The Unknown Friedrich
Here is an intriguing review of a recent biography of Friedrich Hayek, indisputably the intellectual exponent of the small government good is good thesis. Postrel points out that Hayek was not, as he is sometimes caricatured as, simply a advocate of Darwinism in economics and society in general, but rather strongly concerned with a problem that besets any system in which people are organized. That problem is how best to distribute information. Rightly upset by how information was manipulated by the Nazis and Stalinist Soviet Union, Hayek, an Austrian, argued that the free market was much more effective and much more democratic way of disseminating information. Thus, in the Soviet, you had one major state supported vehicle of information, Pravda, while in the US, effectively the free market had a let "a hundred flowers bloom." No doubt in the US, common people as well as the average politician knew much more about what was happening in various parts of their country, then what the average citizen of the Soviet Union. Hayek generalized that thesis to claim that in all cases the free market resulted in more democratic solutions to social problems than government planning.
It's an intriguing claim, one that Postrel submits as prescient of information theory as well as postmodernism, but I would argue that Postrel's extensions of Hayek's prescience, let alone influence are a form special pleading.[1] On information theory, Gregory Bateson's work on systems, documented in Naven from research in the 30s are far more prescient, particularly in paying attention to dysfunction as well as function--finding dysfunction it in part functional. I am less familiar with Norbert Wiener, who codified information theory, but I believe his work is at least contemporary with Hayek. As for postmodernism, I fear that Postrel is ignorant of the meaning of "postmodernism" as opposed to "post-structuralism". Post-Structuralism represents a plausibly coherent philosophical movement, one that either asked what happens when you realize that society is a system (Foucault), or which mocks the ambition to be a systematic philosopher (Derrida). Postmodernism is simply a period term. It is philosophy and thought that comes after the modern period, which ended roughly (in both senses) in the 30s with the rise of the Nazis and Stalin, (both of whom stigmatized the avant-garde in material ways) and the world-wide depression. Hayek, by the virtue of when he was writing, is Postmodern.
If anything, Hayek's economics resemble what the Vienna school was doing in various disciplines: Logical Positivism in epistemology (Carnap) and an absolute objectivity in the history of science (Popper). In particular, the common feature that Hayek shares with these figures is that he proffers one solution for a multipiicity of problems. In every case, where he documents problems, whether in markets, the dissemination of information, public services, etc., he suggests that free market distributes good more equably. And he believes with the same fervor that the logical positivists believed that verification was sole means of philosophizing, so that speculative domains such as ontology and metaphysics and humanist domains such as aesthetics and ethics were at least dubious and probably bad. Likewise, in Hayek's zeal to prove a claim that might be true in some domains to be true in all, he campaigned vigorously (and fairly unscientifically) against competing claims.
There is a very simple way of denying the total truth of such arguments, which, while not scientific, is satisfying. Blake, the greatest English artist (and greatest Christian artist, aside from Dante perhaps), in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell notes that "One Law for the Lion and Fox is Tyranny." Or more recently, "It takes different strokes to move the world...What might be right for you may not be right for some."
1] I take some pleasure in noting that Postrel is using this form of argument for Hayek's influence, since critiques of attempts to expand the canon are always argued as forms of "special pleading." The logic of special pleading is simply begging: your author isn't popular or isn't taught in enough of the right places, so you show how he is deserving. Calling Hayek "postmodern" is another one of these tricks, though it might be properly called branding. [i]
i]And this is just a querulous note as to why Libertarians endorse the Western Tradition unthinkingly. The western tradition is only notionally something put forward by the "free market." The church and the academies, while anti-thetical to the market, have never been pay-as-you-go institutions. They remain institutions that are kept up as an Inherent Good Thing, as The Believer has argued for books. Judging by the "free market," the Bible is the most important text, followed closely by Steven King. Of course, if you were to make judgements about what is thought based on what information people were seeking, you would also have to take into account what is being checked out from a library, as well as what is selling at used bookstores. And then you would have to find out what people were actually reading. Oh, but then you would have to find out what exactly they were getting out of that reading ... You see where I am going ...
Here is an intriguing review of a recent biography of Friedrich Hayek, indisputably the intellectual exponent of the small government good is good thesis. Postrel points out that Hayek was not, as he is sometimes caricatured as, simply a advocate of Darwinism in economics and society in general, but rather strongly concerned with a problem that besets any system in which people are organized. That problem is how best to distribute information. Rightly upset by how information was manipulated by the Nazis and Stalinist Soviet Union, Hayek, an Austrian, argued that the free market was much more effective and much more democratic way of disseminating information. Thus, in the Soviet, you had one major state supported vehicle of information, Pravda, while in the US, effectively the free market had a let "a hundred flowers bloom." No doubt in the US, common people as well as the average politician knew much more about what was happening in various parts of their country, then what the average citizen of the Soviet Union. Hayek generalized that thesis to claim that in all cases the free market resulted in more democratic solutions to social problems than government planning.
It's an intriguing claim, one that Postrel submits as prescient of information theory as well as postmodernism, but I would argue that Postrel's extensions of Hayek's prescience, let alone influence are a form special pleading.[1] On information theory, Gregory Bateson's work on systems, documented in Naven from research in the 30s are far more prescient, particularly in paying attention to dysfunction as well as function--finding dysfunction it in part functional. I am less familiar with Norbert Wiener, who codified information theory, but I believe his work is at least contemporary with Hayek. As for postmodernism, I fear that Postrel is ignorant of the meaning of "postmodernism" as opposed to "post-structuralism". Post-Structuralism represents a plausibly coherent philosophical movement, one that either asked what happens when you realize that society is a system (Foucault), or which mocks the ambition to be a systematic philosopher (Derrida). Postmodernism is simply a period term. It is philosophy and thought that comes after the modern period, which ended roughly (in both senses) in the 30s with the rise of the Nazis and Stalin, (both of whom stigmatized the avant-garde in material ways) and the world-wide depression. Hayek, by the virtue of when he was writing, is Postmodern.
If anything, Hayek's economics resemble what the Vienna school was doing in various disciplines: Logical Positivism in epistemology (Carnap) and an absolute objectivity in the history of science (Popper). In particular, the common feature that Hayek shares with these figures is that he proffers one solution for a multipiicity of problems. In every case, where he documents problems, whether in markets, the dissemination of information, public services, etc., he suggests that free market distributes good more equably. And he believes with the same fervor that the logical positivists believed that verification was sole means of philosophizing, so that speculative domains such as ontology and metaphysics and humanist domains such as aesthetics and ethics were at least dubious and probably bad. Likewise, in Hayek's zeal to prove a claim that might be true in some domains to be true in all, he campaigned vigorously (and fairly unscientifically) against competing claims.
There is a very simple way of denying the total truth of such arguments, which, while not scientific, is satisfying. Blake, the greatest English artist (and greatest Christian artist, aside from Dante perhaps), in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell notes that "One Law for the Lion and Fox is Tyranny." Or more recently, "It takes different strokes to move the world...What might be right for you may not be right for some."
1] I take some pleasure in noting that Postrel is using this form of argument for Hayek's influence, since critiques of attempts to expand the canon are always argued as forms of "special pleading." The logic of special pleading is simply begging: your author isn't popular or isn't taught in enough of the right places, so you show how he is deserving. Calling Hayek "postmodern" is another one of these tricks, though it might be properly called branding. [i]
i]And this is just a querulous note as to why Libertarians endorse the Western Tradition unthinkingly. The western tradition is only notionally something put forward by the "free market." The church and the academies, while anti-thetical to the market, have never been pay-as-you-go institutions. They remain institutions that are kept up as an Inherent Good Thing, as The Believer has argued for books. Judging by the "free market," the Bible is the most important text, followed closely by Steven King. Of course, if you were to make judgements about what is thought based on what information people were seeking, you would also have to take into account what is being checked out from a library, as well as what is selling at used bookstores. And then you would have to find out what people were actually reading. Oh, but then you would have to find out what exactly they were getting out of that reading ... You see where I am going ...
posted by RobCrowe at 1:24 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home