John Medaille wrote:
>
> Hayek (and Mises), on the other hand, were proto-neo-conservatives:
> they combined an extreme form of economic liberalism with a rather
> rigid social conservatism.
Could we get some textual support for this claim John? I see nowhere in
either author's work that would suggest that they would use the law to
enforce their own beliefs about the importance of particular moral
rules. (I assume that is what is meant by a "rigid social conservatism"
and the link to neo-conservatism.) Both Hayek and Mises refused to call
themselves conservatives and their generally classical liberal view of a
limited state saw little to no role for it in regulating conduct that
did not harm others (think Mill here).
For example, here's Hayek in Law, Legislation, and Liberty v. 2 (p. 57):
"A wholly different question is that of whether the existence of
strongly and widely held moral convictions in any matter is by itself a
justification for their enforcement. The answers seems to be that
within a spontaneous order the use of coercion can be justified only
where this is necessary to secure the private domain of the individual
against interference by others, but that coercion should not be used to
interfere in that private sphere where this is not necessary to protect
others. Law serves a social order, i.e., the relations between
individuals, and actions which affect nobody but the individuals who
perform them ought not to be subject to the control of law, however
strongly they may be regulated by custom and morals. The importance of
this freedom of the individual within his protected domain, and
everywhere his actions do not conflict with the aims of the actions of
others, rests mainly on the fact that the development of custom and
morals is an experimental process, in a sense in which the enforcement
of uniform rules of law cannot be...."
And then later, in The Fatal Conceit (p 51, authorship issues noted):
"Limits of space as well as insufficient competence forbid me to deal in
this book with the second of the traditional objects of atavistic
reaction that I have just mentioned: the family. I ought however at
least to mention that I believe that new faculty knowledge has in some
measure deprived traditional rules of sexual morality of some of their
foundations, and that it seems likely that in this area substantial
changes are bound to occur."
Neither of those sound to me like the words of someone best described as
being a "rather rigid social conservative."
It is very frustrating to see this kinds of sweeping claims made about
thinkers' ideas without any textual evidence to support them and when
other evidence exists that would suggest the contrary. It's very
possible that Mises and Hayek do not fit in the neat little
pre-fabricated ideological boxes ("proto-neo-conservative") that we have
at our disposal in the early 21st century, and that understanding what
they believed might require deep engagement with the texts, rather than
the easy categories we have to hand.
Steve Horwitz
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