David Brooks had a great column up yesterday contrasting the French Enlightenment with the Scottish Enlightenment, and cautioning against people who rely unduly on rationalism to impose massive change on society.Don Boudreaux completely missed the point - that Brooks was calling out conservative and libertarian social engineers and radicals as well as liberal ones. Boudreaux regularly advocates these huge imposed changes, derived from deduction from simple principles rather than real testing in the real world - precisely the sort of change that Burke and the Scottish Enlightenment were disposed against.
Greg Mankiw gets Brooks's point, and has this great anecdote:
"A couple years ago, I participated in a panel discussion on libertarianism in Mike Sandel's Justice class, along with my friend and colleague Jeff Miron. Jeff is a true libertarian, and he defended that position with gusto. By comparison to Jeff, I seemed lacking in conviction. I described myself as a "libertarian at the margin." By that, I meant that given our starting point today, I believe more reliance on individual liberty and less on governmental solutions is usually a step in the right direction, but I often recoil at more radical libertarian positions.
David Brooks's column yesterday offers a good explanation of skepticism about big radical ideas, such as pure libertarianism. It made me feel better about my watered-down variety."
I regularly say I'm sympathetic to Austrians and libertarians here. I think I'm clear on how I'm sympathetic. I highlight their ideas that I agree with all the time, despite the fact that I also critique. Sure - I praise Hayek and Boettke and Garrison more than I praise Mises and Salerno and Rothbard, but I'm allowed to have preferences. Anyway - my sympathy is of the Mankiw variety, and I think he and Brooks nail it. Boudreaux, as usual, completely misses the point.
Beware of libertarian social engineers, and any radical social engineers that have a massive mega-project they want to impose on society based on a huge system they've built up from some first principles. John Dewey cautions against this and highlights the point about rationalism in The Quest for Certainty:
"From the side of the object those who put forward the claims of reason have placed the universal higher than the individual; those who have held to perception have reversed the order. From the side of mind, one school has emphasized the synthetic action of conceptions. The other school has dwelt upon the fact that in sensation the mind does not interfere with action of objects in writing their own report. The opposition has extended to problems of conduct and society. On one hand, there is emphasis upon the necessity of control by rational standards; on the other hand, the dynamic quality of wants has been insisted upon together with the intimately personal character of their satisfaction as against the pure remoteness of pure thought. On the political side, there is a like division between the adherents of order and organization, those who feel that reason alone gives security, and those interested in freedom, innovation and progress, those who have used the claims of the individual and his desires as a philosophical basis."
I'm not sure the distinction is quite so sharp (and Rothbard offers an entirely opposite thesis here), but Dewey makes the right point. When you think you can just think up the best way for society to be organized, you'll countenance radical changes and impositions of a new social order on society far more easily. Movements like Communism were at least explicit about this. I think one of the biggest dangers of libertarianism is that since it is ostensibly a doctrine of individual liberty, the fact that an entirely new, theoretical order is imposed on society is obscured. Try telling a libertarian they're imposing a grand plan for a new social order and watch the steam come out of their ears either because (1.) they're furious, or (2.) they can't process the accusation - it makes no sense to them. In fact I'm sure I'll hear a little of both in the comment section (which I probably won't be able to attend to today).
Remember, for all they belly-ache about their claims to classical liberalism, libertarianism largely emerged out of French liberalism and the French Enlightenment - not the British. I'm not saying even that the French Enlightenment is a bad thing (and I don't think Brooks is saying that either). Everyone makes their own unique errors - but it's important to be cognizant about what those errors are and what the implications are, even for fellow liberals.
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UPDATE: So when people write, they don't fact check every single word - we write on the basis of the wealth of knowledge that we've collected and stored over the years. Every once in a while, though, it's good to double-check some things. After publishing this I decided to double check my claim about the roots of libertarianism in French liberalism. I found enough to conclude that as a general statement it's a fine statement for me to make - I'm not claiming that there were no other influences after all, and the French vein seems to be substantial, consequential, and freely acknowledged by libertarians. While double-checking this, though, I stumbled across an interesting (admittedly, from Wikipedia) point about the origins of libertarianism. When the word first emerged in France, it was in a critique of Proudhon. The accusation was that he was "liberal, but not libertarian"... so in other words, in the early days libertarianism was not "classical liberalism" - it was explicitly opposed and quite distinct. For those libertarians, classical liberalism just wasn't good enough.
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UPDATE 2: Jonathan Catalán shares his thoughts on Mankiw's post here, and seems to think that libertarian sympathies aren't compatable with "strict adherence" to Keynesianism.
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I agree with the notion that attempts to remake society from whole cloth are dangerous, at best. Change should proceed slowly, carefully. But how do you choose a pace for change, especially when the current system is broken in an immediate and present sense? For example, the collapse of communism seems to have been too rapid, but it was driven by a pent up desire to have freedom and opportunity.
ReplyDeleteI guess I've talked myself into a corner where it seems clear that slow change is better. I wanted to argue that there's a place for rapid change, but I guess I can't find a basis for it.
And there's not necessarily an answer - or put it this way - people have to decide what the right answer is, it's not decided for them.
ReplyDeleteOn communism, I think there are a few points to make. The rapid collapse of that system is for one thing predictable. Nobody actively decided to do away with it that fast. To a large extent, it imploded because of its own inconsistencies. Given its totalitarian nature (granted, that totalitarianism had receded marginally by the early nineties), a rapid collapse isn't necessarily a bad thing (we can think about the rapid fall of the Axis in this regard too).
But given the understanding that we do want rapid change if we're suffering under a dictator, how do we build up something new? The Soviet experience suggests that we might want to take a Burkean perspective in that case. Shock therapy - the rapid privatization and liberalization of the Russian economy - is (I think its fair to say) broadly discredited at this point. It gets back to a lot of the "calculation vs. incentive" problem issues I've addressed previously. If you come from just a Hayekian, price-based, calculation-problem angle then shock therapy and rapid liberalization makes sense. If, however, you come from the Coasian/Pigovian/Stiglitz perspective where incentives, institutions, and incumbents are important you might proceed more cautiously. The Hayekians could have learned from others who would have cautioned that simply liberalizing prices isn't enough. The soviet institutions priveleged certain managers with greater information and greater incentive to distort a free price system. The institutional framework had to be rectified before state property was simply sold off.
Dewey should have considered before he went all weak in the knee for socialism. Even during the whole defense of Trotsky business the critique wasn't about socialism, but about those nasty Russians and their culture (which is a very strange statement considering his overall ideology).
ReplyDelete"Shock therapy - the rapid privatization and liberalization of the Russian economy - is (I think its fair to say) broadly discredited at this point."
ReplyDeleteExcept that isn't what happened. The Russian economy was not rapidly liberalized; it was just more intensely cronyfied. What was happening in the Russian economy was merely an extension of the 1970s and 1980s.
I am not familiar with Dewey's position on Trotsky, but for anyone that is interested and has time to find out, you can find material here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/dewey/index.htm
If Anonymous's characterization is accurate, the table of contents to the report does an excellent job of obscuring it. It seems to be based on the substance and history of Trotsky and the early Soviet Union.
"Except that isn't what happened. The Russian economy was not rapidly liberalized; it was just more intensely cronyfied. What was happening in the Russian economy was merely an extension of the 1970s and 1980s."
ReplyDeleteNot all of the shock therapy program went through, but the privatization portion did.
Yes, it was cronified. That was my whole critique - that people should have realized that shock therapy would lead to cronyization. A person would only be surprised by that if they focused on the calculation problem and not (in my nomenclature) the incentive problem.
If by privatized you mean that various sectors of the Soviet economy were sold off to insiders, yeah things were privatized. But that is that not liberalization.
ReplyDeleteShit progressed there about the way one would expect it to given the cultural baggage, etc. one was having to deal with.
Jesus, Anonymous - stop talking and read carefully for a second. YES. That is precisely my point. If privatization doesn't take these incentive and institutional factors into account, then insiders take all the gains.
ReplyDeleteRemember, though, that privatization did go off in an unpreferential way. Every Russian got vouchers - shares in state assets. There was theft by the well connected here and there, but for the most part they didn't get what they got because the state gave it to them - they got it because they bought it from the public at firesale prices.
You act like the government just gave it to cronies and oligarchs. That's not what happened. Practically speaking that was the result, but it was the market that converged on that result.
That would surprise and confuse someone that only considered the calculation problem, but it wouldn't surprise someone who considered both calculation and incentive problems.
Sorry to be so short with you, Anonymous - but give me a break. The whole thing about the cronies getting the assets was my entire point. Try to understand that before jumping in.
ReplyDelete"That is precisely my point."
ReplyDeleteFine, I will graciously grant you that.
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On Dewey, here is a direct quote (illustrating how enthusiastic he was about grand transformative social engineering projects - just like Keynes):
"Perhaps the most significant thing in Russia, after all, is not the effort at economic transformation, but the will to use an economic change as the means of developing a popular cultivation, especially an esthetic one, such as the world has never known. I can easily imagine the incredulity such a statement arouses in the minds of those fed only by accounts of destructive Bolshevik activities. But I am bound in honesty to record the bouleversement of the popular foreign impression which took place in my own case. This new educative struggle may not succeed; it has to face enormous obstacles; it has been too much infected with propagandist tendencies. But in my opinion the latter will gradually die of inanition in the degree in which Soviet Russia feels free and secure in working out its own destiny. The main effort is nobly heroic, evincing a faith in human nature which is democratic beyond the ambitions of the democracies of the past."
http://ariwatch.com/VS/JD/ImpressionsOfSovietRussia.htm
An article that has influenced me greatly on these matters:
"John Dewey, like many other American intellectuals between the world wars, was fascinated by Soviet events. After visiting Russia in 1928 he wrote excitedly about the “Soviet experiment” and especially about Soviet educational theorists. In his early enthusiasm Dewey hoped that the US and the USSR could learn from each other, especially among the cosmopolitan group of progressive pedagogues he met on his trip. Observing the rise of Stalinism in the 1930s, though, his optimism dissipated; at the same time he came to emphasize historical and cultural differences between the US and the USSR. The result is apparent in Dewey's writings in the late 1930s (especially Freedom and Culture, 1939), as he began to evaluate the Soviet Union in terms that would have been anathema to him a decade earlier. He increasingly blamed Russia's cultural heritage for inhibiting Soviet development along the lines he had envisioned. Dewey's transformation suggests the importance of a cultural reading of American ideas about the USSR. Many American observers joined Dewey in seeing the USSR as the product of Russian culture, with its historical traditions and its own national character—and not just as the instantiation or betrayal of a political doctrine." http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=1437326CABA5A426C33B5F95715CDC04.tomcat1?fromPage=online&aid=431146
IMHO, you have to be deeply suspicious of any intellectual who their major work or a major portion of it in the 1920s and 1930s. Most of them were deeply engrossed in some anti-liberal project for at least a portion of this period. That's partly what makes the careers of Hayek and Schumpeter so amazing - talk about swimming against the current.
ReplyDelete... and Keynes too.
ReplyDeleteI'm having a hard time figuring out what's so problematic about Dewey from your citations.
He was impressed with their education system, but noted the likelihood of failure. So? Isn't it pretty widely acknowledged that Soviet erradication of illiteracy and the provision of education was successful? I didn't think that was too controversial. The same goes with Cuba today - they are renowned for having fantastically trained doctors... if only they had a market economy that would provide medicine, equipment, etc.!!! This shouldn't be surprising - education has long been recognized as an important area of "market failure" where the state can make important contributions. It shouldn't be surprising at all that although the Soviet Union could do nothing else right, it could train mathematicians and physicists and teach it's people to read. And it also shouldn't be surprising that Dewey (cautiously and with skepticism) noted this.
As for the Russian cultural point, this isn't an uncommon point to make at all - the Russian totalitarian culture, etc.. It's invoked today to explain Putin's success and public support for the United Russia party. I don't know much about these issues, but through my wife I've been acquainted with some of the world's formost Sovietologists (and now I suppose you'd just call them Russian Studies people), and they don't entirely dismiss this point. Britain has a long liberal tradition and culture and it has an impact throughout history. Russia has a very long standing autocratic culture and it shines through whether monarchists, communists, or nationalists are in power. This may or may not be a complete answer, but it's not an insulting or worthless point to make.
"Isn't it pretty widely acknowledged that Soviet erradication of illiteracy and the provision of education was successful?"
ReplyDeleteNo, it is a controverted issue; nice pro and con here: http://library.by/portalus/modules/english_russia/readme.php?subaction=showfull&id=1190296667&archive=&start_from=&ucat=22&
I can also add this: when the Soviet Union collapsed all manner of social problems came out into the open - crime, mass illiteracy and innumeracy, youth hooliganism, etc.
"It shouldn't be surprising at all that although the Soviet Union could do nothing else right, it could train mathematicians and physicists and teach it's people to read."
Just like with the Soviet military, education was an area where the Soviet Union could compete with the West, but that does not mean that all the population benefited. Anyway, you ought to be a little more suspicious about statistics and claims coming out of totalitarian states.
"I'm having a hard time figuring out what's so problematic about Dewey from your citations."
Dewey went on a tour of the Soviet education system where the itinerary was provided by the Soviets; and her returns praising it. The same thing happened to lots of leftists during the same time period.
You can't quote Dewey as a skeptic totalizing first principles and then ignore his own rather dramatic mistakes in this area.
It's worth mentioning that Austrian libertarians recognize the dominance of the English enlightenment over the French, largely because of the work of Schumpeter (not a libertarian, but his history of economic thought was very influential) and Rothbard (for his history of economic thought).
ReplyDeleteI have a primer on Austrian economics coming out on Mises.org soon, and it gives a few paragraphs on the Austrian position on the Scottish/English enlightenment. For example, Rothbard believed that Smith put economics back two hundred years (in large part for obscuring prior French liberals, such as Cantillon, and Spanish scholastics).
I should also re-emphasize the point I make in a comment on my blog. When Rothbard says that Smith put economics 200 years back, he is also referring to political philosophy. For Rothbard, economics was prob. not entirely value-free, largely because Rothbard was as much a political scientist (and philosopher) as he was an economist (I have a similar perspective, given that I have both backgrounds).
As such, I'd like to comment on the following,
"...seems to think that libertarian sympathies aren't compatable with "strict adherence" to Keynesianism."
They are not, because ethically a libertarian could not agree with Keynesian "solutions" (of course, if we want to be strictly accurate there are no such things as Keynesian solutions, since any economic theory is value-free; the application of theory to the real world is outside of the realm of pure theory). Keynesian economics explicitly works against individual human action (for whatever reasons, including supposed irrationality), which few true libertarians could accept.
In any case, my comments on Mankiw's non-Keynesian views are not because of his supposed libertarianism, but because much of what I've read in regards to his economic theory seems more in tune with the Chicago school.
"As for the Russian cultural point, this isn't an uncommon point to make at all - the Russian totalitarian culture, etc."
ReplyDeleteYou'd have to be familiar with Dewey to understand just how bizarre a claim this is. It is bizarre for him to make it that is.
What other idea could Dewey have entertained instead? That perhaps the policies he supported might be the problem?
Thanks for the link, anonymous - but note that this only discusses the early Soviet Union. I don't think I or Dewey said that it was achieved at that point - only that the process was underway.
ReplyDeleteRE: "I can also add this: when the Soviet Union collapsed all manner of social problems came out into the open - crime, mass illiteracy and innumeracy, youth hooliganism, etc."
Not exactly surprising!!!
RE: "Just like with the Soviet military, education was an area where the Soviet Union could compete with the West, but that does not mean that all the population benefited."
We agree on this point emphatically, then.
Well, Keynes was an anti-liberal, so it is not surprising that libertarians aren't fond of his ideas.
ReplyDeleteJonathan -
ReplyDeleteAustrians have a great grasp of intellectual history. It's not just the British they acknowledge - it's the Spanish too, the Scholastic tradition, etc. However, as you allude to - this is only a subset of libertarians. And as you note - with Rothbard there are some critiques of the Scots (which I should note is just fine - there's something to critique in all of these traditions).
RE: "They are not, because ethically a libertarian could not agree with Keynesian "solutions""
Again - you're confusing positive economics with normative positions. Keynes the man did have normative positions that he promoted. But Keynesian macroeconomics is value-free. The lines get blurred in everyday conversation, but it's entirely possible for a libertarian to agree completely with Keynes on how the economy works, and disagree completely with him on what to do about it. To borrow from the science/religion wars, I will insist that we are dealing with "non-overlapping magesteria" here. Economic theory doesn't necessitate a view on political philosophy any more than biological theory necessitates a view on cruelty to animals.
Your comment seems to acknowledge this positive/normative disctinction, while insisting that practically speaking its meaningless. We're in an "agree to disagree" zone on that one.
"I don't think I or Dewey said that it was achieved at that point - only that the process was underway."
ReplyDeleteIt deals with the period that Dewey discussed and I think the con arguments are good largely across the board - you don't trust the numbers of a state like the USSR, etc.
"Well, Keynes was an anti-liberal, so it is not surprising that libertarians aren't fond of his ideas."
ReplyDeleteNeedless to say, I suggest you reread your Keynes.
dkuehn,
ReplyDeleteKeynes was a utopian collectivist; I think that's partly why much of what he wrote is just outright ignored these days - because it is so embarrassing.
Was Keynes a liberal?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=704
Oh goody! Raico!
ReplyDeleteHe's like a blunt Thomas Woods - all the distortion, none of the jokes or pleasantries.
What exactly makes Keynes a liberal dkuehn? After all, we are talking about someone whose main criticism of fascism and communism as practiced was "administrative incompetence" - if only they had better people in charge! How can one be a liberal yet view the pursuit profit as some sort of for now necessary evil that will be eradicated?
ReplyDeleteIf Keynes was a liberal he was an incredibly bizarre liberal?
You have to ignore huge swaths of his thought to make him into a liberal. You have to overlook all manner of weird ideas that no liberal has ever adopted and been called a liberal.
ReplyDeleteI'd refer you to earlier posts for this question. We're getting considerably far afield of the point of this post.
ReplyDeleteI've read the Raico piece you bring up before.
I'll read the Soviet education piece.
And it did not faze you?
ReplyDeleteWhat earlier posts?
Yeah, I don't know what Daniel is thinking. It threw me into a veritable swoon.
ReplyDeleteEvan is delicate like that, though...
ReplyDelete... as, apparently, is Anonymous
Anonymous - for your sake I started skimming the first two or three pages of Raico again.
ReplyDeleteI have to ask you - have you ever read the General Theory? Does Raico's explanation of Keynes's relationship to classical theory and Keynes's relationship to the mercantilists seem at all... well... different from how Keynes laid out his relationship to those schools of thought in the General Theory?
I dismiss Raico because I think he has a poor grasp either of what Keynes said, or he knew what Keynes said and is deliberately distorting it.
Which brings me back to my question - have you read the General Theory? Because if you haven't, I'd caution against taking Raico's word on it as gospel truth.
One of the better statements about Keynes I have found online:
ReplyDelete"Keynes was probably one of the most complex intellectual figures of the 20th century. His work is replete with contradictions. French biographer Alain Minc refers to his works as an 'alchemy of contraries.' That is probably a sounder appreciation of Keynes."
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/09/090115-14.htm#gelbas
It is unlikely that someone this contradictory could be a liberal.
Yes, I am very delicate flower.
Anyonymous - again, have you read the General Theory?
ReplyDeleteI can't help but get the impression that your standard for the quality of assessments of Keynes is the extent to which they badmouth him.
Yes, he was a complicated figure. Some of his views, such as his views on eugenics, bother me quite a bit. But there's a difference between calling that out and distorting every word he ever wrote or idea he ever had.
What by Keynes have you read yourself? Books and papers?
The only thing I've ever finished by Keynes was his "Economic Consequences..."
ReplyDelete"But there's a difference between calling that out and distorting every word he ever wrote or idea he ever had."
Keynes appears to bit like the books of the Bible ... you can dip in there and find almost anything one wants to.
RE: "The only thing I've ever finished by Keynes was his "Economic Consequences...""
ReplyDeleteEvan and I were talking about this in private conversation - about asking you what you've read. Normally we agree that's bad practice. But anonymous, you have to realize that your claims are far to bold and self-confident for someone that is only familiar with Keynes's now rather uncontroversial assertion that "gee this whole Treaty of Versailles thing is pretty f***ed up".
Notice that when I raise reservations about guys like Rothbard or Mises or even Hayek I try to be extremely tentative and qualified precisely because I'm the first to admit I haven't read them deeply.
Don't stop talking about Keynes or even criticize him. But before you write something like "you have to ignore huge swaths of his thought to make him into a liberal", consider how qualified you are to make a statement like that. Presumably, someone who makes a statement like that should himself be familiar with "huge swaths of his thought" - something I in all likelihood wouldn't even claim for myself.
That's my impression of the guy.
ReplyDelete"That's my impression of the guy."
ReplyDeleteI suspect it's your impression of someone else's impression of the guy.
"I suspect it's your impression of someone else's impression of the guy."
ReplyDeleteYou know, since I don't read cuneiform my impression of the Epic of Gilgamesh is somewhat influenced by the translator; that by itself does not invalidate my POV. Same could be said for Madame Bovary or Homer or The Master and Margarita as well - don't know French, or Iconic Greek (much less how to construct a phrase in dactylic hexameter with such) or Russian - still I think I have some relatively valid opinions about these works. Similarly, I've read bits and pieces of Keynes (the man had no gift for prose whatsoever) and what others have written about him. Not quite sure why I need more than that come to useful conclusion about the guy.
I will note that you really haven't made any positive defense of Keynes; mostly you've been attacking me personally.
The idea of personally attacking an anonymity strikes me as exceedingly odd.
ReplyDeleteTo reiterate my earlier position, I'm simply making a point of this since your impression of Keynes is so bold.
ReplyDeleteStrong claims need strong evidence to be taken seriously. I have to admit, I don't take you very seriously when it comes to Keynes. But I think you probably guessed that. I do take you seriously on questions of libertarianism, on questions of history, etc.
I don't think I've attacked you personally, have I? I did attack Raico, I admit. Cathartic, but probably not too professional of me.
I've made defenses of Keynes elsewhere, and since I think you read Coordination Problem and Cafe Hayek, you're probably also familiar with my take on the Keynes's German preface. I'm not rehashing that when it's completely irrelevant to this post.
Evan,
ReplyDeleteWelcome to the blogosphere.
"I've made defenses of Keynes elsewhere..."
ReplyDeleteNever saw them; I spend large chunks of time away from blogging so as to reduce the time suckage (probably need to do that for the next two weeks). One link to a conversation would be interesting for me to see. I am truly puzzled at how anyone could consider the guy a liberal.
Evan, Welcome to the blogosphere.
ReplyDeleteNo, anonymous, my point was to say that a person can't personally attack an anonymity. I am disagreeing with you. Sort of making fun of your assertion, even. "Exceedingly odd" was a euphemism for "exceedingly untenable and borderline narcissistic".
The blogosphere and I are well-acquainted, but thanks for the kind introduction in any case.
"No, anonymous, my point was to say that a person can't personally attack an anonymity."
ReplyDeleteSure you can. People create these placeholder identities for people they meet online - even if they are just named "anonymous." And why not? We're always trying to fit the online world into meatspace parameters.
dkuehn,
ReplyDeleteHey, totally unrelated, if this sort of thing interests you, Gordon's bio of Calvin is really good.
Calvin who?
ReplyDeleteBruce Gordon on John Calvin.
ReplyDelete????
ReplyDeleteOh ok... just didn't realize what the relevance was.
I'm not sure either... I'm assuming that's what Gordon on Calvin is, though. And while I haven't read it, I've heard good things about it.
ReplyDelete...and I thought the Keynes convo was a non sequitor!
ReplyDeleteMaybe we'll have it explained for us.
I said it was "totally unrelated" ... kind of specific about ... just thought I would pass it on since I was about to jump back into it.
ReplyDeleteAh I see. You did indeed.
ReplyDeleteI'll leave the Calvinism to Evan :)
Excellent Post
ReplyDelete