Dialectics and Liberty BY CHRIS MATTHEW SCIABARRA en years ago the first two books of what has The socialists have also criticized many of the advo- become known as my “Dialectics and Liberty” cates of capitalism for having embraced a dogmatic, ahis- Ttrilogy were published. Those books—Marx, torical social ideal. Marx himself had derided bourgeois Hayek, and Utopia (SUNY Press) and Ayn Rand: The theorists as “Robinsonades”; the bourgeois, said Marx, Russian Radical (Penn State Press)—together with the had put forth an atomistic notion of human liberty that culminating work, Total Freedom:Toward a Dialectical Lib- saw individuals as entirely separate from one another. ertarianism (Penn State Press), constitute a defense of Like “Robinson Crusoe” on a desert island, the bour- dialectical method in the service of a geois individual is unrelated to other libertarian social theory. individuals and unrelated to any social It is odd to find the word “dialec- It is odd to find the or historical context. And, for the tics” conjoined with anything remote- word “dialectics” most part, mainstream neoclassical ly having to do with “libertarianism.” economists agreed with him. Their And this is, perhaps, a result of the conjoined with static conceptions of “perfect” compe- profound socialist influence on con- tition posited a rationalistic model of temporary thought. Say the word anything remotely “Economic Man” in possession of “dialectics” and what might come to having to do with “perfect” knowledge. Such a model mind is the “thesis-antithesis-synthe- had little to do with the dynamics of sis” waltz usually associated with “libertarianism.”And the real world. Hegel (even though that triad more this is, perhaps, a But as F.A. Hayek and others have appropriately belongs to Fichte). Or pointed out, the very word “capital- one might think of the “historical result of the profound ism” was a product of the socialist con- materialism” of the Marxists, who socialist influence on ception of history. It took a major view communism as the ultimate effort by twentieth-century thinkers to “synthesis.” Or one might even think contemporary provide a thorough reconceptualiza- of the claims made by some that tion of the market society and its foun- dialectics is a means of “resolving” thought. dations. Among these were Austrian actual, logical contradictions, a means economists, such as Ludwig von Mises of showing that “A” and “non-A” are one and the same. and Hayek himself, who viewed the market in dynamic It is no coincidence that the same people who dis- and institutional terms, and philosophers, such as Ayn miss dialectics as an assault on logic are often the same Rand, who articulated an objective moral ethos at the people who view it as the methodology of socialism. But base of “capitalism: the unknown ideal.” even some of the proponents of socialism would agree, for they have dismissed logic as a “bourgeois” prejudice, Chris Matthew Sciabarra ([email protected]) is a visiting scholar in while viewing exploitation as the “logic” of capitalism. the department of politics at New York University. THE FREEMAN: Ideas on Liberty 34 Dialectics and Liberty A proper defense of the free society is one that must It is simply mistaken to believe that Marx and Marx- lay to rest the notion that classical liberalism, or libertar- ists have had a monopoly on this type of analysis. It is ianism, as such, depends on static, ahistorical, or atomistic also mistaken to believe that this emphasis on grasping thinking. It is possible, nay, necessary, to present a form of the full context is, somehow, a vestige of Marxism. libertarian social analysis that makes use of the very In fact, the father of dialectics, the man whom Hegel dialectical techniques that are its birthright. It is time to himself called the “fountainhead” of dialectical inquiry, recapture dialectics as a tool for liberty. was Aristotle. In works such as the Topics—the very first That was the goal of my “Dialectics and Liberty” tril- theoretical treatise on dialectics—Aristotle presented ogy. On this tenth anniversary of the publication of its numerous techniques by which one might gain a more first two installments, I look back on the genesis and complete picture of an issue by varying one’s “point of development of this project. view.”TheTopics serves as a grand dis- What is dialectics? Dialectics is the Society is not some cussion of how shifts in one’s per- art of context-keeping. It counsels us to spective can reveal different things study the object of our inquiry from a ineffable organism; it is about the objects of our inquiry, and variety of perspectives and levels of a complex nexus of about the perspectives from which generality,so as to gain a more compre- those objects are viewed. hensive picture of it. That study often interrelated institutions I examine the broad history of requires that we grasp the object in dialectical thinking, from the ancients terms of the larger system within and processes, of to the postmoderns, in part one of which it is situated, as well as its devel- volitionally conscious, Total Freedom. Presenting that history opment across time. Because human is beyond our current scope. But it is beings are not omniscient, because purposeful, interacting important to recognize that these none of us can see the “whole” as if individuals—and the methodological techniques have long from a “synoptic” godlike perspective, been an unheralded aspect of classi- it is only through selective abstraction unintended cal-liberal and libertarian analytical that we are able to piece together a consequences they frameworks, as presented by such more integrated understanding of the thinkers as Herbert Spencer, Carl phenomenon before us—an under- generate. Menger, Mises, Hayek, Rand, and standing of its antecedent conditions, Murray Rothbard. interrelationships, and tendencies. In social theory, the object of our inquiry is society: Hayek’s Critique of Utopianism social relations, institutions, and processes. Society is not or example, Hayek, who absorbs from Menger an some ineffable organism; it is a complex nexus of inter- FAustrian emphasis on process and spontaneous order, related institutions and processes, of volitionally con- enunciated a profoundly dialectical critique of utopi- scious, purposeful, interacting individuals—and the anism. As I argue in Marx, Hayek, and Utopia,Hayek unintended consequences they generate. A dialectical railed against both collectivist and atomist viewpoints. approach to social theory is one that recognizes that any For Hayek, since no human being can know everything given social problem will often entail an investigation of there is to know about society, people cannot simply related social problems. What makes a dialectical redesign it anew.Human beings are as much the creatures approach into a radical approach is that the task of going of their context as they are its creators. Hayek’s rejection to the root of a social problem, seeking to understand it of utopianism is a repudiation of what he calls “con- and resolve it, often requires that we make transparent structivist” rationalism.The utopian relies on a “pretense the relationships among social problems. Understanding of knowledge,” Hayek argued, in an attempt to construct the complexities at work within any given society is a a bridge from the current society to a future one.Where- prerequisite for changing it. as the collectivists have criticized bourgeois theorists for 35 SEPTEMBER 2005 Chris Matthew Sciabarra embracing “ahistorical” and “state of nature” arguments a system, then, of mutual implications, of reciprocal con- for capitalism, they themselves have embraced an ahistor- nections between social psychology,culture, and politics: ical, exaggerated sense of human possibility in their pro- jections of an ideal communist society. Freedom to order our own conduct in the sphere Marx himself was critical of this “constructivism” in where material circumstances force a choice upon us, the works of the utopian socialists, but his own work and responsibility for the arrangement of our own life succumbs to the same constructivist impulse. Implicit in according to our own conscience, is the air in which his communist ideal is the presumption that human alone moral sense grows and in which moral values beings can achieve godlike control over society, as if are daily re-created in the free decisions of the indi- from an Archimedean standpoint, virtually transcending vidual. Responsibility, not to a superior, but to one’s unintended social consequences such that every action conscience,...the necessity to decide which of the brings about a known effect. Hayek saw this as a “syn- things one values . and to bear the consequences of optic delusion,” an illusory belief that one can live in a one’s own decision, are the very essence of any morals world in which every action produces consistent and which deserve the name.That in this sphere of indi- predictable outcomes.And, invariably, the quest for total vidual conduct the effect of collectivism has been knowledge becomes a quest for totalitarian control. almost entirely destructive is both inevitable and Whatever problems one might detect in Hayek’s var- undeniable. A movement whose main promise is the ious theories of social evolution—and I discuss these in relief from responsibility cannot but be antimoral in Marx, Hayek, and Utopia—I believe that he contributes its effect, however lofty the ideals to which it owes its much to a dialectical-libertarian social theory.For exam- birth.2 ple, in his classic book, The Road to Serfdom, Hayek pres- ents us with a multidimensional view of the corrosive Hayek understood that under advancing statism, cul- nature of government control. He does not focus on the ture tends to both promote and reflect those social prac- one-dimensional economic effects of state regulation.