Volume 7 Issue 5 + 6 2020
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F. A. Hayek, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, Globalization and Digitalization STEFAN KOLEV Email: [email protected] Web: http://www.hwwi.org/ueber-uns/team/autor/stefan-kolev.html INTRODUCTION alism”. Regarding the ruptures among “Austrians”, putting Boettke’s warning call that “liberalism is liberal” (Boettke Peter Boettke has written a truly multifaceted book 2017) in the context of the two megatrends that can make it (Boettke 2018) on one of the most complex liberal think- even more effective for today and tomorrow. ers of the 20th century. As I have reviewed the plenty of the book elsewhere (Kolev 2019a), in this essay I would like to DISCONTENT WITH GLOBALIZATION: focus on one specific aspect which I believe is crucial for F. IS THIS TIME DIFFERENT? A. Hayek’s reception today: the perennial tension between the logic of the small group and the logic of the extended Why are so many citizens—in the West and also elsewhere 42 order, a tension which humans have had to endure ever —currently turning their back on the order of liberal glo- COSMOS + TAXIS COSMOS since we entered modernity. While famously depicted by balism? This question is of course anything but new, it could Ferdinand Tönnies with the terms “Gemeinschaft” and “Ge- have been (and was) posed at very diverse junctures during sellschaft” (Tönnies 1887) to capture the duality of living in the 19th and 20th century: during the upcoming of aggres- a community and living in a society, this duality is certainly sive nationalism in the late 19th century, on the paths tak- not Tönnies’ invention—instead, it has occupied the atten- en in Russia post-1917 and in Germany post-1933, or amid tion of what Boettke has called elsewhere “mainline econo- the anti-globalization movement at the turn to the new mil- mists” (Boettke 2012) at least since the Scottish Enlighten- lennium. What has happened since 2016—in the US since ment. And this duality doubtlessly constitutes one of F. A. the presidential election, in the UK since the Brexit refer- Hayek’s main concerns in his social philosophy: How the endum, and in Central and Eastern Europe since the emer- logic of the small group continuously threatens and chal- gence of the new so-called “illiberal democracies”—could lenges the logic of the extended order regarding the latter’s either be put in the tradition of the aforementioned rup- legitimacy in the minds of the citizenry. tures, or could require a “this time is different” interpreta- The core of this paper revisits this fundamental tension tion. Let us explore these two potentially diverging (but not as it presents itself in our global-digital age, especially as mutually exclusive) readings. Western democracies on both sides of the Atlantic have What I see as the common traits of the enlisted moments, experienced truly traumatic events for their liberal order despite all obvious historical heterogeneity, is their shared (at least) since 2016—including a new sense of how fragile revolutionary quest to preclude a further unfolding—or to this order and its interdependent sub-orders present them- even trigger a complete rollback—of the order of liberal mo- selves. In a parallel development, “Austrians” on both sides dernity. “Modernity” is understood here as the set of civili- of the Atlantic have recently experienced serious institu- zational patterns which the vigilant Scottish Enlighteners tional splits and ruptures about current issues like migra- observed in the transformation of their “lifeworlds” during tion (Horn 2015), that are well reconstructable along the the late 18th century, and pinpoints these observations on Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft demarcation line. My goal in the the emergence of the Smithian “great society” (Smith [1759] paper is to examine how the two megatrends of our time, 1976, part II, section II, chapter iii; Smith [1776] 1976, book globalization and digitalization, may reinforce the logics I, chapter ii). Living in the context of modernity’s great so- of Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft, and what this could mean for ciety—but of course nevertheless also in the various small the theory and policy of Boettke’s Hayekian “learning liber- groups like the village, family, parish, or clubs—has put a VOLUME 7 | ISSUE 5 + 6 2020 COSMOS + TAXIS significant strain on our mind ever since, as both logics can gardless of the sustainability of this boom, the political sys- be portrayed in diametrically different categories: 1) while tems in almost all Western democracies are experiencing the small group ensures concrete interactions with the sur- an extremely demanding “stress test” grounded in polar- rounding, directly visible individuals, the great society is ization and ever-stronger extremes. In line with so-called full of abstract exchange, often in complete anonymity and “horseshoe theory” (Faye [1972] 2004; Backes 2006), today’s invisibility; 2) while in the small group a high degree of extremes also show tendencies of coalescing (“les extrêmes homogeneity prevails, a cornerstone of the great society’s se touchent”) against an ever-weaker center (Economist prosperity is heterogeneity across individuals, for exam- 2013; Craiutu 2017; Kolev 2019b). ple regarding religious or ideological attitudes; 3) while the Still, this “conspiracy” is not unique if we look back at the small group’s composition is usually fairly static, the great past two centuries. What makes things “really” unique, is society can be dramatically dynamic. Important for this in- the nature of the technological ruptures which have taken terpretation, the historical junctures mentioned above share place in the past three decades since the World Wide Web one particular pattern: the construction of group identities. began transforming our world starting in the 1990s. These From the construction of “rankings” of nations or races in ruptures, their effects, and the possibly necessary policies the 19th century, of class-based and race-based mentalities will be at the center of the rest of this essay. in Russia and Germany, of the “Global South” or of national anti-establishment mentalities: These processes are, above DIGITALIZATION AND KNIGHT-POPITZIAN all, about belonging to a community. Large or small, real or “ORDER UNCERTAINTY” virtual: When aiming to belong to a community, one can easily derive his or her identity from differentiating oneself To begin with, any definitive judgment about the nature from other communities, as well as from mobilizing forces and effects of digitalization is certainly premature and can- 43 within the newly found mental home against the abstract, not be anything but a very tentative “groping in the dark”. cold, anonymous, invisible exchange processes of the great And this is one of the fundamental differences to globaliza- society. tion: We have had exposure to waves of globalizations for So much for the commonalities. What might be specif- centuries if not millennia, while our exposure to digitaliza- ic about the most recent backlash against globalization? To tion is only few decades old, and there are indications dis- COSMOS + TAXIS + TAXIS COSMOS begin with, it seems rooted in both material and ideation- cussed below that digitalization may be qualitatively differ- al causes, constituting a paradigmatic Millian “conspiracy ent from the triggers of earlier industrial revolutions. This of interests and ideas” (Mill [1845] 1991, p. 503). The speed section looks at digitalization by combining two notions: and scope of globalization since the 1980s have produced a “uncertainty” as understood by Frank Knight (Knight sizable proportion within the citizenry of Western societies [1921] 1964), and “order security” as understood by German who see themselves as losers of globalization. Whether this sociologist Heinrich Popitz (Popitz [1986] 2017). is factually true or not, as heatedly debated among econom- Liberal political economists are sometimes (too) quick to ic historians (Piketty 2014; McCloskey 2016): Since David simply declare that we are facing in digitalization another Hume ([1742] 1987, part I, essay V) and Walter Lippmann example of Schumpeterian creative destruction. Howev- (1922), we can plausibly claim that it is subjective opinions er, already today two rather specific traits of this peculiar rather than objective facts that are decisive for the “politi- Schumpeterian process are discernible: 1) its forces are im- cal” in political economy. And here the material transfor- pressive in the scope of domains they hit, and 2) the speed mations following the globalization-related surge of trade, of its unfolding is breathtaking. Liberal political economists investment, and migration combine with powerful ide- are generally open-minded to such processes and their in- ational forces stemming from public intellectuals like Jo- herent dynamics—but only under the dual condition that seph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Greta Thunberg, or Slavoj the process takes place within an efficient humane order Žižek: With different arguments, they reinforce the opin- (Eucken [1940] 1950, pp. 315-317; Eucken [1952] 2004, pp. ion that globalization is above all a rigged game producing 372-374). This condition is the real issue here: To what ex- exploitation, inequality, and environmental damage. This tent do our judgment standards for an order have to change “conspiracy of interests and ideas” has proved rather explo- when so many interdependent societal suborders are simul- sive so far: Even though in 2019 many Western economies taneously undergoing the transformation from analog to produce the best macroeconomic figures imaginable, re- digital? Can this peculiar Schumpeterian process destroy F. A. Hayek, Gemeinschaft AND Gesellschaft, Globalization AND Digitalization orders without creating new ones, as seen from the percep- a quantitative sense, but instead can interdependently rein- tion of the affected individuals? force themselves and categorically change the order vs. cha- This question concerns both the levels of the “rules of the os perception of reality of the individuals affected by digita- game” and of the “moves of the game”. As far as the rules lization, pushing it towards chaos.