John Tomasi is
Associate Professor of Political Science at Brown
University and Director of the Political Theory Project
at Brown University. He is author of Liberalism
Beyond Justice: Citizens Society and the Boundaries
of Political Theory (Princeton University Press,
2001), and numerous articles.
He received his B.A. from Colby College, his M.A.
from the University of Arizona and his Ph.D. from
Oxford University. He has had previous appointments
at Princeton University and Stanford University. His
specializations are political theory and ethics and
public policy.
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Good evening. My name is James Piereson. I am a senior
fellow at the Manhattan Institute and director of
the Institute’s new Center for the American University.
Thank you for being here this evening for the Manhattan
Institute’s third annual Hayek Lecture. Previous
Hayek lecturers have been Michael Novak and Sir Robert
Skidelsky.
I would like to begin by acknowledging an important
benefactor and trustee of the Manhattan Institute,
who is also a good friend: Tom Smith. Three years
ago, Tom came to us with the idea of starting an annual
Hayek Lecture, which would honor Friedrich Hayek for
the role that he played in defending liberty during
a difficult period in history; and which would sustain
and preserve the principles of economic liberty to
which Hayek dedicated his life and to which we owe
our freedom and prosperity. Tom has now expanded this
idea to include Hayek programs at several universities—including
CUNY and his alma mater, Miami University in Ohio—that
are dedicated to promoting the virtues of free markets
and free people. Through these programs, he hopes
to reach the rising generation of Americans with a
body of thought that they might not otherwise encounter
on their campuses.
Tom, on behalf of the board of trustees, let me thank
you for your generosity, for your vision, and for
your principled leadership.
Why do we honor Hayek? One reason is that Hayek had
a small, but important, role in the founding of the
Manhattan Institute.
After World War Two, a former RAF gunner and chicken
farmer named Antony Fisher visited Hayek at the London
School of Economics after reading The Road to Serfdom—Hayek’s
critique of socialism and defense of liberty published
in London in 1944 and in the USA a year later. Interestingly,
The Road to Serfdom was turned down by every
major publishing house—which gives you a sense
of the intellectual bias in favor of socialism and
planning in the early postwar years. Fisher informed
Hayek that he wanted to run for Parliament to help
change the direction in which Britain—and the
rest of the West—seemed to be headed.
Hayek, however, advised Fisher not to enter politics
but rather to fight on the battlefield of ideas. Politics,
Hayek said, was a lost cause, at least in the short
term. Hayek urged Fisher to think for the long run
and to try to alter the climate of opinion in Britain
and elsewhere by building a network of think tanks
that would explain why socialism would fail and why
policies based on individual freedom were both practical
and moral. One of those think tanks that Fisher helped
to start is the Manhattan Institute. And our annual
Hayek Lecture affirms and celebrates the vision of
these two men.
We also celebrate Hayek because he—perhaps more
than any other thinker—reflects the vision of
the Manhattan Institute. Hayek, of course, is one
of the most influential economists in modern history,
but to limit his work to economics is to do him a
great disservice. He was much more than an economist.
In Hayek’s hands, “economics” is not
just a matter of money and wealth but a method of
thinking that tells us how to structure a society
so that each individual can fulfill his unique potential
and contribute to the well-being of mankind in the
process. It is about creating a just political order,
a healthy culture, the rule of law, limited government—all
based on liberty of the individual.
Our Hayek lecturer tonight, Professor John Tomasi,
is a member of a small but growing band of scholars
and teachers working to introduce Hayek’s principles
to the world of higher education. John is an associate
professor of political science at Brown University
and director of Brown’s Political Theory Project—a
wonderful program that introduces undergraduates to
the full range of thought on the most pressing questions
of our time. The program is not doctrinal or ideological
but incorporates a healthy respect for individual
liberty and free markets. Most of all, the program
encourages students to do what Hayek did: to think
through problems in an independent spirit and to defend
liberty and progress even when—and especially
when—to do so might offend the dogmas of conventional
wisdom.
Professor Tomasi received a B.A. from Colby College,
an M.A. from the University of Arizona, and a Ph.D.
in philosophy from Oxford University. He has also
held faculty appointments at Princeton University
and Stanford University. His major areas of study
are political theory, ethics, and public policy. He
is author of Liberalism Beyond Justice: Citizens,
Society, and the Boundaries of Political Theory
(Princeton University Press, 2001) and numerous articles.
John is a serious scholar, to be sure, but he can
also work with a light touch. I especially enjoyed
a paper he wrote recently, spoofing Marx, suggesting
that a specter is haunting higher education—the
specter of liberty. Here he was having fun at the
expense of some colleagues in higher education who,
in the name of diversity, begin to panic when confronted
with ideas that they might disagree with.
John is currently working on a book on the subject
of modern liberalism and the mixing of church and
state. Professor Tomasi is also a renowned Hayek scholar,
and we look forward to his talk tonight in which he
will discuss Hayek’s complex views regarding
government involvement in social policy. Please join
me in welcoming Professor John Tomasi.
* * *
Friedrich Hayek is one of the greatest political
thinkers of the twentieth century. He is also, alas,
one of the most misunderstood. I’d like to talk
about two ideas that make Hayek great but that have
also caused him to be misunderstood: Hayek’s
idea of spontaneous order; and his attack on “social
justice.”
My wife and I have a twelve-year-old son named Peter,
who is fascinated by politics. In the evenings, while
other boys are playing video games or doing their
homework, Peter is often to be found watching clips
of presidential debates on YouTube. He wants to figure
out: What do Republicans stand for? What do Democrats
stand for? After many hours of watching debates, Peter
has now identified a champion from each side, the
person who he thinks represents the deep view of each
party. From the Democratic side, Peter’s champion
is Barack Obama. From the Republican side, Ron Paul.
On Peter’s view: Republicans, such as Ron Paul,
want less government; Democrats, such as Barack Obama,
want more social justice.
But what about Hayek? If Hayek could watch YouTube
with Peter, for which of these two champions would
Hayek cheer? Well, Hayek certainly would be for less
government. And just as certainly, Hayek would oppose
most of the social welfare policies that are centerpieces
of the Obama campaign. But if Hayek is for less government
and is therefore opposed to more social welfare programs,
does that necessarily mean that Hayek is opposed to
social justice?
Hayek certainly indicates that he is opposed to social
justice. Indeed, he wrote an entire book on this subject,
The Mirage of Social Justice. He writes, “Only
situations that have been created by human will can
be called just or unjust.” Justice, Hayek tells
us, is a property of the actions of individual persons.
The complex pattern of holdings that we find across
a free society, Hayek says, is the product of many
human actions. But that pattern is not the product
of any single human will. To apply notions of justice
to the relative holdings of people across an entire
society, Hayek says, is simply confusion. The term
“social justice,” Hayek tells us, “does
not belong to the category of error but to that of
nonsense, like the term ‘a moral stone.’”
On this orthodox reading, Hayek is opposed to social
justice. Indeed, in one place Hayek compares a belief
in social justice to a belief in witches.
So Hayek is for Ron Paul. And he is opposed to Barack
Obama—not just in terms of policy strategy but
in terms of basic moral ideals.
There is a problem with this simple reading of Hayek,
however, and it has much vexed Hayek scholars. For
while claiming to reject social justice, Hayek often
invokes a standard of social justice in arguing for
his Ron Paul–like policies of limited government.
Thus, Hayek says repeatedly that a society of free
markets and limited government will be beneficial
to all citizens, providing each his best chance of
using his own information for his own purposes. On
occasions where he fears that the market system may
not have this hoped-for result, infamously, Hayek
advocates governmental correctives: a guaranteed minimum
income, public funding for schools, and an array of
social services for needy families—all to be
funded by increased taxation. Perhaps we would merely
call this Obama-Lite. But whatever we call it, it
looks a lot like a concern for the pattern of material
holdings across the whole society—a concern,
that is, for social justice.
Hayek scholars wrestle with this problem. For example,
Adam Tebble, my colleague at Brown, thinks that these
concessive passages were simply a blunder on Hayek’s
part. Hayek wrote many of them when he was older,
so perhaps it is a case of “hardening arteries
and a softening heart.” Now, I don’t know
whether Hayek was softhearted. But I am convinced
that he was not softheaded.
Despite what many Hayek scholars have said, I see
no deep inconsistency between Hayek’s rejection
of social justice and his expression of social justice–like
concerns. To see why, we need to travel into some
technical terrain. In particular, we need to consider
an idea I mentioned at the start of this talk, the
idea of spontaneous order.
To understand Hayek’s idea of spontaneous order,
consider a collection of crystals: say, a cluster
of rock candy on a string. Candy crystals form when
a solution of sugar and water cools. As the temperature
drops, the lattice bonds of the sugar molecules begin
to re-form. Crystal facets gather on the string. The
result is a crunchy candy treat.
But now compare the string of rock candy with another
complex structure: a Lego model of the Death Star
from Star Wars. The Death Star is one of the
most complex of all the models made by Lego. The large
box contains 3,449 small plastic pieces and an instructional
booklet with many painstaking pages of step-by-step
instructions. The rules are highly specific, and a
person, or team of persons, must carry out each step
precisely as directed by the Lego engineers.
The Lego model of the Death Star and our string of
rock candy are both complex organizational structures.
Yet each is a product of an importantly different
type of organizational process. The bringing together
of the Lego parts into the form of the completed Death
Star requires the constant application of goal-directed
reason on the part of some organizing agent. It is
that agent’s commitment and skill that determine
how closely the resulting assemblage of plastic pieces
will resemble the picture on the box.
By contrast, the molecular units that are to compose
the rock candy crystals are not moved by any unified
agent according to some preconceived plan. The components
act in accord with general laws of molecular chemistry,
but the precise shape that the resulting candy cluster
will take is beyond the predictive power of even the
most sophisticated scientist. A rock candy crystal
is a self-organizing or spontaneous system. The Lego
model is made; the sugar crystals grow.
Now, apply this to social systems. According to Hayek,
recall, “Only situations that have been created
by human will can be called just or unjust.”
Within a totalitarian or socialist society, every
person is assigned a particular place according to
the will of some central planner—like so many
Lego pieces. With made orders of that sort, then,
Hayek says, it does indeed make sense to talk in terms
of the social justice (or injustice) of the society
as a whole.
But a free society, a society formed according to
classical liberal principles, is a grown or spontaneous
order rather than a made one. The distributional pattern
of goods in such a society is the product of human
action but not of human design. In this, the Great
Society is like a string of rock candy, not the Lego
Death Star.
While general rules govern the actions of the participants
in a free society, there is no central planner who
controls, or could be held responsible for, whatever
particular pattern of material holdings happens to
emerge. To talk of the “social justice”
of those emergent patterns is simply nonsense. Indeed,
the only way to make the concept of social justice
applicable to a free society would be transform that
society into something else: namely, a made order
in which individual freedom is replaced with centralized
control.
Hayek’s distinction between spontaneous and
made orders is one of the most important and fascinating
ideas in all of social science. If you will forgive
me one perfectly sincere pun: I cannot possibly do
justice to it here.
But there is one point about spontaneous orders that
I urge you to ponder: spontaneous orders, on the societal
level at least, are almost always the product of design.
This is true even of the rock candy that we just considered.
Granted, the molecules interact with one another freely
and the crystals grow spontaneously. But somebody
had to stir up the solution in the first place, cut
the piece of string, dip it into the solution, and
carefully cool the thing down. It would be bizarre
to blame the sugar molecules if only tiny or scraggly
candy crystals were formed. But any child can tell
a good batch of rock candy from a lousy one. And they
rightly praise some candy makers, and condemn others,
on that basis.
So, too, with our evaluations of societies. Within
a free society, as Hayek argues, no one controls all
the activities and positions of all the members. That
is the point that Hayek has in mind when he says that
it is nonsensical to talk about the justice or injustice
of the particular patterns that emerge. The ideal
of personal freedom and the ideal of direct control
by so-called experts are indeed in tension on that
level. But as with sugar candy, so with human freedom
and prosperity: we can tell an experiment that is
realizing its goals from one that is falling short.
And we rightly praise some societies (and public policy
programs), and we rightly condemn others, on that
basis.
A closing word. I do not mean to downplay the political
differences between Republicans and Democrats—between,
say, Ron Paul and Barack Obama (or those between Obama
and Hayek!). But I have noticed a worrying tendency,
prevalent not only among twelve-year-old boys or among
undergraduates like those I teach at Brown but even
among otherwise politically sophisticated adults.
This is a tendency to treat the debates between champions
of rival political parties as deeply entrenched moral
debates: less government versus more social justice,
with proponents of each locked in gladiatorial combat
until death. Sometimes, no doubt, there are basic
differences of moral principle, and those must be
confronted with bravery and resolve. But one lesson
we can learn from Hayek is that things are often not
so simple. Like Hayek, one can be against expansive
governmental programs precisely because one is for
social justice.
Thank you.
