PRINCIPLES FOR A FREE SOCIETY SPONTANEOUS ORDER

Principles for a Free Society By Nigel Ashford
Spontaneous order
“Many human institutions are the result of human action, but not of
human design.”
Adam Ferguson
What is spontaneous order?
Order has been a central pre-occupation of political thinkers and
philosophers throughout the ages. It is widely understood today as a
state of harmony between people or social peace. In the pre-modern era,
however, the concept was understood as the maintenance of a stable,
hierarchical order that was pre-ordained by God or nature or both.
Order can also be seen as the existence of regularity and predictability
in human affairs, the absence of chaos. Although no longer associated
with a rigid society ranked by privilege and power, the idea of order is
still highly valued. This is because it allows people with different interests and values to live together in society without resorting to discord,
conflict or civil war. This is the modern idea of spontaneous order.
The first thinker to articulate this modern concept of spontaneous order
was Bernard de Mandeville, in a book called The Fable of the Bees. This
work discussed the paradox that “private vices” such as individual selfinterest could lead to “public benefits” from which the whole community benefited. He observed that the sum of individuals acting from separate motives produced a commercial society that was no part of any one
person’s intention. This idea that the evolution of human institutions
allowed individuals to serve others, even though their motive may be
self-interest, was at the core of the Scottish Enlightenment that grew up
around Adam Smith, David Hume and Adam Ferguson. They sought to
apply this idea to a whole range of human institutions, including commerce but also law, language, human morality, and even mores and customs. Far from a narrow theory of economics, Smith argued in A Theory
of Moral Sentiments that morals evolved with those which enabled
humanity to flourish and prosper slowly accepted by the community
and standing the test of time.
- 82 -These men were fascinated at how these values and institutions grew up
to greatly benefit mankind despite being the idea of no single mind.
Adam Ferguson’s observation that human action produced a superior
form of order in society to that conceived by human design was to echo
in the thoughts of an Austrian thinker, Friedrich Hayek, two centuries
later. Hayek took on the ancient idea that institutions were divided
between those which are ‘natural’ and those which are ‘artificial.’ A third
group of things existed, Hayek said, and these were social institutions.
As these are regular and orderly, people suppose that they have been
invented by humanity and can therefore be altered or restructured at
will. Hayek pointed out that this notion was mistaken because the
human mind and society had evolved together. Tearing down the institutions that kept society together and building anew, as socialists advocated, would destroy the order that made society work.
Order without commands
Spontaneous order keeps the wheels of society turning without the need
to issue commands from the centre. A free society is orderly not because
people are told what to do but because the evolving traditions and
inherited institutions of human society allow individuals to pursue their
own ends and, by so doing, meet the needs of others. People’s behaviour
follows certain patterns because they have been accepted by society initially as they allowed the groups which adopted them to prosper. It is no
accident, says Hayek, that the sharpest differences in material welfare
can be seen in the Third World where the city meets the countryside
and complex, rule-guided societies meet intimate communities where the
rules appropriate to the smooth-running of that society are very different.
The rules that allow a complex social order like a city or the global
economy to function are not orders in the sense that term is usually
understood. Rules which prevent individuals injuring others or engaging
in theft or fraud or breaking promises in fact give people a great deal of
latitude in their behaviour. They tell people how to do things, but they
do not tell them what they should do.
- 83 -The evolution of morality
The moral framework for human society is not set in stone, but rather it
is constantly changing as new rules are discovered that allow the social
order to function better. The problem is that we do not know in
advance which rules will work and which will not. Our existing laws and
customs show us what has worked to get us to the development of society that we have now, but innovation and trial and error are required if
we are continue to discover new rules that will allow society to work of
which we were previously ignorant. Social institutions that keep society
orderly- institutions, customs, traditions and values- are like tools. They
contain the knowledge of generations before us about how to act and
behave, and will be modified by the rising generation and then passed
on to the next. Groups that adopt these rules benefit from having done
so, without necessarily knowing why. The institutions that transmit
information about them are the product of human action, but not necessarily the result of human design.
The transmission of rules
There are three categories of social rules, according to Hayek. The first
which we design ourselves, such as parliamentary legislation. The second, which has been called ‘tacit knowledge,’ rules that we all follow
such as a sense of fair play or injustice that we all understand but cannot
put into words. Finally, there is a third group of rules of beneficial
behaviours which we can observe and write down, but our attempts at
codification only approximate the principle which we have observed.
The Anglo-Saxon system of common law is an example of this third
type of rule, as it has evolved with different cases and judgments adding
to the body of law over centuries which has been gradually refined and is
open to modification in the future. We learn from these rules and contribute to them even though we often cannot fully explain them. And it
is the second and third categories which have the power to create a complex order that utilises more knowledge than can ever be known by a
single human mind.
- 84 -Why we need freedom
Complex social orders require freedom to work because the information
and knowledge which makes them work can never be amassed by a central authority. Attempting to use the first category of rules - legislation -
to change the second and third categories of spontaneous order will fail
because it is the sum total of human knowledge that has allowed people
in society to live with one another and brought us to the levels of prosperity and population that we now enjoy. This was seen in the old
socialist states of the Soviet Empire in which government attacked and
undermined traditional morality and justice and fair play whilst relying
on the economies of the West to keep living standards falling below subsistence levels. Freedom is critical to the process of achieving spontaneous order in society because we do not know in advance which rules
will work, because liberty is essential to the trial-and-error process of
finding out what works, and because the creative powers of man can
only be expressed in a society in which power and knowledge are widely
dispersed. To impose a pre-designed pattern on society would make society cease to function as a creative force. Progress cannot be commanded.
The dispersion of power
Essential to the progress of an orderly society is the distribution of
power amongst its citizens, as opposed to the concentration of power in
the hands of the state. This allows society to experiment in the rules and
mores that govern its behaviour. Whilst this process of trial and error
limits the impact of mistakes to a small segment of society, it also allows
for rules which work to be observed and imitated, and, if successful,
absorbed into the social framework of a free society. Risk-taking and
rule-breaking are virtually impossible in small intimate rural societies
and yet they are essential to maintaining the numbers who live in the
vast impersonal societies of modern life. These valuable activities cannot
take place unless power is disperse amongst the population rather than
concentrated in the hands of a centralised government.
- 85 -As if by an invisible hand...
In a free society, people’s lives are subject to a minimum of coercion by
the state, but it is not anarchic. In fact, life in a free society can be hard
because it forces individuals to adjust to the needs of others. The free
society works because it co-ordinates these conflicting desires by creating
incentives for people to satisfy their own wants by satisfying those of
others. This is the opposite of an anarchic state in which one can only
achieve one’s aims at the expense of others. We are moved to serve the
needs of others, whilst pursuing our own self-interest, as Adam Smith
suggested, as if by an invisible hand.
This complex order which harmonises and synchronising the conflicting
desires of people who are very different from one another can be confusing at first, but it is essential to look beyond that initial confusion if we
are to see how a free society works. When Alexis de Tocqueville first disembarked in New York in 1831, he heard what he described as “a confused hum.” That great chronicler of American society wrote, “No sooner
do you set foot upon American ground than you are stunned by a kind
of tumult; a confused clamour is heard on every side, and a thousand
simultaneous voices demand the satisfaction of their social wants.”
Simply trying to work out how society works by watching it and listening
to it tells us little. It would be like trying to understand how a clock
works by telling the time. It is how people must interact with each other
that allows the clockwork of society to keep ticking.
Freedom promotes harmony
The hum of commerce eases the path of social co-operation in a free
society in part because it offers man opportunities by serving others
which are simply not available by acting alone or in a state of war of
all against all. These incentives allow us to co-operate with each other
even though our views on political issues or our religious beliefs may
radically differ. When people supply goods and services or buy them
from others, they do not know with whom they deal. Protestant,
Catholic, Jew and Muslim all benefit from the commercial activity of
each other in a free society without altering their fundamental beliefs.
- 86 -Their security and prosperity is dependent on that of each other and in
free societies far surpasses that of those nations where conflict marks differences of faith. These differences are resolved peaceably and profitably
in a free society, because the benefits of these values have been passed
down thorough society and become part of the moral framework. The
absence of this mechanism for transmitting moral values in non-free
societies is one of the reasons why religious strife and social discord mark
societies that have never known freedom.
Freedom creates order
One key institution that makes the co-ordination of a free society
possible is the law. In a free society, law is not the same as the arbitrary
government of totalitarian and autocratic societies nor is it the same as
the legislation of Western parliaments. It is, as we have seen, a code
which has evolved not at the hands of politicians but in the decisions of
judges. Tocqueville in Democracy in America described how laws keep
order in a free society. He observed that “the spirit of the law which is
produced in the schools and courts of justice, gradually penetrates
beyond their walls into the bosom of society, where it descends to the
lowest classes, so that at last the whole people contract the habits and
tastes of the judicial magistrate.” The law is respected in a free society
not by the use of force, (although governments do reserve the right to
use force to protect freedom), but because it is based on rules which
have grown up and been tested in real life, and the values, or the spirit
of the law, are closely connected to the moral values of the civilisation.
Over-government undermines that respect by imposing controls on society which do not conform to people’s inherited sense of right and
wrong. Freedom creates order in society. The institutions of a free society give people an interest in keeping the peace, better than any police
state or concentration camp.
- 87 -Reading
Norman Barry, The Invisible Hand in Economics and Politics, London,
Institute of Economic Affairs, 1988.
Friedrich Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, London, Routledge,
1982.
Friedrich Hayek, New Studies in Politics, Philosophy and Economics,
London, Routledge, 1978, chapter 6.
Adam Smith, A Theory of Moral Sentiments, Indianapolis, Liberty
Press, 1976 (1759).
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, New York, Fontana,
1968 (1840).
Questions for thought
1. Why is order necessary?
2. Does moral behaviour require laws?
3. Can order exist when humans pursue their self-interest