TAKING HAYEK SERIOUSLY

Feser on Hayek & the trouble with libertarianism.

"F.A. Hayek (1899-1992) was perhaps the foremost champion of the free society and the market economy in the 20th century. He was also firmly committed to the proposition that market society has certain moral presuppositions that can only be preserved through the power of social stigma. In his later work especially, he made it clear that these presuppositions concern the sanctity of property and of the family, protected by traditional moral rules which restrain our natural impulses and tell us that "you must neither wish to possess any woman you see, nor wish to possess any material goods you see."[1]

"[T]he great moral conflict… which has been taking place over the last hundred years or even the last three hundred years," according to Hayek, "is essentially a conflict between the defenders of property and the family and the critics of property and the family,"[2] with the latter comprising an alliance of socialists and libertines committed to "a planned economy with a just distribution, a freeing of ourselves from repressions and conventional morals, of permissive education as a way to freedom, and the replacement of the market by a rational arrangement of a body with coercive powers."[3] The former, by contrast, comprise an alliance of those committed to the more conservative form of classical liberalism represented by writers like Smith and Hayek himself with those committed to traditional forms of religious belief. Among the benefits of such religious belief in Hayek's view is its "strengthening [of] respect for marriage," its enforcement of "stricter observance of rules of sexual morality among both married and unmarried," and its creation of a socially beneficial "taboo" against the taking of another's property.[4] Indeed, though he was personally an agnostic, Hayek held that the value of religion for shoring up the moral presuppositions of a free society cannot be overestimated:

"We owe it partly to mystical and religious beliefs, and, I believe, particularly to the main monotheistic ones, that beneficial traditions have been preserved and transmitted… If we bear these things in mind, we can better understand and appreciate those clerics who are said to have become somewhat sceptical of the validity of some of their teachings and who yet continued to teach them because they feared that a loss of faith would lead to a decline in morals. No doubt they were right…"[5]

For these reasons, Hayek, though like Locke a great defender of the classical liberal belief in toleration of diverse moral and religious points of view, also held that such toleration must have its limits if a free society is to maintain itself, as the following passages illustrate:

"I doubt whether any moral rule could be preserved without the exclusion of those who regularly infringe it from decent company - or even without people not allowing their children to mix with those who have bad manners. It is by the separation of groups and their distinctive principles of admission to them that sanctions of moral behavior operate."[6]

"It is not by conceding 'a right to equal concern and respect' to those who break the code that civilization is maintained. Nor can we, for the purpose of maintaining our society, accept all moral beliefs which are held with equal conviction as morally legitimate, and recognize a right to blood feud or infanticide or even theft, or any other moral beliefs contrary to those on which the working of our society rests… For the science of anthropology all cultures or morals may be equally good, but we maintain our society by treating others as less so."[7]

"Morals must be… restraints on complete freedom, they must determine what is permissible and what not… [T]he difficulties begin when we ask whether tolerance requires that we permit in our community the observance of a wholly different system of morals, even if a person does so entirely consistently and conscientiously. I am afraid I rather doubt whether we can tolerate a wholly different system of morals within our community, although it is no concern of ours what moral rules some other community obeys internally. I am afraid that there must be limits even to tolerance…"[8]

It is significant that Hayek's view was as conservative and moralistic as it was despite its not being, like Locke's view, based on theological premises or even on the notion of natural rights ..

Libertarians of the contractarian, utilitarian, or "economistic" bent must therefore treat the conservative the way the egalitarian liberal treats the racist, i.e. as someone who can be permitted to hold and practice his views, but only provided he and his views are widely regarded as of the crackpot variety. Just as the Lockean, Smithian, Hayekian, and Aristotelian versions of libertarianism entail a social marginalization of those who flout bourgeois moral standards, so too do these unconservative versions of libertarianism entail a social marginalization of those who defend bourgeois moral standards. Neither kind of libertarianism is truly neutral between moral worldviews. There are two dramatic consequences of this difference between these kinds of libertarianism. The first is that a society self-consciously guided by principles of the Lockean, Smithian, Hayekian, or Aristotelian sort will, obviously, be a society of a generally conservative character, while a society self-consciously guided by principles of a contractarian, utilitarian, or "economistic" sort will, equally obviously, be a society of a generally anti-conservative character ..

Those whose libertarianism is grounded in Lockean, Aristotelian, or Hayekian thinking are far more likely to take a conservative line on the [issue of abortion]. To be sure, there are plenty of "pro-choice" libertarians influenced by Hayek. But by far most of these libertarians are (certainly in my experience anyway) inclined to accept Hayek's economic views while soft-pedaling or even dismissing the Burkean traditionalist foundations he gave for his overall social theory. Those who endorse the latter, however, are going to be hard-pressed not to be at least suspicious of the standard moral and legal arguments offered in defense of abortion ..

Nor can a Hayekian analysis of social institutions fail to imply anything but skepticism about the case for same-sex marriage. Hayek's position was that traditional moral rules, especially when connected to institutions as fundamental as the family and found nearly universally in human cultures, should be tampered with only with the most extreme caution. The burden of proof is always on the innovator rather than the traditionalist, whether or not the traditionalist can justify his conservatism to the innovator's satisfaction; and change can be justified only by showing that the rule the innovator wants to abandon is in outright contradiction to some other fundamental traditional rule. But that there is any contradiction in this case is simply implausible, especially when one considers the traditional natural law understanding of marriage sketched above."

MORE -- Edward Feser, "The Trouble with Libertarianism."

Posted by Greg Ransom at July 19, 2004 11:39 PM | TrackBack