[In statu nascendi]
In an article entitled "Does Hayek Make Sense?", Tyler Cowen tries to glorify his trivial and woolly take on Hayek (based on a cursory reading of Hayek's last book "The Fatal Conceit") into a show of profundity that culminates in the oracular conclusion (still upheld 20 years after writing the article) that he does not know whether Hayek makes sense to him or not.
Little wonder, as neither then nor 20 years later did he bother to study Hayek carefully.
Dear Tyler,
Having read your short essay, I still cannot grasp what is troubling you about Hayek's stance?
Hayek provides a rich theory of TAXIS (a made order), COSMOS (a grown or spontaneous order) and the interaction of taxis and cosmos. Agents of the spontaneous order such as firms will to a large extent be run in the manner of taxis. This is also true for agents that one might consider part of the public sector - law enforcing institutions, for example. Agents such as firms or courts or political bodies must, however, be allowed or induced to interact in such a way as to further rather than stifle the spontaneous order of the market or the rule of law or most generally the freedom of society. While being taxis-type institutions (to some extent or even to a large extent), what matters is that their interaction obeys the requirements of a Great Society (Adam Smith) or Open Society (Popper), i.e. that their interaction is not regulated by taxis-type rules but by cosmos-type rules. Thus, we may quite purposefully design an organisational framework for a law enforcing institution (thus engaging in taxis-type behaviour), however, only to make it as efficient as we can in safeguarding "general rules of just conduct", which promote cosmos-type of behaviour, the very precondition of a free society. This is analogous to running, planing and organising a company (taxis-type behaviour) that in its interaction with other companies must observe "general rules of just conduct", to guarantee the spontaneous order of the market (cosmos-type behaviour).
Kind regards,
IGTU
Posted by: IGTU at Feb 14, 2007 4:12:31 PM
My vote is on NO.
(Said with the intonation from Little Britain's "Computer says NO." sketch.)
Posted by: Gabriel M. at Feb 14, 2007 5:25:00 PM
Dear Gabriel,
I am not that interested in your intonation as in the reasons you have to say "no", and what exactly it is that you are negating.
Kind regards,
IGTU
Posted by: IGTU at Feb 14, 2007 5:54:19 PM
I'm glad you dug up this old essay for us.
I vote "no" on Hayek. He went Pangloss on us when he started making a fuss about spontaneous order, evolved institutions, morals, etc. I agree with pre-anti-liberal John Gray's point (in the article next to yours) about many of our institutions, religions, etc being contingencies. (So says my gut). And thus Hayek's full of hot air.
Anyway, J.S. Mill is all we need---Now there's a liberal!
Posted by: Lee at Feb 14, 2007 7:39:50 PM
I've gotten my Hayek secondhand, but my feelings on what I've heard are identical to Tyler's.
Posted by: Scott Scheule at Feb 14, 2007 7:44:49 PM
Intonations, second-hand "knowledge" (flippantly admitted), feelings and "spontaneous organisations" (the equivalent of rendering Marx as treating of "communist capitalism", for in Hayek's terminology an "organisation" is crucially different from a "spontaneous order") - I say goodbye to all that and take my leave from the "cool" party atmosphere created by fine critical minds too conscientious and deep for me.
Posted by: IGTU at Feb 14, 2007 8:32:03 PM
IGTU,
I actually thought that you and I were more or less on the same page. I read your interpretation as nearly identical to mine. As for spontanious organization (not organizations) I think Hayek would agree that the emergent order of the millions of individual interactions within a complex system is a form of organization - a kind of spontaneous organization which works much better than for example planning. The economics of organization and coordination could do very well to learn from Hayek.
Posted by: liberty at Feb 14, 2007 8:47:59 PM
I'm pretty sure this isn't supposed to be a vote.
Posted by: josh at Feb 15, 2007 9:08:21 AM
Dear Liberty,
(1) Apologies for the "friendly fire".
(2) This is the second time that I follow a blog-"thread" associated with a prestigious American University, only to encounter the same disappointing pattern. A big shot conferencier proposes a riddle (which is not really a riddle but a confusion on the part of the big shot). Comments are made, as an exercise in the "abuse of democracy from below" ("Hey, I got a right to an opinion, don't I!" Disregarding the fact that with an endless range of things to have an opinion on, it should always be our striving to pronounce an opinion on matters that we have seriously looked into - unless FORCED to give an unsubstantiated opinion).
The big shot does not condescend to comment (presumably being busy to start the next fire and wise enough not to get entangled in an exchange that might damage his authority). And indeed, his authority (in the issue at hand) is never seriously questioned - partly because no one knows what they are talking about, partly because the courtier-commentators - cheeky and assertive as they may be - like to bask in the big shot's sunshine.
Characteristically, turning the "thread" into an election serves to nobilitate unsubstantiated opinion at the expense of intellectual substance. Or to put it differently: There is absolutely no need to vote on the issue (except for the doubtful reason just given). Instead, what is very much needed is the spelling out of arguments. But: in no time, everyone rushes on to the next droplet to repeat the subcultural exercise.
(3) Dear Liberty, I think I understand your position and agree with it. However, it is not fellicitous that you used an expression that represents a "contradictio in adjecto" in terms of Hayek's terminology. He contrasts "organisation(s)" against a "spontaneous order", which is the very essence of the distinction between TAXIS and COSMOS. For everyone interested in some enlightenment on this question - do read Hayeks "Arten der Ordnung" (Freiburger Studien, p.32) or "Two kinds or order" (if I remember the English title correctly - one of the papers in either "Studies in..." or "New Studies in...") - which should be readily available from the library of a prestigious American University.
Kind regards,
IGTU
Posted by: IGTU at Feb 15, 2007 2:00:48 PM
I think there is a fairly neat parallel between "spontaneous" as applied to activities within an organization, and as applied to activities within a polity, based on parallel ideas of whether there is an encompassing owner at the level in question. The upshot is that for the polity level, which Hayek is really concerned with, "spontaneous" shakes down as "voluntary," and Hayek is thus really basically within the Locke-Smith-Spencer-Rothbard-etc. definition of liberty (circumlocutions in the Constitution of Liberty notwithstanding). As for the claims for liberty, he would be with Smith, not Rothbard. I tend to read Hayek as a strategic writer who knew not to be too plain about the definition of liberty/coercion. Bottom line: "spontanoeus order" basically mean "voluntary order".
Posted by: Daniel Klein at Feb 15, 2007 3:13:21 PM
Dear Daniel,
By raising the issue of "voluntariness", I do not think you are putting your finger on it. A "(man-)made order" (taxis) and a "spontaneous or grown order" (cosmos) may both be the result of unconstrained volition, the result of "voluntary" action. (Run your company as you see fit, go about it as voluntarily as you like.) And vice versa, a free society, the rule of law, the enforcement of "generally applicable rules of just conduct" may represent constraints on voluntary action.
The crucial point is both a very practical and an epistemological one: where and how to maximize the use of dispersed knowledge.
If we run society like an organisation (taxis) we will be considerably less successful in attaining the maximising goal.
Kind regards,
IGTU
Posted by: IGTU at Feb 15, 2007 3:41:15 PM
IGTU: Notice that I spoke of two levels. As for dispersed knowledge, yeah, sure.
Posted by: Daniel Klein at Feb 15, 2007 5:06:59 PM
Dear Daniel,
Hayek has tried to draw our attention to the need to make distinctions between different types of rules, those characteristic of taxis and those characteristic of cosmos.
Taxis-type rules tell you (on a very high level of concreteness) specifically what to do (akin to or exactly like COMMANDS meant to expedite a very specific assignment: "turn left, then right, then push the blue button").
Cosmos-type rules tell you (on a very high level of abstraction) what not to do, thus creating highly general limitations within which you are entirely free to act as you wish.
A taxis-environment may grant far more scope for voluntary action than a cosmos-environment. Stalin operated in a taxis-environment; a libertarian society must have been unspeakably restrictive to him and his supporters - who may well have represented a majority within the Soviet population.
Equally, from the point of view of government as we know it, a libertarian society would be unspeakably restrictive - for it would not allow us to declare to be the law whatever commands an elected political body decides to issue. In a libertarian society (largely a private law society) we would have to prove that a law (outside of public law) is not a command of the taxis-type but a rule of the cosmos-type. Which in turn would provide the basis for a meaningful separation of powers, and would oust the seeming need for a sovereign (a final instance of unrestricted power, the King, the President, the Führer, the People or what have you) in favour of sound legal criteria to discern between proposed laws that are compatible or incompatible with liberty, as the case may be.
So Hayek's distinction between taxis and cosmos (type of rules) is also (among its many other uses) a crucial auxiliary means in debunking legal positivism - which is the essence of our legal system (and the fraud of calling something "the rule of law" that isn't the rule of law.)
Kind regards,
IGTU
Posted by: IGTU at Feb 15, 2007 6:03:38 PM
i think the bigshot you're attacking admitted he wasn't sure where he now stood on things and would be interested to hear other's positions. i'm with you on the depth of thought reflect by comments on many blogs, but that's somewhat of an odd charge to bring against commenters here (who are by and large fairly serious, experienced, educated, etc.
and i didn't know we were at a conference.
Posted by: dj superflat at Feb 15, 2007 7:27:43 PM
From an Enlightenment or Positivist point of view, which is Hume's point of view, and mine, there is simply no avoiding the conclusion that the human race is mad. There are scarcely any human beings who do not have some lunatic beliefs or other to which they attach great importance. People are mostly sane enough, of course, in the affairs of common life: the getting of food, shelter, and so on. But the moment they attempt any depth or generality of thought, they go mad almost infallibly. The vast majority adopt the local religious madness, as naturally as they adopt the local dress. But the more powerful minds will, equally infallibly, fall into the worship of some intelligent and dangerous lunatic, such as Plato, or Augustine, or Comte, or Hegel, or Marx.
David Stove, The Plato Cult, 1991
Or Hayek.
Posted by: Mike Huben at Feb 15, 2007 7:39:38 PM
Dear Daniel,
You concluded:
Bottom line: "spontanoeus order" basically mean "voluntary order".
To the contrary, in a planned society - toward which we have been moving for so long - we are trying to create a voluntary order, an order derived from and in line with our volition: Let no one make less than x $ an hour.
In a free society an "involuntary order" prevails, for no one expressly intends to bring about much higher income and wealth than in a planned society, yet this will be the result.
The first to see this was Mandeville and the most famous proponent of the idea was a certain Adam Smith.
Capitalism (an economic order dependent on a free society) cannot work in the absence of a genuine rule of law. To understand the true meaning of the rule of law, we need to comprehend the difference between taxis and cosmos type of rules.
I know of no other author, who has made the nexus more intelligible that exists between the institutions of liberty. Hayek has never looked around to see which department he belonged to and then looked at the world from the home perspective. He has stuck to the questions he had and let them take him to whatever department might be helpful in answering them. This is one of the reasons why he is so unpopular: He is too much of a jurist to the economist and vice versa, too much of an economist to the epistemologist, too much of an epistemologist to the political scientist and so on. What is really hard to come to grips with in Hayek is that he brings us from his journey among the worlds ideas that we are NOT USED TO. It is not the intricacy of his thoughts as such - it is that our thinking is so compartmentalised, so trained not to think in a truly interdisciplinary way. I cannot read Hayek without finding instructive messages I have missed before.
Kind regards,
IGTU
Posted by: IGTU at Feb 15, 2007 7:47:02 PM
Dear DJ Superflat,
Message 1: What are your thoughts on "Does Hayek Make Sense?"
Message 2: Anyone who (non-vicariously) feels he has reason to complain about bad behaviour on my part, let me know.
Kind regards,
IGTU
Posted by: IGTU at Feb 15, 2007 8:23:56 PM
Dear Mike,
I find it hard to comment on your contribution. Your quote suggests that Hume was part of the Enlightenment. Fair enough - but which strand of the Enlightenment are we talking about? He had a great fight with Rousseau, to put it mildly. And the Scottish Enlightenment deviated dramatically from the core propositions of leading figures of other, more well known strands of the Enlightenment - such as Voltaire. Hume a positivist - would you explain in what way he deserves to be treated as a positivist? And finally, regarding your own, immediate, prolific contribution ("Or Hayek.): I first read Hume, and when eventually coming across Hayek, I was struck by the extent of agreement to be found between the two. Do you mean to suggest that from a Humean point of view, Hayek ought to be regarded as a madman? Let us have more on that, please.
Kind regards,
IGTU
Posted by: IGTU at Feb 15, 2007 8:37:59 PM
Mike,
Do you believe any of Hayek's views on spontaneous order to be false? If so, why don't you quote Hayek and explain why he's incorrect rather than demonstrate your abilities to cut, paste, and assert?
Posted by: James at Feb 16, 2007 12:49:17 PM
James:
Hayek's "spontaneous order" versus "designed order" is a typical false dichotomy that obscures the reality of evolutionary systems. Evolutionary systems develop due to accretion (among other things.) Take for example his claim 'We have never designed our economic system. We were not intelligent enough for that'. That's nonsense: our economic system is a product of accreted designs, selected deliberately by central planners who thought we needed stable property, stable currency, transparent financial institutions, and a host of other things. There are aspects that are spontaneous and aspects that are designed.
IGTU:
If you don't know which strand of the enlightenment Hume occupied, look it up. It's pretty damned obvious.
David Stove's point of view was that supposedly great thinkers were pathological. The quote was from his chapter "What is Wrong with Our Thoughts." My view of Hayek is that his writings are pathological because of his fixation on propagandizing capitalism.
I'm far from the only person who thinks this way:
"[What Hayek] does not see, or will not admit, [is] that a return to "free" competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse, because more irresponsible, than that of the State. The trouble with competitions is that somebody wins them. Professor Hayek denies that free capitalism necessarily leads to monopoly, but in practice that is where it has led, and since the vast majority of people would far rather have State regimentation than slumps and unemployment, the drift towards collectivism is bound to continue if popular opinion has any say in the matter."
George Orwell, in a 1944 review of "The Road to Serfdom" by F.A. Hayek and "The Mirror of the Past" by K. Zilliacus
"But let us never forget, either, as all conventional history of philosophy conspires to make us forget, what the 'great thinkers' really are: proper objects, indeed, of pity, but even more, of horror."
David Stove
Posted by: Mike Huben at Feb 16, 2007 5:14:58 PM
Dear Mike Huben,
(1)
You suggested to me:
"If you don't know which strand of the enlightenment Hume occupied, look it up. It's pretty damned obvious."
If the issue is "pretty damned obvious" to grasp or easy to look up, why have Stove and Huben failed to do just that?
Treating the Enlightenment as an intellectual monolith and thinkers such as Voltaire and Rousseau, on the one hand, and Hume, on the other, as congenial is akin to regarding, say, Marx and Popper, as representatives of the same school of thought, because both believed themselves to be human beings rather than Mauritian dodos.
Lumping together the French philosophers Voltaire to Condorcet, on the one hand, and Scottish and English thinkers from Mandeville, Hume, Adam Smith to Edmund Burke, on the other, is to overlook the essential and irreconcilable differences between them, which are far more significant than any similarities.
Incisively, Hume has been portrayed as beating the (French) Enlightenment at its own game, pruning the boundless ambitions of reason by dint of rational analysis. True liberalism is about respecting reason by understanding and accommodating the limits of reason.
Unfortunately, the French interpretation of the ideals of political freedom has largely superseded the earlier, foundational British reading - which, I suspect, is why in the United States socialists and social democrats (supporters of the Democratic party) are called liberals, a term more appropriately applicable to those adhering to the ideas proposed by the British founding fathers of liberalism - above all Hume, whose work, preceding French "liberalism", paved the way for the Scottish moral philosophers Adam Furgeson, Adam Smith, Dugald Steward, and the authors of the American Constitution, (and the adoption of the evolutionary paradigm by Charles Darwin for the purposes of the natural sciences).
Hume's enlightenment deals with civilization as a growing order, whose quality and success depend on safeguarding the spontaneous forces underlying its development; the French enlightenment considers civilization an engineering feat of the human mind, it considers society an organization, whose quality depends on the degree to which man's conscious design is efficacious in shaping it. French Enlightenment is cognitively primitive, it thinks of an abstract order (a complex society with hundreds of million of people, most of whom do not know each other) as immediately and concretely comprehensible and fruitfully regimentable as a tribe. Hume's Enlightenment is about a complex society, where abstract rules of just conduct (rather than interested tribal commands) are required to promote the freedom and justice needed to benefit from the immense diversity of interests and values prevailing among millions of people.
Hume's enlightenment is about the principled "rule of law" (to constrain any powers-that-be, among other functions of the rule of law); the French enlightenment is about the unprincipled "rule of men (who happen to be in power)".
(2)
This is not the place to enlarge on why I object to Orwell's
"fixation on propagandizing [anti-]capitalism...monopoly [see below]... State regimentation...and collecticism". (from your quote above).
It is not clear what "unfree" competition is supposed to be - though I have a suspicion what Orwell is driving at. Suffice it to mention that the vices of "capitalism" are really the vices of a highly politicised society ("the rule of men") that - in the absence of the rule of law - induces and depends on a rat-race for the provision of special interests and its stifling imposition on a spontaneous order, which results in monopolies and countless other "bads" such as illegitimate wars, economic depression, retarded economic development or insolvent nations.
There are numerous papers explaining convincingly why economic competition is not a zero-sum game. The most graphic counter-argument in the face of the zeo-sum proposition is the computer in front of your nose, your standard of living for which Hume, a rich man in his day, would envy you. Of course, one might regard, say, friendship a zero-sum game on the grounds that - to maintain a good relationship - friends (say, spouses) sometimes have to make painful concessions and adjustments to their (initial) plans - but that is as short-sighted as the idea that competition is a zero-sum game, because, say, GM would end up a looser if it tried to survive by making sedans (carried by "Chairmen" in the language of Adam Smith), rather than prospering by producing what people are prepared to spend their money on - these days. The false zero-sum claim is a convenient substitute for saying: "Having to make an effort, possibly incurring costs and losses, and the opportunity for someone else to be more successful than you is anti-social".
Kind regards,
IGTU
Posted by: IGTU at Feb 18, 2007 3:25:35 PM
IGTU,
What is the next step?
You use "spontaneous order" with misplaced concreteness; you are turning it into a realizable thing. As Tyler Cowen notes in his old article, it is almost another historicism.
It's a problem from the beginning of the market order. Hume's "abstract rules of just conduct" for "civilization as a growing order" were given advantage by the violence, well known at the time, of "primitive accumulation" and later the Poor Laws. That is how the total market system was instituted. I don't blame Hume for it, although he must have known its long history and the contemporary news items (as did Adam Smith,) --and neither mentioned it. Yet it seems how shall we call it "rationally constructed," a bit of a no-no in the Hayekian sphere.
It is hard to think of, say, "enclosure" as anything other than an engineering feat upon human society of the sort you say that is so loved by the French. It's a good thing that a few eggs can be broken, or else we couldn't tell one from the other! So isn't the distribution of light in the Enlightment something of a spectral prism? Certainly, none of Hume's PRACTICAL constructions can compare, in application, to the mechanical productiveness of Descartes' algebraic geometry, or (keeping it to Voltaire's times,) Montesquieu's separation of powers. Indeed the French also cook better, which is really about as far into the abstract order as two hands can get. (I love David Hume, don't paint me otherwise -- though I don't think cause-and-effect by itself is an interesting problem.)
IGTU, your real problem is that the "spontaneous order" isn't quite the shining city on a hill we hoped. Let us put aside the environmental situation; it requires a study of the science of ecology to discuss the effects of economics upon it. (In passing, we note that the degree of division of labor in our advanced economy has led to an atomization of the intellect that is a little frightening...) You write, "the vices of 'capitalism' are really the vices of a highly politicised society..." Okay: So do you believe that the lopsided distribution of wealth and income will be lessened by less "politicization?" Or do you believe that the distribution of wealth and income is NOT a vice, because you believe it maps the natural productivity of a spontaneous abstract order?
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Feb 18, 2007 11:59:07 PM
Dear Lee A. Arnold,
If our wealth and income is not subjected to arbitrary (re-)distribution, if it is allowed to emerge as the product of a spontaneous process, and if it is respected as the outcome of efforts that involve no injustice, as is the case in the highly "lopsided" pecuniary differential between Bill Gates and IGTU, I not only believe that there is no need to worry about inequality but also that inequality is the stepping stone to a still higher level of wealth and income. For where human beings are allowed to use their knowledge to their purposes - constrained only by the rule of law -, more wealth and income will be created than in any other arrangement. This will of necessity and unproblematically require inequality to prevail, as the more efficient is given the chance to differentiate himself from the less efficient and earn a reward that will raise his wealth and income above the level achieved by the less efficient (who benefits from the more efficient, as I do in not having to hire/ underemploy/misallocate employees for work that can be done by my computer, through which I can access countless libraries that I do not have to build and go about my humble business in hitherto unimaginable efficacy).
The roundabout process that results in a striking difference between the net worth of Bill Gates and IGTU is not an outcome planned and effected by an author who resolved to achieve such a distribution of wealth and income. As such it is an instance that can be conceptualised in terms of a spontaneous order.
A large part of Hayek's work is dedicated to the study of order of this kind, the conditions of its beneficial growth, its improvement, the threats to it and the possibility of its decline.
Its intention is to learn more about the way in which man ought to comport himself so as to benefit from an order superior to arrangements limited by the powers of comprehension of any human mind.
Not concrete design and specific anticipation but the observance of appropriately chosen rules are key to utilising such a spontaneous order.
If Tyler Cowen wishes to make sense of Hayek, he would be well advised to study Hayek's research into the nature of these rules. The taxonomical approach taken in Tyler Cowen's essay is sterile, in fact, it is embarrassing in someone who has the audacity to review the last book of such a prolific, long- and well-known scientist, and only good enough to entertain a class of undergraduates haplessly innocent of the subject-matter. (Is my local football club a spontaneous order? No. Okay, next. What about the police? Organization or spontaneous order? What? Spontaneous order? Is he suggesting this? Oh, dear, oh, dear, isn't Hayek getting it wrong here?)
I can't fathom where Cowen gets the idea from that Hayek excludes the public sector from an analysis of these rules - in fact, Hayek dedicates hundreds and thousands of pages to investigating agents of that sector.
As for the conclusion of Cowen's essay, the author may wish to take a look at the "Postscript" to "The Constitution of Liberty", where Hayek explains "Why I Am Not a Conservative".
Kind regards,
IGTU
Posted by: IGTU at Feb 19, 2007 1:23:05 PM
What are the written laws for the "spontaneous order" which prevent injustices in the distribution of wealth?
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Feb 19, 2007 7:51:55 PM
Dear Lee A. Arnold,
While our blog-thread has disappeared into the archive, and I feel, I have said what I had to say, let me take my leave by quoting Friedrich August (Hayek) to provide some clues that might help answer your last question:
"It is perhaps not surprising that men should have applied to joint efforts of the actions of many people, even where these were never foreseen or intended [see my Bill Gates and IGTU. example above, IGTU] the conception of justice which they had developed with respect to the conduct of individuals towards each other. 'Social' justice...came to be regarded as an attribute which the 'actions' of society, or the 'treatment' of individuals and groups by society, ought to possess. As primitive thinking usually does when first noticing some regular processes, the results of the spontaneous ordering of the market were interpreted as if some thinking being deliberately directed them, or as if the particular benefits or harm different persons derived from them were determined by deliberate acts of will, and could therefore be guided by moral rules. This conception of 'social' justice is thus a direct consequence of that anthropomorphism or personification by which naive thinking tries to account for all self-ordering processes. It is a sign of the immaturity of our minds that we have not yet outgrown these primitive consepts and still demand from an impersonal process which brings about a greater satisfaction of human desires than any deliberate human organization could achieve, that it conform to the moral precepts men have evolved for the guidance of their individual actions." (Law, Legislation and Liberty (LLL),Volume 2, The Mirage of Social Justice,p. 62 ff, Chicago, 1978)
"Such statements which explicitly connect 'social and distributive justice' with the treatment by society of the individuals according to their 'deserts' bring out most clearly its difference from plain justice, and at the same time the cause of the vacuity of the concept: the demand for 'social justice' is addressed not to the individual but to society - yet society, in the strict sense in which it must be distinguished from the apparatus of government, is incapable of acting for a specific purpose, and the demand for 'social justice' therefore becomes a demand that the members of society should organize themselves in a manner which makes it possible to assign particular shares of the product of society to the different individuals or groups." (item, p.64)
"It has of course to be admitted that the manner in which the benefits and burdens are apportioned by the market mechanism would in many instances have to be regarded as very unjust IF [change of character by IGTU, IGTU] it were the result of a deliberate allocation to particular people. But this is not the case. Those shares are the outcome of a process the effect of which on particular people was neither intended nor foreseen by anyone when the institutions first appeared - institutions which were then permitted to continue because it was found that they improve for all or most the prospects of having their needs satisfied. To demand justice from such a process is clearly absurd, and to single out some people in such a society as entitled to a particular share evidently unjust. (item, p.64 f)
"The expression ['social justice', IGTU] of course described from the beginning the aspirations which were at the heart of socialism. Although classical socialism has usually been defined by its demand for the socialization of the means of production, this was for it chiefly a means thought to be essential in order to bring about a 'just' distribution of wealth; and since socialists have later discovered that this redistribution could in a great measure, and against less resistance, be brought about by taxation (and government services financed by it), and have in practice often shelved their earlier demands, the realization of 'social justice' has become their chief promise. It might indeed be said that the main difference between the order of society at which classical liberalism aimed and the sort of society into which it is now being transformed is that the former was governed by principles of just individual conduct while the new society is to satisfy the demands for 'social justice' - or, in other words, that the former demanded just action by the individuals while the latter more and more places the duty of justice on authorities with power to command people what to do." (item, p.65 f)
"The commitment to 'social justice' has in fact become the chief outlet for moral emotion, the distinguishing attribute of the good man, and the recognized sign of the possession of a moral conscience. Though people may occasionally be perplexed to say which of the conflicting claims advanced in its name are valid, scarcely anyone doubts that the expression has a definite meaning, describes a high ideal, and points to grave defects of the existing social order which urgently call for correction...But the near-universal acceptance of a belief does not prove that it is valid or even meaningful any more than the general belief in witches or ghosts proved the validity of these concepts. What we have to deal with in the case of 'social justice' is simply a quasi-religious superstition of the kind which we should respectfully leave in peace so long as it merely makes those happy who hold it, but which we must fight when it becomes the pretext of coercing other men. And the prevailing belief in 'social justice' is at present probably the gravest threat to most other values of a free civilization." (item, P.66 f)
"It is now necessary clearly to distinguish between two wholly different problems which the demand for 'social justice' raises in a market order.
The first is whether within an economic order based on the market the concept of 'social justice' has any meaning or content whatever.
The second is whether it is possible to preserve a market order while imposing upon it (in the name of 'social justice' or any other pretext) some pattern of remuneration based on the assessment of the performance or the needs of different individuals or groups by an authority possessing the power to enforce it.
The answer to each of these questions is a clear no.
Yet it is the general belief in the validity of the concept of ' social justice' which drives all contemporary societies into greater and greater efforts of the second kind and which has a peculiar self-accelerating tendency; the more dependent the position of the individuals or groups is seen to become on the actions of government, the more they will insist that governments aim at some recognizable scheme of distributive justice; and the more governments try to realize some preconceived pattern of desirable distribution, the more they must subject the position of the different individuals and groups to their control. So long as the belief in 'social justice' governs political action, this process must progressively approach nearer and nearer to a totalitarian society." (item, p 67 f)
Finally, let me ask a question, although we are not likely to receive an answer to it:
Tyler Cowen, do you feel you have been helped by our contributions to the present thread in deciding whether you are able to make sense of Hayek or not?
Kind regards,
IGTU
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