Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty - Institute of Economic Affairs

h ay e k ’ s t h e c o n s t i t u t i o n o f l i b e r t y
t h e u s e a n d l i m i t s o f k n o w l e d g e
Accounting for order is a central aim of Hayek’s political
philosophy, but his discussion of it in The Constitution of Liberty
is quite diffuse as compared with later presentations, where he
distinguishes quite clearly between the order that men deliberately
make (‘organisation’) and order that forms itself (‘spontaneous
order’). Both kinds of order are essential to civilisation (see
1964).
Hayek is widely known for his advocacy of the idea of spontaneous
order. He briefly discusses the concept itself at two points
in The Constitution of Liberty, although the idea of spontaneous
growth is present in his discussions of tradition, liberty and
progress. Hayek’s comments about organisation as a source of
order are scattered elsewhere in the book, so the relationship of
spontaneous and constructed order is not developed thematically.
Hayek’s first description of spontaneous order, though not by
that name, comes in Chapter 4, where he examines the contribution
of eighteenth-century British thinkers to our understanding
of progress. These thinkers, especially David Hume, Adam Smith
and Adam Ferguson, addressed the following question: how can
social order emerge, if not from a designing human intelligence or
that of a superior being? In addressing it, they
showed how, in the relations among men, complex and
orderly and, in a very definite sense, purposive institutions
might grow up which owed little to design, which were not
invented but arose from the separate actions of many men
who did not know what they were doing. (58–9)
The Scots in particular saw that the orderly growth of institutions
takes place through ‘adaptive evolution’ or ‘the survival of
the successful’ (59, 57). Those tools and institutions survive which
have proven themselves superior (60). This insight was central to
the British case for freedom, which held that the value of freedom
‘consists mainly in the opportunity it provides for the growth of
the undesigned’ (61).
It must be emphasised that in embracing the idea of evolution,
Hayek has in mind social or cultural evolution as anticipated
in the teachings of eighteenth-century thinkers, particularly
the Scots, and not physical evolution as taught later by Charles
Darwin and others. What is crucial to cultural evolution is not the
selection and transmission of physical characteristics, but rather
the selection and transmission of values or rules of conduct.
Cultural evolution takes place through a process of ‘winnowing
and sifting,’ and where it will lead is unknowable and thus
unpredictable. Certainly it does not exhibit an intelligible law.
Its tendency, however, is to produce orders or structures that
reflect ‘the differential advantages gained by groups from practices
adopted for some unknown and perhaps purely accidental
reasons’ (1979: 155; cf. 153–9, 196–200).
Hayek returns to spontaneous order at the very end of Chapter
10, where he draws a parallel between natural and social order.
Often in the physical world we must ‘rely on the spontaneous
adjustments of individual elements to produce a physical order.’
For example, we ‘could never produce a crystal or a complex
organic compound if we had to place each individual molecule
or atom in the appropriate place in relation to the others;’ yet
because the individual molecules or atoms obey a law of nature,
they will in certain conditions ‘arrange themselves in a structure
possessing certain characteristics’ (160). Hayek reasons that spontaneous
forces can likewise produce human society when individuals
act in accordance with general rules or laws. Lawmakers
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