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January 5, 2007
John Gray in his F. A Hayek and the Rebirth of Classical Liberalism asks a very pertinent and contemporary question:
if free markets have corrosive effects in respect of the moral traditions which support them, so that capitalism institutions contain cultural contradictions which make them over the long run self-destroying, what is to be done?
It is pertinent given the conflict between a freemarket economy that rewards the values of competitiveness, individualism and personal advancement and a family life that depends on opposite values in families and communities. Gray says that an answer given by Hayek addresses this work/family conflict:
There is in Hayek's work an argument for voluntaristic traditionalism which goes some way toward answering this question. Hayek sees that the principal cause of the erosion of definitive moral traditions in advanced societies is not so much the market itself, but rather interventionist policies sponsored by governments. Often with the support of business, governments have contributed to the erosion of moral traditions by their educational, housing, and welfare policies. Hayek's argument for a voluntaristic traditionalism distinguishes him from neo-conservatives, firstly in that he would argue that it is government interventionism which causes much of the contemporary moral malaise and because he would not seek to use government power to prop up faltering traditions...
Gray adds that Hayek seeks to establish something like a market in traditions, in the hope that the traditions which would emerge from an unhampered social life would be most congenial to the stability of the market order itself.
I"m not persuaded by Hayek's response. It is does not recognize the differences between the family and market spheres of social life --it just wishes them away on the basis of hope in an evolutionary process towards liberal institutions.
What Gray means is that Hayek presupposes that the evolutionary natural selection of moral traditions will filter out those unfriendly to the market process. What then happens to the family and its values of care and obligation? Is it to be remodelled in market terms so that the principles of efficiency, fast turnaround and cost effectiveness, which are the principles of mass industrial production are applied to families, caring for children and the aged, and love? Does that mean a future of entrepreneurial childcare corporations (eg., ABC Learning Centres ) with the attention primarily fixed on making a profit from child care?
Does this not indicate that there are unresolved difficulties, tensions and conflicts in Hayek's writings?
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