Eric Schliesser's Blog, page 12
September 29, 2022
Why Does Socialism have no autonomous governmentality; Foucault, Duncan Kelly (and Wendy Brown), and a hypothesis
Viewing the contemporary problems of European socialism through ordoliberal lenses allowed him to suggest there is no "autonomous socialist governmentality." Socialism remains too statist, beholden to ideological dogma, and therefore too utopian to be effective as a contemporary strategy. Socialism in effect has become a model of the total state for Foucault, [not] unlike Nazism, in fact, and this makes its analysis of power problematic, because of "power is not a substance." Alongside revisionists accounts of modern socialism that has had been repurposed since the 1959 Bad Godesburg decisions of the SDP, Foucault thought that such revisionism was no sort of betrayal, but a necessary update providing an entry point into the liberal game of modern politics. Willy Brandt, too, offered a new kind of German realism about modern politics and modern liberalism, and the French left needed to learn from it.--Duncan Kelly (2019( Foucault on Phobie d�����tat and Neoliberalism." in Foucault, Neoliberalism, and Beyond, (edited by Stephen W." Sawyer and Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins), p. 117. [I inserted a 'not' above, but nothing that follows turns on it.--ES]
Kelly's essay on Foucault is very interesting because it clarifies the significance of Kant and Weber to Foucault's 1979 lectures published as Birth of Biopolitics. And I also agree with the claim that according to Foucault the SDP's stance at Bad Godesburg -- which (in the tradition of Bernstein) basically rejected revolution and accepted the ordoliberal social market economy as legitimate (this involved planning for the market, but no more than necessary) -- was no "betrayal." So, Foucault here, as elsewhere in the Birth of Biopolitics, rejects a Marxist historiography and lens. So what follows is a relatively minor disagreement with Professor Kelly.*
I am not convinced, however, that the explanation for Foucault's claim that there is "no autonomous socialist governmentality" is that it is "too statist," as Kelly suggests. To be sure, one may well think this is plausible because one may assume that the term/concept 'governmentality' is introduced in order to distinguish it from a kind of direct exercise of power by way of command and control; and rather to describe government practice, as Wendy Brown argues, as the "power of conducting and compelling populations "at a distance."" (Undoing the Demos, p. 117; recall also this post). If Brown is right then 'governmentality' anticipates what has come to be known as 'governance.' (Since she is primarily interested in 'governance' my disagreement with her is irrelevant to her argument.)
I don't think Brown is correct here. For Foucault also applies 'governmentality' to police states (which have their own kind of governmentality); that is -- and this is central to my disagreement with Kelly -- on Foucault's account statist doctrines do have their own governmentality. Now, to be sure, Foucault means quite a few things when he uses 'governmentality' and sometimes these do involve a process of compulsion at a distance. But these are just one way governmentality is exercised. In 1978 he stipulated that one of his uses of 'governmentality' meant "The ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power, which has as its target: population, as its principal form of knowledge: political economy, and as its essential technical means: apparatuses of security."** There is no mention of 'distance' here. And this, for good reason because the security state is rather invasive.
Let's look at the passage that Kelly quotes:
In any case, socialism offers an economic rationality just as it puts forward an historical rationality. We can also say that it possesses, and has shown that it possesses, rational techniques of intervention, of administrative intervention, in domains like those of health, social insurance, and so on. So, it is possible to recognize the existence of an historical rationality, an economic rationality, and an administrative rationality in socialism, or, at any rate, let���s say that we can argue about the existence of these rationalities in socialism and we cannot eliminate all these forms of rationality with a wave of the hand. But I do not think that there is an autonomous socialist governmentality. There is no governmental rationality of socialism. In actual fact, and history has shown this, socialism can only be implemented connected up to diverse types of governmentality. It has been connected up to liberal governmentality, and then socialism and its forms of rationality function as counterweights, as a corrective, and a palliative to internal dangers. One can, moreover, [reproach it, as do liberals],* with being itself a danger, but it has lived, it has actually functioned, and we have examples of it within and connected up to liberal governmentalities. We have seen it function, and still see it function, within governmentalities that would no doubt fall more under what last year we called the police state, that is to say, a hyper-administrative state in which there is, so to speak, a fusion, a continuity, the constitution of a sort of massive bloc between governmentality and administration. At that point, in the governmentality of a police state, socialism functions as the internal logic of an administrative apparatus. Maybe there are still other governmentalities that socialism is connected up to; it remains to be seen. But in any case, I do not think that for the moment there is an autonomous governmentality of socialism. Foucault-Birth of Biopolitics, Lecture four, 31 January 1979, p. 92 [See also the material from the same lecture I quoted here a few years ago]
I think this passage is really incompatible with the idea that socialism lacks a governmentality in virtue of its statist orientation. If anything, Foucault's claim isn't just that (i) socialism lacks a governmentality of its own, but also (ii) that when socialism is in power it relies on governmentalities it borrows from others (including rather statist orientations), and (iii) socialism does have a administrative rationality. To put the point sharply, for Foucault the Leninist-Stalinist art of government is de facto a police state while relying on bureaucracy (which can follow socialist principles [as Lenin himself suggested]).
Now, there is no doubt -- and the secondary literature is in broad agreement over this -- that Foucault is rather polemical against Marxism in these lectures. (And remember he had first hand experience not just with the French communist party, but with really existing communism in Poland and social democracy in Sweden.) The real scholarly disagreement involves to what degree Foucault was searching for a a non-socialist 'left' governmentality or to what degree he kind of endorsed a neoliberal governmentality in 1979. I will take no position on this disagreement.
If Kelly is incorrect, as I have argued, why then would Foucault claim that socialism lacks its own autonomous art or practice of government? I have a speculative suggestion. True socialism in the Engels-Leninist tradition involves the abolition of the state. And when it arrives, there is no need for a governmentality at all. Governmentality is only required in the transitionary phases (involving the dictatorship of the proletariat or, say, the party's leadership, etc.) when the state is supposed to be made to wither away. But in the transition phase ruling and governing cannot really be done on socialist principles. This is why during the transition it borrows from other intellectual traditions and practices (and so the lack of autonomous governmentality). I can't prove this is what Foucault has in mind, but I think it makes good sense of his position. For, as he goes on to say, "In short, whether or not there is a theory of the state in Marx is for Marxists to decide. As for myself, I would say that what socialism lacks is not so much a theory of the state as a governmental reason, the definition of what a governmental rationality would be in socialism, that is to say, a reasonable and calculable measure of the extent, modes, and objectives of governmental action."
*I don't see any evidence for the claim that in the 1979 lectures, Foucault claims Willy Brandt offers "a new kind of German realism about modern politics and modern liberalism, and the French left needed to learn from it." But perhaps there is evidence elsewhere in the 1970s.
**From The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, p. 102
September 28, 2022
On Analytic and Continental Clarity (Collingwood and McGuiggan.)
We have, then, two sorts of project, the scientific and the poetic, and two corresponding norms of clarity. Scientists, whose concepts are additions to our experience or (in other words) discrete from other concepts, properly use strictly defined, technical terms to refer to these wholly new and discrete things. This use of language is appropriate to its subject matter and so is content-directedly clear. Poets, whose concepts expand or develop our experience, appropriately do not use technical terms, which would inhibit clarity for them. What is content-directedly clear in poetry is language that is stretched and grown.
McGuiggan tagged me in a twitter thread (here) introducing the paper I have quoted above. I noticed with pleasure and vanity that some of my blog posts are cited rather prominently in the paper, although (mysteriously to me) not the posts I have written on clarity in analytic philosophy (recall here on Carnap and Quine; here on Ernest Nagel). Despite this modest disappointment, I read the paper, and I am very glad I did so. It's a lovely work with lots of clever illustrations from poetry, has useful distinctions, and you get a nice introduction to Collingwood's ideas from an independently minded, but true believer. (And I found the argument an invitation go back and re-read some Collingwood in the future.)
A key distinction is the one between content-directed clarity and audience-directed clarity. Content-directed clarity involves (presentational) form that is appropriate to the content. Whereas audience-directed clarity involves the aptness/fit of the norms of communication that we adopt given our intended audience. This distinction is part of a wider taxonomy (including presentational clarity, clarity of thought, etc.), so don't complain (yet) it's not exhaustive.
Now, content directed clarity and audience directed clarity need not be opposed to or even fully independent of each other. After all, what counts as the proper presentational form apt for particular content, may well be governed, in part, by the norms our communication falls under given our intended audience. (This seems fully compatible with what McGuiggan writes, but if you think it's silly attribute the view to me.) We may, for example, think rightly that a sonnet would be best for a certain content, but decide that a carefully constructed note in Analysis would be more likely to reach most professional philosophers, and advance our careers. On a less dramatic scale such trade-offs are routine in our professional lives (due to word-count restrictions, citational practices, refereeing practices, etc.), and we make them -- sometimes not without anguish -- almost constantly in our publication practices as well as our lectures/colloquia.
If I understand McGuiggan correctly (see the second paragraph quoted above), on his view analytic philosophers criticize or disparage continental philosophy for violating the norms of audience directed clarity that analytic philosophers adhere to. And the reason analytic philosophers do so is that we (pretend my defense of synthetic philosophy is just a thought experiment) falsely assume that continental philosophers are engaged in the same underlying project, and so miss that continental philosophers are shaped by different content-directed standards. Let's call this McGuiggan's Diagnosis or if you prefer, 'McGuiggan's Diagnosis.'
What's neat about McGuiggan's Diagnosis -- and this also lends it some evidence -- is that it helps explain why some analytic philosophers think it's an okay project to translate continental works into the vernacular of analytic philosophy (say for students and for professional advancement) without thinking something really important is lost. This is a thriving genre, so pick your favorite example. (I am not being too sarcastic here because arguably my present Foucault project falls under this genre.)
As an aside, what's odd about McGuiggan's Diagnosis is that if it's true even the most fair-minded least polemical analytic philosophers somehow never grasp what continental philosophy is up to, or, more insidiously, keep quiet about it when we do and our peers attack it unfairly. So, I was a bit sad he did not engage with (say) Kolodny's work on Foucault's cryptonormativity or some of the analytics that turn Heidegger into a fellow pragmatist (and possibly share his theological aims).
Be that as it may, since it's not uncommon to insist that continental philosophy is poetry adjacent and analytic science adjacent, I won't complain about this move. (If only because it strengthens my prediction back in 2014 (recall) that Wittgenstein will end up treated as a continental.) One problem with McGuiggan's diagnosis is that he essentializes analytic and continental philosophy. (This is notoriously a dubious move.) In particular, he claims that continental philosophy tries to expand our (possible) experience whereas analytic philosophy tries to account for additions to our experiences. Let me stipulate, for the sake of argument, that this indeed fits, say, Heidegger (an example he repeatedly uses) and your favorite philosopher of logic quite well.
So, I have two reservations (that spring from this essentialization). First, some continental philosophers and some analytic philosophers are manifestly engaged in overlapping enterprises. This is most evident in the revival of post-Kantian metaphysics among continentals and among analytics. When I disagree, say, with Meillassoux's 'speculative realism' or the object oriented ontology of Graham, the disagreements are not primarily about the worth/aims or the presentation of the project(s), it's about the contents of the position. When I disagree with, say, Badiou, I do disagree with the Marxist or revolutionary aims of the project, but I have trouble taking it seriously because of the weight and uses he places on set theory.
To be sure, there are circumstances where there is no overlap in the first order aims. Recently, using Deleuzian tools, Jeff Bell has convinced me that in the 1970s Foucault is trying to state the features that are presupposed such that a stable (what we analytics call) semantics and pragmatics (in Carnap's sense) are or appears to be possible. I don't think analytic philosophers are, at present, really engaged in that project despite our search for grounds or for the conditions of a final language, even if the metaphysical position Foucault arrives at (a pragmatism about pragmatics welded to a kind of realist semantics) is not far removed from ones I am familiar with (say, as Jeff suggests, Putnam at some time.)* That's to say we could get involved in this project. I mention this example because if it is right about Foucault it looks to me as if Foucault's special vocabulary then is primarily due to the need to account for additions to our 'experience.' (I use scare quotes there because we can't really experience directly the conditions that make semantics or even pragmatics possible; perhaps in the latter we can sense their absence when a practice breaks down or has moved on.) I don't mean to deny that, perhaps, Foucault is also interested in creating new additions -- to be a philosophical legislator --, but that's beside the point here.
Second, it's not entirely clear to me that that the contrast between accounting for an addition to experience and for expanding or developing our experience is really all that robust where it matters. By this I don't just mean that there are philosophical poets (Lucretius paradigmatically), but rather that it seems to echo a kind of context of discovery vs context of justification distinction. And the problem with that distinction, for present purposes, is that discovery is never wholly discrete from previously justified or to be justified work. That is, within science (and analytic philosophy) there are going to be moments where new terms are introduced and defined in order to make new experience possible, or to begin to classify/measure (etc.) it (with an eye toward new justification).
For related reasons, I also don't think McGuiggan's approach does full justice to the aims of conceptual engineering or ameliorative analysis in ethics and political philosophy. When 'epistemic injustice' gets complemented by 'epistemic violence' and 'epistemic pollution' these new concepts are introduced to make new diagnoses and new forms of intelligibility of one's experiences possible, but also with an aim to change the conditions that make these experiences possible (even though the term was not around). The point here is not to challenge the coherence of McGuiggan's distinctions, but to suggest that the diagnosis seems to presuppose conditions that are not always present.
*I also don't think Deleuze and (let me be immodest for a second) and I are busy with the same enterprise when we read historical sources like Spinoza or Hume (in remarkably similar fashion).
September 27, 2022
Hazony on Conservatism, part II
This is the second in a series of posts on Hazony's Conservatism (recall the first one here). Hazony's conservatism fuses nationalist and religious themes. Here I explore his account of the family. For, while I am no expert on contemporary conservative thought, and generally Hazony presents his views polemically against liberal or Marxist (or so-called "woke") views, his account of the family is, in fact, rather revisionary relative to the public statements of those "who regard themselves as political conservatives" and when they "speak of the importance of the 'the family' as a cultural matter or in regard to government policy." (p. 213). His views on the family, thus, give a fascinating oblique glimpse into some serious rethinking on 'the right.'
Hazony's account of the family is offered as part of a larger account of the significance of families in congregations and congregations, in turn, in the life of the nation (or clan). Congregations are composed of families, and together with the families that constitute them are key to passing on traditions. (p. 218) The account of the family itself is functional in character. I return to this below.
Now, a casual reading of Hazony's argument seems to suggest that it is based on sex-essentialist views of human nature. In particular, Hazony denies that enduring sexual monogamy is natural to men, especially, in fact, "nothing is more contrary to human nature." (p. 208) And so, in so far as "the lifelong bond of a man and a woman" is advocated by Hazony (which it is) as the "first pillar" of "civilized life," (p. 209) it turns out that for Hazony this lifelong bond is really the effect of the proper organization of social life (including families and traditions), that is, (what the Aristotelians would call) our second nature. So, it turns out that Hazony's sex-essentialist views are dispensable for his argument (which are compatible with all kinds of constructivist views).
And, in fact, in Hazony's favored account of the family -- what he calls "the traditional family" -- gender based dimorphism is rather small. It is much smaller, in fact, than in the patriarchic account of the nuclear family familiar from those "who regard themselves as political conservatives" Let me explain.
Because he is attuned to the changing dynamics of the function and composition of families, Hazony works with a clear three-fold distinction among three ideal types: (i) the traditional family; (ii) the nuclear family; (iii) the hollowed out family. In brief: the traditional family is a business enterprise consisting of multiple generations in daily contact; the nuclear family involves a sexed division of labor within the household with the mother devoted to child-rearing and the father as breadwinner on a Fordist family wage; the hollowed out family has all its adult members involved in society's extended division of labor and purchases services from it to take on childrearing, cleaning, and education tasks.
While the distinction is conceptual (and normative) in character, it is presented as a temporal (and conceptual) descent, even thought it is possible for a great society to have instances of all three kinds of families existing at the same time (but usually one will predominate numbers-wise and/or normatively).
Let me quote the passage in which he makes this three-fold distinction. (And then I return to what he calls the 'traditional family.') I suspect it will be received as a bombshell among Hazony's target audience:
As anyone who has lived among traditional families can immediately see, the nuclear family is a weakened and much diminished version of the traditional family, one that is lacking most of the resources needed effectively to pursue the purposes of the traditional family. When this conception of the family became normative in America after the Second World War, it gave birth to a world of detached suburban homes, connected to distant places of employment and schools by trains, automobiles, and buses. In other words, the physical design of large portions of the country reflected a newly rationalized conception of what a family is, which had been reconstructed in light of the economic principle of the division of labor. In this new reality, there were no longer any business enterprises in the home for the family to pursue together. Instead, fathers would ���go to work,��� seceding from their families during their productive hours each day. Similarly, children were required to ���go to school,��� seceding from the family during their own productive hours. Young adults would then ���go away to college,��� cutting themselves off from family influence during the critical years in which they were supposed to reach maturity. Similarly, grandparents were excised from this vision of the home, being ���retired��� to ���retirement communities��� or ���nursing homes,��� which cut the older generation off from the life of their family in much the same way that going away to college cut the younger generation off from it.
Under this new division of labor, mothers were assigned the task of remaining by themselves in the house each day, attempting to ���make a home��� using the minimalist ingredients that the structure of the nuclear family had left them. Much of this involved increasingly desperate efforts to keep adolescents somehow attached to the family���even though they now shared virtually no productive purposes with their parents, grandparents, and broader community or congregation, and instead spent their days seeking honor among other adolescents. The resulting rupture between parents and their children was poignantly described in numerous books and films beginning in the 1950s. But these works rarely touched upon the reconstruction of the family, which had done so much to inflame the natural tendency of adolescents toward agonized rebellion, while depriving parents of the tools necessary to emerge from these years with the family hierarchy strengthened.
But mothers had the worst of this new family life. Some did succeed in maintaining the cohesion of their families in a world in which grandparents and other family relations had grown impossibly distant, in which the family business had disappeared from the home, and in which the congregation or community, with its sabbaths and festivals, had likewise been reduced to something accessed by automobile once each week like a drive-in movie. However, many other ���housewives��� despaired and fell into the arms of the feminist movement, which, not without reason, declared the nuclear family to be a tomb for women. Feminist writers were mistaken in supposing that the reconstructed household of the postwar era was itself the traditional family. But they were right that the life of a woman spending most of her productive hours in an empty house, which had been stripped of most of the human relationships, activities, and purposes that had filled the life of the traditional family, was one that many women found too painful and difficult to bear. Many of these mothers quickly joined their husbands and children in leaving the home during the daytime���thus completing the final transformation of the post-traditional ���nuclear family��� into a hollowed-out shell, a failed imitation of the traditional institution of the family.--Yoram Hazony (2022) Conservatism: A Rediscovery, Chapter 4, pp. 213-215 (emphasis added)
I doubt a conservative has ever been so frank in acknowledging the solidity of key features of the argument of Friedan's The Feminine Mystique!
Hazony is, thus, explicit that he rejects a restoration of the nuclear family as an unworthy project. His is rather an attempt to restore the traditional family. This traditional family has five dimensions (and main characteristics): "lifelong marriage, permanent relations between parents and children, family business operations, the embrace of multiple generations within the family, and active [that is, daily] participation in a broader community or congregation." (p. 211) These are families, that is, that live on farms or compounds, or above/behind a store-front they own (or rent). As Hazony notes, it "becomes clear that the traditional Jewish or Christian family was a far more active, extensive, and powerful organization than the family as it exists in contemporary imagination and practice." (p. 211)*
As an aside, because Hazony is working with a cultural account of the Anglo-American nation, it's a peculiar fact that he does not explore how in immigrant communities -- including Muslim and Hindu --the traditional family is still very much alive and an attractive ideal. (Hazony's views on immigration are assimilationist in character, but compatible with this fact.) I suspect this reflects the unease on the political right with how to conceive the Anglo-American nation's internal relations with non Judeo-Christian religions. (I return to this in a future post when I discuss this more directly, and his views on public religion.)
While in some of Hazony's auto-biographical vignettes the traditional family has some gendered division of labor, it's pretty clear that within the family men and women are equal and that their contributions to the family functions, including its business and enduring partnership with other families, is valued even honored equally. And while the traditional family is hierarchical in character, the hierarchy is structured around age and contribution to the joint efforts not gender. In so far as there are any patriarchic elements left in it, these seem symbolic in nature. So, in some significant ways the traditional family is a much better home than the nuclear family is for a world that takes women and girls and their interests seriously. While it would be a mistake to ignore the anti-feminist rhetoric and arguments in Conservatism -- or the passages where Hazony expresses his criticism of abortion -- in many ways Hazony's program is not a return to patriarchy, but post-feminist.*
To what degree the traditional family is an attractive (or politically winning) ideal, I leave to others. But it is worth noting how much the political economy of the US would need to be re-shaped if it becomes at all feasible. As I noted above, at the level of dwellings and urban/suburban planning it would involve very different choices from the ones that are presently familiar (including a retreat from the suburb). In addition, the traditional family is incompatible with the large corporation; the underlying political economy is Smithian in character composed of price-taking small firms/units and protected by fierce anti-trust regulations and limitations on incorporation. (This is a bit ironic because Hazony's book has a Hamiltonian polemic with Jefferson.) So, this would have to be a conservatism that commits to non-trivial attacks on very strong vested economic and political interests (in the name of a restoration). Hazony hints at this when he warns against the "excessive accumulation of power by private enterprises and cartels" (p. 343), but this part of his program seems underdeveloped.+
*This can be readily noticed if we look at the traditional family's distinctive purposes he enumerates:
(i) bringing children into the world and protecting them until they can provide for themselves....: The traditional family has (ii) economic aims, by means of which its members are kept sheltered, fed, and in good health. It has (iii) an educational purpose, which is to equip the children with the knowledge, traditions, and skills they will need for life. The traditional family also (iv) aims at the security of the household, arming and protecting itself against threats from the outside. It aims at (v) domestic peace, establishing rules, rewards, and punishments in order to attain it. It aims at (vi) cohesion, which is best attained through a just distribution of honor and influence among its members. It aims at (vii) contributing to honorable and mutually beneficial relations with other households in the community or congregation and with the broader tribe or nation. It aims at (viii) maintaining proper relations with God and with one���s ancestors, observing sabbaths and holy days and other festive occasions, with the parents and grandparents undertaking various priestly functions within the family to this end. It provides (ix) honor and care for the elderly. And it serves as (x) a home and a support for relations, friends, and strangers who do not have families of their own, or who are distant from them at a given time, or who are otherwise in distress. (pp. 211-212)
In addition, Conservatism has little to say about sexual choice and policing sexual preferences/activities (including anticonception, and non-heterosexual sexual activity).
+This is a bit surprising because the first Trump campaign showed that there was interest in such a program.
September 26, 2022
On Wendy Brown's Undoing the Demos and the Homo Politicus of (Foucault's representation of) Ordoliberalism
The economization of the state and of social policy. The virtue of competition is that it generates economic growth, the promotion of which is ���the only one and true fundamental social policy.��� Foucault elaborates: In neoliberalism, ���social policy must not be something that works against economic policy and compensates for it��� or that ���follows strong economic growth by becoming more generous.��� Instead, economic growth by itself should enable individuals to prosper and to protect themselves against risk, so economic growth is the state���s social policy. Competition is a means facilitating an end; the state primes this means so that the economy can generate the end.
Neoliberal states thus depart from liberal ones as they become radically economic in a triple sense: The state secures, advances, and props the economy; the state���s purpose is to facilitate the economy, and the state���s legitimacy is linked to the growth of the economy ��� as an overt actor on behalf of the economy, the state also becomes responsible for the economy. State action, state purpose, and state legitimacy: each is economized by neoliberalism. The Ordoliberals carried this even further: the market economy should also be the principle of the state���s internal regulation and organization. Reversing the liberal formulation in which a free market is defined and supervised by the state, for them, the state should be defined and supervised by the market. In short, the state itself should be economized.
Competition replaces exchange; inequality replaces equality. In neoliberalism, competition replaces the liberal economic emphasis on exchange as the fundamental principle and dynamic of the market. This is another of those seemingly trivial replacements that is a tectonic shift, affecting a range of other principles and venues. Most importantly, equivalence is both the premise and the norm of exchange, while inequality is the premise and outcome of competition. Consequently, when the political rationality of neoliberalism is fully realized, when market principles are extended to every sphere.--Wendy Brown (2015) Undoing the Demos: Neliberalism's Stealth Revolution, pp. 63-64 (emphasis in original)
It is fair to state that Brown's Undoing the Demos is the most influential treatment of neoliberalism that simultaneously draws on Foucault's Birth of Biopolitics. Brown is not uncritical of Foucault. In particular, in her third chapter she argues that in articulating "the novel dimensions of the contemporary neoliberal subject," he fails to register "its specific eclipse of homo politicus...[S/he] is not a character in Foucault's story." (85-86). This matters because the homo politicus "forms the substance and legitimacy of whatever democracy might mean beyond securing the individual provisioning of individual ends; this "beyond" includes political equality and freedom, representation, popular sovereignty, and deliberation and judgment about the public good and the common." (87) The underlying claim is that Foucault has (what the Anthropologists call) 'gone native' and that his analysis recapitulates some of the flaws of the neoliberal authors and movements he analyzes.
Now, in the passages I quoted from pp. 63-64, Brown is quoting from Foucault's lecture(s) of 7 and 14 February 1979, that is, lectures five and six, both primarily devoted, as Brown explicitly recognizes, to German Ordo-liberalism (or the ORDOs). And as a summary of their views, Brown's account is misleading in two very important ways: first, she misrepresents the 'virtue' of competition in their thought. Second, she misrepresents what it means for the ORDOs to suggest that the market economy should be the principle of the state���s internal regulation and organization.
First, for the ORDOs the market's main virtue is that it, if it is properly regulated, it is a mechanism against (what Samuel Bagg calls) 'concentrated power.' This is absolutely explicit in Eucken's central work, The Foundations of Economics, where the "main task" is to find a "system" that is "effective" and does ���justice to the dignity of man.��� (p. 314) For Eucken ���economic history is [full] of brutal struggles for power.��� (264) In the context of perfect competition we are least likely to be dominated (and when some agent tries to do so we can safely exit). By contrast communism and Nazism are characterized by concentrated power (128) and "loss of independence." (p. 268). The ORDO embrace of markets and their suspicion of cartels and (in the hands of R��pke, especially) very large corporations (as well as unions) is motivated by their aversion to concentrated power. (See also Wilhelm R��pke (1960) A humane economy: the social framework of the free market, p. 32.)
It is worth noting that while Foucault does not use the phrase 'concentrated power,' it is still odd that Brown misses the significance of the neo-Kantian themes in Foucault's treatment of the ordoliberals and the republican concern with combatting domination. For, Foucault frames his discussion of modern variants of neoliberalism with a distinction between what he calls, at the end of the second lecture, "the fundamental axiomatic of the rights of man and the utilitarian calculus of the independence of the governed." (17 January 1979, p. 43) The former is associated with Rousseau and Kant, and the latter with Benthamite radicalism, and he is explicit there is a complex dynamic between them. And the most natural way to read his subsequent discussion is that Chicago economics is in the tradition of Benthamite radicalism (a point he explicitly makes), and the ORDOs in the former (a point he makes by implication by treating them as neo-Kantians). I return to the significance below.
Second, to think that for the ORDOs "the state should be supervised by the market" is not altogether strange in light of some of Foucault's expressions.* But even in Foucault, it is completely clear that for the ORDOs the state must have independent capacity and knowledge to be an umpire over the market (in terms of anti-trust), and to create the pre-conditions (in terms of rule of law, and social skills) to make markets function properly. (See, especially, lectures 6- 7.) So, what's going on here?
Now, it's important to recognize that that in Brown's presentation above, 'competition' becomes synonymous with 'market economy.' And so when Foucault represents the ORDOs as emphasizing competition, even treating it as a principle of regulation of the state, it is quite natural to read this as suggesting a kind of total displacement of the state's political functions with principles of the market. And this natural reading is by no means odd, if we look at the rhetoric (and some of the practice) of New Public Management in subsequent decades. Brown herself recognizes that in some respects this is much closer to the Chicago school than the ORDOs (see, especially, p. 60).
Even so, at the political level, 'competition' does not have to be identified with 'market economy.' It is quite natural to treat elections as competitive mechanisms. In fact, in ordo-liberalism one will find defenses and legitimations of the market economy or the price system in terms of a referenda. In 1951 R��pke writes "The process of the market economy is like an uninterrupted referendum on what use should be made (at every minute) of the productive resources of the community." ("The Problem of Economic Order" (Third lecture), published in Two Essays by Wilhelm Ropke, edited by Johannes Overbeek, Lanham: University of America Press, 1987, p. 26) Even Hayek, who allows himself plenty of skeptical comments about democracy, thought that judicial review of the sort practiced Stateside ought to be complemented by a referendum (see The Constitution of Liberty, p. 286, a work that Foucault read carefully). R��pke, especially, held up Switzerland as a model to be emulated by a wider European Union.
Now, at this point one may object that Ordoliberalism also has considerable suspicion of pure democracy or what Brown tends to call the popular sovereignty of the demos. While I think this tends to get emphasized too much in critical discussions of the ORDOs -- they are fully committed to democratic politics of the Bonn and Berlin republics (and as Foucault notes their political allies tend to win elections in it, and German social democracy had to change character/ideology if it wanted to win elections!) --, it is undeniably true that the ORDOs have some suspicion of the rent-seeking that takes place through political life and the (collectivist) temptation to use state power to plan and direct the economy. This, too, is emphasized in Foucault through the significance of the road to serfdom thesis in his analysis of them.
But the ORDOs respond to this (and this echoes Lippmann's analysis) not just by emphasizing markets and the rule of law, or even the countervailing powers of civil society, but rather by what one may call the fragmentation of the polity by way of federalism and de-centralization. (This is also quite present in Chicago economics starting with Simons.) Foucault is absolutely explicit on this:
Such a Gesellschaftspolitik was therefore orientated towards the formation of a market. It was a policy that had to take charge of social processes and take them into account in order to make room for a market mechanism within them. But what did this policy of society, this Gesellschaftspolitik have to consist in for it to succeed in constituting a market space in which competitive mechanisms could really function despite their intrinsic fragility? It consisted in a number of objectives which I have talked about, such as, for example, avoiding centralization, encouraging medium sized enterprises, support for what they call non-proletarian enterprises...(Lecture 10, 21 March 1979, pp. 240-241--emphasis added)
In addition, Foucault treats the ORDOs as the heir of Kant's federal plan for perpetual peace, and he inscribes this idea into the ORDO significance to the construction of the European Union. (In fact, he is quite prescient about this.) So, on their view of politics it should be polycentric with federalism at the national and European level. Now, admittedly Foucault doesn't use the term (despite quoting Michael Polanyi), but unless one assumes that neoliberalism is committed to creating economic markets at all levels, the fact that 'competition' has a political significance is very hard to miss in Focault's treatment of the ORDOs.
So, rather than rejecting homo politicus, as Brown ascribes to Foucault and the ORDOs, the ordoliberals ask of her to participate in political life at different federal levels and with elections at different times. And to do so in a position of sufficient independence (and dignity) so that her political voice can express her interests and even her vision of the common good. Especially in Erhard (who Foucault discusses at length in lecture four) this also involves a defense of basic rights.
Now, obviously, it is possible that the homo politicus of the ORDOs is too thin and too liberal for the more substantive conception that Brown adheres to. Gesellschaft can mean 'enterprise'/'corporation,' but also 'society.' And a politics that defends and organizes society may be too bourgeois for Brown. There is no doubt that the ORDOs are comfortable with the existence of considerable economic inequality, although not so much inequality that this can be organized to extract rents or to become a source of concentrated power.
And while it is true that economic growth is very significant to the ORDOs. In Foucault's analysis this is so because it can create (what since has come to be called) 'output legitimacy.' And this legitimacy is explicitly treated as a form of representativeness. For, the output legitimacy (which involves economic growth is the effect of respecting "the basic freedoms, the essential rights of citizens" and thereby be "representative of its citizens." (31 January, 1979, p. 81, discussing Erhard.) As Foucault puts it "it is simply a matter of saying that a state which abuses its power in the economic realm, and more generally in the realm of political life, violates basic rights, impairs essential freedoms, and thereby forfeits its own rights." (p. 80) In reading Brown on ordoliberalism, and her account of Foucault's treatment of it, one would simply miss this tight connection between respecting homo politicus and advancing (a new conception of) homo economicus.+
*In addition to the passages quoted by Brown, see also, for example, "The society regulated by reference to the market that the neo-liberals are thinking about is a society in which the regulatory principle should not be so much the exchange of commodities as the mechanisms of competition. It is these mechanisms that should have the greatest possible surface and depth and should also occupy the greatest possible volume in society. This means that what is sought is not a society subject to the commodity effect, but a society subject to the dynamic of competition." (14 February 1979, p. 147)
+To what degree Chicago economics does displace homo politicus by homo economicus, I leave for another time.
September 23, 2022
Hazony on Conservatism, part I
Everything that we call a freedom of the individual, or one of the individual���s liberties, is a traditional institution whose particular form is learned by imitation, maintained through honor and self-discipline, and handed down, in a given society, from one generation to the next. Every freedom emerges through a well-structured constraint, and so it is worse than merely misleading to say that our political freedoms come to us by nature, or that reason leads easily to them, or that nothing is needed to maintain them but for government to let us be. All of this mythology diverts our eyes from the difficult road that must be traveled in order for the necessary constraints to be instilled in society, so that even the most rudimentary freedom or right can become a reality.
Where do these constraints come from?
They can come from the laws of the state and the commands of its officials, of course. And indeed, this is the most common Enlightenment-rationalist depiction of constraint. In Hobbes���s Leviathan, for example, fear of the government provides the constraint needed to bring peace and order to a society that would otherwise tear itself apart.
But constraint can also come from another source. In a free society, the principal constraining force comes not from fear of the government, but from the self-discipline of the people, who provide the necessary constraint themselves by upholding inherited relations and the obligations that attend them. This point was emphasized by the English political theorist John Fortescue in the fifteenth century, and taken up by Montesquieu, Burke, and the American founding fathers centuries later. Where nations can impose the needed constraints themselves, the government can be mild or moderate, offering them greater freedom to conduct their affairs without interference. But where a people is incapable of self-discipline, a mild government will only encourage licentiousness and division, hatred and violence, eventually forcing a choice between civil war and tyranny....
An individual who was guided by common sense enjoyed a broad range to think things through for himself. But his originality and divergences from the way others spoke and behaved were always constrained by a thick fabric of inherited relations and norms, which included the obligation to maintain and defend the place of God and religion, nation and government, family, property, and so on.
These inherited norms provided the framework (or ���guardrails,��� as we now say) within which reason was able to operate, yet without overthrowing every inherited institution as today���s adulation of perfectly free reasoning does. In our day, these inherited norms have been discarded in the name of the freely reasoning individual and his right to be rid of any constraint he has not himself chosen. God and religion, nation and government, marriage and children and caring for the aged���all these traditional ideas and institutions that once constrained the individual are now regarded as burdensome and difficult things, to be avoided because of the limits they impose on our freedom.
What would be required to build up this voluntary self-constraint rather than ceaselessly working to destroy it?
The propagation of such self-constraint depends on the honor that a given society is willing to award those who practice it. Indeed, the only known means of causing individuals to shoulder hardship and constraint without coercion or financial compensation is by rewarding them with honor.--Yoram Hazony (2022) Conservatism: A Rediscovery, pp 164-166
When Donald Trump destroyed Jeb Bush in the (2016) South Carolina primary it inaugurated a seismic shift within the Republican party. One of the effects has been the rejection of a whole number of what we might call 'right liberal' commitments that centered on cosmopolitanism, individualism, free markets, free trade, and a defense of the rule of law. In its wake there has been a scramble to provide a reasonably coherent intellectual program that can unify its nationalist and Christian coalition and provide a governing philosophy. This is, in brief, the political context of Yoram Hazony's increased prominence Stateside during the last half decade.
Since 'self-constraint' and 'honor,' on one side, and 'Donald Trump,' on the other side, don't naturally go together in the same sentence, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the precise contents of Hazony's vision are at odds with Trump's persona and his style of leadership and governance. In addition, if one reads Conservatism: A Rediscovery with some care one will discern a whole number of subtle rejections of what one may call 'Trumpism' in political life not the least is a clear distancing from racism and racialized hierarchy, but also from Trumpism's zero-sum winner-takes all understanding of politics.
Before I get to discuss the passage I quoted at the top of this post, I don't mean to suggest that Trumpism is irrelevant to Hazony's argument even if Trump's actual views are barely mentioned. At the start of the book, Trump's 2016 victory is briefly identified as evidence for the rise of 'nationalist conservatism' and nearer to the end, the talk of 'resistance' to Trump's 2016 electoral college victory is offered as evidence that his legitimacy was denied and that Marxism has taken over the central organs of the old liberalism (pp. 327-328). There is no critical scrutiny of Republican malfeasance, and so this limits the audience of Hazony's message.
Rather, a natural way to understand the role of Trump in Hazony's larger argument, is that he is a kind of symptom of a much wider social distress and inaugurates a period "when a major reframing of a scheme of ideas and the relations among them���a change in paradigm���becomes possible." (This echoes my own (recall) diagnosis back in December 2015.) In such periods, "we begin seeking the causes of our distress in earnest, and this search becomes the lever that pries the old paradigm loose. A period of open-mindedness is initiated, and proposed repairs that were once ridiculed are reconsidered. At this time, dissenting individuals who were once spurned and disreputable may grow quickly in importance, even as those who jealously protected the old consensus are diminished in stature and significance." (176)*
Okay, let me turn to the passage which is from the long third chapter, "The Conservative Paradigm." This paradigm is situated in a historical narrative about the theoretical and political roots of Hazony's position in what he calls 'The English Conservative tradition" and "American nationalism," with the latter understanding itself as a continuation, even restoration (a key word for Hazony) of the former in the wake of the 1787-1789 Constitution.
While self-discipline and constraints are not at odds with a liberal political worldview, a focus on honor is. Even liberal counterparts such as 'social credit' or 'recognition' or 'social approbation' all function differently than Hazony's account of honor. This is especially noticeable if one recognizes that those that (properly) perform the traditionally sanctioned role in a (traditional) hierarchy (parents, teachers, soldiers, political leaders, etc.) are to be honored. In addition, on Hazony's account obligations are the effects not primarily of consent, but rather of the existence of traditional relationships within this hierarchy (marriage, parenthood, childhood, membership in a clan, tribe, a nation, but also a corporation, a platoon, etc.). And so it is no surprise that this understanding of obligation is, in turn, repeatedly linked to loyalty, and that, as one can discern in the quoted passage, imitation is treated as praiseworthy. By contrast, there is no place in Hazony's scheme for (a celebration of) individual autonomy and authenticity.
So, while I think his account of freedom can be accommodated by certain republican liberals, on the whole Hazony offers a genuine alternative to liberalism, but he has no interest in facilitating, in his doctrines, what we might call Confederate irredentism. Rather, he celebrates "Edmund Burke in Britain and...the Federalist Party of George Washington, John Jay, John Adams, Gouverneur Morris, and Alexander Hamilton," who stood for a strong national government and rejected States' rights and slavery. Lincoln is treated as the great inheritor of this program, and Jefferson the exemplary misguided Enlightenment rationalist (and defender of slavery).+ And despite the emphasis on tradition and hierarchy, this Anglo-American conservatism is, thus, presented as not just as fully compatible with constitutional self-government, but as the true bearer of its tradition. I think this is, in fact, an improvement over the earlier (2017) presentation of these views (recall here) in an essay with Ofir Haivry at American Affairs. (Haivry seems to have co-authored the first two chapters of the present book.)
Since there are elements on the contemporary nationalist-Christian right, intoxicated by (natural law) Integralism and/or Schmittian decisionism and/or racialized hierarchy (the latter we might call the 'Jacksonian strain'), who seem little interested in constitutional and democratic self-government, it is actually to be wished that Hazony's position becomes the dominant element in Republican elite circles. For it would allow the possibility of the continuation of competitive elections that would permit alternative rule by different elites in the service of political coalitions and so the nourishment of hope that one can reverse a majority and policy. (Hazony claims that the cultural Marxist take-over of Liberal institutions will make that impossible.) In that respect, it's actually quite notable that at key moments in Hazony's narrative it is acknowledged that his favored tradition was a minority option. And unlike many other public facing thinkers on the nationalist conservative right, there is in Hazony no sign of rejection of scientific expertise. In a future post, I'll discuss his views on what a revived Conservative and Christian democracy would look like in greater and more critical detail. But here I want to close with an observation.
Hazony's road map from the present to the restoration of nationalist conservatism is, in fact, not centered on The Supreme Court or even electoral politics, even if the uptake of his views among Republican cadres will make him more influential. Rather, it is fundamentally ground in a "personal journey of repentance and return" and a rejection of "personal decadence." (p. 391) Not unlike his adversaries, Hazony believes the personal is political. And this means, for Hazony, in practice, building "family and congregation" dedicated to the passing on and honoring of tradition. (p. 393).
Given this self-transformative focus, I find it odd that Hazony barely touches on the nature and causes of contemporary celebrity and attention culture and the (consequent) frivolity of what passes for spirituality today.** For even if one grants (as I do not) that the vacuity of contemporary celebrity culture is the effect of liberalism, and evidence of its moral bankruptcy, it is also a rather effective block on the revival of a honor society he wishes for. In celebrity culture nurses and teachers and all lives dedicated to service, or any activity that provides social [what Hazony often calls] "cohesion," are simply not truly honored. This we have seen in a pandemic that should have caused a major cultural shift in attitudes. And within this celebrity culture, attention and success are its own ends and engage in a (if you will, vicious) mutually reinforcing cycle with financial rewards. And while some charismatic religious leaders may develop huge followings, they will do so in virtue of their charisma and success at attracting attention (and huge bank accounts) not because they have been touched by the divine.
There are passages that hint at a willingness to control the "corrosive effect" of capitalism on "traditional institutions," (and especially the off-shoring of good jobs abroad), but since celebrity culture now infiltrates our lives 24/7 on hour handheld, algorithmic networked devices introduction of (say) a number of tariffs will make no material difference here. That is to say, even if Hazony got his way and the "separation of church and state" would be abolished Stateside (p. 345) and Christianity would be restored to the centrality he wishes for it in our midst, the odds are it would be a repackaged Christianity fundamentally unmoored from its history and its sacred texts, in which resources are pooled to give fellow congregationalists a leg up in the social battle for attention.
*In fact, Hazony goes on to write. "Attend carefully to the following point: I have not said that such a crisis always leads to the adoption of an improved scheme of ideas and principles. A new scheme of ideas that comes to the fore in a time of crisis may prove worthless, and the consensus that seems to form around it can collapse within a short time. Frequently, a crisis will lead to the adoption of a series of different frameworks, which are tried and fail in rapid succession."(p. 177) I am suggesting that by implication Hazony treats Trump as agent of a new scheme of ideas that are not durable themselves.
**People are said to "pass the time with drugs and alcohol, pornography, video games, television, social media, and similar remedies, which suppress the pain, shame, anxiety, and depression that plague them." These ills are taken to be the effect of "liberal society," but the role of technology and what we might call techno-capitalism in reinforcing celebrity culture goes unexamined.
September 22, 2022
Hobbes on Natural Equality
It's natural to read a Spinozism before Spinoza into the first sentence quoted above. While I do not want to reject that out of hand, it's worth recalling that in the first sentence of the "Introduction" of the Leviathan, we learn that nature just is "the art whereby God hath made and governes the world." So, we are equal in virtue of God's art which both creates and governs the world. To what degree this government is providential I leave to discussion of chapter XXXI.
Such cosmocraft is the theological, or natural, counterpart to the statecraft (or art of governing people) that Hobbes teaches. The term 'statecraft' does not appear, I think, in the Leviathan, but we are informed in chapter XIX that the absence of "the art of making fit Laws" is one of the main conditions of the dissolution of states. And in that very sentence (of chapter XIX) laws are treated as coordination devices of human action. In fact, Hobbes is explicit that only fit laws can make a state last.
That there is an art of government, Hobbes explicitly defends -- against a kind of Thrasymachian objection "some say, that Justice is but a word, without substance; and that whatsoever a man can by force, or art, acquire to himselfe, (not onely in the condition of warre, but also in a Common-wealth,) is his own" -- in chapter XXX. And he explicitly goes on to say that "time, and Industry, produce every day new knowledge" of commonwealths. And "so, long time after men have begun to constitute Commonwealths, imperfect, and apt to relapse into disorder, there may, Principles of Reason be found out, by industrious meditation, to make use of them." And while "industrious meditation" gives the suggestion that these principles are rationalistic or Cartesian in character (as thinkers as different as Hume and Hazony imply), the wider context suggests he thinks these principles are empirical in character, even subject to trial and error. For these principles are "observed by industrious men, that had long studied the nature of materials, and the divers effects of figure, and proportion, long after mankind began (though poorly) to build."* That Hobbes thinks that the longevity and well-structured-ness of a state is a kind of practical response to the Thrasymachian objection is worth further exploration, but I leave it aside for now.
As regular readers know (recall here), I am rather fond of Leviathan's account of natural equality. Even so, Hobbes' defense that we are naturally bodily equal is a bit peculiar. Leaving aside the Spinozistic way of expressing things, in effect, in the first quoted paragraph (13.1) Hobbes re-tells the story of Glaucon's account of the origin of the social contract in Book 2 of the Republic at 358e/359a, where the not so powerful gang up against the powerful in order to restrain them. I call it 'peculiar' not just because Hobbes appeals to our political nature (confederacy, secret cabals) to explain we're naturally equal, but also because if Glaucon's social contract is apparently just as possible in the state of nature (and later in 13, we're reminded about the brutish and short lives there) as Hobbes' own version of the contract; then why do we need Hobbes' (different) version of the social contract?+
In XIII.2, Hobbes articulates a kind of natural ignorance. Science is historically late on the scene, and by Hobbes' light it is something "which very few have, and but in few things." Those that deny our equal natural ignorance tend to be our elitist vanity. As regular readers know, I think XIII.2 is significant because Hobbes shifts here from a kind of extensional perspective (in XIII.1) to a more intentional perspective in what we believe. And he appeals to a kind of no-envy-principle to suggest that we often seem satisfied with our own capacities or natural wisdom. And by 'wisdom,' Hobbes means here a kind of superior prudence in human/social affairs.
It is worth noting that Hobbes here rejects what Hume would call the monkish virtue associated with (say) Christian humility and epistemic deference to superiors as somehow unnatural. By this I mean that Hobbes thinks these are acquired perspectives on ourselves and can't be used in the escape from the state of nature. We don't really have easy epistemic access to the practical wisdom of others, while, on his view, we can relatively easily discover that others are funnier, and more eloquent and learned than we are. Since Hobbes is, in fact, very funny in XIII.2, I take it he means this claim to be proven or illustrated by example.
There is, of course, a peculiar fact that in defending our mental equality, Hobbes presupposes a distinction of rank between the gentlemen (who are, in fact, a mere subset of "all men") and the "vulgar." It's a nice example of a rhetorical maneuver that appeals to the prejudices of one's audience to simultaneously undermine it. That is to say, in XIII.2, he also illustrates superior eloquence by example. In fact, I am inclined to say that in 13.2 Hobbes improves rhetorically on (say) Romans 12:16, which also presupposes the distinction of ranks: "Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits." That Hobbes has this in mind is plausible because in chapter XV he writes, "For there are very few so foolish that had not rather govern themselves than be governed by others: nor when the wise, in their own conceit, contend by force with them who distrust their own wisdom, do they always, or often, or almost at any time, get the victory."
Be that as it may, Hobbes goes on to say (in XIII.3) that each of us think ourselves wise is a political problem in a world of material scarcity because it generates dangerous (because mutually incompatible) hopes. Hope had been defines as a passion or "Appetite with an opinion of attaining." That is to say, how we view ourselves is, alongside our desires, action guiding. And, in fact, earlier (at chapter XI.13) Hobbes had already alerted the reader to the political problem of our satisfaction with our own wisdom: "Men that have a strong opinion of their own wisdome in matter of government, are disposed to Ambition." And for this to be true, one need not assume that satisfaction in one's own wisdom is equally distributed. The political problem Hobbes is pointing to is generated if even only a few are really excessively self-satisfied in their own capacities, and these few are not in a position to hope to rule. Of course, making room for them to rule can cause its own problems. But I have gone on long enough.
*In context, Hobbes is comparing the building of a commonwealth to building of a house.
+One may also wonder to what degree it's likely that the relatively weak will combine to restrain the strong as distinct from the strong combining the relatively weak. Hobbes is, of course, aware of this (naturally not infrequent fact) and discusses it under 'dominion by conquest.'
September 20, 2022
Hobbes and Newton on the co-constitution of bodies and minds
The definition, therefore, of body may be this, a body is that, which having no dependence upon our thought, is coincident or coextended with some part of space...they answer best that define an accident to be the manner by which any body is conceived; which is all one as if they should say, an accident is that faculty of any body, by which it works in us a conception of itself. --Hobbes, Elements of Philosophy, Concerning Body, Part Second, chapter 8 "Of Body and Accident" [HT Jennifer Jhun]
In what follows I use 'Hobbes' as shorthand for his Elements of Philosophy. (I, thus, ignore any other works by Hobbes.) Because Hobbes is a quintessential modern corpuscularian, and we are often told that the encounter with Galileo was decisive to Hobbes' life it is natural to read passages like the one just quoted as instantiating a primary/secondary quality distinction, especially because Galileo seems clear on the distinction in (say) The Assayer. (See Martha Bolton's lovely review essay in the Stanford Encyclopedia.) Hesitation on the ascription of the primary/secondary quality distinction to Hobbes immediately creeps in (not just because Bolton does not mention Hobbes, but also) because in (the quoted passage from) Hobbes it seems nearly all qualities of bodies are what one might call 'secondary' and only the bare bodies themselves, and perhaps magnitude (as being the quality body shares with extension or parts of space), are what one might call 'primary' if it wouldn't be so odd to call body itself a quality of (ahh) body.
A Hobbesian accident may be thought of as a disposition or relational quality (as Jhun suggests in the paper that triggered this post). In particular, it is a quality of body that is intelligible to us (assuming that if we an have a conception of it, it's intelligible). There is an interesting question lurking here to what degree accidents are co-constituted by the conceptions of agents. And, so, it seems that for Hobbes there is a bare and parsimonious absolute ontology of fairly homogeneous matter, and that the rest of nature's structure or differentiation is, in part, the effect of the conceptualizing existence of material minds like ours.*
So, if Hobbes has or anticipates a primary/secondary quality of bodies distinction at all (which I am doubting), the list on the primary side is going to be rather short (it seems to include only magnitude or extension, which Hobbes explicitly treats as synonyms "The extension of a body, is the same thing with the magnitude of it, or that which some call real space.")+ And the list of secondary qualities will include features that are generally taken to be primary in the early modern tradition. For example, in the same section Hobbes goes on to write:
So, Hobbes does have a distinction between universal or what one may call 'intrinsic' or 'essential' qualities of body -- these are the accidents that make a body a body while it exists -- and non-universal or extrinsic or inessential qualities of body. Now, as readers of Newton's third rule of reasoning know, there is no necessary requirement to treat universal qualities as intrinsic qualities of bodies. That a quality is a universal property of matter may be an accidental feature of the universe; God's will or the laws of nature could have been otherwise. But it looks like Hobbes tacitly denies any gap between the universal and intrinsic qualities of body. And that makes sense, because Hobbes' list of these is incredibly short: only extension/figure is universal to body, and it must intrinsic to it.
Again, one may well treat the distinction between features of body that never perish except when the body perishes and features that are transient qualities of bodies as a kind of anticipation of the primary/secondary quality distinction. And I think that's fine, as long as one remembers that the transient qualities of bodies include accidents that are often treated as primary (hardness, motion/rest) by the rest of the tradition.
The significance of this is two-fold. First, relative to Galileo, Descartes, Boyle, and Locke, Hobbes is really an outlier. But, second, I do think pre-Principia Newton toyed with something close to Hobbes' position. This seems to be suggested by an extended aside in Newton's manuscript known as 'De Grav.' (I call it an 'aside' because it both detracts from the main argument of De Grav, and, in fact, is in some tension with it, or so I have argued.) After articulating the exceptionally clear idea of space, Newton offers a tentative hypothesis on the nature of body with an extended thought experiment involving God's creation. I quote the crucial passage from Andrew Janiak's edition:
And hence these beings will either be bodies, or very similar to bodies. If they are bodies, then we can define bodies as determined quantities of extension which omnipresent God endows with certain conditions. These conditions are: (1) that they be mobile, and therefore I did not say that they are numerical parts of space which are absolutely immobile, but only definite quantities which may be transferred from space to space; (2) that two of this kind cannot coincide anywhere, that is, that they may be impenetrable, and hence that oppositions obstruct their mutual motions and they are reflected in accord with certain laws; (3) that they can excite various perceptions of the senses and the imagination in created minds, and conversely be moved by them...--Newton's Philosophical Writings, edited Janiak, p. 43
To be sure, this is not exactly Hobbes' position. For, Newton does not rely on Hobbes' terminology of 'accidents'. Hobbes would not define body as determined quantities of extension (let alone let God's will play such an outsized role). And it does seem that Newton is inclined to treat mobility and impenetrability as universal qualities of bodies, where Hobbes would not. But here in (3) Newton does echo Hobbes in thinking that except for the spatiality of body, it is rather to central to body (I almost wrote 'intrinsic to body') as such that body has a relationship to minds.
Now, again there are important differences between Hobbes and Newton even on this point. In Newton this relationship is causal: bodies can "excite various perceptions of the senses and the imagination," whereas in the passages quoted from Hobbes the relationship is conceptual, we cognize features of bodies which, thereby, become intelligible if not differentiated. (Of course, there are plenty of passages in Hobbes, in which our thinking is treated in terms of the effects on the senses by bodies in motion!)
This soft connection between Hobbes and Newton is not wholly contingent. We know from Newton's early notebooks that Newton read De Corpore, and that he reacted strongly against Hobbes' materialism. And so while I don't want to claim that Newton was self-consciously following and modifying Hobbes (and Newton's position evolved away from the one presented De Grav), I do want to claim them as occasional partial fellow-travelers when it comes to analyzing bodies as spatialized, in one absolute sense, and as treating the differentiating properties of bodies as being more than accidentally linked to minds that perceive or cognize them.
*This anticipates some of (the as it were formal structure of) Spinoza's metaphysics, although because of Spinoza's commitment to infinite attributes the details are going to be very different.
+In "Hobbes and the Phantasm of Space," (2014) Ed Slowik nicely brings out the bewilderment one might feel if one reads Hobbes and comes to it with the primary/secondary quality distinction.
September 19, 2022
Hume, Foucault, Becker, (and Spinoza) on our fundamental and obvious interests
In the context of explicitly criticizing both the tacit and explicit versions of social contract theory, Hume draws upon (and subtly rewrites) his account of the origin of justice from the Treatise. In the quoted passage Hume works with a distinction or contrast between primary or original instincts (which are said to be "strong passions") and reflection or interest. And, in case one treats Humean reflection as a rationalist principle, Hume quickly adds that reflection is shaped or informed by "experience and observation." Even a small amount of this experience is sufficient to become aware of our "general and obvious" interest in obedience to the law not as something abstract, but as instantiated by the authority of magistrates. And so one important feature of Hume's account is that on his view it clearly does not require much intelligence to recognize such an interest in obedience. It's not, say, the product of philosophy or much enlightenment.
For a certain kind of theorist, Hume's claim that both our original and continuing adherence to the law are ground in our interests and not in some promise is suspect. For, after all, what if it is not in our general interest to do so? Here Hume seems to edge rather close to the Spinozistic position that our obligations dissolve once they (structurally) violate our interests. I use 'structural' here to echo Hume's use of 'general' and to allow for occasions where particular laws violate some of our (short-term or material) interests. Structural interests are akin to basic or fundamental rights.(To be sure, Spinoza clothes this doctrine in the language of social contract, and Hume rejects it.) This position is a feature and not a bug of Spinoza's account: rulers can't count on our allegiance and obedience when they violate our most fundamental interests or basic rights. And, while Hume is no fan of revolution (the passage is about obedience to government, after all), Hume is happy to bite this Spinozistic bullet (see Treatise 3.2.9.4, which Foucault will allude to [see below Foucault's treatment of the Humean response to Blackstone's account of tacit contract]).
The passage quoted above is discussed by Foucault on 28 March 1979, published as the eleventh lecture of Birth of Biopolitics. Foucault introduces it in the context of his revisiting and elaboration of kind of natural history of homo oeconomicus that, as I have noted before (recall), runs through the lecture series: (i) in the Smithian period he is the man of exchange (224); in the (ii) classical period starting with Ricardo he is man the consumer in terms of satisfaction/pursuit of needs (p. 225); (iii) in the neoliberal period, especially in the (recall) ORDO senses, "he is the man of enterprise and production." (147, lecture 6). And (iv) at Chicago he is also "an entrepreneur," but now, especially, "an entrepreneur of himself," who develops and produces/maintains his own human capital as a source of earnings (226), even a possible earning stream into the future (230).
And, in fact, as an aside, just before het gets to Hume, Foucault subtly refines (recall) his account of Chicago, especially Becker, who he correctly recognizes (v) treats homo oeconomicus as "any conduct which responds systematically to modifications in the variables of the environment, in other words, any conduct, as Becker says, which ���accepts reality,��� must be susceptible to economic analysis." (Birth of Biopolitics, p. 269; recall also this post). Foucault connects this feature of Becker's economic imperialism to Skinnerianism.
Now, Hume is treated by Foucault as a kind of radicalization of Locke's empiricism, which is said to posit a "subject of individual choices which are both irreducible and non-transferable," (BofB, p. 272; I have discussed this here.) They are irreducible and non-transferable because, in Foucault's treatment of Hume, these choices express or ultimately refer back to the subject's pleasure and pain. Crucially, Foucault adds: "This principle of an irreducible, non-transferable, atomistic individual choice which is unconditionally referred to the subject himself is what is called interest." (BofB, p. 272)
As an aside, that Hume is an atomist in this way is by no means obvious (a lot hinges on how one understands his account of sympathy), but Foucault buttresses his interpretation with an appeal to "Hume's famous aphorism which says: If I am given the choice between cutting my little finger and the
death of someone else, even if I am forced to cut my little finger, nothing can force me to think that cutting my little finger is preferable to the death of someone else." (BoB, p. 272) The editors of Foucault helpfully note that this is a reference to Treatise 2.3.3.6.* It is worth adding -- since one may well be tempted to ascribe to Hume's doctrine a kind of base selfishness -- that the next example Hume gives of the very same phenomena/doctrine is "'Tis not contrary to reason for me to chuse my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me." That is, on Hume's explicit account, one's interest need not be selfish.
Okay, with that in place, let me quote Foucault's analysis of the nature of Humean interest in the context of Hume's "Of the Original Contract" (quoted above):
This means that it is not because we have contracted that we respect the contract, but because it is in our interest that there is a contract. That is to say, the appearance and the emergence of the contract have not replaced a subject of interest with a subject of right. In a calculation of interest, the subject of interest has constituted a form, an element in which he will continue to have a certain interest right to the end. And if, moreover, the contract no longer offers an interest, nothing can oblige me to continue to comply with it. So, juridical will does not take over from interest. The subject of right does not find a place for itself in the subject of interest. The subject of interest remains, subsists, and continues up to the time a juridical structure, a contract exists. For as long as the law exists, the subject of interest also continues to exist. The subject of interest constantly overflows the subject of right. He is therefore irreducible to the subject of right. He is not absorbed by him. He overflows him, surrounds him, and is the permanent condition of him functioning. So, interest constitutes something irreducible in relation to the juridical will.--Foucault, 28 March 1979, p. 274.
In context, Foucault plausibly treats Blackstone's account of tacit contract as a source of obedience as the target of Hume's analysis. And what Foucault recognizes is that in Blackstone the social contract changes something fundamental about the agent: we become a juridical subject or a subject of right, or someone who can be held accountable in virtue of his or her promises (as it in Hobbes and, say, Rousseau).
Now, in larger context of Foucault's argument, it is clear that Foucault admires Beccaria and Bentham, and Benthamite radicalism as it flows into, and is revived by, Chicago economics because this tradition has an anthropologically thin account of the criminal. In Becker, arguably, the criminal has perhaps a different risk appetite (and, perhaps, bad luck that the government deploys significant resources to catch him) than other subjects, but is not different in nature.
And what Foucault recognizes is that this tradition is (as Bentham had hinted) rooted in Hume's philosophy. For even if a social contract is conceptually possible, as Hume allows for the sake of argument, the interest of the contracting agent subsists after the contract. As my comment about Spinoza above hints, I actually think this insight predates Hume (and, perhaps, even can be traced to Hobbes himself). Foucault goes on to argue "that in the eighteenth century the figure of homo oeconomicus and the figure of what we could call homo juridicus or homo legalis are absolutely heterogeneous and cannot be superimposed on each other...and have essentially a different relationship to political power." (276) Foucault develop this idea more fully in light of an account of Mandeville, Condorcet, and Smith.
But I want to close with two observations. First, the contrast that Foucault draws here actually helps explain, and historically anticipates, his claim that there are two liberal traditions (which he had articulated first in lecture two of 17 January 1979) one 'axiomatic, juridico-deductive' one that one might better call the republican stream within liberalism one can discern in Rousseau and, especially Kant and Constant (and later strands of ordoliberalism and Rawlsianism), and the other, the Benthamite radical (or utilitarian) one. And here Foucault suggests that Hume is really the fount of the radical tradition.
And, second, that from the perspective of Hume's metaphysics it's notable that reflection can generate a subsisting interest, even though the impressions of pain and pleasure that give rise to it, perhaps help constitute it, are themselves rapid and evanescent. And one suspects, but Foucault shows no interest in this, that such a steadfastness of our interest especially when the magistrate is not visible or absent, itself, requires (see, e.g., Treatise 1.2.3.11) some kind of fiction of the imagination, on Hume's account. To be continued.
*Unfortunately, Foucault's editors get the page number right, but mistakenly suggest it is in Book III, Part III, section III.
September 15, 2022
Milton Friedman (Schumpeter, Foucault, Dicey, and Hayek) on the Possibility of a Free Society
THERE IS A STRONG TENDENCY for all of us to regard what is as if it were the ���natural��� or ���normal��� state of affairs, to lack perspective because of the tyranny of the status quo. It is, therefore, well, from time to time, to make a deliberate effort to look at things in a broader context. In such a context anything approaching a free society is an exceedingly rare event. Only during short intervals in man���s recorded history has there been anything approaching what we would call a free society in existence over any appreciable part of the globe. And even during such intervals, as at the moment, the greater part of mankind has lived under regimes that could by no stretch of the imagination be called free.
In yesterday's post, I said something about the intellectual significance of New Individualist Review to the political development of what came to be known as 'fusionism' Stateside and its Hayekian context (and so the mainstreaming of neoliberal ideas, 'neoliberal' in its historical sense, that is). I also suggested that Friedman's essay (I quoted the first two paragraphs above) should be understood in context of the surprisingly critical reception of the Road to Serfdom thesis in this context. (Friedman's friend and colleague, Stigler, savages it.)
I wish I had read Friedman's essay before I blogged on Graeber and Wengrow's recent Dawn of Everything because one way to understand the significance of their book is that it challenges the idea that a genuinely free society is rare. Now, obviously Friedman and Graeber/Wengrow don't mean the exact same thing with a 'free society.' While Friedman is a right or 'individualist' libertarian he is clearly not an anarchist, so it's not the case that Graeber/Wengrow refute Friedman's claim here. (And it's pretty clear that Graeber & Wengrow would not accept Friedman's claim that we're living in a free society.) But since Graeber/Wengrow and Friedman agree that legally sanctioned coercion is itself generally problematic (in ways that mainstream liberals often think not, alas), my suggestion is not altogether farfetched. Because it's pretty clear that the many urban polities that Graeber and Wengrow admire are open to commerce while rejecting state organized/sanctioned/rent-seeking (etc.) capitalism (which is what draws Friedman's ire, too).
So, one way to react to Friedman's set-up of his argument is that he is (tacitly) working with a biased sample or a historically limited data-set (something Friedman may well appreciate given his kind of research in monetary history) because, and this is the interesting part, he is drawing on a literature (shared by Marxists and certain classical liberals alike) that presupposes something like an idea of progress (that has already occurred) and that is distinctly Eurocentric/Western. This can be checked because Friedman's main source is Lectures on Law and Public Opinion in the Nineteenth Century (1905) by A. V. Dicey. Dicey clearly impressed Friedman because he also frames Friedman's argument in his important earlier (1952) essay "Neo-Liberalism and its Prospects��� that I have discussed here.
What makes Friedman's "Is a Free Society Stable?" interesting are two important observations. First, and this one (I am pretty sure) he has repeated elsewhere but here clearly credits Dicey with noticing, is that the consequentialist arguments that tend to support classical liberalism all violate what we might call 'na��ve empiricism' or 'lived experience' because they require a kind of statistical or aggregate perspective:
The argument for a free society, he goes on to say, is a very subtle and sophisticated argument. At every point, it depends on the indirect rather than the direct effect of the policy followed. If one is concerned to remedy clear evils in a society, as everyone is, the natural reaction is to say, ���let���s do something about it,��� and the ���us��� in this statement will in a large number of cases be translated into the ���government,��� so the natural reaction is to pass a law. The argument that maybe the attempt to correct this particular evil by extending the hand of the government will have indirect effects whose aggregate consequences may be far worse than any direct benefits that flow from the action taken is, after all, a rather sophisticated argument. And yet, this is the kind of argument that underlies a belief in a free or laisser-faire society.
So, that also means (and this is Dicey's initial observation) that arguments for a free society have a kind of utopian quality ahead of their existence. And even while such societies exist, given the abstracted/philosophical nature of the argument it is "says Dicey...really amazing and surprising...that for so long a period as a few decades, sufficiently widespread public opinion developed in Britain in favor of the general principle of non-intervention and laisser-faire as to overcome the natural tendency to pass a law for the particular cases." (The natural tendency is, thus, rooted in what I called the na��ve empiricist assumption which is attributed to ordinary life.) Obviously, as an aside, Marxists would take Dicey's argument, if they cared to take it seriously, and suggest that it is violence (and then ideology) that has to do the job to get people to accept a free society.
I don't mean to suggest such utopianism is required. For, as Friedman notes there is another route that is at least partially ground in experience:
one of the factors that led Bentham and the Utilitarians toward laisser-faire, and this is a view that is also expressed by Dicey, was the self-evident truth that if you wanted to get evils corrected, you could not expect to do so through the government of the time. The government was corrupt and inefficient. It was clearly oppressive. It was something that had to be gotten out of the way as a first step to reform. The fundamental philosophy of the Utilitarians, or any philosophy that puts its emphasis on some kind of a sum of utilities, however loose may be the expression, does not lead to laisser-faire in principle. It leads to whatever kind of organization of economic activity is thought to produce results which are regarded as good in the sense of adding to the sum total of utilities. I think the major reason why the Utilitarians tended to be in favor of laisser-faire was the obvious fact that government was incompetent to perform any of the tasks they wanted to see performed.
So, you might say that on Friedman's view Bentham and the radicals that followed backed themselves into laisser-faire as a kind of second best (or n-th) best option. What's undoubtedly correct here is that there is no intrinsic connection between free society and Utilitarianism. But Friedman ignores how important Adam Smith (and Hume) is to Bentham's intellectual development and the more important political radicals.
The second really interesting observation by Friedman is set up by him noting that "Dicey���s argument is enormously strengthened by an asymmetry between a shift toward individualism and a shift away from it." (For all his admiration, Friedman doesn't mince words about a kind of Victorian complacency in Dicey.) By contrast, in virtue of accepting the rarity of a free society (and a kind of explanatory parsimony), Friedman treats the mechanisms one might posit in a road to serfdom thesis as symmetrical (even potentially identical) with those that lead to a free society. Friedman is motivated to do so, also, by his reflection on Schumpeter's acceptance of the Marxist idea that capitalism is doomed to failure (but with this twist that "[W]hereas Marx���s view was that capitalism would destroy itself by its failure, Schumpeter���s view was that capitalism would destroy itself by its success.").
As an aside, if you accept my claim that Hayek is Friedman's real target in his 1962 article (which I claim is plausible on contextual grounds), what's neat about this is that he inscribes the road to serfdom thesis in a larger debate, inspired by Marxism, about the historical necessity of capitalism, and its subsequent demise. And in Friedman (recall here and here) not unlike Foucault in Lecture 7, The Birth of Biopolitics, 21 February 1979. Birth of Biopolitics, Schumpeter is crucial for linking the debates about monopoly capitalism and the road to serfdom thesis. (And unlike Foucault, Friedman, in turn, treats Schumpeter as a variation on Veblen and Burnham as a variation on Schumpeter--it is really a virtuoso performance by Friedman.) Some other time I will address Friedman's criticism of Schumpeter's thesis.
The mechanism, which has some unacknowledged roots in Marx's analysis, is as follows:
the development of laisser-faire laid the groundwork for a widespread respect for the law, on the one hand, and a relatively incorrupt, honest, and efficient civil service on the other, both of which are essential preconditions for the operation of a collectivist society. In order for a collectivist society to operate, the people must obey the laws and there must be a civil service that can and will carry out the laws. The success of capitalism established these preconditions for a movement in the direction of much greater state intervention.
But then Friedman adds:
The process I have described obviously runs both ways. A movement in the direction of a collectivist society involves increased governmental intervention into the daily lives of people and the conversion into crimes of actions that are regarded by the ordinary person as entirely proper. These tend in turn to undermine respect for the law and to give incentives to corrupt state officials....the erosion of the capital stock of willingness to obey the law reduces the capacity of a society to run a centralized state, to move away from freedom. This effect on law obedience is thus one that is reversible and runs in both directions. It is another major factor that needs to be taken into account in judging the likely stability of a free system in the long run.
And this argument is directed against both Marxist necessity and the road the serfdom. Because countervailing forces are naturally developed as one goes down the road to serfdom: "Once government embarks on intervention into and regulation of private activities, this establishes an incentive for large numbers of individuals to use their ingenuity to find ways to get around the government regulations." (And this, in turn, starts to swallow up time of the more earnest government officials, etc.) Friedman recognizes his claims are speculative (much more historical work is needed), but a reader of Friedman comes away thinking that free societies are rarely stable, if one means by that, in equilibrium; that is, they are always in some kind of crisis (again this anticipates Foucault's idea that liberalism is co-constituted with crisis); but these crises of a free society have, on the whole also a self-correcting quality over the medium term.
It's easy to mock Friedman's position as I have reconstructed it as a kind of providential optimism. But perhaps such providentialism is required within political life; the great danger of it is that encourages complacency about the possibility of a crisis that fatally undermines a free society.
September 14, 2022
Stigler (and Milton Friedman) on Hayek's Road to Serfdom Thesis with a nod to Condorcet and even Rawls at the end
The conservative, or the traditional liberal-or libertarian, or whatever we may call him-will surely concede this proposition in the large. He will say that this is precisely the problem of our times: to educate the typical American to the dangers of gradual loss of liberty. One would think that if liberty is so important that a statue is erected to her, then the demonstration that a moderate decline of personal freedom leads with high probability to tyranny would be available in paperback at every drugstore. Such a book is not so easy to find. In fact, it may not exist.
No one will dispute that there have been many tyrannies, and indeed it is at least as easy to find them in the twentieth century as in any other. Moreover, the loss of vital liberties does not take place in a single step, so one can truly say that a tyranny is entered by degrees. But one cannot easily reverse this truism and assert that some decrease in liberties will always lead to more, until basic liberties are lost. Alcoholics presumably increased their drinking gradually, but it is not true that everyone who drinks becomes an alcoholic.
An approach to a demonstration that there exists a tendency of state controls to increase beyond the limits consistent with liberty is found in Hayek's Road to Serfdom. But Hayek makes no attempt to prove that such a tendency exists, although there are allegations to this effect. This profound study has two very different purposes: (1) A demonstration that comprehensive political control of economic life will reduce personal liberty (political and intellectual as well as economic) to a pathetic minimum. (I may observe, in passing, that this argument seems to me irresistible, and I know of no serious attempt to refute it. It will be accepted by almost every one who realizes the import of comprehensive controls.) (2) If the expansion of control of economic life which has been under way in Britain, the United States, and other democratic western countries should continue long enough and far enough, the totalitarian system of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy will eventually be reached. This second theme is not a historical proposition-and no historical evidence was given: it is the analytical proposition that totali��tarian systems are an extreme form of, not a different type from, the democratic "welfare" states to which the book was addressed. Hayek was telling gentlemen drinkers, and especially some Englishmen-who were becoming heavy drinkers-not to become alcoholics.
The thirty-five years that have passed since the outbreak of World War II have seen further expansions of political control over economic life in the United States, and in most western European nations except Germany. Yet no serious diminution of liberties deemed important by the mass of educated (or unedu��cated) opinion has taken place. Another hundred years of governmental expansion at the pace of these recent decades would surely destroy our basic liberties, but what evidence is there that such an expansion will continue? Quite clearly, no such evidence has been assembled. But it is one thing to deny that evidence exists for the persistence of present trends to the point where they will endanger our liberties, and quite another to deny that such a momentum exists. Or, differently put, where is the evidence that we won't carry these political controls over eco��nomic life to a liberty-destroying stage?
This may be an impeccable debating point, but it will carry much less conviction than an empirical demonstration of the difficulty of stopping a trend. When men have projected the tendency of a society to a distant terminus, they have invariably committed two errors. The tendency develops in a larger number of directions than the prophet has discerned: no tendency is as single-minded as its observer believes it to be. And the tendency encounters in the society other and contradictory forces which eventually give the course of events a wholly different tum. We have no reason to believe that the current prophets are any wiser.
So I conclude: we should fish or cut bait. On the subject of liberty the conservative should either become silent or find something useful to say. I think there is something useful to say, and here is what it is.--G.J. Stigler (1975) The Citizen and the State, pp. 17-18
Among Hayek scholars it is a well known fact that the Chicago economist (and self-described 'conservative'), G.J. Stigler, was rather critical of Hayek's road to serfdom thesis. (See especially the rather intense exchanges between Bruce Caldwell, one side, and Andrew Farrant with Edward McPhail, on the other.) But I haven't seen the point discussed in wider scholarship on the nature of neoliberalism, so it can't hurt to amplify its existence. In addition, to the best of my knowledge Caldwell, Farrant and McPhail rely on Stigler's (1988) autobiography, Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist, and on his earlier essay (1961) "Reflections on the loss of Liberty." This early essay was reprinted with modifications as "reflections on Liberty" as chapter 2 in The Citizen and the State. The passage quoted above is pretty much identical in substance to the earlier essay. But in virtue of its context -- it's now part of a larger argument in a book -- it is worth revisiting in its incarnation in the Citizen and the State, which is Stigler's contribution to the liberal art of government (and art of economics).
When Stigler's essay first appeared in 1961 in New Individualist Review, which originated at The University of Chicago and had strong connections to its faculty, he had just returned to The University of Chicago where Hayek was still in the Committee on Social Thought. The Review was a central vector in the intellectual revitalization of the anti-New Deal forces on the Right, and in fact Hayek and his students played a central role in it. Interestingly enough, the Review published major criticisms of Hayek. In addition to Stigler, Hamowy's "Hayek���s Concept of Freedom: A Critique" also originated in it. Sometimes Hayek is not named, but the critical thrust of the argument is clear enough (see, for example, Milton Friedman's "Is a Free Society Stable?"). This original context also helps to explain Stigler's emphasis on educating 'typical Americans.' (In those days conservatives could not take their own typicality for granted.)
Recall that a road to serfdom thesis holds that an outcome unintended to political decisionmakers is foreseeable to the right kind of observer and that in addition the outcome leads to a loss of political and economic freedom over the medium term. I use ���medium��� here because the consequences tend to follow in a time-frame within an ordinary human life, but generally longer than one or two years (which is the short-run), and shorter than the centuries��� long process covered by (say) the rise and fall of civilization. Crucially for a road to serfdom thesis, along the way, in order to ward off some unintended and undesirable consequences, decisions are taken that tend to lock in a worse than intended and de facto bad political unintended outcome. It is pretty clear that Stigler attributes a road to serfdom thesis in this sense to Hayek. (A lot of the debate in Hayek studies is whether Hayek thought the welfare state must lead to serfdom.)
Now, Stigler's overall point is to try to turn the road to serfdom thesis from prophecy to a theory that can be tested empirically, which is treated as useful speech. Part of its utility is to "frighten" modern man "with [empirical] evidence." (18) But it is worth noting that lurking in Stigler's argument is a hypothesis that social tendencies naturally encounter and, perhaps even trigger, "other and contradictory forces which eventually give the course of events a wholly different turn." So Stigler's account presupposes, in fact, a commitment to a certain kind of pluralism as a social reality which can counterbalance serfdom inducing forces. (At the very end of this long post I return to characterize this pluralism.) To put it politically: there is a clear commitment to the proposition that New Deal Coalition can be defeated.
As an aside, Stigler's point about the plurality of social forces that may be a countervailing internal balance seems to anticipate Milton Friedman's ideas on the matter. In 1962, Friedman writes, "I HAVE BEEN EMPHASIZING forces and approaches that are mostly pessimistic in terms of our values in the sense that most of them are reasons why a free society is likely to be unstable and to change into a collectivist system. I should like therefore to turn to some of the tendencies that may operate in the other direction." ("Is a Free Society Stable?"). And Friedman thinks this is also an effect of the fact that (the side-effects of) tendencies in one direction become visible and become grounds for mobilization. (Since the two were close colleagues it's possible Friedman is the source of Stigler's point despite publishing later.) Friedman's essay is worth reading because he puts the road to serfdom thesis in the context of Dicey's arguments and a general awareness that liberal societies are historically rare.
The evidence of loss of liberty Stigler will point to are primarily economic, but some of them (media monopolies/oligarchies, land-management) clearly do have an effect on political issues. Yet, it's worth noting that when Stigler first published the piece, Jim Crowe had not been defeated even formally in the South. So, this, and the claim just before the passage I quoted above that "our franchise is broad...we have the political system we want" (16) suggests remarkable complacency about the state of civil rights (this is no surprise (recall) after Brad de Long called attention to his racist and condescending essay directed at students and civil rights leaders a few years later).
In fact, in The Citizen and the State, "The Loss of Liberty" follows a chapter called, "The Unjoined Debate." It seems to have gone unnoted that there, too, he address the Road to Serfdom thesis:
Let us begin with the most fundamental issue posed by the increasing direction of economic life by the state: the preservation of the individual's liberty-liberty of speech, of occupation, of choice of home, of education.
The situation is presently this: everyone agrees that liberty is important and desirable; hardly anyone believes that any basic liberties are seriously infringed today. The conservatives believe that a continuation of the trend toward increasing political control over economic life will inevitably lead to a larger diminu��tion of liberty. The liberals believe that this contingency is remote and avoidable. The more mischievous of the liberals point out that the conservatives have been talking of the planting of the seeds of destruction of liberty for decades-perhaps the seeds are infertile. Liberty is thus not a viable subject of controversy; neither side takes the issue seriously.
The lack of any sense of loss of liberty during the last two generations of rapidly increasing political control over economic life is of course not conclusive proof that we have preserved all our traditional liberty. Man has an astonishing ability to adjust to evil circumstances.
It is not possible for an observant man to deny that the restrictions on the actions of individuals have been increasing with the expansion of public control over our lives. I cannot build a house that displeases the building inspector. I cannot teach in the schools of the fifty states because I lack a license, although I can teach in their universities.
This list of controls over men can be multiplied many-fold, but it will not persuade the liberal that essential freedoms are declining. The liberal will point out that restrictions on one man may mean freedom for another. (5-6)
What's notable about this passage is that the veracity of the road to serfdom thesis has been elevated to it being "the most fundamental issue" in the modern administrative state. But simultaneously he thinks the conservative has engaged in "indolence parading as prophecy" with his "seeds-of-destruction talk." (6) That is to say on the acknowledged key question -- can liberalism [in its wider sense] survive? -- Stigler thinks Hayek's case is underwhelming.
What's also notable, and I realize I am testing your patience, is that Stigler clearly resists the idea that liberty is merely freedom of contract and simultaneously elevates freedom of speech beyond the other (unmentioned) political liberties. This is, in fact, no surprise because the chapter/essay is framed by the idea that "the controversy between conservatives and liberals in the United States is so ineffective that is serving the purposes of controversy. The quality of controversy is not only but in fact declining, and what was once a meaningful debate is becoming completely unjoined." (4). This passage was first written in 1966 (in the middle of the Vietnam War and Civil Rights debates). And even if you reject much of Stigler's political stance in the age (as I do), the fact that this idea is conventional wisdom of our own age (about the recent past) should give us pause. There is a sense in which liberal democracy is co-extensive with the further thought 'that the quality of controversy has declined.' Foucault (recall) picks up on this and treats liberal democracy as co-constituted with a sense of crisis.
Somewhat surprisingly, I think, the proper purpose of debate according to Stigler is announced on the following page, "the believer in democracy, or even more basically a believer in the dignity of man, has a moral obligation to seek to remove differences of opinion among groups by honest argument." (4) And this will also make "progress into our policies" possible. (13) We are not far removed from Rawls' idea that conceptual engineering will make overlapping consensus possible. And the reason for this position in Stigler is ground in a kind of negative Condorcet-ian insight (Condorcet goes unmentioned) that "the larger the group, the more certain we can be that is not insane in the sense of being divorced from apparent fact and plausible reasoning." (4, emphasis in original) And so their common position reflects "common factual beliefs and the same causal processes." (4) If large groups disagree, Stigler implies, they are both latching onto something fundamental in social reality.
Now, Stigler recognizes that eliminating "differences of opinion on public policy" is not likely because there are "unresolved factual and theoretical questions" and so "alternative policies" may well be equally reasonable. (13) This passage echoes Friedman's views in 1953 (which in turn echo Stigler's own views from the 1940s). But he also allows genuine value disagreement: "we shall still have men [sic] disagreeing on the comparative roles of individual responsibility and social benevolence." (13) That is, when confronted by the social tensions of the 1960s, at least one leading Chicago economists became receptive to the reality of value pluralism. And thought it important enough to repeat it in his major book on liberal, political statecraft.
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