Principle for a Free Socieity SPONTANEOUS ORDER

[William M. Finley]

Principles for a Free Society By Nigel Ashford

Spontaneous order

“Many human institutions are the result of human action, but not of

human design.”

Adam Ferguson

What is spontaneous order?

Order has been a central pre-occupation of political thinkers and

philosophers throughout the ages. It is widely understood today as a

state of harmony between people or social peace. In the pre-modern era,

however, the concept was understood as the maintenance of a stable,

hierarchical order that was pre-ordained by God or nature or both.

Order can also be seen as the existence of regularity and predictability

in human affairs, the absence of chaos. Although no longer associated

with a rigid society ranked by privilege and power, the idea of order is

still highly valued. This is because it allows people with different interests and values to live together in society without resorting to discord,

conflict or civil war. This is the modern idea of spontaneous order.

The first thinker to articulate this modern concept of spontaneous order

was Bernard de Mandeville, in a book called The Fable of the Bees. This

work discussed the paradox that “private vices” such as individual selfinterest could lead to “public benefits” from which the whole community benefited. He observed that the sum of individuals acting from separate motives produced a commercial society that was no part of any one

person’s intention. This idea that the evolution of human institutions

allowed individuals to serve others, even though their motive may be

self-interest, was at the core of the Scottish Enlightenment that grew up

around Adam Smith, David Hume and Adam Ferguson. They sought to

apply this idea to a whole range of human institutions, including commerce but also law, language, human morality, and even mores and customs. Far from a narrow theory of economics, Smith argued in A Theory

of Moral Sentiments that morals evolved with those which enabled

humanity to flourish and prosper slowly accepted by the community

and standing the test of time.

- 82 -These men were fascinated at how these values and institutions grew up

to greatly benefit mankind despite being the idea of no single mind.

Adam Ferguson’s observation that human action produced a superior

form of order in society to that conceived by human design was to echo

in the thoughts of an Austrian thinker, Friedrich Hayek, two centuries

later. Hayek took on the ancient idea that institutions were divided

between those which are ‘natural’ and those which are ‘artificial.’ A third

group of things existed, Hayek said, and these were social institutions.

As these are regular and orderly, people suppose that they have been

invented by humanity and can therefore be altered or restructured at

will. Hayek pointed out that this notion was mistaken because the

human mind and society had evolved together. Tearing down the institutions that kept society together and building anew, as socialists advocated, would destroy the order that made society work.

Order without commands

Spontaneous order keeps the wheels of society turning without the need

to issue commands from the centre. A free society is orderly not because

people are told what to do but because the evolving traditions and

inherited institutions of human society allow individuals to pursue their

own ends and, by so doing, meet the needs of others. People’s behaviour

follows certain patterns because they have been accepted by society initially as they allowed the groups which adopted them to prosper. It is no

accident, says Hayek, that the sharpest differences in material welfare

can be seen in the Third World where the city meets the countryside

and complex, rule-guided societies meet intimate communities where the

rules appropriate to the smooth-running of that society are very different.

The rules that allow a complex social order like a city or the global

economy to function are not orders in the sense that term is usually

understood. Rules which prevent individuals injuring others or engaging

in theft or fraud or breaking promises in fact give people a great deal of

latitude in their behaviour. They tell people how to do things, but they

do not tell them what they should do.

- 83 -The evolution of morality

The moral framework for human society is not set in stone, but rather it

is constantly changing as new rules are discovered that allow the social

order to function better. The problem is that we do not know in

advance which rules will work and which will not. Our existing laws and

customs show us what has worked to get us to the development of society that we have now, but innovation and trial and error are required if

we are continue to discover new rules that will allow society to work of

which we were previously ignorant. Social institutions that keep society

orderly- institutions, customs, traditions and values- are like tools. They

contain the knowledge of generations before us about how to act and

behave, and will be modified by the rising generation and then passed

on to the next. Groups that adopt these rules benefit from having done

so, without necessarily knowing why. The institutions that transmit

information about them are the product of human action, but not necessarily the result of human design.

The transmission of rules

There are three categories of social rules, according to Hayek. The first

which we design ourselves, such as parliamentary legislation. The second, which has been called ‘tacit knowledge,’ rules that we all follow

such as a sense of fair play or injustice that we all understand but cannot

put into words. Finally, there is a third group of rules of beneficial

behaviours which we can observe and write down, but our attempts at

codification only approximate the principle which we have observed.

The Anglo-Saxon system of common law is an example of this third

type of rule, as it has evolved with different cases and judgments adding

to the body of law over centuries which has been gradually refined and is

open to modification in the future. We learn from these rules and contribute to them even though we often cannot fully explain them. And it

is the second and third categories which have the power to create a complex order that utilises more knowledge than can ever be known by a

single human mind.

- 84 -Why we need freedom

Complex social orders require freedom to work because the information

and knowledge which makes them work can never be amassed by a central authority. Attempting to use the first category of rules - legislation -

to change the second and third categories of spontaneous order will fail

because it is the sum total of human knowledge that has allowed people

in society to live with one another and brought us to the levels of prosperity and population that we now enjoy. This was seen in the old

socialist states of the Soviet Empire in which government attacked and

undermined traditional morality and justice and fair play whilst relying

on the economies of the West to keep living standards falling below subsistence levels. Freedom is critical to the process of achieving spontaneous order in society because we do not know in advance which rules

will work, because liberty is essential to the trial-and-error process of

finding out what works, and because the creative powers of man can

only be expressed in a society in which power and knowledge are widely

dispersed. To impose a pre-designed pattern on society would make society cease to function as a creative force. Progress cannot be commanded.

The dispersion of power

Essential to the progress of an orderly society is the distribution of

power amongst its citizens, as opposed to the concentration of power in

the hands of the state. This allows society to experiment in the rules and

mores that govern its behaviour. Whilst this process of trial and error

limits the impact of mistakes to a small segment of society, it also allows

for rules which work to be observed and imitated, and, if successful,

absorbed into the social framework of a free society. Risk-taking and

rule-breaking are virtually impossible in small intimate rural societies

and yet they are essential to maintaining the numbers who live in the

vast impersonal societies of modern life. These valuable activities cannot

take place unless power is disperse amongst the population rather than

concentrated in the hands of a centralised government.

- 85 -As if by an invisible hand...

In a free society, people’s lives are subject to a minimum of coercion by

the state, but it is not anarchic. In fact, life in a free society can be hard

because it forces individuals to adjust to the needs of others. The free

society works because it co-ordinates these conflicting desires by creating

incentives for people to satisfy their own wants by satisfying those of

others. This is the opposite of an anarchic state in which one can only

achieve one’s aims at the expense of others. We are moved to serve the

needs of others, whilst pursuing our own self-interest, as Adam Smith

suggested, as if by an invisible hand.

This complex order which harmonises and synchronising the conflicting

desires of people who are very different from one another can be confusing at first, but it is essential to look beyond that initial confusion if we

are to see how a free society works. When Alexis de Tocqueville first disembarked in New York in 1831, he heard what he described as “a confused hum.” That great chronicler of American society wrote, “No sooner

do you set foot upon American ground than you are stunned by a kind

of tumult; a confused clamour is heard on every side, and a thousand

simultaneous voices demand the satisfaction of their social wants.”

Simply trying to work out how society works by watching it and listening

to it tells us little. It would be like trying to understand how a clock

works by telling the time. It is how people must interact with each other

that allows the clockwork of society to keep ticking.

Freedom promotes harmony

The hum of commerce eases the path of social co-operation in a free

society in part because it offers man opportunities by serving others

which are simply not available by acting alone or in a state of war of

all against all. These incentives allow us to co-operate with each other

even though our views on political issues or our religious beliefs may

radically differ. When people supply goods and services or buy them

from others, they do not know with whom they deal. Protestant,

Catholic, Jew and Muslim all benefit from the commercial activity of

each other in a free society without altering their fundamental beliefs.

- 86 -Their security and prosperity is dependent on that of each other and in

free societies far surpasses that of those nations where conflict marks differences of faith. These differences are resolved peaceably and profitably

in a free society, because the benefits of these values have been passed

down thorough society and become part of the moral framework. The

absence of this mechanism for transmitting moral values in non-free

societies is one of the reasons why religious strife and social discord mark

societies that have never known freedom.

Freedom creates order

One key institution that makes the co-ordination of a free society

possible is the law. In a free society, law is not the same as the arbitrary

government of totalitarian and autocratic societies nor is it the same as

the legislation of Western parliaments. It is, as we have seen, a code

which has evolved not at the hands of politicians but in the decisions of

judges. Tocqueville in Democracy in America described how laws keep

order in a free society. He observed that “the spirit of the law which is

produced in the schools and courts of justice, gradually penetrates

beyond their walls into the bosom of society, where it descends to the

lowest classes, so that at last the whole people contract the habits and

tastes of the judicial magistrate.” The law is respected in a free society

not by the use of force, (although governments do reserve the right to

use force to protect freedom), but because it is based on rules which

have grown up and been tested in real life, and the values, or the spirit

of the law, are closely connected to the moral values of the civilisation.

Over-government undermines that respect by imposing controls on society which do not conform to people’s inherited sense of right and

wrong. Freedom creates order in society. The institutions of a free society give people an interest in keeping the peace, better than any police

state or concentration camp.

- 87 -Reading

Norman Barry, The Invisible Hand in Economics and Politics, London,

Institute of Economic Affairs, 1988.

Friedrich Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, London, Routledge,

1982.

Friedrich Hayek, New Studies in Politics, Philosophy and Economics,

London, Routledge, 1978, chapter 6.

Adam Smith, A Theory of Moral Sentiments, Indianapolis, Liberty

Press, 1976 (1759).

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, New York, Fontana,

1968 (1840).

Questions for thought

1. Why is order necessary?

2. Does moral behaviour require laws?

3. Can order exist when humans pursue their self-interest