Hayek and the Forces of History
“Some of us who share much of Hayek’s vision cannot take the ultimate step here, which seems to require a faith in the beneficent working of the evolutionary process.”
In August 1982, a small group of economists from several countries made a journey to Obergurgl, high in the Austrian Alps, for a two-day conference with Professor Hayek at his long-time summer habitat. The ostensible purpose of the conference was to criticize and discuss early manuscript versions of what was then projected to be a treatise, to be entitled The Fatal Conceit. I reveal no secrets when I state that the participants were skeptical, even after two-days discussion, about prospects for the circulated material to be transformed into a publishable book. My first reaction, therefore, on reading The Fatal Conceit, as published, is to express admiration for the intellectual and physical vitality of an author who, in his upper 80’s, had transformed a somewhat rambling set of sketches, with some badly expressed ideas, and little organization, into a coherent, well-constructed argument, from which anyone can learn. This reaction must be accompanied by an expression of gratitude and respect for W.W. Bartley, III, who has nobly sacrificed his own time and effort in the cause of getting the finished product in shape. Such patience and skill deserve both recognition and reward.
The central ideas were, of course, in the original manuscripts. They represent the cumulation of Hayek’s thinking over a long and productive life of the mind. The extended order that is our civilization has been made possible by the cultural evolution of a set of precepts for behavior that lie between biological instinct and reason. We cannot understand these norms rationally; we cannot construct them or substitute for them. The fatal conceit of socialism, in all its forms, lies in the notion that science and reason can be used to “improve” on the evolutionary product.
These ideas, which Hayek has also variously expressed in earlier writings, are subject to a central criticism that has been expressed by many scholars. Is the implication that we must remain quiescent before the forces of cultural evolution? Is there no value in attending to the rules that govern our interactions, one with another? Hayek admits and allows for the exercise of conjectural analysis, and hence some use of reason, in assisting in understanding why the culturally-evolved precepts may have abiding value. And he, somewhat grudgingly in this book, allows for occasional piecemeal efforts at shoring up some loose ends.
Some of us who share much of Hayek’s vision cannot take the ultimate step here, which seems to require a faith in the beneficent working of the evolutionary process.
Some of us who share much of Hayek’s vision cannot take the ultimate step here, which seems to require a faith in the beneficent working of the evolutionary process. Let us acknowledge, with Hayek, that our civil order may crumble from an over-extension of ill-advised attempts at rational reconstruction of our rules. But those of us who are what Hayek classifies here as rules rationalists (along with John Locke) find our whole raison d’être, as political economists-cum-social philosophers in the conviction that humankind can, indeed, construct, maintain, and improve the procedural framework within which the spontaneous order of the market can be allowed to emerge. Hayek does not pay sufficient attention to the necessary distinction between the choice among processes, among rules, among constitutions, and the choice among end-states that may emerge within these sets of constraints. His generalization of the understanding of the spontaneous order of the market to the evolution of the institutions that constrain this order must, I think, ultimately be rejected. Adam Smith did not make this generalization. He recognized that the spontaneous order of the market required the requisite structure of “laws and institutions.” Nonetheless, Hayek, both in this book and in earlier writings, has forced us to think about and to defend even the limited “constructivism” that he would apply to describe our efforts. Since the conference at Obergurgl, Hayek (and/or Bartley) has very substantially modified and improved an element of his argument that did seem to represent a departure from earlier emphases in his work. I refer to the direct relationship between the evolved norms that make the extended order possible and the size of the population that may be sustained. Hayek is surely correct in pointing out, and in stressing, that without the rules that describe the working of the modern capitalist economy, many of us now alive could not exist. This argument is a powerful one, and here Hayek has wisely limited discussion to variations on this theme. He does not in this book elaborate on what some of us sensed to be a potential flaw in the earlier drafts, which was to extend the argument to say explicitly that population size, as such, is the criterion of evolutionary success.
Socialism was based on a fatal conceit, which Hayek has done much to expose. The socialist god is dead, thanks in some part to Hayek’s own efforts, along with direct observations of failure. But the resurgence of mercantilism requires a somewhat different counter attack. There remains the failure to understand the working of the spontaneous order of the marketplace; and this failure is exploited by those who seek to secure differential gains through the agencies of politics. Modern rent seekers are under no delusion about the “social good.” They do not abide by the precepts of honesty, fairness, respect for the rule of law, etc. that are necessary for our civilization to survive. Are we to accept their behavior as a temporary aberration which cannot be changed by conscious effort, or are we to use the combined forces of scientific analysis and moral argument to defeat them?
Despite his earlier denial, is Hayek, after all, a conservative?