Abstract
This chapter re-examines the link between the gnoseological premise of ignorance and liberty, formal legal equality, the “government of law”, individual freedom of choice and voluntary cooperation.
This chapter also returns to the critique, hinted to in the opening chapter, towards homo oeconomicus, which is also often imported in political science and sociology. Such figure is tightly connected to the utilitarian tradition, but is in conflict with that cultural orientation that is typical of the “Darwinians before Darwin,” namely the likes of Mandeville, Montesquieu and exponents of the Scottish Enlightenment. Homo oeconomicus is an actor who has all the “relevant data” available. And his permanent task is to “maximize” results. This is a consequence which is consistent with the endowment of knowledge attributed to the actor. The basic question, which is that of the ignorance and fallibility of each individual, is thus completely avoided. And this erases the fact that competitive allocation of resources is, “like experimentation in science, first and foremost a discovery procedure [… and] cannot be said of competition any more than of any other sort of experimentation that it leads to a maximization of any measurable results. It merely leads, under favorable conditions, to the use of more skill and knowledge than any other procedure” (Hayek). This means that we compete because we do not have the knowledge we need. And, under these circumstances, we cannot maximize any advantage. We can try to achieve our priority goal, which is to cooperate with one another, in order to alleviate our condition of scarcity.
If competition has such a meaning, we can understand that, in a social system that sees competition present, everywhere minimizes the power of one individual over another. If merits do not explain the social positions occupied by subjects, it means that cooptation from conformity has prevailed over the competitive process. By revealing which of us performs best, competition attributes varying levels of personal freedom. But lack of competition, by preventing or distorting such “discovery procedure,” produces arbitrary power.
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Notes
- 1.
Simmel (1978), p. 290.
- 2.
Ibid.
- 3.
Op. cit., p. 291.
- 4.
“Peace treaty” is an expression of Simmel’s. See Chap. 1, note 63.
- 5.
Simmel (1978), p. 291.
- 6.
Ibid.
- 7.
Hayek (1982), vol. 3, pp. 68–9.
- 8.
With his “theory of public choice”, Buchanan (1979, p. 273) dealt with “persons as utility-maximizing beings”. But Buchanan (op. cit., pp. 26–27) stated that economists should focus on exchange rather than choice. He suggested (ibid.) using the term “catallactics” (cf. note 15 in this chapter) to refer to economics. And he admitted: “When individuals engage in trade, interests differ. Each individual desires to secure the most favorable terms of trade. However, no one draws from this the conclusion that the separate interests are mutually exclusive and that one must prevail over the other. Shall the ‘will’ of the seller or the buyer prevail in a particular exchange? […]. If it is defined as some maximum advantage from trade, the answer to the question must normally be that neither the ‘will’ of the buyer or the seller prevails, although trade is observed to take place” (Buchanan, Tullock 1999, p. 425). Despite these clarifications and many other fruitful observations, Buchanan’s work remains firmly bound to utilitarianism in the narrower sense. See also note 102 in this chapter.
- 9.
It is significant that Stiglitz (1985, p. 26) wrote that “the Invisible Hand may be invisible, because it simply is not there”. Which is like denying the existence of unintended consequences, that is denying the very reasons of existence of economic theory. Evidently, Stiglitz knows nothing about methodological matters.
- 10.
- 11.
Mill (1892), pp. 545, italics added.
- 12.
Op. cit., p. 546, but earlier Mill (2007), p. 111.
- 13.
There is a link between Mill’s homo oeconomicus and the “animal spirits”, considered by Keynes (1936, pp. 161–162) as “a spontaneous urge to action”. This psychologism can be opposed by what was pointed out rightly by Simmel (1978, p. 291): “In contrast to the simply taking-away or gift, in which the purely subjective impulse is enjoyed, exchange presupposes […] an objective appraisal, consideration, mutual acknowledgment, a restraint of direct subjective desire […]. Exchange – which to us appears to be something entirely self-evident – is the first, and in its simplicity really wonderful, means for combining justice with changes in ownership. In so far as the receiver is at the same time the giver, the mere one-sidedness of advantage that characterizes changes of ownership dominated by a purely impulsive egotism or altruism disappears”. Hayek was aware of the psychologism which runs through Keynes’s work. And it is probably because of this that he wrote: “Every explanation of economic crises must include the assumption that entrepreneurs have committed errors. But the mere fact that entrepreneurs do make errors can hardly be regarded as a sufficient explanation of crises. Erroneous dispositions which lead to losses all around will appear probable only if we can show why entrepreneurs should all simultaneously make mistakes in the same direction. The explanation that this is just due to a kind of psychological infection or that for any other reason most entrepreneurs should commit the same avoidable errors of judgment does not carry much conviction. It seems, however, more likely that they may all be equally misled by following guides or symptoms which as a rule prove reliable” (Hayek 1939, p. 141). Another aspect of the issue is highlighted by the statements made by Keynes (1924, p. 110), that the “long run is a misleading guide to current affairs”, because “in the long run we are all dead”. Which is tantamount to saying that one should not concern oneself with indirect or unintended consequences. Hayek (1941, p. 410) caustically commented: “après nous le déluge”!
- 14.
Infantino (2010), pp. 159–74.
- 15.
Given the premises underpinning homo oeconomicus , it is no surprise that Mill (1888, vol. 1, pp. 535–6) rejected the suggestion made by Whately (1831, p. 7), who believed that economics was the “science of exchanges” or “catallactics”. Among the supporters of Whately’s proposal were Mises (1966) and Hayek (1982). Although he did not speak of catallactics, Simmel (1978, p. 291) saw man as “the exchanging animal”. Exactly as had been done by Whately. See Infantino (2008), p. 84.
- 16.
Mises (1981a, pp. 357–8) wrote : “there is no contrast between moral duty and selfish interest. What the individual gives to society to preserve it as society, he gives, not for the sake of aims alien to himself, but in his own interest. The individual […] cannot deny society without denying himself”. Which is tantamount to saying that, if the actor breaks the rules of exchange, he may in some cases obtain a unilateral advantage, but he impairs the continuation of the co-operative relationship and his own medium- and long-term interests.
- 17.
Hayek (1949), p. 11.
- 18.
Mises (1977, p. 60) wrote : “The […] economists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries demonstrated how competition works in the social order that rests on private property in the means of production. This was an essential part of their critique of the interventionistic policies of mercantilistic police and welfare state. Their investigations revealed how illogical and unsuitable interventionistic measures were. Pressing further they also learned that the economic order that corresponds best to man’s economic goals is that built on private property. Surely the mercantilists wondered how the people would be provided for if government left them alone. The classical liberals answered that the competition of business-men will supply the markets with economic goods needed by consumers”.
- 19.
Smith (1976), vol. 2, p. 687.
- 20.
Op. cit., pp. 687–688.
- 21.
Hayek (1960), p. 502, nota 12.
- 22.
Ibid.
- 23.
Hobhouse (1946), p. 159.
- 24.
Pigou (1920), p. 5.
- 25.
Op. cit., pp. 16–7.
- 26.
Einaudi (1939), p. 2.
- 27.
Fasiani (1968), p. X. Pigou’s work appeared in its first edition in 1912, with the title Wealth and Welfare. From the second edition onwards (1920, 1924, 1928, 1932), the author changed the title to The Economics of Welfare. It is worthwhile recalling that Pigou was the successor to Alfred Marshall, who dreamt of “a world in which all men were perfectly virtuous”, where competition would be “out of place” and also “private property and every form of private right”. In such a world, men would have thought “only of their duties”; and no one would have desired to have “a larger share of comforts and luxuries of life than his neighbours” (Marshall 1907, p. 9). It should also be noted that John Stuart Mill (1976, p. 209) had already stated: “not believing in universal selfishness, I have no difficulty in admitting that Communism would even now be practicable among the élite of mankind, and may become so among the rest”. And he also added: “knowledge, to be most useful, must be centralized; there must be somewhere a focus at which all its scattered rays are collected, that the broken and coloured lights which exist elsewhere may find there what is necessary to complete and purify them” (op. cit., p. 357). The positions of Mill, Marshall and Pigou are the consequence of the input of utilitarianism in the narrower sense. There exists relevant knowledge to do everything or, in any case, it is perfectly supposable that this could be attained. It is finally useful pointing out that, even though rather late, Pigou (1954) cast doubts on what he had asserted in his youth. This is why Hayek (1967, p. 264) wrote : “at the end of a long life devoted almost entirely to the task of defining the conditions in which government interference might be used to improve upon the results of the market, [Pigou ] had to concede that the practical value of these theoretical considerations was somewhat doubtful, because we are rarely in a position to ascertain whether the particular circumstances to which the theory refers exist in fact in any given situation”.
- 28.
Hayek (1972), p. 119.
- 29.
Hayek (1960), p. 285.
- 30.
Hayek (1982), vol. 3, p. 55.
- 31.
Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 136. Nassau W. Senior, a great exponent of the Whig tradition, had already in 1848 written: “to proclaim that no man, whatever his vices or even his crimes, shall die of hunger or cold – is a promise that in the state of civilization of England, or of France can be performed not merely with safety but with advantage”. Quoted by Robbins (1965, p. 140), who held the same position (op. cit., pp. 55–61).
- 32.
Hayek (1960), p. 289.
- 33.
Wootton (1953), p. 65.
- 34.
- 35.
Hayek (1949), p. 21, note 21.
- 36.
Ibid.
- 37.
Hayek (1972), p. 128.
- 38.
Ibid.
- 39.
Op. cit., p. 129.
- 40.
Hayek (1982), vol. 2, p. 137.
- 41.
- 42.
This occurs because the information based on which citizens have to decide is provided by the same people who derive advantage from the interventionist ideology. See Hayek (1960), p. 293.
- 43.
Hayek (1982), vol. 1, p. 144.
- 44.
Hayek (1960), p. 296.
- 45.
Buchanan and Wagner (2000, p. 73) have rightly written that, “to justify its continued existence, the particular bureaucracy of each spending program must increase the apparent ‘needs’ for the services it supplies”. And this constitutes the innermost logic of every bureaucratic apparatus.
- 46.
Hayek (1960), p. 303.
- 47.
Ibid.
- 48.
Op. cit., p. 261.
- 49.
Tocqueville (1994), p. 319.
- 50.
Op. cit., p. 318.
- 51.
Hayek (1960), pp. 304–5.
- 52.
Op. cit., p. 303.
- 53.
Ibid.
- 54.
Op. cit., p. 292.
- 55.
Rothbard (1970), vol. 2, p. 884.
- 56.
Brennan and Buchanan (2000a, p. 4) rightly wrote that “government derives its power from the ultimate consent of those who are governed”.
- 57.
De Viti de Marco (1939, p. 21) wrote : “the relationship linking State as producer [of public services] to citizens as consumers is that of exchange, because it cannot be anything else”. De Viti immediately added in an annotation: “despite the evidence, this concept is denied by those who do not like to treat the obligation of paying tax as a counterpart to the right to obtain public services. This recalls, in attenuated form, the times in which taxation was a tribute which the vanquished paid to their victor”.
- 58.
Op. cit., p. 11.
- 59.
Puviani (1973), p. 17 and p. 5.
- 60.
Op. cit., p. 14.
- 61.
- 62.
Wicksell (1967, p. 75) wrote : “Can the preference of modern fiscal theorists for the principle of equality (or proportionality) of sacrifice unreservedly be considered a step in the direction of scientific progress? […] With all its clumsiness the theory of Value and Countervalue had at least the virtue of maintaining some sort of contact with the other, the expenditure, side of the public economy. That theory provided something like an upper limit to the concrete amount of taxes by rejecting any public expenditure, along with its companion tax levy, which failed to render each taxpayer a service corresponding to this payment”. Wicksell (op. cit., p. 76) added that the theory of sacrifice “would almost necessarily lead to communism in the worst sense of the word if […] all connections between the distribution of the tax sum and the individual evaluation of the separate state services were to be accepted”. De Viti de Marco (1939, p. 11) himself stated: “The reasons and needs which lead the State to produce public goods are a result of the reasons and needs of individuals and groups which have contributed in practice to the formation of the financial calculation. As a result, theoretical investigation must as far as possible break down financial calculation into the economic calculations of the individuals or groups which are its constituent elements. This is the fundamental principle”. It is a principle which “one cannot say has been commonly accepted by those who like to define the needs and goals of the State in a way which is disconnected from individuals” (ibid., note 1).
- 63.
De Viti de Marco (1994), pp. XLVIII–XVIX.
- 64.
Since they consider the process to be inexhaustible, the actors feel no responsibility. They focus their attention exclusively on the achievement of their immediate ends. In parliament, this leads to the practice of vote swapping, where each group votes in favour of the proposals of others, in order to achieve the corresponding support they need for their own purposes. This is the practice of so-called logrolling (see Buchanan and Tullock 1999, pp. 99–126; Demsetz 1982, p. 75). In this connection Bentley (1935, pp. 370–1) wrote: “Log-rolling is a term of opprobrium. This is because it is used mainly with reference to its grosser forms. But [… it] is trading. It is adjustment of interests”. Bentley’s comment is only apparently correct. It is true that it is “adjustment of interests”, but the exchange impacts the resources of others. In other words, since they use the resources of others, the actors decide without having to take the condition of scarcity into account. Furthermore, in view of the time interval separating measures from their indirect consequences, the actors themselves evade any responsibility.
- 65.
Einaudi (letter dated 21 June 1959, collected in A. Dalle Molle, ed., 1962, p. 15) wrote: “When the large fact, visible to the naked eye, is the creation on the part of the State of all kinds of monopolies, both public and private, the battle […] is to prevent freebooters from also making private enterprises degenerate from free enterprises to State-subsidised enterprises; in such a way as to legitimize, in the eyes of those incapable of seeing the substance of things, the creation of public enterprises which are equally detrimental, established by freebooters of the same breed and who also live, like the private ones, off the tributes collected from tax payers and consumers. The battle must therefore be fought on two fronts: against state enterprises which are damaging and expensive, and there are very many of them, and against the private enterprises which live off plunder, and there are many of them too”.
- 66.
The expression “negative illusion” is from Puviani (1973), p. 7.
- 67.
- 68.
Ferrara (1934), vol. 1, p. 551.
- 69.
Ibid., p. 553.
- 70.
Brennan and Buchanan (2000a), p. 131. De Viti de Marco (1939, p. 388, note 1) wrote: “So far the issuing of fiat paper-money was by common consent considered a form of State debt. But in the new economic literature, which flourished in the war and post-war years, even that opinion has been challenged. Some have assimilated the issuing of paper-money to the collection of a ‘levy’ or an ‘indirect tax’ on transfer of property. In the matter of analogies, all are possible, since all are more or less wrong. Levies, special taxes, direct taxes, indirect taxes, special taxes on property and loans are all withdrawals from the national income. Once you go back to the concept of ‘withdrawal’ the distinctions vanish”.
- 71.
Aguirre (1985), p. 26.
- 72.
Ibid.
- 73.
On the statalist theory of money, cf. Knapp (1924), the English translation of which was promoted by J.M. Keynes.
- 74.
- 75.
Plato (H), 742a.
- 76.
Rostovtzev (1928), vol. 1, p. 211–2.
- 77.
- 78.
- 79.
The sequential nature of the inflationary process, that is the fact that not all actors are affected at the same time and to the same extent, produces the so-called Cantillon effect. See Infantino (2008) at length, pp. 199–200 and 268–269.
- 80.
Op. cit., p. 242.
- 81.
- 82.
Buchanan and Wagner (2000), p. 64.
- 83.
Hayek (1960), p. 295. Röpke (1964, p. 70) aptly wrote: “Inflation, and the spirit which nourishes it and accepts it, is merely the monetary aspect of the general decay of law and of respect for law. It requires no special astuteness to realize that the vanishing respect for property is very intimately related to the numbing of respect for the integrity of money and its value. In fact, laxity about property and laxity about money are very closely bound up together; in both cases what is firm, durable, earned, secured and designed for continuity gives place to what is fragile, fugitive, fleeting, unsure and ephemeral”. The position of Keynes (1920, p. 20) was the exact opposite: “Individuals would be exhorted not so much to abstain as to defer, and to cultivate the pleasures of security and anticipation. Saving was for the old age or for the children; but this was in theory – the virtue of the cake was that it was never to be consumed, neither by you nor by your children after you”. And then comes the conclusion: “The war [The First World War] has disclosed the possibility of consumption to all and the vanity of abstinence to many” (op. cit., p. 22).
- 84.
Buchanan and Wagner (2000), p. 37.
- 85.
See Chap. 3, note 239.
- 86.
Cf. Chap. 3, note 240. Sartori (1962, p. 373) rightly stated: “The formula of liberal-democracy is equality through liberty, by means of liberty, not liberty by means of equality. Logically the inversion is plausible, but empirically it is not. It is exactly for this reason that democracy came back to life in the wake of liberalism. And for the same reason it is easy to predict that democracy will become once again a dead letter if liberal freedom is overthrown, and if the end of a greater equality is pursued to the detriment of the means which allow us to lay claim to it”.
- 87.
- 88.
Hayek (1972), p. 130.
- 89.
- 90.
This is why Hayek (1972, p. 145) wrote : there are many who do not see that, “by uniting in the hands of some single body power formerly exercised independently by many, an amount of power is created infinitely greater than any that existed before, so much more far-reaching as almost to be different in kind”.
- 91.
Op. cit., p. 146. See also Vitale (2009), pp. 5–32.
- 92.
Hayek (1982), vol. 3, p. 4.
- 93.
Ibid.
- 94.
Op. cit., p. 3. Leoni (1991, p. 23) rightly stated: “there is more than an analogy between the market economy and a judiciary or lawyers’ law, just as there is much more than an analogy between a planned economy and legislation”. The planner and the legislator, both dictating their economic and legal imperatives, are the operational faces of the same idea, namely that of centralization. See also Masala (2003), pp. 196–215.
- 95.
Brennan and Buchanan (2000a), p. 8.
- 96.
Hayek (2011), p. 172.
- 97.
Hayek (1982), vol. 3, p. 111.
- 98.
Ibid.
- 99.
Op. cit., p. 112.
- 100.
- 101.
Hence, the conclusion that no rule based on the majority principle is capable of representing the preferences of the collectivity. Which moves in the same direction as Arrow’s (1963) theorem , according to which there is no single voting process which can simultaneously comply with the minimum conditions which would make the decision representative of the decisions of voters.
- 102.
Buchanan and Tullock (1999), p. 74.
- 103.
If misinterpreted, Buchanan and Tullock’s conclusions could lead perilously to Rousseau, who (see Chap. 2, note 218) stated: “To discover the best rules of society suited to each Nation would require a superior intelligence who saw all of man’s passions and experienced none of them, who had no relation to our nature yet knew it thoroughly, whose happiness was independent of us and who was nevertheless willing to care for ours; finally, one who, preparing his distant glory in the progress of times, could work in one century and enjoy the reward in another”. And yet, since Buchanan and Tullock declare that they adopt an individualistic approach, they have to rule out the possibility of the existence of a “point of view of society”. The “best set of rules for the social group” are thus the general and abstract norms of law, which allow the free mobilisation of resources and knowledge. And constitutional rules must accordingly limit public power, in order for the “rule of law ” to be re-affirmed.
- 104.
Buchanan and Tullock (1999).
- 105.
- 106.
Mandeville (1924, vol. 2, p. 183) rightly said that men attribute themselves merits they do not possess. For his part, Smith (1976, vol. 1, p. 422), in referring to the process which had led to the granting of the Magna Charta, wrote: “A revolution of the greatest importance to the publick happiness, was in this manner brought by two different orders of people, who had not the least intention to serve the publick […]. Neither of them had either knowledge or foresight of the great revolution which [… they were] gradually bringing about”.
- 107.
It is no accident that Hayek (1982, p. XX) stated : “if the first experiment of freedom we have tried in modern times should prove a failure, it is not because freedom is an impracticable ideal, but because we have tried it the wrong way”.
- 108.
Voltaire (1778), pp. 38–39. Tocqueville (1983, p. 158) rebuked Voltaire for having failed to understand the importance of “English political system”. For his part, Hayek (1978, p. 5) placed him in the stream of Cartesian radicalism, on account of the fact that Voltaire wrote: “If you want good laws, burn those you have and make yourselves new ones” (Voltaire 1876, vol. XVIII, p. 432). This statement is, to tell the truth, a part of a number of pages which it is very hard to defend. It is therefore right to take into account Tocqueville and Hayek’s comments. And yet this should not make us forget that Voltaire took a position which was opposed to Rousseau’s.
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Infantino, L. (2020). Voluntary Cooperation and Unlimited Democracy. In: Infrasocial Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45081-6_5
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