual or group has access to this.
Thus no one can claim to have access to or
to be able to take into account all of the
parameters. Yet, effective social action
demands complete familiarity with the pertinent
facts. To the extent that such a familiarity
is impossible, no one can claim to act on
society according to his interests or even
to undertake a perfectly adequate action
in relation to the object in view. Hayek
draws a sociological consequence from this
epistemological state of affairs: some ignorance
is inevitable; the incompleteness of information
drives the impossibility to foresee the real
consequences of actions, which leads to doubt
about the operationality of our knowledge.
Since man is not omniscient, the best he
can do is rely on tradition, i. e., habit
sanctified by experience. According to Nemo:
"real rationalism consists in recognizing
the value of normative knowledge transmitted
by tradition, despite its opacity and its
irreducibility to logic."[8]
The market is obviously the key to the entire
system. In a society of individuals, exchange
takes place within the context of the market,
which is the only conceivable means of integration.
For Smith and Mandeville, the market is an
abstract mode of social regulation. It is
governed by an "invisible hand"
following objective laws which supposedly
regulate relations among individuals, independently
of any human authority. The market is intrinsically
anti-hierarchical: it is a way of making
decisions where no one decides for anyone
other than oneself. Thus social order becomes
confused with economic order, whose unintended
results are actions undertaken by agents
pursuing their best interest.
Hayek accepts Smith's theory of the "invisible
hand," i. e., that totally impersonal
mechanisms are at work in a free market.
Yet Hayek makes some very important modifications.
Smith operates on a macro-economic level:
although operating in an apparently disorderly
manner, individual acts end up miraculously
contributing to the collective interest or
to everyone's well-being. This is why Smith
allows for public intervention when individual
aims do not bring about collective well-being.
Hayek does not allow for this exception.
Classical liberalism also claims that the
competitive market allows for the optimal
satisfaction of particular ends. Hayek argues
that, since the ends cannot be known, they
are never given. Thus it is not possible
to give the market the ability to translate
the hierarchy of values. Such a claim is
tautological because "the relative intensity
of the demand for goods and services, an
intensity to which the market will adjust
its production, is itself determined by the
distribution of revenue determined by market
mechanisms." Having no priority, the
market is not ordered according to goals:
it leaves them undetermined and only deals
with reconciling means. Furthermore, in classical
theory the optimal allocation of scarce resources
is theoretically guaranteed by the adjustment
of competitive markets forming a general
balance. Following Mises and anticipating
the critique eventually developed by G. L.
S. Schackle and Ludwig Lachmann, Hayek rejects
this static, Walras-inspired vision and tries
his best to substitute an optimal institutional
system for a socially optimal system of production,
thus replacing the general static balance
with a partially dynamic one.
Finally, Hayek claims that it is not the
agents' freedom which makes exchange possible,
but the other way around. This is crucial
and has decisive consequences. From a classical
viewpoint -- the market in the strictest
sense of the term -- was still linked to
the only economic sphere, while the state's
role was to "complete the market"
by guaranteeing its proper operation, even
occasionally substituting for it. From the
neo-liberal viewpoint, i. e., that of generalized
economics, the market becomes an explicative
model, an interpretative framework applicable
to all human activity. Thus there is a marriage
market, a crime market, etc. Politics itself
is redefined as a market where entrepreneurs
(politicians) try to be elected by responding
to the demands of voters, themselves seeking
to pursue their best interests. Hayek indirectly
legitimates this vision by no longer posing
the market merely as an economic mechanism
allowing for the miraculous adjustment of
individuals' private plans. Rather, it is
an ordered formation, a spontaneously established
order prior to and independent of all individual
action, which through the price system allows
for the optimal communication of information.
Under these conditions, the market takes
over the social. It is no longer just the
model of human activity, but the activity
itself. Far from dealing only with economic
activity (Hayek tends to restrict the word
'economy' for elementary units such as enterprises
and the home), it becomes a system of general
social regulations, pompously called "catalaxis"
(a neologism borrowed from Mises). It is
no longer simply an economic mechanism for
the optimal allocation of resources in a
universe traditionally described as governed
by scarcity -- a mechanism ordered by some
positive finality (individual happiness,
wealth, well-being); rather, it is a sociological
as well as political order, an instrumental
formal support for the possibility of individuals
to freely pursue their particular objectives.
In short, it is a structure, i. e., a process
with no subject, spontaneously managing the
coexistence of the plurality of private goals,
which imposes itself on everyone to the extent
that, by nature, it prevents individuals
as well as groups from trying to reform it.
The principle asserted here is obviously
that of an individual activity closely associated
with the market model of exchange. Freedom
remains defined as the absence of constraints
and coercion. It expresses "the situation
where each person can use what he knows in
view of what he wants to do" -- a state
of affairs guaranteed only by the order of
the market. Freedom is no longer the means
to achieve an objective through social action,
but the impersonal gift historical evolution
bestowed on men with the emergence of the
abstract order of exchange. There is no freedom
outside of the market!
Pierre Rosanvallon rightly claims that "somehow,
liberalism turns the depersonalization of
the world into the conditions for progress
and freedom."[9] Hayek's efforts are
part and parcel of this vision to replace
human power with social regulations as impersonal
as possible. Locke had already argued that
those in authority should set only general
and universal rules. For Hayek, the social
coherence that results not from sharing some
collective goal but from the mutual adjustment
of each person's anticipations is both logical
and functional. A social state is coherent
when its behavioral rules are not contradictory
and conform with its evolution. In the same
way that for Popper one cannot establish
the true but only eliminate the false (falsifiability),
for Hayek, one cannot define fair rules but
only determine those that are not fair. The
least unfair rules are those which do not
hinder the proper functioning of the market,
which best conform to impersonal and abstract
order, and which deviate the least from established
practice. The good society is therefore one
where the legislator's law (thesis) stays
closest to the customs (nomos) which have
allowed the emergence of the market. It follows
that a constitution should not deal with
substantial but only neutral and abstract
rights, setting limits to legislative or
executive action.
The law's objective is no longer to organize
individual actions in terms of the common
good or of some particular project, but to
codify the rules whose only function is to
protect individual freedom of action, i.
e., to indicate "to each person what
he can count on, which material objects or
services he can use for his projects, and
the kind of action he can engage in."
According to Hayek, however, the legal order
cannot protect the formation of individual
anticipations in accord with the already
instituted order of things. Conversely, only
those individual anticipations in agreement
with this instituted order can be regarded
as legitimate. The rules will then be purely
formal norms, without any substantial content
-a necessary condition for them to be universally
valid. Hayek emphasizes that "only if
they are universally applicable, without
any regard for their particular effects,
will they be able to maintain the abstract
order." Of course, individuals will
all be set as equals in relation to these
formal rules, but since they refer to a concrete
reality which is nothing other than liberal
capitalism, their equality will have no substance:
formal equality will go hand in hand with
real social inequality.
A society organized according to market exchange
would be able to obtain the support of all
without ever proposing any common goals.
It would institute an order of pure means,
leaving everyone responsible for their own
goals. What aggregates men in the catalaxis,
defined as "the order engendered by
the mutual adjustment of numerous individual
economies to the market,"[10] is not
a community of goals but a community of means
expressed in the abstract order of the law.
Along with Hume and Montesquieu, Hayek also
believed in the pacifying virtue of exchange.
By avoiding the dangers of face to face relations
typical of the "tribal order" and
the debates concerning collective goals,
the market would neutralize rivalries, calm
passions, and put an end to conflicts. If
all members of the "grand society"
were aggregated within a system of means
substituted for a debate concerning goals,
oppositions would disappear or find their
own solutions.
This social model immediately poses a problem
of interpretation. At first glance, one could
be tempted to consider the idea of a spontaneous
order as an avatar of the natural order,
as conceived by counter-revolutionary theoreticians
most hostile to voluntarism. This, however,
would be a mistake because Hayek does not
present the spontaneous order as a return
to a state both original and permanent, somehow
constitutive of all social orders, but as
an order acquired over time and culminating
in the modem era. It is an order resulting
from a "natural" evolution, but
which is still not a "natural order."
The manner Hayek posits the autonomy of the
social gives his reasoning the appearance
of holism --at least to the extent that he
sees the market as a globalizing totality
implying exchange relations between agents
which are not attributes of the isolated
individual. Finally, the idea of a spontaneous
order seems to imply a systems theory notion
of self-organization, and Hayek himself at
various times sought to integrate his ideas
with those of P. A. Weiss, with cybernetic
models (Heinz von Forster), with concepts
of complexity (John von Neumann) and "auto-poesis"
(Francisco Varela, H. Maturana), with the
thermodynamic of open systems (Ilya Prigogine),
etc. [11]
In fact, Hayek reformulates earlier ideas
put forth by Mandeville, Smith, and Ferguson
-- the three founders of the new theory of
"civil society." Within the context
of liberal thought, the originality of these
authors was to distance themselves both from
Jeremy Bentham's naive utilitarianism and
from the philosophy of natural right. Their
contribution consists in no longer searching
for the origin of society (what led Locke
to postulate the social contract) but focusing
on regulation or social functioning. Gautier
has argued that this evolution corresponds
to the shift from a vision of the world based
on theodicy to one based on sociodicy.[12]
The essential point is dismissal of the fiction
of the contract and recognition of social
ties as components of human nature. A society
constituting the natural framework of human
existence no longer needs to unveil the secret
of its "origin" in a contractual
agreement between isolated individuals. The
market mechanism substitutes for the artifice
of the contract as a foundation of social
life. This avoids the aporias typical of
contract theories inherited from Hobbes or
Locke and is the foundation of the Smithian
theory of the "invisible hand"
-- a theory which takes into account habits,
customs and even the traditions which have
accompanied the emergence of the market.
To some extent, as with Ferguson, market
exchange becomes the specific modality of
social relations based on custom.
Gautier is right, therefore, in speaking
of an "impure individualism" to
describe this new liberal process which seeks
to found "the relation of cogenesis
of the one and the whole on a specific anthropology"
in order to reconcile individual interest
and the social whole without recourse to
a social contract. The consequences are crucial.
If the market model alone explains the functioning
of society, then the economy is the best
way to realize the political. This implies
an indictment of public power, because if
man is naturally social it is no longer necessary
to "force" him to live in society:
"The state is no longer constitutive
of social bonds, it only guarantees their
permanence." Better yet, public power
must always be "neutralized" in
order to prevent it from "invading"
civil society. Politicians are thereby delegitimated
in their attempt to realize particular goals.
By rejecting the social contract and by focusing
on a spontaneous order beyond nature and
artifice, Hayek places himself squarely within
this school. This explains the holistic appearance
of his system: the market is assimilated
to the social "whole" and constitutes
the highest form of regulation on a supra-individual
level.
Here appearances must not mislead. One can
speak of holism only when the whole has its
own logic and goal, i. e., characteristics
different from those of its constituent elements.
But this is precisely what Hayek rejects
as typical of a "tribal order."
Even though the individual is never entirely
isolated, since he is always in society and,
from a moral viewpoint, fully human only
in relation to his fellow human beings, in
the "grand society" social relations
can be understood solely in terms of the
multiplicity of its parts. Society is organized
only in terms of its individuals, in the
same way that the market is seen only as
an aggregation of individual preferences:
society is constitued by the interaction
of particular interests. The social is thus
deduced from the individual, not the other
way around. The individual is the ultimate
irreducible unit. It follows that the intelligence
of the whole is a function of its parts and
that there cannot be any collective entity,
such as a people, a culture or a nation,
with an identity different from that of the
sum of its individual components. Finally,
individuals' behavior is governed only by
the goals they pose for themselves. The members
of society are social atoms "free to
use their own knowledge for their own objectives."
What guides their choices is obviously the
pursuit of their best interest. Hayek is
not so naive as to believe that everyone
behaves rationally. He does claim, however,
that such behavior is advantageous in that,
in a society where it is comparatively more
profitable to act rationally, rational behavior
will gradually spread by selection or imitation.
Thus, in social life the individual is compelled
to behave as an economic agent in the market.
This is all within the paradigms of methodological
individualism and homo oeconomicus.
Hayek actually poses the individual less
autonomous than independent since, as Jean-Pierre
Dupuy points out, "autonomy is compatible
with the submission to a universally-valid,
supra-individual sphere -- to a normative
law limiting individuals according to rules
of a self-grounded normativity -- while independent
individuals are unable to willingly or consciously
pose an order as a project."[13] Beyond
all consideration of the formation of structures
ordered in terms of aleatory fluctuations,
this distinction indicates the limits of
a possible reconciliation between Hayek's
ideas and the systems theory notion of self-organization:
the latter implies an anti-reductionist vision
where the whole inevitably exceeds the sum
of its parts.
II
Having defined the "grand society,"
Hayek goes on to study the ideology he opposes,
which he calls "constructivism."
This ideology, he says, is the result of
a "synoptic illusion." It consists
in believing that social arrangements can
be the result of man's voluntary intentions
and actions, i. e., that it is possible to
construct or reform society according to
some project. Constructivism claims that
"human institutions will only serve
human designs if they have been deliberately
elaborated according to these designs."
Yet, Hayek maintains it is impossible to
relate institutions to willful acts, since
this requires the kind of complete information
which is never available. Thus constructivism
systematically overestimates the possible
role of social engineers, reformers and politicians.
Hayek first located the source of constructivism
in scientism, in the human sciences' "servile
imitation" of the concepts, methods
and objectives of the physical sciences.
He next went to Descartes. The Cartesian
mechanistic approach, which he considers
a French disease, calls for logico-mathematical
intelligibility in the social sciences as
well as elsewhere and that, from this perspective,
institutions can be constructed and reconstructed
at will, like so many means devised to achieve
particular goals. Hayek regards this as a
"presumption of reason" because
allegedly reason cannot determine the right
goals conducive to the common good but only
the formal conditions of the agents' activity.
[14]
For Hayek, the archetype of constructivism
is socialism, which represents the resurgence
of the "tribal order" at the very
heart of the "grand society." Accordingly,
the success of socialism results from the
fact that it emphasizes "atavistic instincts"
of solidarity and altruism which today have
become anachronistic. From Hayek's viewpoint,
however, "socialism" must be understood
in a broad sense. It gradually comes to designate
all kinds of "social engineering"
and all types of political and economic projects.
Hayek criticizes Descartes' followers, as
well as the advocates of a holistic or organicist
concept of society, the counter-revolutionaries
as well as the romantics. According to him,
in a strict sense, socialism, Marxism, fascism
and social democracy are all the result of
the same "constructivism," which
begins with the most modest kinds of state
intervention or social reform. Assigning
a goal to production, imposing solidarity,
redistributing revenues to benefit the least
privileged, legislating on the environment
or social protection, progressive taxation,
imposing any type of economic protection
-- all this is the result of "constructivism,"
which can only lead to catastrophe because
the order of the market by definition forbids
any attempt to intentionally act on social
realities. Hayek constantly reiterates that
there can be no collective agreement concerning
goals, and one should not try to find one,
because all such efforts would result in
failure. All managerialism, all planning
and all political projects are latently totalitarian!
This is what leads Hayek to extremely radical
positions, as when he advocates privatizing
the issuing of money, [15] justifies monopolies,[16]
rejects all macro-economic analysis and goes
so far as to assume, in his last book (Fatal
Presumption), that all socialist systems
are doomed to starve their populations to
death.[17]
The classical liberal school retained the
idea of social justice, at least in the sense
of supporting transitory regulations. Hayek
completely rejects this in one of the most
violent critiques ever written.[18] Social
justice, he claims, is a "mirage,"
an "inept incantation," an "anthropomorphic
illusion," an "ontological absurdity."
In short, it is a meaningless expression,
except in the "tribal order," i.
e., within a social space instituted by people
with well-defined objectives. To prove this,
Hayek redefines catalaxis as a social game.
Being impersonal, the rules of the game are
the same for everyone. In this sense, all
the players are equal. Obviously, that does
not imply that they can all win, since in
any game there are winners and losers. In
addition, since only human behavior resulting
from deliberate choices can be regarded as
"just" or "injust," it
is a logical error to apply these terms to
things other than voluntary human acts. Social
order can thus be declared just or injust
only if it results from voluntary acts. However,
Hayek goes out of his way to show that this
is not the case. Since the social game has
no author, no one is responsible for its
results, and it is both childish and ridiculous
to claim that it produces "unjustice."
Actually, it is no more "injust"
to be unemployed than to have failed to choose
the winning number in the lottery, because
only the players' behavior can be considered
just or injust, not the results of such behavior.
As the social is not the result of intentions
or projects, no one is responsible for the
fact that the most underprivileged did not
win first prize. Thus "losers"
are wrong to complain. Rather than giving
in to "atavistic instincts," which
lead them to believe naively that every phenomenon
has an identifiable cause, or looking for
those responsible for the "injustice"
they suffer, they would be better off to
blame themselves or to admit that their "bad
luck" is in the order of things.
Hayek also writes: "The manner in which
advantages and burdens are affected by market
mechanisms should in many cases be regarded
as very unfair if this allocation resulted
from the deliberate decision of a particular
person. But this is not the case." Once
this is admitted, the consequence follows.
To demand social justice is unrealistic and
illusory. To seek social justice is an absurdity
which results in the ruin of the legal system
(l'Etat de droit). Thus Nemo writes matter-of-factly
that social justice is "profoundly immoral."[19]
The traditional notion of distributive justice
is immediately challenged. All notions of
instituted solidarity, predicated on the
notion of the common good, are also condemned
as "tribal archaic revenge." According
to Hayek, "the 'grand society' has nothing
to do with, and cannot be reconciliated with,
solidarity in the true sense of the pursuit
of common, known goals." Hayek even
rejects equality of luck, for this would
nullify differences between "players"
before the beginning of the game, which would
falsify the results. Of course, unions must
also disappear, for they are "incompatible
with the foundation of a society of free
men." As for those who complain of being
alienated by the market order, they are "non-domesticated,
non-civilized beings."[20] Here is "liberalism
at the service of the people"!
The theory claiming that the market is never
unfair because of its impersonal and abstract
nature obviously has the advantage of forbidding
the measure of reality in terms of concrete
results. With the general interest reduced,
at best, to maintaining public order and
to providing some collective services, and
with justice defined in terms of formal-universal
rules limited to regulating the agents' behavior,
the market cannot be evaluated in terms of
its substantial dimension, i. e., according
to its results. The same goes for justice,
which would have no substantial content because
goals do not have their own normativity.
In society there is no life "content."
Furthermore, since social justice cannot
be defined positively, any debate about its
essence is useless. The system is thus perfectly
"locked." One has to obey the market
order because it has not been wanted by anyone
and it simply imposed itself. One must follow
the established order without trying to understand
it or rebelling against it. Similarly, "losers"
must develop a new moral whereby "it
is only normal to accept the course of events,
even when they are unfavorable." This
is an unqualified apology for success, no
matter what the cause, and at the same time
the radical denial of equity in the traditional
sense of the term. It is also a perfect way
to soothe the conscience of "winners"
and to enjoin "losers" from revolting.
Hayek's viewpoint thus leads to a "veritable
theorization of indifference toward human
unhappiness."[21] Ultimately, the market
replaces the Leviathan.
The "grand society" turns out to
be as unpolitical (impolitique) as possible.[22]
Public order is seen as resulting without
any intentions and no big political project
can be grounded on will or reason because
there is no social master of the historical
process. Ultimately, the rule of the market
tends to deprive public power of an object.
Against Carl Schmitt, who makes law dependent
on authority and political decision, Hayek
claims that authority cannot and must not
be obeyed except when it applies the law.
(There is, however, considerable discretion
concerning the nature of legal obligation).
At the same time, against Hans Kelsen's legal
positivism, which identifies norms (loi)
with the legislator's decision and as the
essential source of law (droit) and justice,
he declares that law has always existed --
before legislators' and the state's authority.
His praise of common law seeks to demonstrate
that law preceded all legislation, which
is the foundation of the theory of legal
normativism. This is the new basis of the
legal system (Etat de droit), where the state's
only role is to preserve society's "spontaneous
order" and to manage its resources.
Within such a context, the politician is
reduced, at best, to the role of a lifeguard
of formal legal rules and to the administrative
management of a civil society already ordered
by the market. He does not have to produce
this society, assign it a goal, spread values
or generate cohesion. Hayek vigorously rejects
the notion of sovereignty, traditionally
defined as indivisible authority (whether
the prince's or the people's), in which he
sees only a "constructivist superstition":
the society which functions best is the one
in which no one rules. "In a society
of free men," he writes, "in normal
times the highest authority must have no
power to role or give any orders whatsoever."[23]
Its essential goal is to place public power
at the disposal of the "nomocracy."
He even denies that there can be "political
necessities." Nemo adds: "All things
considered, the mere idea of political power
is incompatible with the concept of a society
of free men."[24] Since there is no
politics without power, this is clearly a
call for the total elimination of the political.
Here democracy is defined in a purely legal
and formal manner. Furthermore, Hayek openly
claims that his liberalism is only conditionally
compatible with democracy. More precisely,
he adheres to constitutionalism and to the
theory of a representative and limited government.
But he has no theory of the state. He knows
only "government," which he defines
as the "administrator of common resources,"
i. e., a purely utilitarian device. He adds
that democracy is only acceptable as a method
of government which does not question any
liberal principles. In fact, Hayek's postulate
ends up denying democracy understood as a
regime with a substantial content (an identity
between the ruler and the ruled) and resting
on popular sovereignty. Like the market,
democracy (or what remains of it) becomes
a matter of impersonal rules and of formal
procedures without any content.[25] Hayek
vigorously criticizes majority rule, which
he sees as an arbitrary principle opposed
to individual freedom. According to Nemo,
majority rule is valuable as a "method
of decision, but not as a source of authority
to determine the very content of the decision."[26]
From this follows the rejection of the notion
of people as a political category, the denial
of the idea of national sovereignty ("there
is no will of the social body that can be
sovereign") and the refusal of all forms
of direct democracy.[27]
Paradoxically, this "unpolitical"
ideal brings Hayek's ideas close to Marxist
"constructivism," which criticizes
Hegel on the basis of Smith by proclaiming
the self-sufficiency of civil society. In
the classless society, the withering away
of the state ultimately leads to the obsolescence
of politics. Marx, who never entirely breaks
with a certain individualism, does not consider
man as a social being except to the extent
that he participates in the construction
of society. "Within the Marxist framework,"
writes Bertrand Nezeys, "socialism must
represent the triumph of an individualist
society or simply of individualism --private
society representing only an alienated form
of it."[28] Rosanvallon, who has no
problem seeing Marx as "the direct heir
of Adam Smith," remarks that "anti-capitalism
has become synonymous with anti-liberalism,
so that socialism has no other real objective
than to fulfill the program of the liberal
utopia." Furthermore, "utopian
socialism rejects capitalism entirely, but
remains blind to the profound meaning of
the economic ideology within which it functions.
Similarly, liberalism denounces collectivism,
but does not see it other than as a radical
despotism; it does not analyze it in relation
to individualism, in so far as it also conveys
the illusion of a depolitized society within
which democracy reduces to consensus."[29]
It remains to be seen how this ideal is not
fundamentally totalitarian, at least if one
admits, with Hannah Arendt, that totalitarianism
is the desire to dissolve politics more that
the desire to extend it everywhere.
III
Hayek's critique of constructivism is closely
linked to the representation of the social
as an ensemble concerning which individuals
can only have incomplete information. But
does he draw the right conclusions from this?
Obviously, human information is always incomplete.
Contrary to Hayek, however, this is also
true for the "tribal order," even
if the number of parameters is smaller. Furthermore,
under the impact of slow processes, of interactions
with no clearly identifiable author, human
society generates many social facts impossible
to link to any particular intentions or projects.
Cybernetics and systems theory provide a
convincing account of this predicament in
ways which relate it to certain intuitions
of organicist thought. Moreover, one cannot
deny the value of traditions validated by
historical experience. Finally, it is obvious
that there is frequently a gap between a
project and its fulfillment -- resulting
in unforeseen consequences often regarded
as "perverse effects." Yet, this
in no way implies the logical impossibility
of undertaking any social or political action,
or of trying to shape a social order according
to a particular goal, without all voluntary
actions seeking improvement necessarily making
things worse.
At first, Hayek pretends to believe that
all constructivism is rationalism, which
betrays his "technistic" concept
of voluntary acts. Human practice is rarely
the result of reasoned examinations of pros
and cons. This is clearly the case in the
"tribal order," concerning which
Hayek says that "instincts" are
king. But it is also true of the "grand
society," especially in the political
domain, where determination of collective
goals is inevitably a function of value judgments
rarely founded on reason. Next, Hayek argues
as if human decisions require knowledge of
all parameters, which alone would allow the
proper evaluation of consequences and results.
This is predicated on complete ignorance
of decisions, notably of the fact that, far
from translating through a purely linear
effect reflecting a kind of omniscience,
they constantly undergo corrections -- men
being always able, after the initial decisions,
to multiply subsidiary decisions meant to
modify the chain of cause and effect according
to new information and preliminary results.
"Contrary to what Hayek claims,"
writes Gerard Roland, "the success of
an action does not necessarily depend on
complete knowledge of pertinent facts. One
can assume that some scientific, technical,
economic, political, social, or other action,
undertaken during the history of humanity,
was not based on such complete knowledge.
This is perhaps why no action is totally
exempt from error in relation to its initial
intention, but this relative lack of knowledge
has never been an absolute obstacle to the
success of an individual or collective human
action ... The process of knowledge is not
and has never been totally prior to action.
On the contrary, it is closely and dialectically
interwoven with it. The failure and success
of past actions provide knowledge for future
actions, which will succeed or fail in view
of this new knowledge, and so on, in a process
not necessarily linear and ,unpredictable,
but always marked with the goals people set
for themselves."[30]
Actually, the critique of constructivism
clashes with common sense, according to which
"to analyze suffering, a crisis, or
evil, is always to analyze them as a problem,
as one which can be solved and whose solution
is technical."[31] In this respect,
to claim that one cannot or, better yet,
must not, correct a situation for which no
one is originally responsible, is a pure
paralogism. It is actually irresponsible
not to act on effects, even if no one is
responsible for their cause. Thus the question
is not to know if a situation can be judged
"just" or "unjust," according
to abstract criteria, but rather if it is
"just" to accept what is not acceptable
for ethical, political or other reasons.
Is it imaginable to fail to improve the security
of boats or planes under the pretext that
"no one is responsible" for the
nature of the oceans or of space? By shifting
the criteria of "justice" from
human subjectivity to the objectivity of
the situation, by claiming that a situation
has no identifiable culprit in order to conclude
that it is impossible to change it, Hayek
reveals his personal preferences. But he
does not demonstrates that man is by definition
powerless in relation to a social fact no
one wanted.
Finally, Hayek seems to argue that man is
not omniscient in order to render him powerless.
Yet, man's ability to modify a state of affairs
depends much more on the means at his disposal
than on the extent of his "information."
With Hayek, it is as if the only alternative
was between an actually utopian will to reconstruct
the whole social order from the bottom up,
making a "tabula rasa of the past,"
and a total acceptance of the established
order (or disorder). Within this logic of
all or nothing -- metaphysical because of
its aim toward the absolute, all political
projects, all will to reform or transform
can only appear as an unbearable disruption
[rupturalisme]. Such an approach feeds into
the classical liberal condemnation of the
autonomy of politics for the simple reason
that, since politics is primarily project
and decision, ultimately there is no politics
which is not constructivist. But it is also
a process that can turn against its author.
If, as Hayek says, it is actually impossible
to anticipate the real results of human actions,
so that the most logical attitude is to do
nothing to try to change society, it is unclear
why it is necessary to try to establish the
liberal order, which should unavoidably come
about because of its intrinsic excellence
and of the advantage it provides to the society
which adopts it. It is equally unclear why
one should follow Hayek's ideas, e. g., his
monetary or constitutional proposals,[32]
which entail a more or less radical rupture
in relation to the present situation.
Hayek's critique thus boils down to an incapacitating
system, destined to comfort the worst conservatism.
To claim that the market is neither fair
nor unfair is tantamount to claiming that
its effects should not be judged, that it
is the new divinity -- the new God in front
of which one must bow. Then one must no longer
look for values to realize in society, but
simply recognize the existing value system
which allows one to be a member. One must
mind ones's own business without ever calling
into question the social order or worrying
about the course of history, which can unfold
best only without human interference. This
is the kind of individual "autonomy"
Hayek allows. The individual is emancipated
from political power exercised in the name
of the social totality only to end up unable
to undertake any projects with his peers.
Hayek puts it quite forcefully: "Man
is not the master of his destiny and never
will be." Man can do what he wants,
but he will not know how to want what he
does. The object of a society which only
functions well on its own is thus defined
in terms of powerlessness and submission.
According to Hayek, freedom can only be exercised
within the context of that which denies it.
Thus it is not an exaggeration to say that
man is thereby deprived of his humanity because,
if there is a fundamental characteristic
which distinguishes human beings from animals,
it is the ability to conceive and realize
collective projects. By depriving humanity
of this ability, by turning market monotheism
into the new "empire of necessity,"
Hayek surreptitiously regresses to the "pre-tribal"
stage of pure animality.[33]
Here it is clear that it is impossible to
use Hayek's analysis to return to tradition.
Actually, Hayek only praises tradition in
an instrumental context, in order to legitimate
an order based on the market. In his eyes,
traditions can only be valuable if they constitute
"pre-rational regulations," which
have favored the emergence of an impersonal
and abstract order where the market constitutes
the most advanced result. When he speaks
about traditions favorably, it is to evoke
the slow evolution of societies toward modernity,
the sedimentation of usages which have allowed
(at least in the West) the "grand society"
to triumph. Thus all other traditions can
only be rejected. There is, however, a contradiction
in principle between traditions that, by
definition, are always part of particular
cultures, and the universality of the formal
rules Hayek advocates. Since, as it is commonly
admitted, Western modernity has rolled over
all traditions everywhere, it is easy to
see here that Hayek's "traditionalism"
only relates to the tradition ... of the
extinction of traditions.
In this regard, Hayek remains true to some
of his predecessors' perspectives, in particular
David Hume's, to whom he frequently refers.
In the 18th century, in his Political Essays,
Hume already criticized Locke and those like
him, who accorded too important a place to
reason: by itself, reason is unable to oppose
the passions. The latter can only be channeled
by "non arbitrary artifices," which
are not the result of a preestablished design
Among these non-arbitrary artifices are habits,
customs and institutions sanctified by use.
Justice is itself a "grown institution,"
while custom turns out to be the best substitute
for reason in guiding human practice. Thus
the emphasis on traditions allows him to
hold back passions, all the while economizing
on the fiction of the social contract. For
Hume, however, institutions are not the result
of a "selection" during the course
of history. If they are not arbitrary, it
is because they correspond to the general
principles of understanding.[34]
The real nature of Hayek's "traditionalism"
clearly appears in his critique of the "tribal
order," whose different forms of constructivism
constitute so many anachronistic resurgences.
The "tribal order" is actually
nothing more than traditional society as
opposed to modem society, or community as
opposed to society. In fact, all of the organic
and holistic characteristics of traditional
and communitarian societies are condemned
by Hayek as traits antagonistic to the "grand
society." The tradition he defends knows
neither collective goals nor the common good;
neither social values nor a shared symbolical
imaginary. In short, it is a "tradition"
deemed valuable only to the extent that it
is born out of the break-up of "archaic"
societies. Paradoxically, it is anti-traditional
thought camouflaged as the "defense
of traditions"!
According to Yvan Blot, "a liberalism
of the traditionalist kind is national, because
the nation itself comes out of tradition
and not from an arbitrary construction of
the spirit."[35] This statement presupposes
a double misunderstanding. On the one hand,
the modern idea of the nation is truly an
"arbitrary construction of the spirit,"
because it is first and foremost a creation
of Enlightenment philosophy and of the French
Revolution -- the kingdom of France, which
historically preceded it, having itself been
constructed in a manner necessarily voluntarist
and "constructivist" by the Capetian
dynasty. On the other hand, it is common
knowledge that Hayek's or any other liberalism
cannot assign a privileged place to the nation,
because its concept of the social does not
operate in a politically bound territory
but in a market. For the mercantilists, the
"national" territory and economic
space were still confused and Smith, in his
Wealth of Nations, sharply differentiates
these two concepts. For Smith, the boundaries
of the market are constantly constructed
and modified, no longer coinciding with the
static boundaries of the nation or the kingdom:
it is the domain of the market, no longer
that of the territory, which is the real
key to wealth. As such, as Rosanvallon put
it, Smith is "the first consistent internationalist."
After Smith, the same postulate will be advocated
once again by the whole liberal tradition.
While the nation can provide citizens with
an identity, it cannot become the criterion
of economic activity nor can it control or
limit exchanges. Consequently, it is impossible
to bring together legal, political, and economic
spaces within a given territory and under
a particular authority. From the viewpoint
of economic activity, there cannot be any
boundaries: laissez-faire, laissez-passer.
Correlatively, the merchant is no longer
anything but an economic entity. According
to Smith: "A merchant is not necessarily
a citizen of any particular country. He is
largely indifferent where he carries out
his business, and only the slightest disgust
is necessary for him to decide to take his
capital from one country to another, and
with it all the industry that capital financed."[36]
This statement captures all the ambiguity
of "national-liberalism."
IV
Coming back to Hayek's concept of the market,
by instrumentalizing traditions, to resolve
the question of the foundation of obligation
in the social pact by the legitimacy of the
market. This is a constant preoccupation
in liberal thought. The point is always to
find a natural foundation for the social
order: "sympathy" with Smith, "custom"
for Hume, etc. This poses the problem of
the "state of nature" hypothesis,
which in Locke's thought is resolved by means
of the deployment of the fiction of a primitive
scene: the social contract. As already indicated,
in Smith's line of thought, this fiction
is useless: the "invisible hand,"
whose intervention produces the necessary
market adjustments, also explains the permanence
of the social order. Unlike other liberal
authors, however, Hayek does not simply regard
the market as "natural." On the
contrary, he recognizes that it comes about
at a particular time in history. Yet, it
is only this coming into being that he considers
natural: without originally being a natural
phenomenon, the market is supposed to appear
"naturally" under the impact of
a gradual automatic selection. Hayek's naturalism
relies on the idea of inevitable progress
based on objective laws unshackled by cultural
evolution.
Hayek's cleverness consists in this: by combining
the evolutionist theory and the doctrine
of the "invisible hand," the "naturality"
of the market it established without having
to posit it as original. He does away with
the idea of a natural order or self-evident
truth. At the same time, he appropriates
the liberal postulate according to which
there are objective laws such as the free
interaction of individual strategies leading
not only to order but to the best possible
one. As such, however, he does not avoid
the classic aporia of liberal thought in
explaining how a viable social order can
be constituted solely on the basis of individual
sovereignty. The difficulty is "to presuppose
the presence of the whole in each part. If
the social was not already, in any way, contained
in the parts, it is hard to see how they
could agree."[37] Then the necessary
postulate is that of a continuity of the
parts with the whole. However, this does
not work, if for no other reason than Bertrand
Russell's theory of logical types ("a
class cannot be a member of itself, anymore
than one of its members can be the class").
In other words, there is necessarily a discontinuity
between the whole and its parts, and this
poses problems for liberal pretenses.
Hayek's vision of a "primitive"
man living in the "tribal order,"
while rather different from that of Hobbes
or Locke, or even Rousseau, is otherwise
anthropologically trivial. To regard traditional
societies as privileging voluntarist ("constructivist")
behavior is questionable, because these societies
are governed precisely by traditions seeking
to reproduce themseves. On the contrary,
it can be argued that it is the "grand
society" which welcomes new projects
and deliberate designs. In other words, it
is traditional and "tribal" societies
which come about spontaneously, while modern
societies are instituted. Alain Caille rightly
observes that, to make freedom a function
of conformity to the traditional order "leads
paradoxically to the conclusion that the
only just society conceivable is a closed
one rather than the Liberal Grand Society."[38]
By definition, the society whose "themis"
is closest to "nomos" is actually
a closed traditional society (open, however,
to the cosmos): from Hayek's viewpoint, it
is even more "just" (or, rather,
even less "unjust") in that it
seeks to perpetuate its identity by founding
itself on usage.
The idea according to which long-lasting
institutions are the result of "men's
action, but not their designs," is not
any less questionable. The English Right,
frequently cited as a typical example of
an institution based on custom, was really
born in a relatively authoritarian and brutal
manner "following royal and parliamentary
interventions, and it is the result of the
creative work of lawyers belonging to the
centralized administration of justice."[39]
More generally, the whole English liberal
order is the result of the 17th century conflict
between Parliament and the Crown rather than
of spontaneous evolution.
As for the market, if it is not the natural
form of exchange. Its birth cannot be related
to a slow evolution of customs and institutions
free of all "constructivism." Rather,
the opposite is the case: the market constituting
a typical example of an instituted order.
As already indicated, the logic of the market,
a phenomenon both particular and recent,
does not come into being until the end of
the Middle Ages, when the emerging states,
concerned with monetarizing economies in
order to increase their fiscal resources,
began to unify local and long distance commerce
at the heart of "national" markets
they could more easily control. In Western
Europe, France in particular, the market,
far from being a reaction against the state,
came into being through its initiative. Only
subsequently did it emancipate itself from
"national" borders and constraints,
with the gradual growth of the autonomy of
economics. Strictly a voluntary creation,
at the beginning the market was one of the
means the nation-state used to dispose of
the feudal order. It sought to facilitate
fiscal practices in the modem sense of the
term (non-market, intra-communitarian exchanges
were intractable). This entailed the gradual
elimination of autonomous organic communities
and, consequently, centralization. In this
way, both the nation-state and the market
favored an atomized society where individuals
are gradually disentangled from all intermediary
socialization.
Finally, Hayek's dichotomy between spontaneous
and instituted order is untanable. It simply
never existed. To say that society evolves
spontaneously amounts to claiming that it
is transformed by the sole impact of man's
voluntary actions. The claim that the logic
of spontaneous order could not interfere
with that of the instituted order without
resulting in catastrophic consequences is
also completely arbitrary. The history of
humanity is the result of such an interplay.
The claim that the formation of the social
order is the result of "unconscious"
practices, independent of all goals or collective
aims, is simply wrong. There has never been
such a society. The self-organization of
society is both more complex and less spontaneous
than Hayek claims. If rules and traditions
influence human life, one cannot overlook,
without falling into a purely linear and
mechanical vision, that men, in turn, also
affect rules and traditions. When all is
said and done, Hayek does not see that societies
are never instituted only on the basis of
spontaneous practices and individual interests,
but first in the symbolic order, on the basis
of values whose representation always implies
a gap with respect to this practice.
The question also arises concerning how one
moves from the "tribal" and traditional
order to that of the "grand society."
Although essential for his argument, Hayek
does elaborate this point. How could a particular
society, say, a communitarian and holistic
one, "naturally" give birth to
an essentially individualistic society --
a society of the opposite type? It is possible
to answer this question by following Louis
Dumont, i. e., by describing the emergence
of modernity as the result of the slow process
of secularization of Christian ideology.
But Hayek never pays much attention to ideological
factors and, at any rate, it would be problematic
for his thesis to claim that the "grand
society" came out of a "constructivist"
rapture. (Actually, what is more constructivist
than the will to create a new religion?).
This is why he falls back on the evolutionist
scheme, i. e., to a social Darwinism entailed
by the idea of progress.
Of course, Hayek does not fall into a crude
biologism. His Social Darwinism, carefully
outlined in The Constitution of Liberty,
consists primarily in positing human history
as the reflection of a cultural evolution
functioning according to the model of biological
evolution. As in all liberalism, economic
competition is seen as advancing progress
just as, in the animal kingdom, the "struggle
for life" is supposed to pave the way
for selection. Traditions, institutions and
social facts are also explained in this manner.
Similarly, there is a constant surreptitious
shift from facts to norms: liberal society
and the market economy are values since they
have been "naturally selected"
in the course of evolution. Value is thus
a function of success. This view is particularly
explicit in Hayek's last book,[40] where
capitalism is seen not so much in terms of
its economic efficiency but as the non plus
ultra of human evolution. This identification
of value with success is typical of all evolutionary
visions of history. If evolution "selects"
what is best adapted to the conditions of
the moment, all that has happened in history
can only be regarded in an approving and
optimistic manner. Selection sanctifies the
best -- the proof that they are the best
being that they have been selected. The replacement
of the "tribal order" by the "grand
society," the rise of modernity, the
success of individualism over holism, are
thus part of the order of things. In other
words, the state of evolution reflects exactly
what must be. Human history can then be read
as progress, reinterpreted by Hayek as the
march of "freedom."[41] "In
a universe without progress," writes
Henri Lepage, "freedom would have no
raison d'etre ..."
Obviously, the parallel between cultural
and biological evolution raises methodological
problems, beginning with the question as
to what the liberal order is best "adapted."
From this viewpoint, Hayek's almost mechanical
application of the theory of natural selection
to social values and institutions does not
escape the criticism that the theory is tautological.
As Frydman remarks, "the utilitarian-evolutionary
perspective which inscribes cultural developments
in a finalized sequence is either trivial
or unverifiable. It is trivial because human
institutions are necessarily adequate for
the goals or the survival of each society
that produces them. It is unverifiable because,
if it is proper to claim that institutions
are adapted, and not even necessarily as
a whole and always relatively in terms of
particular objectives, there is no escape
from this vicious circle in order to be able
to say that these are the best, or the fittest
which were ultimately selected."[42]
According to Jean-Pierre Dupuy, if Hayek
"had followed to the end logical and
systems theories of self-organization, of
which he was from the beginning an advocate,
he would have understood that they cannot
be accommodated to the vicious circles of
neo-Darwinism on the subject of the survival
of the fittest."[43]
This evolutionary model also clashes with
Western particularity which, as in all ethnocentric
viewpoints, is posed as the embodiment of
normality, while, on the contrary, it is
the exception. Hayek never explains why the
liberal order and the market were not "selected"
as the most adequate forms of life in any
society other than in the West. He also does
not explain why, in other parts of the world,
social order "spontaneously" evolved
in other directions ... or did not evolve
at all.[44] More generally, Hayek does not
seem to realize that all forms of "spontaneous"
order, including those in the West, are not
necessarily compatible with liberal principles.
A social system can evolve "spontaneously"
toward a traditional or "reactionary"
order as well as toward a liberal one. It
is also by arguing for the "natural
character" of traditions that the counter-revolutionary
school, represented mainly by Bonald and
Maistre, develops its critique of liberalism
and pleads for theocracy and absolute monarchy.
Hayek reasons as if common sense were spontaneously
liberal, which clashes with historical experience,
and as if it developed autonomously, while
one of the characteristics of modem society
is precisely its heteronomy. It cannot be
otherwise: if the rise of the liberal order
is not solely explained by "natural
selection," its entire system immediately
collapses.
In fact, however, the market order has not
been "selected" everywhere. Then
how can one claim that the selection from
which this order is supposed to result is
"natural?" Moreover, how can one
show that this order is the best there is?
Here, the difficulty for Hayek is to go from
stating a supposed fact to stating a norm.
From the claim that institutions cannot be
the product of voluntary human designs (allegedly
a fact), he concludes that there must be
no attempt to transform them (a norm). From
the claim that institutions are the result
of a cultural evolution functioning according
to the model of biological evolution (allegedly
a fact), he concludes that such a result
necessarily constitutes progress (a norm).
But then he becomes caught in a classic aporia:
"is" is not equivalent to "should
be." In reality, Hayek knows very well
that his preference for a system of particular
values, in this case the liberal order, cannot
be logically grounded. This is why he conceals
his choice behind evolutionary considerations,
which confers upon his reasoning an air of
objectivity. Furthermore, there is a contradiction
between claiming that all moral rules are
equal in that they result from a "selection"
guaranteeing their adaptation to social life,
and Hayek's need to show that liberal society
is objectively the best. The question here
is whether the liberal order is the best
because of its intrinsic qualities, or because
it has been "sanctified" by evolution.
These are totally different things. If the
answer is that the liberal order is the best
because it has been "naturally selected"
in the course of history, it is then necessary
to explain why it was not selected everywhere
and why, moreover, completely different orders
were selected. If, on the other hand, the
answer is that it is the best because of
its own merits (the position of the classic
liberal school), then the market is no longer
a norm but a model, i. e., a system among
others, and it is no longer possible to demonstrate
its excellence by relying on a fact external
to these virtues, in this case, evolution.
Hayek cannot escape this dilemma other than
by falling back once again on that utilitarianism
which he claimed to have left behind, i.
e., by claiming that the market no longer
constitutes a means to coordinate all human
activities without any plans, that it is
simply the generic model of organization
most conducive to human development. Thus
he does not avoid recourse to this process
when he explains that the "grand society"
came about "because the most efficient
institutions prevailed in a competitive process."
But such reasoning implies a double inconvenience.
On the one hand, it leads back to a totally
arbitrary judgement: to claim that all human
aspirations boil down to a principle of efficiency
which allows the best to materially enrich
themselves is simply another way of saying
that there is no higher value than this enrichment
(while Hayek claims that the economy does
not have as its main goal the creation of
wealth). But then, on the other hand, it
is no longer clear what is the advantage
of a market defined as an epistemological
tool allowing access to a global order. If
the superiority of the market actually rests
only in its ability to produce wealth, and
if the first priority is self-enrichment,
there is no longer any reason for those who
fail to be satisfied with their lot or to
find the unequal distribution of goods "normal."
Thus Caille poses the right question: "Does
not making market efficiency the criteria
and the goal of justice amount to reintroducing
in its very definition considerations allegedly
done away with?"[45] By falling back
on a utilitarian appreciation of the market,
Hayek renders null and void all he has said
about the "non-injustice" of the
"grand society."
Hayek's critique of utilitarianism appears
the least ambiguous. Linked, along with that
of rationalism and positivism, to the denunciation
of"constructivism," it aims at
best for the "straight utilitarianism"
of a Jeremy Benthan, who defines general
happiness as the happiness of the greatest
number. According to Hayek, this definition
remains too tied to the idea of the common
good. It actually legitimates the logic of
sacrifice, which it closely relates to a
numeric quantity. Pareto proposed the principle
that, if some people can bring about a social
transformation without others suffering from
it, then this transformation is to be recommended.
Bentham's utilitarianism transgresses this
principle by going too far. If what is essential
is the satisfaction of the majority, it can
be argued that a transformation which improves
the gains of the greatest number while worsening
the losses of a small number is still justified.
Hayek rejects the idea that the sacrifice
of a few is legitimate if it contributes
to the advantage of all others (which is
also one of the points of the victimological
mechanism of the theory of the scapegoat),[46]
simply because he does not allow the notion
of "collective utility," even if
defined as the simple aggregation of individual
utilities. Here his position is indistinguishable
from that of Robert Nozick or even John Rawls,
according to whom: "each person possesses
an inviolability founded on justice upon
which even the good of society considered
as a whole cannot prevail. For this reason,
the deprivation of the freedom of some people
cannot be justified by a larger good that
others would receive in return. It is incompatible
with freedom to admit that sacrifices imposed
on some people can be compensated by the
increase of the advantages that a large number
would receive."[47] But is this refusal
sincere? When Hayek proposes to the losers
in the catalactic "game" that they
should accept their lot as the least "unfair"
option, is he not somehow calling on them
to sacrifice themselves for the proper functioning
of the general order of the market? There
is an ambiguity here which leads back to
the already discussed "impure individualism."
Hayek opposes individualism to utilitarianism
but, despite himself, he falls into this
same utilitarianism each time he boasts of
the efficiency of the "invisible hand,"
each time he legitimates the market in terms
of its intrinsic merits, or when he identifies
success as the highest value.[48]
V
This is how Caille defines the two aporias
of liberal critical rationalism: "The
first comes from the fact that critical reason
is not self-sufficient. In order to be critical,
reason must find something other than itself
to criticize and this something cannot be
something purely negative. The second aporia
follows from the first. Critical reason does
not come to believe it can exhaust the real,
unless it supposes that it boils down to
a negative rationale, which would constitute
its only identity. Liberal critical reason
is thus based on an identitarian representation
of social relations, which contradicts the
idea of freedom."[49]
Max Weber has shown that there is always
a contradiction between formal and substantial
rationality, and that the two can always
come into conflict. Thus the problem of the
substantial content of freedom cannot be
dealt with by simply focusing of the procedures
which are supposed to guarantee it. Here
the hypothesis of spontaneous adjustments
of the economic and social agents' various
competing projects within a context of total
freedom of exchange -- optimal adjustments
not in an ideal but in a possible sense,
i. e., in reference to the real cognitive
life-conditions of the social members --
presupposing there are no irreducible antagonisms
concerning interests, destructive market
crises, etc., turns out to be profoundly
utopian. In fact, the very idea that the
values of freedom and of a spontaneous order
arising out of practice can be fused rests
on a representation of society without any
public space.
As already indicated, Hayek does not hesitate
to claim, along with classical liberals,
that the market maximizes the well-being
of all. He claims it constitutes a "game"
which increases the chances of all players,
considered individually, to achieve their
individual goals. This claim clashes with
an obvious objection: how can the market
maximize the chances of individuals to achieve
their goals if in principle these goals cannot
be known? At any rate, as Caille writes,
"if such were the case ... it would
be easy to maintain that the market economy
has multiplied the goals of individuals more
than their means to realize these goals;
it has, according to the psychological mechanism
analyzed by Tocqueville, increased dissatisfaction.
This is a sort of reminder that the goals
of individuals do not fall from the sky but
come from the social and cultural system
within which they find themselves. Thus it
is unclear why, e. g., the members of a savage
society could not have infinitely more chances
to realize their individual goals than those
of the "grand society." Hayek would
probably reply that the savages were not
'free' to choose their own objectives. This
would be as difficult to demonstrate as that
modem individuals determine themselves."[50]
The representation of catalaxis as a game
providing "impersonal" chances
and in which it is normal for there to be
winners and losers is in reality untenable.
The existence of abstract rules does not
actually suffice to guarantee that everyone
will have the same chance to win or lose.
Hayek forgets that the chance to win is not
the same for all, and that the losers are
often always the same ones. Hence, the results
of the game cannot be regarded as uncertain.
In order for them to become uncertain, it
would be necessary for the game to be "corrected"
by the willful intervention of public power,
which Hayek vigorously rejects. What is one
to think of a game where, as if by chance,
the winners keep winning, while the losers
keep losing? According to Hayek, to charge
that the spontaneous order is "unjust"
is tantamount to falling into anthropomorphism
or "animism," even in the logic
of the scapegoat, because it would be like
looking for someone responsible or guilty,
where no one is. But, as Jean-Pierre Dupuy
has noted, here the argument backfires because,
if there is a decisive acquisition in the
process of social evolution, it is that it
is now generally ackowledged that it is not
fair to condemn an innocent person. From
this viewpoint, it is rather the denial of
the mere notion of social injustice which
calls for pause. In seeking to avoid the
logic of the scapegoat, Hayek himself becomes
guilty of it: in his system, not only are
scapegoats simply the victims of social injustice,
they are even forbidden to complain. To claim
that social justice means nothing amounts
to transforming the victims of injustice
into scapegoats of a theory of its legitimation.
Then the sophism consists in saying that
social order is neither just nor unjust,
while concluding that we must accept it as
it is, i. e., as though it were just.
Here, the ambiguity comes from occasionally
posing the market as intrinsically the creator
of freedom (the basis of his thesis), while
at times posing freedom as a means of the
generalized efficiency of the market. But,
then, what is the real goal -- individual
freedom or economic efficiency? Hayek would
probably say that these two objectives are
really only one and the same. Yet, it has
to be shown how they operate in relation
to one another. In fact, Hayek's definition
of freedom shows how ultimately it is the
latter, whose function is to guarantee the
market, which becomes an end in itself. For
Hayek, freedom is neither an attribute of
human nature nor a complement of reason but
an historical achievement, a value brought
into being by the "grand society."
Furthermore, it is a purely individual, negative
and homogenous freedom. Hayek goes so far
as to say that freedom is suffocated where
various freedoms are pleaded.[51] Thus the
market only creates the conditions for freedom
because freedom is put at the market's disposal.
As such, the ethic of freedom is turned into
the ethic of well-being, which amounts to
falling once again into utilitarianism. Hayek
proposes only one instrumental vision of
freedom: it is valuable only to the extent
that it allows the functioning of the market.
Lastly, to identify the market with the social
order reveals a most reductive economism.
As Frydman put it: "The market is inevitably
an economy. It forms a system which presupposes
continuity between a social arrangement and
the objectives it can satisfy. In order for
the market to function, it must itself be
founded on a social relation able to translate
itself into quantifiable language and be
able to propose market ends, or at least
transform them into monetary and profitable
guidelines for enterprises. As such, we cannot
avoid the obligation to ground a market society
on its economic performance, and in return
to select the rules of fair play according
to these same objectives."[52] When
all is said and done, the only thing defensible
is "legislation adequate to the mode
of existence of products of human activity
such as commodities, worked out within a
competitive process."[53] Such is also
Caille's conclusion: "The slight of
hand of liberal ideology, of which Hayek
provides the best example, is in the identification
of a state based on law with the market,
in its reduction to the role of the market.
As such, the plea for individual freedom
boils down to real obligations, which is
to have no other goals than those of the
market."[54]
Liberal doctrine claims that all can be bought
and sold in a self-regulated market. As Rosanvallon
put it, this economistic ideology "translates
the fact that relations between men are understood
as relations between market values."
As such, it subscribes to the denial of the
traditional difference, recognized at least
since Aristotle, between economics and politics
or, rather, it only grasps this difference
in order to invert relations of subordination
between the first and the second. It leads,
then, to what Lepage calls the "generalized
economy," i. e., the reduction of the
social dimension to an economic (liberal)
model, by means of a process founded on a
methodological individualism which legitimates
itself with the conviction that, "if,
as economic theory claims, economic agents
behave in as relatively rational way and
generally pursue their best preference in
matters of producing, investing, consuming,
there is no reason to think that it works
differently in other social activities; e.
g., when it is a matter of electing a representative,
choosing a profession, then a career, taking
a spouse, having children, foreseeing their
education ... The paradigm of homo oeconomicus
is thus used not only to explain the logic
of production or consumption but also to
explore the ensemble of social relations
based on the interaction of decisions and
individual actions."[55]
Hayek's efforts differ from classical liberalism
because of his attempt to re-ground the doctrine
at the highest possible level without recourse
to the fiction of the social contract and
by attempting to avoid the critiques usually
made of rationalism, utilitarianism, the
postulate of a general equilibrium or of
pure and perfect competition founded on the
transparency of information. In order to
do this, Hayek is forced to raise the stakes
and to turn the market into a global concept
necessary because of its totalizing character.
The result is a new utopia, predicated on
as many paralogisms and contradictions. Actually,
as Caille put it, were it not for "the
welfare state's failure to achieve social
peace, the market order would have been swept
away a long time ago." A society based
on Hayek's principles would explode in a
short time. Furthermore, its institution
can only be the product of a pure "constructivism"
and would undoubtedly require a dictatorial
state. As Albert O. Hirschman writes, "this
allegedly idyllic privatized citizenship,
which only pays attention to its economic
interests and indirectly serves the public
interest without ever playing a direct role
-- all of this can only be achieved within
nightmarish political conditions."[56]
That today "national thought" is
being reinvigorated by this type of theory
says a lot about the collapse of this thought.
[Telos, Winter 98, Issue 110]
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