Social Cooperation, Part 2
Foundation of liberalism.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Ludwig von Mises’s emphasis on social cooperation as the basis of his economic philosophy, particularly in his magnum opus, Human Action. I thought I’d follow up with more thoughts on this subject.
Mises was no maverick in this regard. Interest in social cooperation pervades the best classical-liberal and libertarian thought. Paradoxical as it sounds, it is at the heart of the philosophy of individualism. If opponents of the freedom philosophy base their criticism on an atomistic model of the individual, it’s largely because too many libertarians overlook their heritage and emphasize that side of the coin to the neglect of the social side.
Leading thinkers in the liberal tradition have sought a synthesis of individual and society. In Social Statics (1850), Herbert Spencer discussed the “tendency to individuation,” which is most pronounced in the human race.
[The person] is self-conscious; that is, he recognizes his own individuality. … [W]hat we call the moral law – the law of equal freedom – is the law under which individuation becomes perfect, and that ability to act up to this law is the final endowment of humanity…. The increasing assertion of personal rights is an increasing demand that the external conditions needful to a complete unfolding of the individuality shall be respected. Not only is there now a consciousness of individuality and an intelligence whereby individuality may be preserved, but there is a perception that the sphere of action requisite for due development of the individuality may be claimed, and a correlative desire to claim it. And when the change at present going on is complete – when each possesses an active instinct of freedom, together with an active sympathy – then will all the still existing limitations to individuality, be they governmental restraints or be they the aggressions of men on one another, cease. Then none will be hindered from duly unfolding their natures.
But in the next section Spencer wrote:
Yet must this higher individuation be joined with the greatest mutual dependence. Paradoxical though the assertion looks, the progress is at once toward complete separateness and complete union. But the separateness is of a kind consistent with the most complex combinations for fulfilling social wants; and the union is of a kind that does not hinder entire development of each personality. Civilization is evolving a state of things and a kind of character in which two apparently conflicting requirements are reconciled.
Thus Spencer foresaw “at once perfect individuation and perfect mutual dependence.”
Just that kind of individuality will be acquired which finds in the most highly organized community the fittest sphere for its manifestation, which finds in each social arrangement a condition answering to some faculty in itself, which could not, in fact, expand at all if otherwise circumstanced. The ultimate man will be one whose private requirements coincide with public ones. He will be that manner of man who, in spontaneously fulfilling his own nature, incidentally performs the functions of a social unit, and yet is only enabled so to fulfill his own nature by all others doing the like.
For Spencer, to violate the law of equal freedom – “that vital law of the social organism” – is to assault society itself. It sounds as though Spencer is saying that we need society not only for economic exchange and security but something more — because our very nature requires it.
Aristotle
Despite some differences, this reminds me of Aristotle. (Fred D. Miller Jr. finds classical-liberal themes in Aristotle.) In the Politics, Aristotle states that a polis is not merely a collection of individuals seeking gains from trade and safety. It “is a community of families and aggregations of families in well-being, for the sake of a perfect and self-sufficing life…. The end of the state [polis] is the good life….”
Aristotle famously identified the human being as a social/political animal, a concept inseparable from the capacity to reason, use language, and discourse. In Aristotle’s view, a human being can live like a human being only in society. We need other people to be fully human because we can’t know what we need to know or do what we need to do except through interaction in a community. “For each individual among the many has a share of virtue and prudence,” Aristotle writes.
Likewise in the Nicomachean Ethics he writes, “For the final and perfect good seems to be self-sufficient. However, we define something as self-sufficient not by reference to the ‘self’ alone. We do not mean a man who lives his life in isolation, but a man who also lives with parents, children, a wife, and friends and fellow citizens generally, since man is by nature a social and political animal.”
Endoxa
Auburn University philosopher Roderick T. Long (to whom I am indebted for his discussion of Aristotle in Reason and Value: Aristotle versus Ayn Rand) emphasizes Aristotle’s view that we can’t know very much without help from society. Discussing Aristotle’s theory of knowledge and belief, Long notes that for the Greek philosopher endoxa, or “reputable beliefs,” are critical to the individual. No one builds up her knowledge from scratch on a bedrock foundation. We are born into a particular context and are taught many things. It would be impossible to start over, and fortunately there is no need to. We can begin with the beliefs we have and move forward making adjustments as we find inconsistencies and learn new information. This is necessarily a social process. Long writes: “But Aristotle thinks I will have good reasons for including the endoxa of others – the collective wisdom of mankind, as it were – among my endoxa or phainomena. The pursuit of knowledge is a cooperative endeavor, and will be more successful if everyone is allowed to make a contribution.”
Aristotle says, “For each man has something personal to contribute toward the truth….” For him, society is not just a bridge to the good life, it is constitutive of the good life.
I could also invoke Ludwig Wittgenstein (no classical liberal), who drew attention to the intrinsically public nature of language (and hence thought) itself. Wittgenstein, like F. A. Hayek, underscored the communality of rules. “The word ‘agreement’ and the word ‘rule,’” Wittgenstein wrote, “are related to one another, they are cousins [like Wittgenstein and Hayek]. If I teach anyone the use of the one word, he learns the use of the other with it.”
Only individuals value, choose, and act, of course, but in an important sense the resulting social whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts. Thus the defense of personal liberty is the defense of society. Let’s hear our opponents criticize that.
Comment by D. Frank Robinson on 26 August 2011:
I think this is unfortunate construction: ‘No one builds up her knowledge from scratch on a bedrock foundation. We are born into a particular context and are taught many things. It would be impossible to start over,…’
But if it is impossible to start over, then it was impossible to get started, unless one assumes a never-to-be-repeated divine or some other intervention to ‘prime our cultural pump’.
Other than this point, I think your point is well reasoned.
Comment by Sheldon Richman on 26 August 2011:
Thanks, but I don’t think that follows. One cannot put oneself back to his or her pre-knowledge position and start assembling the building blocks of knowledge, free of beliefs remote from the foundation. No original divine intervention need be posited. One is born and is soon taught a range of beliefs by parents, etc. (The world predated you; the earth is a sphere, etc.) Where is the problem?
Comment by Ed Holden on 26 August 2011:
It seems to me that today’s endoxa includes faith (or the foundational belief) that the state is capable of and beholden to provide for the citizenry certain general and/or specific goods and services. Perhaps that is why it is so difficult to change the current course of society without experiencing some broad based painful consequences resulting from actions based on a faulty belief system. There have been a lot of “reputable beliefs” throughout history that led to wars, economic failures and other uncomfortable results. I think that eventually (eventually could be a very, very long time) whatever “reputable belief” is the most accurate basis for human interaction will prevail. I believe this is the case because I have faith that faulty belief systems inevitably lead to actions that will lead to failure.
Comment by Sheldon Richman on 26 August 2011:
Ed, using the Socratic method, we can show people that their belief in the State conflicts with their equally strong belief that we should not kill, hit, or steal from one another. That is our opening to persuasion.
Comment by Martin Buerger on 26 August 2011:
In the world of technology, products being produced today rely in some measure on products and technology that did not exist 10 years ago. And that earlier technology in turn was dependent upon technology that did not exist 10 years prior to that time, and so on. In freer societies, that exchange and building on the work of others can happen with great rapidity. In managed societies, that transferal can be slowed or even interrupted.
It is inconceivable to consider an individual starting from zero without prior knowledge and experience guiding them. Those of us blessed with the richest human capital in terms of education, social connections, and means are the most dependent on what others have produced. Every free individual today is a beneficiary of what others (society?) have learned before and are doing now, thank goodness.
Pingback by Part of an Original Crowd on 26 August 2011:
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Comment by Shawn P. Wilbur on 26 August 2011:
“Only individuals value, choose, and act, of course, but in an important sense the resulting social whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts. Thus the defense of personal liberty is the defense of society.”
Good stuff, Sheldon, but I’m afraid that this may only confirm things in the minds of at least some of your opponents. After all of the testimony to the importance of social cooperation, your “Thus…” seems to retreat more than a bit, and relegate that to something that will emerge from personal liberty, whether or not individuals value, choose and act in ways that specifically take social cooperation seriously. Given the neglect you cite of “the social side,” might there not be a plausible reading of things that complains, “For Pete’s sake, now those Austrians have reduced even social cooperation to an emergent function of free markets, the product of the right sort of atomism”?
Comment by Sheldon Richman on 27 August 2011:
Thank you, Shawn. You’ve read more into “thus” than I put there. I was implying an identity, not a retreat. I hope the article’s discussion of Aristotle conveys that social cooperation is something to be relished and embraced as constitutive of the good life, rather than a mere emergent byproduct of atomism or an instrumental means to anything. This is something I will have to explore further. I’m open to suggestions.
Comment by Roderick T. Long on 27 August 2011:
Charles Johnson has pointed out that libertarians tend to conflate spontaneous order in the sense of uncoerced and/or bottom-up order with spontaneous order in the sense of unplanned order, and that our preference for the former needn’t require a preference for the latter; hence his (and my) defense of the (non-governmental) “political.”
But that’s certainly not a way of saying that we should have a preference *against* the latter. Intended good consequences and unintended good consequences are both good.
Comment by Tim on 27 August 2011:
It is ironic that critics of the free market accuse it of promoting an atomistic vision. Looking at the rioters in Greece and London, most of whom are recipients of socialistic welfare programs, it is clear which system promotes an atomistic vision.
Comment by Sheldon Richman on 28 August 2011:
Question for Shawn: Why should anyone regard the social cooperation that emerges from the search for the good life as inferior to the social cooperation deliberately aimed at for some other motive?
Comment by Shawn P. Wilbur on 28 August 2011:
Isn’t “the search of the good life” one of those phrases that can quite simply mean just about anything? My concern in reading the transition around the “thus” (and this at least seems to be part of Charles’ concern) is that one can value “social cooperation” and still insist that it is a mistake to attempt to address the social, except as an emergent result of narrowly self-interested individual interactions. Perhaps the question would be clearer if I knew what other motive you thought might be in play for those who take social cooperation seriously in a more direct manner. If, for instance, the fact that “the resulting social whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts” suggests to me that perhaps the contention that “only individuals value, choose, and act” leaves something unthought, I’m pretty sure that our practical divergences going forward are not going to be differences of motive. Those who explicitly value “association” and “solidarity” may have a different notion of what constitutes “the good life,” and a different analysis that gets them there, but I’m curious if some other motive springs to mind as a difference?
Comment by Sheldon Richman on 28 August 2011:
I didn’t have any particular other motive in mind, Shawn. I would not insist “that it is a mistake to attempt to address the social, except as an emergent result of narrowly self-interested individual interactions.” I hoped that the Spencer and Aristotle quotes made it clear that I was not talking about “narrow self-interest,” but rather a richer, fuller self-interest in the Greek flourishing sense, where communality is constitutive of flourishing. I meant “thus” as a synonym for “consequently.”
Comment by Gene Callahan on 30 August 2011:
@D. Frank Robinson: “But if it is impossible to start over, then it was impossible to get started, unless one assumes a never-to-be-repeated divine or some other intervention to ‘prime our cultural pump’.”
Well, you could “start over” as a bacterium and re-evolve, but short of that, Sheldon is right.
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