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Hayek: A Critique
Alain de Benoist
The "Club de l'Horloge" held its
5th annual meeting October 20-22 1989 in Nice, on "Liberalism at the People's
Service." The general tone was "national liberal" conservative. According
to the Club's president, Henry de Lesquen, "there can be no authentic liberal society
as long as the concept of man emerging from the Western, humanist and Christian tradition
has not prevailed."[1] The objective was to contrapose two liberal traditions:
Locke's vs. Hume's and Burke's, i.e., a "bad liberalism" leading to libertarian
or anarcho-capitalist movements, and a "good liberalism" concerned with
preserving tradition and thus reconcilable with a "nationalist" perspective.
This politically opportunistic approach legitimates itself by appealing to a long gone
author: Friedrich A. (von) Hayek. While the distinction[2] has recently been somewhat
mitigated, "national liberalism" (or conservative liberalism) constantly
reappears in the history of ideas.[3] A good way to approach this problem is to begin with
Hayek's works.
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, Winter98, Issue 110]