Hayek intended his writings to serve as a wake-up call to defenders of liberalism. When such defenders took actions in support of private property, Hayek was unashamed in his support for them.
Of course, Hayek would argue that this was just the defense of (economic) liberalism against the tyranny of the majority of democracy, even though democracy based on popular sovereignty is the foundation of political liberalism.
Good history lesson about liberalism and also a good summary of Hayek's argument. Hayek held that liberalism is about freedom from government interference in private matters, especially involving private property. This is the English version of liberalism elaborated by Burke, Locke and Adam Smith, for example. It holds that the liberalism is essentially freedom from constraint. Continental liberalism held that liberalism as not only about freedom from (unreasonable) constraint but also freedom to choose freely and responsibly with respect to the equal rights of others, and freedom for self-determination.
The problem of economic liberalism relative to social and political liberalism is that the former prioritizes property over people while the latter makes people more important than property. The very term "capitalism" means that capital is prioritized, while socialism signifies that the people as a whole are prioritized rather than any class and vested interests are not privileged.
Another paradox of liberalism.
Oh wait, elsewhere Hayek wrote:
Selwyn sees the result as:
In his influential article The Principles of a Liberal Social Order published in 1966, at the high point of Euro-American Keynesianism, Hayek outlined the relationship between liberalism and democracy. He makes a strong normative case for the primacy of the former, and the potential elimination of the latter. The article also outlines the needs for very strict limits on the parameters of electoral democracy in ‘normal’ (non-dictatorial) times.
Hayek begins by contrasting two traditions of liberalism. The first, his favoured one, emerged in the England of the Old Whigs from the mid to late seventeenth century and was fortified by the theories of Edmund Burke, John Locke and Adam Smith. The second was a continental European product elaborated theoretically by writers such as Voltaire and Rousseau.
The first tradition of liberalism is “inseparable from the institution of private property”. It has its roots in human nature. It is superior to any form of centralized state planning...
It:
“[D]erives from the discovery of a self-generating or spontaneous order in social affairs…an order which made it possible to utilize the knowledge and skill of all members of society to a much greater extent than would be possible in any order created by central direction…” (Hayek, 1966).
It “arose from the desire to extend and generalize the beneficial effects which unexpectedly had followed on the limitations placed on the power of government"....
For Hayek, the second, continental tradition of liberalism advanced by writers such as Voltaire and Rousseau points in a fundamentally different direction. There is a straight line from it, to what he labels, the totalitarian politics of the French revolution and modern socialism. Through democratic practice, this tradition attempts to subordinate society to a set of political/normative objectives. Under such conditions, individuals are no longer free to do as they please, and certainly not free to use (or even own) their property in ways they see fit. Hayek argued that this tradition of liberalism “has in effect become democratism rather than liberalism and, demanding unlimited powers of the majority, has become essentially anti-liberal”.There is is in black and white in his own words. Economics liberalism (capitalism) and political liberalism (democracy) are antithetical. It doesn't get much clearer than that.
Oh wait, elsewhere Hayek wrote:
In another letter to The Times entitled “the dangers to personal liberty”, he endorsed Thatcher whilst restating his claim that the marketplace is “indispensable for individual freedom” while the ballot box “is not”.Who needs free elections anyway?
Selwyn sees the result as:
... an erosion of democracy is occurring under the guidance of elected politicians across many of the advanced capitalist countries.
I suggest that the work of Friedrich Hayek is part and parcel of conservative neoliberal 'common sense'. His ideas justify the erosion of democracy under capitalism in defence of private property.I would say not only an erosion of democracy but also of national sovereignty, along with an onslaught against civil rights, constitutional liberties, and human rights. In short, neoliberalism is in reality a neo-feudalism of a transnational power elite. The liberal revolution of the Enlightenment set about to do away with the remnants of feudalism at the time, and now they're baaack!
The Old Whig antipathy to popular democracy on the one hand, and support for private property rights on the other, stands at the core of Hayek’s political philosophy. From this starting point he theoretically de-links liberalism and democracy. This move is designed to a) explain how liberalism can exist without democracy, and b) to limit, significantly, democratic influence over a liberal private property based market order.
Hayek’s advocacy for negative freedoms over positive freedoms logically limits democratic content. If governments want to guarantee a liberal market order then they must guarantee negative but not positive freedoms. By default then, they are precluded from implementing widespread social programmes designed, for example, to redistribute wealth, power and property towards the poor. These policies would necessitate imposing obligations upon society in order to pursue a designated outcome. Such actions, according to Hayek, represent the first steps towards totalitarianism. Liberal freedoms would be undermined as society is forced to submit to an 'artificial' (i.e. planned) overarching objective, as opposed to benefitting from the free play of the natural, spontaneous market order....
Hayek points to how governments, driven by democratic and other rationales (such as economic planning), were undermining the potential benefits of the spontaneous market order.Spontaneous market order is, of course, the basis of neoclassical economics and also Austrian economics: Spontaneous natural order arising from laws of nature like the law of supply and demand regulating the operation of market forces results in Pareto equilibrium as long institutions do not interfere, with the chief interfering institution being government and its legal apparatus based on positive law rather than the laws of nature. Evidence for the assumption about spontaneous order, please.
Good history lesson about liberalism and also a good summary of Hayek's argument. Hayek held that liberalism is about freedom from government interference in private matters, especially involving private property. This is the English version of liberalism elaborated by Burke, Locke and Adam Smith, for example. It holds that the liberalism is essentially freedom from constraint. Continental liberalism held that liberalism as not only about freedom from (unreasonable) constraint but also freedom to choose freely and responsibly with respect to the equal rights of others, and freedom for self-determination.
The problem of economic liberalism relative to social and political liberalism is that the former prioritizes property over people while the latter makes people more important than property. The very term "capitalism" means that capital is prioritized, while socialism signifies that the people as a whole are prioritized rather than any class and vested interests are not privileged.
Benjamin Selwin
7 comments:
Well said, Tom.
Then there is the FDR-type freedom from want, freedom from fear, and freedom from unfair competition and monopolies. "Necessitous men are not free men. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made." ~ FDR
Prioritising property over people is precisely the problem.
And few people can say that, never mind understand it :)
The lesson is not to listen to what they say, but to look at what they do. In this case, however, Hayek is content to let the mask of respectability drop a little and show the grotesque face behind the beautifully crafted exterior.
Having been crushed by Keynes and Sraffa on economics (probably the reason Hayek was awarded economics greatest prize; after all, being right about anything disqualifies you from nomination), Hayek turned to writing extremely turgid and frankly rather awful and crass books about political philosophy. Why The Road To Serfdom is considered an important book is a total mystery to me. A Tory teenager with posters of Margaret Thatcher on his bedroom wall could do better. Hayek displayed his alleged great love for freedom, small government, classical liberalism and libertarianism when he supported the neo-Nazi coup of a democratically elected government in Chile.
Milton Friedman, another gigantic fraud, went along for the ride too, making his excuses for Pinochet and his neo-Nazi regime. Libertarianism's great defenders Hayek and Friedman in action. Is libertarianism nothing but a facade for fascism? If it isn't, why are libertarians so very quiet by their heroes support for neo-Nazi psychopathic regimes? How embarrassing. Or rather how eye opening.
"Evidence for the assumption about spontaneous order, please."
Tom you should be able to just talk to your favorite Darwin person to get this...
rsp,
Not Darwin, Matt, but Herbert Spencer and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, although there is some evidence that Darwin agreed with Social Darwinism even though his theory base don natural (sexual) selection doesn't support it.
Social Darwinism is a modern name given to various theories of society that emerged in the United Kingdom, North America, and Western Europe in the 1870s, and which are claimed to have applied biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology and politics.[1][2] Social Darwinists generally argue that the strong should see their wealth and power increase while the weak should see their wealth and power decrease. Different social Darwinists have different views about which groups of people are the strong and the weak, and they also hold different opinions about the precise mechanism that should be used to promote strength and punish weakness. Many such views stress competition between individuals in laissez-faire capitalism, while others motivated ideas of eugenics, racism, imperialism,[3] fascism, Nazism, and struggle between national or racial groups.[4][5]
The term social Darwinism gained widespread currency when used after 1944 by opponents of these earlier concepts. The majority of those who have been categorised as social Darwinists, did not identify themselves by such a label.[6]
Creationists have often maintained that social Darwinism—leading to policies designed to make the weak perish—is a logical consequence of "Darwinism" (the theory of natural selection in biology). Biologists and historians have stated that this is a fallacy of appeal to nature, since the theory of natural selection is merely intended as a description of a biological phenomenon and should not be taken to imply that this phenomenon is good or that it ought to be used as a moral guide in human society. While most scholars recognize some historical links between the popularisation of Darwin's theory and forms of social Darwinism, they also maintain that social Darwinism is not a necessary consequence of the principles of biological evolution.[7]
Scholars debate the extent to which the various social Darwinist ideologies reflect Charles Darwin's own views on human social and economic issues. His writings have passages that can be interpreted as opposing aggressive individualism, while other passages appear to promote it.[8] Some scholars argue that Darwin's view gradually changed and came to incorporate views from the leading social interpreters of his theory such as Spencer,[9] but Spencer's Lamarckian evolutionary ideas about society were published before Darwin first published his theory, and both promoted their own conceptions of moral values. Spencer supported laissez-faire capitalism on the basis of his Lamarckian belief that struggle for survival spurred self-improvement which could be inherited.[10] [emphasis added]
Social Darwinism is a combination of a bastardization of Darwin's theory of evolution, Lamarck's discredited genetic theory of social inheritance, the Protestant ethic, Calvinism (the elect), and the Great Chain of Being used to rationalize the divine right of kings and the aristocracy.
This is no new “discovery”. Of course, libertarians have always been against democracy and in favor of private property. Under private property, freed blacks in the south are safe from harm at the hands of private criminals AND state actors. Under democracy, the majority white populations of the south voted to enact Jim Crow laws which created a ghastly regime of forced segregation and second class citizenship that would have been impossible (by definition) if the protections of private property could not have been voted away by the white majority.
Further, big government democracy in multi-ethnic/multi-religious societies invariably results in ethnic turmoil and slaughter because the largest ethnic majority gains control of the statist economy and employs it for the benefit of its fellow ethnics. This is what was predicted by me to happen in post Saddam Iraq and it is exactly what did happen.
The most excellent book, “Politics in Plural Societies” explained this all very well to me in 1973. You guys will purposefully want to avoid thinking about these obvious implications of democracy.
http://tinyurl.com/oq3pgze
As I constantly explain, this puts you MMT guys on the side of both Jim Crow and the Iraqi Shi’ite skull drillers while I’m on the side of peace and prosperity, especially for the weak and powerless.
"Evidence for the assumption about spontaneous order, please."
The wonderful new music of the 50s and 60s is definitive evidence of and a great example of the spontaneous order. A local council's voting to ban it and harass its practitioners is definitive evidence of the authoritarian nature of democracy.
See. It's really not that complicated
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