progressivism, individualism, and the public ... - Telmarc Group

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PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC
INTELLECTUAL
admitted to the club because of some exogenous reason, one can then demand club
excess compensation. Unions are also a form of club, thus GM has excess club payments
as compared to Honda, and the US Government then underwrites that excess. Ryan failed
to deal with real examples, which a century ago were a bit more compelling. Today
supply and demand almost always holds.
Now to Hayek and his views. In Chapter 9 of Law Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 2, Hayek
presents the case against what we now see as social justice or distributive justice. In
essence it is the case against neo-progressives and for individualism. It is not a case for
libertarianism, since in many ways it admits some Government intervention but abjures
Government control. The arguments of the more than thirty year earlier Serfdom book are
not tempered but refined.
Hayek starts 132 :
"While in the preceding chapter I had to defend the conception of justice as the
indispensible foundation and limitation of all law, I must now turn against an abuse of
the word which threatens to destroy the conception of law which made it a safeguard of
individual freedom. … "Social" justice … came to be regarded as an attribute which the
"actions" of society, or the "treatment" of individuals and groups by society ought to
possess. … This conception of "social" justice is thus a direct consequence of that
anthropomorphism or personification by which naïve thinking tries to account for all
self-ordering processes. … statements which explicitly connect "social and distributive"
justice with the treatment by society of the individuals according to their "deserts" bring
out most clearly its difference from plain justice, and at the same time the cause of the
vacuity of the concept; the demand for "social" justice is addressed not to the individual
but to society… The primary question then becomes whether there exists a moral duty to
submit to a power which can co-ordinate the efforts of the members of society with the
aim of achieving a particular pattern of distribution regarded as just."
It becomes immediately clear that to Hayek, the concept of social justice is a ruse, and a
threat to the freedom of the individual and the intent of social justice is redistribution. We
will continue on this analysis but it is important to note that Hayek does not look deeply
into the reason that motivate the proponents of social justice. The same could be said
about socialism and the proponents of it. I shall return to that later when we have
reviewed the neo-Progressives.
Hayek continues 133 :
"Although classical socialism has usually been defined by its demand for the
socialization of the means of production, this was for it chiefly a means thought to be
132 Hayek, Law , pp 62-64.
133 Hayek, Law, pp 65-66.
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