Murray N. Rothbard vs. the Philosophers - Ludwig von Mises Institute

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REVIEWS AND COMMENTS BY MURRAY N. ROTHBARD 67 Burke who led both the bloody and murderous war against the French abroad and the tyrannical, liberty-destroying suppressions at home—while it was Price and his Radical friends who defended both domestic liberty and foreign isolationism. Philosophically, Hayek, much as he denies it, is a conservative, in the sense that he believes we must blindly follow traditions even if we can’t defend them. He differs from Kirk, et al., largely in a bad way, i.e., by adopting the opposite fallacy that the case for liberty rests on the fact that we know nothing, or very little, and must therefore keep the roads open so that we can learn something. In short, Hayek explicitly rests his case on man’s ignorance, differing from Kirk who believes that at least tradition gives us some knowledge. This is the J.S. Mill, H.B. Phillips, Gerald Heard argument. 18 Of course, such a puny argument means that, as civilization advances, and we get to know more and more, the case for liberty becomes weaker and weaker. To evade this conclusion, Hayek employs two contradictory stratagems: (1) using the absurd and self-contradictory bromide that “the more we know, the more we know how little we know,” and (2) saying even if we do know more, we still know less than we don’t know, i.e., we still know less than 50 percent of what there is to be known. How he knows this is, of course, in the lap of the gods. Both the Kirkian worship of the past and the Mill-Phillips emphasis on man’s ignorance have one thing in common: their attack on man’s reason. But how else could Hayek combine two contradictory fallacies? In an interesting way: through his knowledge of the free market. For to Hayek, the market is an example of a social institution that works better than any individual knows and is needed because of each 18 Gerald Heard (1889–1971). A historian and philosopher, Heard studied at Cambridge and briefly taught at Oxford before moving in 1937 to the United States. He briefly taught at Duke University before founding Trabuco College in 1941. He was well known for his evolutionary theory of human consciousness. See his works The Ascent of Humanity (1929), The Source of Civilization (1935), and The Five Ages of Man (1963).
MURRAY N. ROTHBARD VS. THE PHILOSPHERS: UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS 68 ON HAYEK, MISES, STRAUSS, AND POLYANI person’s ignorance. But while subtle, this too is a fallacious argument. For there is nothing really mysterious about the market: the fact that Hayek can explain its workings shows that reason can comprehend it; and since every single transaction benefits both parties and rewards rationality, it is not surprising that the sum of all market transactions is a beautiful and rational instrument. In short, if irrational entrepreneurs lose money and rational ones make profits, it is not surprising that a profit-run economy will be rational. To deprecate human reason by saying that none of us is or can be omniscient is absurd, for it takes an impossible standard as the judge of a possible and real condition. All of our knowledge we get from the exercise of our reason; to say that no man can be God and know everything is to take an irrational standard of evaluation. There are countless other examples of tortuous fallacies—for example, Hayek’s denial that a free market allocates income in accordance with merit. Here he tries to make a vague and absurd distinction between “merit” and “value,” and, of course, his denial plays into the hands of the egalitarians. For Hayek attacks the very idea that justice can be known by man or that it could be applied, and says, see, since we can’t be just and reward according to merit, you’d better accept the free market. Will a man thirsting for justice accept this dictum—or that of the socialists, who promise him justice and reason? In fact, Hayek, almost incredibly, seems to identify merit with pain; if somebody enjoys achieving something, he is not meritorious, but if he suffered while doing so, then he is meritorious. To take pain as one’s standard of the good is hair-raising indeed. On democracy, Hayek is again confused; he begins by separating liberalism neatly from democracy and finally ends by confusing them, talking of democracy as also a good, etc. Finally, even on his revered rule of law, equality under general rules, which Hayek establishes to the exclusion of more important contentual doctrines of liberty, Hayek backtracks so much as even to eradicate that. First, he upholds
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© 2009 by the Ludwig von Mises Ins
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ROTHBARD’S UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS I
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LAW AND NATURE IN THE WORK OF MURRA
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CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE AND WORKS OF
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REFERENCES 1 Buckley, William F. Go
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REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 151 BIB
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REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 153 Dav
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REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 155 giv
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“Absolutes, Relativism, and the S
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INDEX 161 environment, 123-24 Essay
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INDEX 163 Jesuits, 24 judges, 69 ju
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INDEX 165 Oriental Despotism (Wittf
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INDEX 167 Socrates, 26n42 solidarit
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Murray N. Rothbard vs. the Philosophers - Ludwig von Mises Institute

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