RedStateEclectic : Spontaneous Order of Politics and the State (SO2)

My contention is that we are lacking a theory of the spontaneous order of politics and the state (SO₂).

This is regrettable because such a theory shows promise to debunk altogether or reasonably attenuate widely held derogatory misconceptions concerning the role of politics and politicians in our free societies.

It is also deplorable that Hayek, the great theoretician of self-organising systems, failed to extend the insights of his research into the spontaneous order of markets (SO₁) to the area of human political engagement. This could have provided us with an excellent starting point in developing a theory of SO₂. After all, Hayek's findings with regard to SO₁ yield powerful explanations of how the evolution of social relationships produces

extra-somatic auxiliary arrangements (intelligence situated outside the human body which is systematically conducive to human needs)

that

advance the cognitive capabilities of our species so that we are enabled to better cope with our environment and further our interests and level of comfort.

In this post, I shall not explain SO₁ beyond insinuating that the concept refers to market-type activities which allow us to

generate, disseminate, and productively use information (conveyed in the form of prices)

that

no human mind or body of rational actors could identify, dispatch, and process with even remotely comparable success.

It is all the more surprising that Hayek did not pursue research into the analogous structure of SO₁ and SO₂.

To see the crux of the analogy, let us first briefly consider how SO₁ works:

Human beings

behave in certain predictable ways (largely expressible in terms of specific rules)

that

create a division of labour amongst them

which produces

information and preferred economic states of affairs that cannot be brought about in any other way.

I cannot "play market" on my own. I need others to play along, according to a set of specific rules. I cannot produce the game's outcome myself, but if I and others play by these specific rules, we engender the outcome, which is a wealthier society.

There is no maker of the end result, there are only players, and it is the game played that produces the result. If you look at the comportment of this or that player, not only is it not obvious that he is contributing to a desirable outcome, he may actually be committed to action that is hard for you to fathom or condone, as he may be spending his money in ways you disapprove of or find pointless and so on.

Respecting SO₂, the situation is similar: as members of a large community, citizens of a nation or inhabitants of a hemisphere, we stumble into and partly recognise and then deliberately apply

the advantages of following certain rules of political conduct,

thus achieving

desirable outcomes that cannot be generated other than by playing a game tied to a set of specific rules.

The upshot is a society that condones and mass-produces dissent at the same time that it offers procedures to step down the explosive tension inherent in raw, untransformed diversity.

Again: If you look at the comportment of this or that player, not only is it not obvious that he is contributing to a desirable outcome, he may actually be committed to action that is hard for you to fathom or condone, as he may be supporting political groups that you strongly disapprove of. But overall you are moving within an

institutional environment that evolved to lower the virulence of or remove altogether

circumstances that tend to amplify and trigger the explosive tension inherent in raw, untransformed diversity.

Unfortunately, Hayek has ideological reasons to miss the compelling analogy. Though not expressly committed to it, Hayek is effectively wedded to the Lockean idea of autonomous spheres of freedom - for more see my The Idea(s) of Freedom (3/3) - The Mirage of Autonomous Spheres of Freedom -, an attitude probably re-enforced by the experience of the catastrophic effects of massive intervention into the SO of society in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. As against this Hayek emphasises the idealtypal structure of free markets to demonstrate the basic principles and supreme advantageousness of free markets. But he fails to recognise that every economy is a mixed economy and that it is the mixture ratio (between spontaneity and regulation) that is decisive in determining how benign, viable, and efficient a mixed economy is.

It is precisely Hayek's disinclination to consider the possibility of a systematically benign role of politics and the state in supporting, in fact, in making possible to begin with, a free society that causes him to overlook the obvious in so far as

there is no reason to assume that evolution would drive only one type of spontaneous order, being somehow barred from exerting its effects in the fields of political and governmental institutions and activities.

Arguably, in the broadest sense, Hayek does have a theory of spontaneous order pertaining to non-economic spheres. He acknowledges that societies evolve and with them practices and institutions that confer vital advantages on certain groups which make them superior vis-à-vis less well adapted competitors. But he does not offer an account of SO₂; he is blocked to take that step as he finds political activism (especially the type insensitive to his standards of liberalism) repulsive - the idea being anathema to him that conscious design, political participation, let alone a highly politicised society constantly interfering with the fabric of social order may actually be

a prerequisite of our stage of civilisatory (admittedly, this is not a word of the English language, but I still use it to mean "pertaining to civilisation") advancement and,

what is more,

the sine qua non of the freest societies we can possibly sustain, at the present stage of human development.

Of course, what is positive about politics cannot be reduced to unintended consequences alone; there is any number of reasons to encourage political activism in pluralist democracy under robust conditions of freedom; and a lot that appears incomprehensible, ambivalent or dubious about the political game we play, can be made sense of only in the light of a theory of the spontaneous order of politics and the state (SO₂) - thus helping us to foster trust in the contemporary attainments of mankind's innate political mission. For we cannot but act politically. Politics follows us like our shadow.

Freedom is a condition that equips man to handle the social affairs of his species - which is ever destined to act politically - with good prospects for peace and high levels of wealth, welfare, and personal autonomy.