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Posted at 08:35 PM in Autobiography, Meaning of Life, Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)
I have been invited to join the Crooked Timber blog. I have been reading that blog as long as I can remember the existence of blogs. And while I don’t recall John Protevi ever mentioning it, or any of us discussing it, it’s pretty clear that Crooked Timber was the standard we tried to emulate in the golden days at NewAPPS. So, I felt a strange mixture of flattery and disbelief when I was contemplating joining it. I hesitated about my decision primarily because I don’t want to give up these Digressions, and wasn’t sure, given the ongoing after-effects of long covid, whether I wanted the meshuggas (and coordination costs) that inevitably comes with a group blog (with different comments policy than my own) and a much larger audience, again. I also adore your loyalty and quality engagement, and the freedom I have, here. Not to mention that D&I has become a self-anchoring mechanism.
Anyway, I published my first piece at the good old Crooked Timber (see here). I intend to write essays there that are deliberately pitched to a slightly wider audience (primarily on politics and on what Foucault might call the ‘philosophy of the present’). But I won’t give up my fleeting and more nerdy (as well as autobiographical) Impressions, just yet. 😊
Posted at 08:21 PM in Autobiography, blogging | Permalink | Comments (0)
The quoted passages dates from the 1706 Latin edition of the Opticks and ended up in Query 31 of the later English edition. As regular readers know (recall here), I am rather fond of it, and I have explored the significance and implications of it also in my scholarly work (including writing with Zvi Biener here; and here solo). Because of a visit to Duke, and my conversations with Katherine Brading and Caleb Hazelwood while there, I had occasion to revisit the passage.
Before I get to that let me offer some clarification on Newton's terminology for those of you who have never seen this passage before: the universe can (but need not) be composed of different worlds. Ordinarily, when Newton uses 'world,' he means thereby to refer to a solar system. Newton recognizes that the universe could be composed of different worlds that coexist (in the General scholium he remarks [recall] on the beauty of the night sky to aliens in other worlds)! A 'system of worlds' is a collection of solar systems (we would say, a 'galaxy') that, presumably, share in a uniform motion or frame of reference.
But Newton also uses 'world' in a metaphysically richer sense. A world in this richer sense is constituted and characterized by the kinds of “particles of Matter” and forces that are to be found in it. The matter and forces of a world can be described by laws of nature. Newton's attitude toward matter and forces is realist in that they are part of his basic ontology; matter and forces ground the laws of nature, which are derivative from them: note Newton's "thereby."
In fact, as an aside, at the start of the Principia, Newton notes that the "basic problem of philosophy seems to be to discover the forces of nature from the phenomena of motions and then to demonstrate the other phenomena from these forces." So, the ontological priority of forces (and matter) is reflected in his epistemic aims.
The passage quoted at the top of this post suggests that Newton's laws are not primitive or productive in the sense that, say, Maudlin's treatment of laws implies (recall). In my work with Biener, especially, I have tried to explain how we should think of the metaphysics of laws according to Newton (short version: it's complicated). But in what follows I want to make a further suggestion about what we might call the extension or locality of the laws of nature.
For Newton, at every point of space, there is time and God, and places that might be filled by matter. (Conversely, there are space and God at every moment of time.) But there are also enormous number of otherwise empty spaces, some enormous. Now, we can discern in Newton treatment of four kinds of empty spaces: first, there are (interstitial) empty spaces within bodies. Second, there are empty spaces among (planetary) bodies within worlds. Third, there are vast empty spaces between solar systems. Fourth, there are enormous empty spaces between galaxies. (I think this is the doctrine of the Principia, but Newton did not always think this because he sometimes experimented with aether theories.)
Now, according to the doctrine that I ascribe to Newton based on the passage quote at the top of the post, the properties of bodies, and their forces of interaction generate the laws that govern them. How to think about the grounding relation between laws and the bodies they describe, I leave to others. (In fact, Caleb Hazelwood is circulating a fascinating paper about this.) On my view (see here), and also (say) David Miller Marshall (here), the Newtonian laws really are about interactions of bodies or systems of bodies (in which they are grounded).
So, here comes the pay-off of this discussion. It follows from these features of bodies, forces and laws, that on Newton's views the laws can be said to be present in interstitial spaces. They are also present in the spatial voids within and between solar systems. You may wonder, given the view I am sketching here, why I am so confident this is so between solar systems for Newton. However, on his view light easily and rapidly moves between solar systems, and we know that for Newton light rays themselves are composed of particles (with mass). Moreover, on his view solar systems tend to be part of a galaxy which follows a uniform motion or has a general frame of reference.
I do not mean to suggest that all the laws of nature that exist in a galaxy are also always present in the vast voids that occupy the spaces of a galaxy. It's possible, after all, some kinds of bodies that can be found in parts of a galaxy are, in principle, unable to move among different solar systems. Notice, that lurking here is genuine lack of knowledge how many kinds of bodies there are in the universe and so how many kinds of laws will be discovered. Newton knew that he was making all kinds of homogeneity assumptions (this was explicit in hypothesis 3 of the first edition), and he also knew that the evidential basis of his claims was limited to a small speck of vast space.
So, on the view that I am sketching here, there need to be no laws of nature present in the vast empty spaces or darkness among galaxies (that is, the fourth kind of spaces). So, for Newton it's possible the total universe is rather dappled (in Nancy Cartwright's sense). Of course, in so far as light also may move among galaxies there may be considerable possibility for uncovering unified laws. (Brading teased me that on my view, as bodies move into empty spaces the laws of nature are simultaneously extended--which I find a lovely implication..) But that's an open question. (Zvi Biener and I argue that methodologically, within physics research, Newton assumes universal laws until there is evidence otherwise. But that's a different register.)
One final thought. Often discussions of Newton assimilate his views of laws of nature to Descartes. In Descartes, the laws are kind of second causes and are universal in scope. The issue I have sketched here does not arise there because, in principle, all bits of matter of the universe are indirectly in contact with each other (and are either part of a universal vortex, or mediate among large solar vortices). Spinoza grasps the significance of this picture with a beautiful treatment in a justly famous letter to Oldenburg (that I suspect shaped Leibniz's metaphysics non-trivially):
While in my writings I tend to bring Newton rather close to Spinoza, it should be clear that on the view sketched here, Newton cannot endorse this lovely picture.
Posted at 03:32 PM in history of philosophy, history of science, HOPOS, Leibniz, Newton, Spinoza, Theology | Permalink | Comments (1)
Kautsky’s definition is as follows:
Kautsky’s utterly meaningless talk about ultra-imperialism encourages, among other things, that profoundly mistaken idea which only brings grist to the mill of the apologists of imperialism, i.e., that the rule of finance capital lessens the unevenness and contradictions inherent in the world economy, whereas in reality it increases them.--Lenin (1917) Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Chapter VII
Much of Lenin's argument in his Imperialism, The Highest State of Capitalism is directed against that 'renegade' Kautsky's position. But Kautsky's own stance has not generated much enthusiasm nor, it seems, interest from subsequent scholarship (which tends to read Kautsky (1854 – 1938), a major theorist of the second International, explicitly or implicitly, through Lenin's perspective). It is pretty clear why it was important to Lenin's leadership and strategic ambitions to disqualify Kautsky and why, perhaps, there is a sense in which Kautsky's stance on imperialism is not echt Marxist (I have no stake in that debate). But Kautsky's account treats uncorrupted liberalism as the pathway into modern (nineteenth century) imperialism. If Kautsky is right about this (to be explored below) this would be highly salient to the liberal tradition's self-understanding. For, by contrast, Lenin and Hobson put rent-seeking elites at the core of their explanations of such imperialism (even if they diverge on the details--with Lenin ((recall; and here) singling out monopoly capitalism as the late stage of capitalism, while Hobson (recall) points to a too limited franchise that facilitates elite rent-seeking).
Now, characteristically Lenin does not literally misrepresent Kautsky. But through his omissions one ends up missing the significance of Kautsky's definition of imperialism quoted above. Kautsky's underlying position is this: once post Cobden, industrialized/industrializing European societies embrace free trade and invest in their comparative advantage in industry and through technological innovations escape the Malthusian trap with growing populations (also, as Kautsky explicitly notes, through immigration from agrarian countries), they will start to need to import a growing number of agricultural goods. Under a regional federation or in pacific times, this state of affairs is splendid with all sides gaining from trade.
But in the context of great power rivalry the effects of such a liberal free trade policy makes one vulnerable to food blockades or other ways in which the need for food imports can be weaponized. (The risks associated with the experience of the blockade of grain shipments from Ukraine's ports this year was all too common during the nineteenth century.) And so, what Lenin treats as Kautsky's definition of imperialism is de facto a description of the effects of free trade on industrialized wealthy states in an imperfect security environment (or a Hobbesian state of nature in international affairs). And so they will try to control agricultural zones in order (and I quote Kautsky's (1914) Ultra-Imperialism) "to force them to restrict themselves entirely to agricultural production."
As hinted above, what's important about Kautsky's approach to imperialism, is that it foregrounds how as liberalism's political fortunes rise -- as it manifestly did in the middle of the 18th century -- with a peak moment the 1860 Cobden–Chevalier Treaty (an Anglo-French free trade agreement, including most favored nation clauses that facilitated more such agreements) -- it generates the seeds for imperialism, absent a wider political settlement. To the best of my knowledge only Kautsky noticed how liberalism's political success generates a dynamic that threatens to become self-undermining. (I don't mean to suggest the lesson wasn't later learned and applied!)
That is to say, domestic liberal economic policies require, once implemented, transnational political responses in order to be managed. And is clear from Lenin's description, Kautsky anticipates this point. I don't mean to suggest Kautsky is the first to notice the need for transnational liberal institutions -- Kant, Mazzini, and others had argued for it --, but rather Kautsky recognizes that such institutions will be needed to solve the political problems that are the effects of embracing free trade.
Here, too, Lenin's approach to Kautsky is literally true, but turns out to be misleading through his omissions. What's key to Kautsky's analysis is not the possibility of international cartels who manage trade in the way Deutsche Bank manages German industry, but rather (and now I quote Kautsky directly), "the result of the World War between the great imperialist powers may be a federation of the strongest, who renounce their arms race." (Recall also here my discussion of Luxemburg's criticism of Kautsky; and especially here where I discuss Kautsky's 1911 proposals). Such a federation would also turn the zero-sum political environment into a context in which the gains from trade would generate mutual prosperity and security.
And in so far as international institutions like the IMF and World Bank act as 'cartels' for capital/finance, then these, too, serve the same interest. Either way, from a liberal perspective Kautsky points the way toward the future, and turns out to be quite prescient and even helps explain why the internal contradictions of capitalism have not been the ultimate undoing of liberalism, so far.*
Continue reading "That Renegade Kautsky, and the fate of Capital and Liberalism" »
Posted at 02:27 PM in International Affairs, Marxism, WW2 | Permalink | Comments (0)
I have set the economic compulsion in the foreground, because in point of history it is the causa causans of the Imperialism that accompanies or follows.
In considering the ethics and politics of this interference, we must not be bluffed or blinded by critics who fasten on the palpable dishonesty of many practices of the gospel of “the dignity of labour” and “the mission of civilisation.” The real issue is whether, and under what circumstances, it is justifiable for Western nations to use compulsory government for the control and education in the arts of industrial and political civilisation of the inhabitants of tropical countries and other so-called lower races. Because Rhodesian mine-owners or Cuban sugar-growers stimulate the British or American Government to Imperialism by parading motives and results which do not really concern them, it does not follow that these motives under proper guidance are unsound, or that the results are undesirable.
Duncan Bell once pointed out to me that while Hobson is a genuine and fierce critic of really existing imperialism, he is in favor of what we now call white 'settler colonialism' (with this qualification that the colony needs to occupy is thinly occupied). In addition, Hobson clearly argues for a European federal entity that, if it can be properly designed, will take on global responsibilities, and, in turn, even be the foundation for a world-federation.
One of these potential global responsibilities is to engage in a kind of eugenics (which Hobson calls echoing Pearson, 'rational selection'): "If progress is helped by substituting rational selection for the struggle for life within small groups, and afterwards within the larger national groups, why may we not extend the same mode of progress to a federation of European States, and finally to a world-federation?" As he puts it, "Biology furnishes no reason for believing that the competition among nations must always remain a crude physical struggle, and that the substitution of “rational” for “natural” selection among individual members of a nation cannot be extended to the selection of nations and of races."
Now, in general when an author freely uses language of 'lower races' and simultaneously argues for eugenics, it's safe to conclude one is in the company of scientific racism. And there are plenty of passages in Imperialism that if quoted in isolation in today's climate would lead to cancelation on a college campus and a lucrative substack column. Even so, throughout Imperialism Hobson engages in immanent criticism, but frustratingly to the modern reader, he doesn't always carefully distinguish between his own position and the one he is criticizing by way of, say a reductio. (His work seems like a good one to motivate use/mention and scare-quote techniques.) And so selective quotation from Imperialism may mislead about his position.
So, for example, I strongly doubt Hobson's race theory, such as it is, involves commitment to a fixed racial hierarchy. That's actually visible in the final paragraph of the passage quoted above, where Hobson warns against the possibility that a certain form of hegemonic rule engenders the conditions for racial 'degeneration.' (In larger context he suggests such degeneration seems to be the fate of imperial rulers on a regular basis.) And, in fact, that point is preceded in the quoted passage by the suggestion that any present advantage is the effect of "a more stimulative environment" (that is, their institutions and, perhaps, climate) not their stock. Near the end of the chapter, Hobson leaves no doubt that existing "white rulers of these lower races" is "parasitic." So, if Hobson were to believe his own racial theory, he is effectively predicting the demise of white stock!
In fact, Hobson tends to draw from Pearson's eugenics all kinds of conclusions that unsettle the very desirability of fixed racial hierarchy. For example, near the end of part I of the chapter on "The Scientific Defence of Imperialism," Hobson deserves with delicious irony, "Whether a nation or a society of nations will ever proceed as far as this, or, going farther, will attempt the fuller art of stirpiculture, encouraging useful “crosses” of families or races, may be matter of grave doubt; but if the maintenance and improvement of the national stock ever warranted such experiments, we are entitled to insist that logic would justify the application of the same rule in the society of nations." That is to say, Hobson suggests that if breeding (rational "stirpiculture") of populations were to take off as social policy (which, notice, he doubts), then international racial hybridity would be a natural and desirable outcome. In general, racial supremacists get rather anxious about such hybridity.
I don't mean to suggest Hobson is not a supremacist of sorts. In the passage I quoted at the top of the post he clearly implies that some of the conquered peoples in Africa and the Caribbean can be likened to children. (I put it like this because in a later chapter on "Imperialism in Asia," he clearly marks off Asian civilizations from the discussion that preceded it.) And, in fact, his position evokes John Stuart Mill's in which a proper imperialism would guide the lower civilizations. But the tendency to treat other peoples as childlike and uncivilized is one of Locke's really terrible ideas (see Essay 1.2.27) that badly shaped European intellectual culture (despite (recall) contestation of folk like Adam Smith).
Unlike, say, Mill, Hobson offers no defense of existing imperial practice (and when he praises individuals he tends to praise their intentions not the outcomes). In so far as he offers a normative account of statecraft it is one that would generate a world civilization in which the lower civilizations end up as 'developed' as the ones that understand themselves as higher in his time. Now, I am not interested in defending Hobson if only because he seems unambiguously open to the legitimacy of forced/compulsory economic development even if only when the proper conditions obtain for it.
But Hobson goes on to suggest that in practice these proper conditions simply do not exist:
Now, one might think this is the end of the matter. But, anticipating Mises (recall), it turns out Hobson goes on to advocate for a system that came to be associated with trust/mandate system of the league of nations: "until some genuine international council exists, which shall accredit a civilised nation with the duty of educating a lower race, the claim of a “trust” is nothing else than an impudent act of self-assertion." And while he recognizes that "one may well be sceptical about the early feasibility of any such representative council," he clearly seems to think it would be a proper function of a well functioning world federation. Why such a council would escape the problems he diagnoses as "inherent in the nature of...domination" is left unclear. As I have suggested elsewhere, it seems that such a position was respectable among left and right liberals until the 1940s.
Posted at 04:00 PM in Adam Smith, Locke, political philosophy, Racism | Permalink | Comments (0)
Hobson claims that from the perspective of both liberalism ("laissez-faire democracy") and socialism a public, cost-benefit analysis of imperialism would find imperialism wanting. The mystery, then, is why it survives. And the mystery resolves once one realizes that imperialism benefits and greatly benefits concentrated, special or "sectional" interests. (He avoids the more Millian phrase, 'sinister' interest.)
Depending on one's training and disciplinary formation, it is incredibly difficult not to read the quoted passage and not think immediately of Mancur Olson's treatment of interest groups. And if I understand Paul Krugman's criticism of Adam Tooze correctly (see here), it's actually a good thing if that were to happen to you.
Or perhaps, if you are primed to see rent-seeking here, you think of Tullock and Krueger. The problem is that this literature is focused on tariffs, import licensing, and monopoly not imperialism (which tacitly is relegated to mere historical interest). That's not quite fair to Tullock, who is widely read and explicitly interested in vindicating "the classical economists;" and whose recurring mention of Gladstone in his short paper may well lead one to believe that the question of imperialism is lurking in the informal background of his treatment. After all, the implied lesson of Tullock's paper is that there are political costs from rent-seeking not well captured by a purely economic focus. And if this seems all too Straussian to you, Tullock has a known interest in Hobson (recall; see here 1963).
Hobson himself does not claim originality (his analysis is Smithian through and through) and evokes Tomas More. Some playing around with Google convinced me Hobson relies on a relatively late (1808) translation (Dibdin's revision of Raphe Robinson) of Utopia. But here I am not interested in tracing lineages. (That was the hook.)
As I have noted before (recall; and here) many people come to Hobson's Imperialism via Lenin and the tacit reception of Lenin in contemporary political economy and intellectual history. And once one has read Lenin, the crucial issue in Hobson's argument is Hobson's diagnosis of domestic underconsumption and over-saving as a driver of the export of capital. Imperialism then becomes a search for new markets (recall Duncan Bell's interpretation).
And from the Leninist-Marxist perspective domestic underconsumption is best understood as an effect of monopoly capitalism. There are, indeed, passages in Hobson that seem to evoke and anticipate this diagnosis. For example, in Chapter VI, Hobson writes,
It is not industrial progress that demands the opening up of new markets and areas of investment, but maldistribution of consuming power which prevents the absorption of commodities and capital within the country. The over-saving which is the economic root of Imperialism is found by analysis to consist of rents, monopoly profits, and other unearned or excessive elements of income, which, not being earned by labour of head or hand, have no legitimate raison d'être.
But as Hobson's wording suggests, his treatment is normative ("legitimate"). He does not think monopoly capitalism inevitable or necessary. In fact, as his analytic categories ('complete socialism' and 'laissez faire democracy') suggest he thinks alternative polities can be coherently thought. And that's because for Hobson imperialism is the effect of political decisions not the necessary outcome of economic laws. As he puts it (also in chapter VI), his economic analysis "dispels the delusion that expansion of foreign trade, and therefore of empire, is a necessity of national life." In so far as there are monopolies, these are themselves the effect of tariffs and political decisions.
Moreover, for Hobson, the search for new markets does not drive imperialism. (Simply put, he shows that the gains from new markets tend to be negligible. This does not deny some imperialist projects are pursued in the service of expanding markets.) For Hobson, while many interests benefit from imperialism, and sustain it, and while he recognizes all kinds of ideological commitments that promote it, imperialism is fundamentally a mechanism to protect high risk (and so high interest) investment income of creditors from political risk; as he puts it in Chapter VII:
That is to say, imperialism for Hobson is analytically connected with finance capital and its manipulation of the political process (and national public opinion).* If you pursue high risk, high reward investments, which effectively price in some defaults, you have no claim on socializing the downside risk.
On this view imperialism does not disappear with de-colonization, but is still exhibited in the gains from market turbulence -- "every oscillation of public credit short of this collapse, every risky enterprise in which public resources can be made the pledge of private speculations" -- and financial bailouts of the potential losses suffered by European and American creditors abroad.
I do not mean to deny that for Hobson protecting the political risks faced by a creditor class abroad isn't a peculiarly modern phenomenon. As he puts it:
To a larger extent every year Great Britain is becoming a nation living upon tribute from abroad, and the classes who enjoy this tribute have an ever-increasing incentive to employ the public policy, the public purse, and the public force to extend the field of their private investments, and to safeguard and improve their existing investments. This is, perhaps, the most important fact in modern politics, and the obscurity in which it is wrapped constitutes the gravest danger to our State.
And this gives rise to the modern phenomenon of competitive imperialism.+ But rather than treating such large saving surpluses as intrinsic to late stage capitalism, Hobson treats them as an effect of political decisions. For, Hobson does not subscribe to an economic destiny; he respects the primacy of what he calls "statecraft." And this means such saving surpluses are also correctable by political decisions. For as he puts it in Chapter VI:
Of course, diagnosing the desirably of an alternative political outcome is not the same as diagnosing the existence of a political coalition or a feasible pathway that can generate it.
Continue reading "Hobson, Mancur Olson, Lenin, and Laissez-faire democracy" »
Posted at 04:16 PM in Adam Smith, Marxism, political philosophy, politics | Permalink | Comments (0)
It's worth noting that passage...when quoted in full, explicitly involves a qualification that shows a circumstance prior to the invention of money and the development of property/rent: "IN that early and rude state of society which precedes both the accumulation of stock and the appropriation of land." (WN 1.6.1, 65) So, [it] involves a situation where nominal prices are absent, and where capital and rent are absent! It's akin to an early Lockean state of nature. In Marxist terms, if Smith holds a strict labor theory of value [LTV] as a measure of exchange value, then it is only well before the stage of primitive accumulation not in a capitalist economy. This illustrates my claim that the LTV gets introduced only in the context of thought experiments that go on to make more complex claims.--Eric Schliesser "Smith's Labor Theory Thought Experiment," @AdamSmithWorks
I don't have a lot of time for blogging this week. But, coincidentally, a relatively short essay appeared (here) in which I explain why it is a mistake to attribute to Adam Smith a Labor Theory of Value. (It's based on a twitter thread that went viral over the Summer, but slightly refined and more carefully argued.)
Posted at 11:50 PM in Adam Smith, blogging, Marxism | Permalink | Comments (1)
[S]uch expressions of traditional Anglo-American nationalism and public religion would soon come to an end. In the wake of the Second World War, America, Britain, and other Western countries underwent a dramatic change in self-understanding. Somehow, a war fought to defend God-fearing democracy inadvertently ended up destroying the religious foundations of the victorious Western nations. Within a few years, the God-fearing democracies came to see themselves as liberal democracies, and liberalism replaced Christianity as the perceived source of whatever was good about America and other Western nations.
We can see the beginning of this change immediately after the Second World War in the American Supreme Court’s determination, in Everson v. Board of Education (1947), that state governments could no longer support and encourage religion—whether a particular religion or any religion. In theory, this decision is deduced from the First Amendment of the Constitution as applied through the Fourteenth. But the Fourteenth Amendment, passed after the Civil War to protect black Americans from violations of their right to due process under the law, had by this point been on the books for seventy-nine years without anyone supposing that support for religion by the states was a violation of anyone’s right to due process.
What had changed in the interim was not the letter of the law, but the narrative framework through which the justices of the Supreme Court, as representatives of elite opinion, understood the relationship between Christianity and the American nation. That there had been such a change is obvious from the fact that, in the aftermath of the Second World War, Justice Hugo Black felt he needed to provide a new story of the American founding—one broadly hostile to government encouragement of religion. Among other things, he writes:It is not inappropriate briefly to review the background and environment of the period in which that constitutional language was fashioned and adopted. A large proportion of the early settlers of this country came here from Europe to escape the bondage of laws which compelled them to support and attend government favored churches. The centuries immediately before and contemporaneous with the colonization of America had been filled with turmoil, civil strife, and persecutions, generated in large part by established sects determined to maintain their absolute political and religious supremacy. With the power of government supporting them, at various times and places, Catholics had persecuted Protestants, Protestants had persecuted Catholics, Protestant sects had persecuted other Protestant sects, Catholics of one shade of belief had persecuted Catholics of another shade of belief, and all of these had from time to time persecuted Jews. In efforts to force loyalty to whatever religious group happened to be on top and in league with the government of a particular time and place, men and women had been fined, cast in jail, cruelly tortured, and killed.
In Black’s retelling, religion is no longer the source of American democracy and independence, as it had been in Roosevelt’s State of the Union address eight years earlier. On the contrary, religion is now portrayed as a danger and a threat to democratic freedoms. Indeed, the very form of the American Constitution is now said to have resulted from the excesses of religion that drove the first Europeans to settle in America. It is in the Everson decision, in other words, that we find some of the first intimations of the transition from a God-fearing democracy to a liberal democracy: one in which religion is perceived as being so great a threat that the federal government must act to safeguard every child in the country from being taught religion in a publicly supported school.--Yoram Hazony (2022) Conservatism: A Rediscovery, Part III" pp. 264-266,
This is the fourth in a series of posts on Hazony's Conservatism (recall the first one here; here the second one on Hazony's post-feminist conception of the family; and here the third one on Hazony's account of statecraft). In this series, I mix exposition with immanent critique (even if sometimes I am bad at hiding my own skeptical liberal commitments).
The quoted material is part of a chapter, "Liberal Hegemony and Cold War Conservatism," that introduces Hazony's intellectual history of the post WWII conservative 'fusionist' movement. It has major treatments of Russell Kirk, Hayek, Leo Strauss, and Frank Meyer. (Burnham is notably missing.) The first of these is, in many ways, closest to Hazony, but Kirk's defense of states' rights (and the racialism supporting it) are criticized by Hazony. (As I have noted, before Hazony is a fierce critic of ethnic and genetic accounts of nationalism.) The latter three are all treated as liberals, and criticized for their one-sided defense of individual freedom. The cumulative effect of the chapter is, to simplify, to show how the intellectual, 'fusionist' movement organized by and around Buckley's National Review somewhat unintentionally contributed to 'liberal hegemony.' For present purposes what matters is a common thread in these thinkers that in different degrees they are willing 'to privatize' (a phrase Hazony uses in context of Meyer) religion to a relatively domestic sphere.
Now, Hazony treats World War II as a major rupture, or a triggering cause, for the retreat from public religion Stateside. (He resists the temptation to throw this on the sixties youth culture.) His explanation for this change is that elite opinion -- shocked and shamed by the racial Nazi atrocities -- correctly retreated from Jim Crow and other forms of state enforced, domestic racial oppression, and then mistakenly treated other forms of state sanctioned distinctions as on par with the racial kind. By contrast, Hazony does not "believe these aims are substantively similar at all. However, it is important to recognize that the U.S. Supreme Court did fid them comparable. Indeed, it is fair to say that these two goals—erasing distinctions based on race and religion—were the principal engines driving the establishment of liberal-democratic government in America after the Second World War." (267) And this led to the mistake of "instead of engaging in a focused effort to assist black Americans in overcoming the racial barriers that had been placed in their way, the constitutional revolution of the 1960s set out to reconstruct America in the image of the social-contract theories of Enlightenment rationalist philosophy." (270)
My interest here is not to contest the historical accuracy of this narrative. But it is worth noting an important irony. As I have noted before, Hazony treats Locke as the key 'rationalist,' who is foundational to the 'Enlightenment liberalism' (and 'liberal democracy') that Hazony treats as a rival to his own conservative/federalist nationalism. And Hazony implies throughout his argument that the Lockean liberals are to blame for the retreat of public religion. The irony, of course, is that Locke thought only protestants ought to be tolerated, and that Catholics and atheists not. And while Jews could be tolerate in Locke's day, and in the American Founders' era, the thrust of his argument is that no such toleration is possible once there is a Jewish state (due to possibility of divided loyalty, which is the argument to reject toleration of Catholics).
The point here is not that Locke was a bigot, or even to suggest that the "spirit of old the Protestant republicanism" Hazony suddenly extolls in the context of Reagan's presidency, is rather Lockean in character (and so there is something off in Hazony's conceptual framework), but rather to look again at Justice Black's rationale (and by implication of those American elites) to change the relationship between 'government 'and 'Christianity.' And to point to a surprising equivocation in Hazony's position in which 'Christianity' is treated as a kind term and 'religion' or 'religious practices' a kind of synonym for it. We see this in how Hazony advocates for what he calls 'conservative democracy. I first quote the principle on which it rests:
Principle 3. Religion. The state upholds and honors God and the Bible, the congregation and the family, and the religious practices common to the nation. These are essential to the national heritage and indispensable for justice and public morals. At the same time, the state offers toleration to religious and social views that do not endanger the integrity and well-being of the nation as a whole. (337; this is repeated from pp. 30-1, end of chapter 1)
While Hazony rejects Locke's views on consent, in the practical effects this account of toleration (to tolerate 'religious and social views that do not endanger the integrity and well-being of the nation as a whole') is, thus, actually remarkably Lockean. And while Locke might emphasize more than Hazony the right to exit from one's congregation, Hazony, too, allows this as we have seen in his account of the nature of 'loyalty groups.'
Anyway, the principle is rather vague. And is to be balanced with a number of other principles. But the practical pay-off is articulated as follows:
Public religion. Conservative democracy regards biblical religion as the only firm foundation for national independence, justice, and public morals in Western nations. In America and other traditionally Christian countries, Christianity should be the basis for public life and strongly reflected in government and other institutions, wherever a majority of the public so desires. Provision should be made for Jews and other minorities to ensure that their particular traditions and way of life are not encumbered. The liberal doctrine requiring a “wall of separation between church and state” is a product of the post–Second World War period and is not an inherent feature of American political tradition. It should be discarded both with respect to majority religion and to minorities. (341)
That biblical religion is (in 'Western' contexts) the only firm foundation for 'national independence, justice, and public morals' might raise protests from liberals (like myself). But that does not concern me here. Rather I am interested in the consequences for religion to Hazony's view that a (local or national) "majority of the public" can impose their religious views on minorities. And I do so by returning to Hazony's treatment of Everson vs Board of Education quoted above.
In the passage quoted from Black's opinion of Everson v. Board of Education, justice Black is fundamentally concerned about the political effects of sectarianism that is repeated almost staccato like in the opinion: (i) 'escape the bondage of laws which compelled them to support and attend government favored churches;' (ii) 'the colonization of America had been filled with turmoil, civil strife, and persecutions, generated in large part by established sects determined to maintain their absolute political and religious supremacy; (iii) he power of government supporting them, at various times and places, Catholics had persecuted Protestants, Protestants had persecuted Catholics, Protestant sects had persecuted other Protestant sects, Catholics of one shade of belief had persecuted Catholics of another shade of belief, and all of these had from time to time persecuted Jews;' (iv) 'In efforts to force loyalty to whatever religious group happened to be on top and in league with the government of a particular time and place.' And the implication is that such sectarianism has also shaped American political life, or is a danger to it.
Of course, for much of American history, Protestantism was the majority religion. But Justice Black is writing in the aftermath of a huge, century long demographic shift toward Catholicism, and consequent increasing Catholic, political emancipation. The series of legal rulings that make the state retreat from enforcing religion in public life, can be understood as an attempt to pacify the potential for non-trivial sectarian strife not the least among Catholics and protestants, and among different protestant sects. In fact, liberals of the age (including Isaiah Berlin and John Rawls) suddenly start to emphasize (it's an innovation) the significance of religious wars as a foundational myth in the growth of liberalism.
That is to say, if sects can justly try to control government, this means that religious life will be politicized and factionalized permanently. Now, I think Hazony accepts that loyalty groups are intrinsically political (and hierarchical), although he underestimates what kind of leaders will rise to the top within religion if religion is a means to political spoils. But the dangers of sectarianism are obscured in Hazony's argument because he kind of tacitly assumes that 'Christians' will agree with each other. Of course, he is not unfamiliar with the history of sectarianism and political religious persecution. But because contemporary conservative Christians understand themselves, rightly or wrongly, as embattled against, and unified in opposition to, the near victory of (secular) Enlightenment liberalism/rationalism, Hazony never has to confront the dangers of doctrinal and factional sectarianism.
Let me close. In a way the problem of sectarianism makes the problem of statecraft I diagnosed in the previous post on Hazony's book worse. For in order to maintain peace among different religious sects, the wise politician must not only navigate a complex commerce of honors (and interests), as Hazony advocates, but s/he must also navigate a complex set of doctrinal and theological religious disputes founded on by no means durable majority opinion. This is a recipe for permanent political strife.
Posted at 05:31 PM in Hazony, Locke, political philosophy, politics, Racism, Religion | Permalink | Comments (1)
In his fifth lecture of 7 February 1979 Foucault introduces "American anarcho-capitalism" as a synonym for "contemporary American liberalism." (The Birth of Biopolitics p. 104.) In context, the intended contrast is with German Ordoliberalism and Hayek's Austrian liberalism. In the next lecture, of 14 February, 1979, Foucault contrasts "contemporary American anarcho-capitalism" with the "classical liberalism of the nineteenth century." (p. 133) Later in the sixth lecture, Foucault claims that "American anarcho-capitalism" develops from the rejection of "Keynesian economics, and others from the Beveridge plans or European social security plans." (pp. 144-145) Foucault doesn't use the phrase "Anarcho-capitalism" again. He does use 'anarcho-liberal' (and its cognates) a few times (p. 117; p. 161) as apparent synonym.
It's pretty clear, however, that he is thinking of the Chicago school, especially the strand inspired by Henry Calvert Simons (1899 –1946). Because Foucault makes clear that that "Simons drafted a number of critical texts and articles, the most interesting of which is entitled: “The Beveridge Program: an unsympathetic interpretation,” which there is no need to translate, since the title indicates its critical sense." (p. 216) In addition, Foucault had just introduced Simons to his audience as follows, "The first, fundamental text of this American neo-liberalism, written in 1934 by Simons, who was the father of the Chicago School, is an article entitled “A Positive Program for Laissez-Faire.” (p. 216) And, in fact, Foucault explicitly identifies 'anarcho-liberalism' with the Chicago school (p. 161).
Foucault's adoption of the phrase 'anarcho-capitalism' is a bit strange because Simons is no anarchist. And, in fact, to the best of my knowledge most real anarchists (Left and Right) would not treat any Chicago economist as an anarchist (since they tend to accept non-trivial state institutions). Milton Friedman's defense, for example, of central banking often gets him criticized by certain libertarians and anarchists alike.
Unusually, the editorial team of The Birth of Biopolitics is silent on Foucault's use. I mention that not to criticize them. For, in a note attached to a cryptic remark by Foucault -- "The ideas of North on the development of capitalism, for example, are directly in line with this opening up made by the neoliberals" -- in lecture of 14 February 1979 they call to "H. Lepage, Demain le capitalisme (Paris: Librairie Générale Francaise, 1978; republished “Pluriel”) p. 34 and chapters 3 and 4 (this book was one of the sources used by Foucault in the last of these 1979 lectures)." Lepage treats North at length in this fascinating book, translated by Sheilagh C. Ogilvie* as Tomorrow, Capitalism: The Economics of Economic Freedom (Open Court, 1982).
Lepage introduces the term 'anarcho-capitalism' near the end of the first chapter ("The New Economists") in a section, "The Libertarians," as follows:
This renaissance in modern economic thought has given rise to the appearance on the American political chessboard of a new ideological movement—the Libertarian movement. It does not yet represent more than an intellectual fringe, but it embodies an astonishing reconciliation between a distinctly controversial social libertarianism (favoring legalization of drugs, moral freedom, freedom from military conscription, international neutrality, suppression of the CIA, abolition of the corrupt ‘‘military-industrial complex’’) and an economic libertarianism that calls for a radically laissez-faire capitalist society in which a maximum of transactions would take place through voluntary contractual exchange.
Often having close ties with the ‘‘radical”’ philosophy of the New Left and mostly less than 40 years of age, these libertarians are the direct descendants of the great libertarian revolt of the 1960s. They hold the very existence of the state to be the supreme evil that is to be actively resisted. Opponents of all manifestations of Gulag, down to the least offensive, their objective is to abolish the state in favor of a social system in which all public functions would be made private. This has given them the name ‘‘anarcho-capitalists,’’ a name assumed by certain of their leaders such as David Friedman, son of Milton Friedman, also a professor of economics, now at UCLA and formerly at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg." Lepage Capitalism, Tomorrow, p. 25
A few pages later Lepage clarifies that "Milton Friedman, for instance, passes for “‘libertarian’’ in most circles, but he is not recognized as libertarian by militants of the Libertarian Party such as his own son." (p. 27) And a few lines down, he is equally clear that "not all Chicago school adherents or the new economists are libertarians." (p. 27) It's natural to read this page as suggesting that Nozick and David Friedman are anarcho-capitalists. In the section on anarcho-capitalism (near the end of chapter 7) only David Friedman is mentioned and quoted (and no Chicago economist).+
I suspect Foucault gets the term 'anarcho-capitalism/liberalism' from Lepage. And it is pretty clear that Lepage's discussions of Becker, Stigler, and North shape Foucault's analysis (about this some time soon more). But Foucault does not follow Lepage slavishly (or may have conflated Milton and David Friedman). Another important difference between Foucault and Lepage is that while Lepage identifies Simons as one of the founders of the "Chicago tradition," he treats Knight (correctly) as the "true founder." (p. 5) Lepage devotes no space at all to discuss Simons (who was long dead when Lepage wrote his book). By contrast Foucault largely ignores Knight and focuses on Simons.
Okay, Capitalism, Tomorrow (Demain, le capitalisme) is a superb survey of anti-Keynesian economics and political philosophy of the 50s-70s. (It was a bestseller in France.) In his "foreword" to the English translation, James Buchanan notes that Lepage visited in September 1976. Throughout the foreword Buchanan treats Lepage as a "journalist." But I understand from Guillaume Yon that Lepage wrote important policy briefs for the regulatory framework of French electricity industry. And in France Lepage quickly became associated with 'new economists' and 'anarcho-capitalism.' And I suspect that Foucault used 'anarcho-capitalism' to alert his audience that he would be talking about the whole ensemble of characters that Lepage discusses in his book, rather than conflate the more narrow work of David Friedman with the much broader movement that Lepage discusses.
One reason Douglass North is so important to Lepage's argument, and why I think Foucault mentions him in that otherwise obscure passage when he first introduces 'anarcho-capitalism,' is that running through Lepage's book are a whole number of set-pieces in which known criticisms by Marxists of capitalism, markets, and/or liberalism are answered (if not refuted) rather thoroughly. As Lepage puts it in his introduction, "capitalism and economic freedom cannot be defended successfully...[without] new theoretical and scientific insight into the economic bases and implications of their own political philosophy," (p. 3; emphasis in original.) In fact, Capitalism, Tomorrow would still work very well in an 'intro to PPE' course or as the right-wing response to (say) Polanyi's The Great Transformation (or some such book) or as an introduction to economic way of thinking.
An example of this occurs right at the start of the book. After briefly introducing the significance of human capital theory and the new theory of consumer behavior to his audience, Lepage writes,
Formulated separately by Gary S. Becker at Chicago and Kelvin J. Lancaster at Columbia, the new theory of consumption sees the consumer as an individual who not only consumes but also ‘‘produces’’ his own satisfaction, using inputs consisting of his market purchases and his time. This is in itself—as we shall see'’—an intellectual revolution, yet despite its controversial political implications it is still practically unknown outside economic circles. Its new view of consumer demand finally makes it possible to reply effectively to the critics of capitalism who base their view of society on a supposed distinction between ‘‘true”” and ‘‘false’’ needs. In their view, advertising, by changing people’s desires, makes consumers the slaves of the producers, and the proliferation of new products becomes proof of the wasteful and suicidal nature of consumer society. But consumer behavior can be explained convincingly without invoking ‘‘false needs’’ or consumer irrationality. (Capitalism, Tomorrow, Chapter one, pp. 9-10, emphasis added)
My present point is not to endorse Lepage's claim that the new theory of consumption does respond adequately to the Marxist criticism. To evaluate that we will need to explore the details of his argument (in the very near future!) But rather that responding to anti-capitalism systematically is clearly Lepage's purpose. And I suspect this is what made the book attractive to Foucault, who, as is well known, runs with the idea that what is distinctive about American neoliberalism (as exemplified by Becker and Stigler) is the "programming of policies of economic development, which could be orientated, and which are in actual fact orientated," toward the development of human capital. (Birth of Biopolitics, p. 233) And this programming can, as Foucault clearly discerns, be developed through social policy and one's own activities.
Finally, Becker's move is at odds (recall; see also here) with Frank Knight’s position who claimed that “wants which impel economic activity and which it is directed toward satisfying are the products of the economic process itself.” (This is a view that is not just Marxist, but goes back to Smith and Rousseau and probably Aristotle.) Arguably this is one of the central oppositions between 'old' and 'new' Chicago. TBC.
Continue reading "Foucault, Lepage, Anarcho-capitalism and anti-Marxism" »
Posted at 05:43 PM in Chicago Economics, Foucault, Frank Knight, Libertarianism, Marxism, Milton Friedman, The University of Chicago | Permalink | Comments (3)
For England, like France, had its century of liberalism: and to the century of the French Revolution corresponded, on the other side of the Channel, the century of the Industrial Revolution: to the juristic and spiritualistic philosophy of the Rights of Man corresponded the Utilitarian philosophy of the identity of interests. The interests of all individuals are identical. Every individual is the best judge of his own interests. Therefore it is necessary to break down all artificial barriers which traditional institutions set up between individuals, and all the social restraints based on the supposed necessity of protecting individuals against each other and against themselves. It is a philosophy of emancipation, very different in its inspiration and principles, but akin in many of its applications, to the sentimental philosophy of J.-J. Rousseau. The philosophy of the Rights of Man eventually led, on the Continent, to the Revolution of 1848; in England at the same time the philosophy of the identity of interests resulted in the triumph of the free-trade doctrine of the Manchester School.--Élie Halévy (1901) The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, Translated by Marry Morris, London Faber & Faber (1928), p. xvi.
Despite the different terminology, Élie Halévy's distinction anticipates the Rawlsian distinction between a social contract and a utilitarian tradition. According to Halévy both traditions are a "philosophy of emancipation." In Halévy (1870 – 1937) the opposition of utilitarianism to the social contract is introduced via Hume's criticism of Locke which Bentham takes over from Hume and then also applies against Blackstone (and the inconsistencies in Beccaria) in chapter 2. It's worth noting, again, that Foucault, treats the first as the "axiomatic, juridico-deductive approach" (he drops its connection to sentimentalism--Halévy is clearly seeing the influence of Mandeville on Rousseau) focused on contracts and rights, which Foucault explicitly associates with Rousseau, and the second Foucault associates with "English radicalism" or "the problem of utility" or interest (The Birth of Biopolitics, 17 January 1979, pp. 39-40), My interest here, however, is not in labeling.
Rawls knew Halévy's book. After introducing "the distinction between the constitutive rules of an institution, which establish its various rights and duties, and so on, and strategies and maxims for how best to take advantage of the institution for particular purposes," and explaining this distinction (Rawls does not cite Buchanan & Tullock here, but rather Searle and Anscombe),* Rawls goes on to cite Halévy's Growth (from the French original) as a source on Bentham and Smith in A Theory of Justice:
In designing and reforming social arrangements one must, of course, examine the schemes and tactics it allows and the forms of behavior which it tends to encourage. Ideally the rules should be set up so that men are led by their predominant interests to act in ways which further socially desirable ends. The conduct of individuals guided by their rational plans should be coordinated as far as possible to achieve results which although not intended or perhaps even foreseen by them are nevertheless the best ones from the standpoint of social justice. Bentham thinks of this coordination as the artificial identification of interests, Adam Smith as the work of the invisible hand.3 It is the aim of the ideal legislator in enacting laws and of the moralist in urging their reform.--Rawls A Theory of Justice (Revised edition), p. 49 [it's also in the original 1971 edition.]
I take it that Rawls is describing his own program when he writes that in designing and reforming those social arrangements which are "the constitutive rules," which just are (a part of) the basic institutions of society, "the conduct of individuals guided by their rational plans should be coordinated as far as possible to achieve results which although not intended or perhaps even foreseen by them are nevertheless the best ones from the standpoint of social justice." As I recount in my book, the distinction between intended and foreseeable consequences is rather important to a proper understanding of Smith's account of the invisible hand, but I leave that aside here.
As an aside, it's worth noting that the terminology of the 'ideal' here (recall) echoes the manner by which Knight and Arrow refer to what they call the 'idealist tradition,' which in the very notes that Rawls calls attention to (see p. 233 and 314 n. 16 of TJ) in Arrow, Arrow mentions Rousseau, Kant, T.H. Green and Milton in the context of discussing the 'Idealist' tradition. (On p. 233, Rawls tacitly divides the Idealist tradition, which he ordinarily only associates with Bradley (in the sense familiar to us), into a social contract variant.))
Be that as it may, in the accompanying footnote to the passage from p. 49, Rawls claims that "The phrase “the artificial identification of interests” is from Elie Halévy’s account of Bentham." Rawls cites pp. 20-24 from volume 1 of the French edition. In the English translation this is pp. 15-18 (which basically runs from Mandeville to Helvetius). The key passage is worth quoting:
But there is yet another argument which can be used: while still admitting that individuals are chiefly or even exclusively egoistic, it is yet possible to deny that their egoisms will ever harmonise either immediately or even ultimately. It is therefore argued that in the interest of individuals the interest of the individual must be identified with the general interest, and that it is the business of the legislator to bring about this identification. This may be called the principle of the artificial identification of interests. Hume approved the maxim of political writers according to which every man should, on principle, be held a knave, and, once this principle had been laid down, concluded that the art of politics consists in governing individuals through their own interests, in creating artifices of such a kind that in spite of their avarice and their ambition they shall co-operate for the public good. If politics are not carried on in this way, it is vain to boast of possess-ing the advantages of a good constitution ; for it will in the end be found that a man’s sole guarantee of his liberty and property consists in the good-will of his rulers, which amounts to saying that he has no guarantee at all. — Now this is the form in which Bentham first adopted the principle of utility. It is true that he occasionally applied, by accident, the principle of the fusion of interests. It is true that in political economy he adopted, with the ideas of Adam Smith, the principle of the natural identity of interests. But the primitive and original form in which in his doctrine the principle of utility is invested is the principle of the artificial identification interests. Bentham appealed to the legislator to solve…the great problem of morals, to identify the interests of the individual with the interests of the community. -Élie Halévy (1901) The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, pp. 17-18.
(For the roles of knaves in public choice see this lovely paper by Kliemt; and my response.) Notice, first, that Halévy does not claim here explicitly, as Rawls does, that the invisible hand solves the meta-coordination problem that Bentham ascribes as a task legislator. Rawls' position or gloss is explicable, of course, that if (in Bentham) a legislator is needed to identify and coordinate artificial identification (of true/authentic, well-considered) interests, then no such legislator would be needed if such identification is natural (and, hence, can be left to the market mechanism or the invisible hand, or as Halevy, phrases it sometimes in his treatment of Smith, "the spontaneous harmony of egoisms." (p. 89)) Halévy explicitly suggests that Smith invisible hand links egoism to general interest of society or civilization on p. 90, where no "wisdom of a legislator" is said to be required. So, Rawls' echoes Halévy's nicely which suggests he read more of the book than just the pages cited in TJ.
Shortly after the passage Rawls explicitly cites (and before p. 89), Halévy points out that for Bentham, "Either the man whose actions I intend to direct is myself, in which case morals is the art of governing myself or private morals: or else the men whose actions I intend to direct are men other than myself. In this case, if they are not adults, the art of governing them is called education, which is either private or public: if they are adults, the art of directing their actions so as to produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number appertains to legislation, if the acts of the government are of a permanent kind, or to administration, if they are of a temporary kind dictated by circumstances." (p. 27)
So, for Bentham (go check out Bowring, vol. i, pp. 142-143, partially cited by Halévy), the (outer directed) "art of government" directs the actions of "other human beings" and is divided in legislation and administration. The terminology of 'legislation' as the permanent kind is a bit misleading to modern ears, which often associate it not with the constitutional rules or basic structure, but with particular laws. (Bentham's terminology here follows Smith's something Halévy emphasizes throughout.)
In Rawlsian terms the Benthamite art of government just is the setting up of constitutive rules (that is legislation) such that "men are led by their predominant interests to act in ways which further socially desirable ends." If these rules work properly, then "the conduct of individuals guided by their rational plan" produces what in context Rawls calls "social justice." (We later learn quite a bit is packed into the idea of a rational plan for Rawls.) Somewhat surprisingly, then, the design of the basic institutions behind the veil of ignorance in the original position in which we imagine we pursue a rational plan (without knowing our station) just is what Bentham would call the 'art of government.' (A phrase Rawls never uses I think. But I return to Rawlsian art of government some other time.)
I should stop here. But I want to begin to argue that Halévy is non trivial to Foucault's overall argument in Birth of Biopolitics. In Foucault's account the art of government in the history of liberalism (in The Birth of Biopolitics), Hume is the crucial originary figure (against the confusions of Blackstone) that helps set up a separation between the juridical rights based approach and the one focused one interests (see 28 March 1979, pp. 273-274; recall this post). Chronologically, Foucault's argument is a bit dubious (Hume's crucial material seems to be published ahead of Blackstone.) But conceptually, Foucault is clear and he is clearly echoing Halévy's narrative (see, especially, p. 133 in the English translation; but it's anticipated between pp. 12-25!) And, in fact, Foucault's subsequent claim that the subject of interest and the subject of right cannot be superimposed on each other (p. 276) is a nice summary and crystallization of Halévy in memorable language!+
And, then, after developing the point through Mandeville and Condorcet, Foucault turns to Smith's invisible hand and claims "that kind of bizarre mechanism which makes homo oeconomicus function as an individual subject of interest within a totality which eludes him and which nevertheless founds the rationality of his egoistic choices." (p. 278) Now, as a straight reading of the invisible hand passage of Wealth of Nations this is very implausible. But if we return to the very same passage from Halévy that Rawls cites and uses to frame the nature of constitutive rules above quoted above, Foucault's claim is, in fact, a lovely interpretation of Halévy's account of Smith!
TBC+
Posted at 05:31 PM in Foucault, Frank Knight, history of philosophy, political philosophy, politics, Rawls | Permalink | Comments (0)
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