Orlando Jos Penicela Jr.

THE TRINITY OF HAYEKIANISM

HAYEK THE WHISTLEBLOWER + HAYEK THE SKEPTIC + HAYEK THE LIBERAL

"If we are to understand how society works, we must attempt to define the general nature and range

of our ignorance concerning it. ... The misleading effect of the usual approach stands out clearly if
we examine the significance of the assertion that man has created his civilization and that he
therefore can also change its institutions as he pleases. ... In a sense it is true, of course, that man
has made his civilization. It is the product of his actions or, rather, of the action of a few hundred
generations. This does not mean, however, that civilization is the product of human design, or
even that man knows what its functioning or continued existence depends upon. ...If we are to
advance, we must leave room for a continuous revision of our present conceptions and ideals
which will be necessitated by further experience. We are as little able to conceive what civilizations
will be, or can be, five hundred or even fifty years hence as our medieval forefathers or even our
grandparents were able to foresee our manner of life today."
(F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty [The Definitive Edition edited by Ronald Hamowy],
Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 2011, p. 74).

Why is recognition of human ignorance an important starting point for Hayek?

To what degree is human liberty important for the progress of civilization?
Can the pretence of knowledge, independent of experience, mislead decision-making?

Written for the Mont Pelerin Society Essay Contest 2014

MAPUTO, MOZAMBIQUE
MAY 2014

I. INTRODUCTION
If they were intended to be challenging, the three questions the competition poses couldnt have been better
conceived. Interestingly, whoever dares challenge them, finds himself overwhelmingly absorbed in the variety and
extensiveness of the Hayekian thought to the point that one can hardly remain the same after coming-out of those
enlightened depths. In my personal experience, as I went through the three questions, three Hayeks seemed to
emerge clearly from each one of them, exposing me to a defined and consistent approach to the questionings that
kept arising in my reflexions. For these three Hayekian lines of thought, I couldnt find a name that could better suit
his self-pronounced agnosticism. Its then my feeling [if the term happens to evoke some sort of religious connotations]
that I should probably have to apologize for naming it a HAYEKIAN TRINITY.
On the question on whether knowledge independent of experience can mislead decision-making (which is the first
one I deal with, for duly explained reasons), one encounters the first Hayek a mind unsettled with the dangers of
the constructivistic rationalist Paradigm of Science, who then blows the whistle heralding a post-modern paradigm
of knowledge with better prospects both for theoretical social sciences and practical decision-making.
On why is recognition of human ignorance an important starting point for Hayek, one is faced with a skeptic that
wouldnt entrust neither his life nor the fate of society to policy prescriptivism of supposed experts who claim to have
the [totality of] knowledge to get things right.
On to what degree is human liberty important for the progress of civilization one is brought face to face with a selfpronounced liberal that is willingly to tolerate and concede his own values and principles for the sake of progress. I
admit that it might seem odd and almost irrelevant to say Hayek the Liberal, for how he has come to be acquainted
to all of us. However, it seems relevant to me to stress and remind the reader of the vastness of his liberalism, which
in fact ranges far beyond polity, stretching into the tritest aspects of a social coexistence, defining and distinguishing
along the way, the course of the nations and societies.
These three Hayeks comprise a Trinity because they are in fact a single entity or, to put it differently, the three are
fully mutually-reinforcing to form the single consistent thought that has come to be termed Hayekianism.

II. CAN THE PRETENCE OF KNOWLEDGE, INDEPENDENT OF EXPERIENCE, MISLEAD DECISION-MAKING?

The Mirage of Models, Hayek the Whistleblower and the Postmodern Breakaway1
.... we see an alliance on behalf of truth of the commonsense member of the public with the genuine economist,
uniting against the sophistries of the [] pseudo-intellectual and pseudo-economist.
Murray Rothbard2
scientific inquiry is contiguous with everyday empirical inquiry.
Susan Haack3
When asked in a 1978 interview about his early interests, Hayek answered that science methodology was from the
beginning central to his readings4 which might partially explain his impetus in the field. Though he might be hardly
seen today as having been a particularly prolific epistemologist, hardly ever before him, had the theoretical insights
around the idea of knowledge been taken as far beyond the camp of epistemology, deriving so profound implications
into the ontological reality of the economic, political and social order of our society. In fact, he asserted that the
problem of society which economists ever since Adam Smith permanently strive to uncover, is fundamentally a
problem of knowledge [or rather its utilization] (Hayek, 1945).
When it came about, Karl Poppers magnum opus The Logic of Scientific Discovery in 1934, seems to have been
pretty reassuring to Hayeks understanding that our often unconscious views on the theory of knowledge and its
central problems ('What can we know?', 'How certain is our knowledge?,...') are decisive for our attitude towards such
diverse spheres of human experience far beyond the ranges of epistemology and science itself, as ourselves and
politics 5 . Put in other words, ones epistemological views are critically decisive of his/her attitude towards the
ontological reality he/she confronts with.
Hence, it is my wish to start from this question because our prior understanding of the epistemology of science
behind Hayeks system of ideas is of key importance if we are to endeavour a successful attempt of interpreting not
only his own vast corpus of work but also that of other fellow neo-liberal thinkers.

As from the beginning, it should be made clear that neither this brief text nor the post-modernist epistemology as a whole, build a case

against [the validity of] scientific models as such, but rather a call for moderation and responsibility in how they are applied.
2

Rothbard, Murray. The present State of Austrian Economics. Working Paper from the Ludwig von Mises Institute. November 1992. Available

at http://library.freecapitalists.org/books/Murray%20N%20Rothbard/The%20Present%20State%20of%20Austrian%20Economics.pdf
3

Haack, Susan. Defending Science Within Reason: Between Scientism and Cynicism. A critical assessment by a logician and philosopher of
science. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003
4

http://hayekcenter.org/?p=628

Popper, Karl. Unended Quest, p. 115 et Popper, Karl. Conjectures and Refutations. Introduction

The question of whether knowledge independent of experience can mislead decision-making, put as it is, might be
misleading, since it seems to suggest the existence or relevance of only one type of knowledge, a suggestion which
is in itself a scientistic myth. If one is to make any substantial breakthrough, a refinement of the question is
demanded and can be achieved by the restatement of a dichotomy in the kinds of knowledge which Hayek6 himself
acknowledges and describes: Common-sense Knowledge and Scientific Knowledge. Though it might correspond to
an advanced stage of human civilization, the latter ought not to be seen as the sum of all previously existing forms of
rather trivial and un-organized knowledge, yet of no less importance. Common-sense Knowledge is more likely to be
at the disposal of particular individuals whilst scientific knowledge is with greater confidence found in the possession
of an authority made up of suitably chosen experts among the scientific community7.
Common-sense knowledge defines itself as anarchic (in the Feyeranbendian sense), for comprising a set of
dispersed and sometimes contradictory beliefs, expectations and assumptions that literally translate into the maxim
Things are what people think/believe they are. Fact is that ordinary individuals tend to take decisions and act (in the
praxeological sense, i.e., conscious engagement in actions towards chosen goals) according to those beliefs which
often take the form of socially-contextualized law-like generalizations that could be seen as heretical by the gatekeeping parameters of normal social sciences. Nevertheless, it is immediately important here to stress, as Hayek
did, that this knowledge constitutes oftentimes an advantage of one individual over others, being therefore, unique
and relevant for the acting subject [as well as to the social scientist].
I would have jumped straight into the core discussion on the Pretence of [scientific] knowledge but I found it relevant
to make this brief mention to common-sense knowledge because the two are commonly taken as opposed to each
other and one would perhaps be led to erroneously think that latter is the pretentious [corrupt] version of the former.
Now, the question we are primarily dealing with drives one firstly to the proceedings of acquisition of scientific
knowledge (i.e., the epistemology of science). In this bitterly fought terrain, Hayek seems to sympathize better with
the Mengerian critical and moderate ontological apriorism of Aristotelian traditions rather than the apodictic or
absolutist apriorism of his mentors Ludwig von Mises praxeology with its Kantian overtones8. Hayekian epistemology
then, becomes a blend of a relativist and fallible [Aristotelian/Ontological] apriorism 9 with a dosage of [Scottish]
Humean empiricism by which he basically maintained that the essence and interconnections of the sensory

6Hayek,

F. The Uses of Knowledge in our Society. The American Economic Review, Vol. 35, No. 4. (Sep., 1945), pp. 519-530.

Ibid.

Shceall, Scott D. Hayek the Apriorist. Center for the History of Political Economy. Arizona State University.
Smith, Barry. Austrian Philosophy and Austrian School of Economics. Institute of Philosophy University of Graz.

Smith, Barry. idem, p.261

experience are given meaning by an a priori [non-] propositional knowledge (in itself based on the experience of the
species/race or of the individual organism)10.
Therefore, what historicist and other scientisms consistently failed to reckon and Hayek emphasized is the fact that
whereas bureaucratic experts can have [partial] control over the scientific knowledge at their disposal, it is not the
organized information they are able to gather that determines most of common everyday individual decisions but
rather the un-organized yet unique "knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place, local conditions,
people..." that practically every man on the spot possesses11.
Without this anarchical and fragmented [empirical common-sense] knowledge or rather information [which they in
fact dont have], bureaucratic experts can do nothing but modelling and pretending theyve got all the knowledge
and in the end, take presupposed decisions bound to fail or rather do more harm than good even if they goodheartedly intended to better organize/engineer society. Around the world, and particularly in the new market
economies of Sub-Saharan Africa where the last kicks of the recently aborted socialist experiments were still felt, the
last decades have been particularly fertile in examples of rationalistic cures that quickly proved inefficient or even
worse than the disease.
But, we can also resort to a more global and glaring example. For instance, take the case of how damaging the
prestigiously awarded rational methods of the so-called Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) designed to compute the
risks of financial portfolios, has been to the global financial system stability leading to the 2007/2008 bust. Whereas
practical know-how and empirical tricks learned by older generations of experienced traders and risk managers was
simply put aside, a young senior financial economist at Lehman Brothers and enthusiastic MPT supporter came out
yelling in an August 2007 morning: Events that models predicted would happen only once in 10,000 years happened
every day for three days12. The remainder of this story is the one we all know because the crisis that followed was
the worst in the past half-century.
Here again, the predictive rationality of the [non-empiricist] models we were taught to trust by what Santos (1992)13
named the dominant [rationality] Paradigm of Science, failed after misleading many investors decisions. It is simply
astonishing that the overwhelming majority of people blame the crisis either to bankers or to liberal government

10

Ibid

11

Hayek, F. The Uses of Knowledge in our Society. The American Economic Review, Vol. 35, No. 4. (Sep., 1945), pp. 519-530.

12Taleb,

N. The pseudo-science Hurting Markets. Financial Times, October 27, 2007. Available at http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/FT-

Nobel.pdf
13

Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. Review. A Discourse on Sciences. In The "New Science" and the Historical Social Sciences. Volume XV. No

1. 1992. Available at http://www.boaventuradesousasantos.pt/media/pdfs/a_discourse_on_the_sciences-Review.PDF

policies or even to both. Few however acknowledge that they [we] are all [to greater or lesser degrees] still trapped
by the tentacles of the powerful Newtonian Paradigm of [infallible] rationality.
In fact, despite such blatantly inconceivable over-confidence in the truisms of the rational models, there seems to
be an implicit legitimization of this status of affairs, because, as Hayek (1960:4) warned, our society shows a naive
readiness to leave the decision to the expert or to accept too uncritically his opinion about a problem of which he
knows intimately only one little aspect14. After all, as Habermas (1978)15 pointed out, positivism and scientism move
in where the discourse of science lacks self-reflection and where the spokespersons of science exempt themselves
from public scrutiny.
It is then not particularly startling to me that since the Age of Reason came about, science itself [or rather its pseudo
variants] has been the source of intoxicating propaganda of flawed noble ideals and utopian utilitarian projects
designed as Hayek himself noted, to justify preconceived opinions16.
Fortunately though, Mankind has always been favoured by the existence of minds bold and clear enough to step-in
against the established orthodoxies of our civilization. When the fast moving tide of disguised Socialist Propaganda
seemed to conquer the hearts of everyone, Hayek himself reminded us of the invaluable values of liberty we stood to
lose for taking them for granted. But, he was also among the first twentieth century minds to not only energetically
blow the whistle against the dangers of totalitarian rationalism in contemporary science but also to propose what
Santos (1992) would appropriately call a leap from Modern Science to Post-modern Knowledge.
Hayeks epistemological stance, as discussed earlier, is notably embedded with a dosage of empiricism, in what
seems to be a restatement of the Aristotelian reverence for immediate experiences. In fact, though not ignoring its
inherent limitations, by recognizing the reliable practical and pragmatic knowledge drawn from the experiences of
either individual life trajectories or given social groups, the postmodern knowledge tries to rehabilitate the so-called
common sense in the hope of enriching our relationship with the world [as well as our understanding of it] (Santos,
1992).
Both the Hayekian decentralized knowledge and postmodernists democratized knowledge, are doubtless a
rapprochement of science to the unique and once discarded empirical knowledge possessed by the [acting] man on
the spot. Susan Hack (2003), perfectly summoned the current mood when she contended that the so-called

14

Hayek, F. The Constitution of Liberty. 1960. p 4.

15

Habermas, Jrgen. "The Idea of the Theory of Knowledge as a Social Theory." In Knowledge and Human Interests. 2nd ed. Translated by

Jeremy J. Shapiro. London: Heinemann Educational. 1978

16

Hayek, F. The Road to Serfdom. Routledge Classics, London and New York. 2006. Chapter IX, p. 161.

scientific method is a scientistic myth and, scientific inquiry is contiguous with everyday empirical inquiry17. This
ever growing movement away from the Cartesian fatal conceit, will drive science back to a little closer from reality,
and consequently to far more earth-grounded decision-making processes. After all, cognoscetis veritatem et veritas
liberabit vos (John, 8:32).18
III. WHY IS RECOGNITION OF HUMAN IGNORANCE AN IMPORTANT STARTING POINT FOR HAYEK?
Hayek the Skeptic and the Case against the Rational Pythias
The power of forecasting, determining or prescripting the right course of action, has always been as appealing as it
still remains today and those who somehow hold that power [or rather successfully pretend to], as powerful. Perhaps
paradigmatic of this is the power and influence once exerted by the Pythia, the priestess of the Temple of Apollo in
Delphi who, on behalf of Apollo himself, the Greek god of Revelations, claimed to literally know it all past, present
and future. For that power, she had all works of the Hellenic civilisation and beyond, queuing-up on her doorsteps:
from kings to military commanders; from lawmakers to philosophers down businessmen and mere heads of family. In
fact, the influence of the Delphic Pythias was such that, perhaps she might even have advised the legendary
Lycurgus in reforming the institutions of the Spartan Society. Take note of this bolding [reforming institutions].
Fast forward into the 21st century, one would fairly claim that the reign of guesses19 of the Delphic Pythias based
on an [alleged] transcendental authority is long dead and gone. In fact, that is the typical kind of triumphant and
progressive mantras of the modern Rationalist Paradigm of knowledge. History and reality however, show that
though rejecting any sort of transcendental divine authority over knowledge, the dominant modern paradigm of
Science didnt apparently find a reason not to have a god of its own. This was made evident when the French
Revolutionaries came out with the passionate claim of Reason as the Goddess of the Revolution20 meaning that all
the knowledge that fuelled the revolution sprang but from Reason. Actually, the Revolutionaries were just expressing
what had in fact been the spirit of the entire Enlightenment - Reason, the Goddess of Science, the Goddess of
knowledge. So, in the end, our modern science (to a great extent heir of the Enlightenment), literally came full circle.
While attempting to demystify knowledge, modern science simply mystified it on a different god, i.e., Reason
instead of the divinities of the Antiquity and the Middle Age. The Delphic Pythias are of course long dead and gone

17

Haack, Susan. Defending Science Within Reason: Between Scientism and Cynicism. A critical assessment by a logician and philosopher
of science. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003
18

You shall know the Truth, and truth shall set you free verse 8:32 of the Gospel of John.

Eurupides suspected that the Oracle was simply guessing well rather than embodying some sort of transcendental inspiration. Plutarch,
The Obsolescence of Oracles, in Moralia Volume V, Frank Babbitt, trs. (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 1934)
19

20

Hayek, F. The Counter-Revolution of Science: studies on the abuse of reason. The Free Press of Glencoe Collier-Macmillan Limited. 1955

but, the reign of guesses is somehow survived by the Rational Pythias or rather a class of Cartesian
constructivistic social scientists, who naively believe in a infallible rationality that is capable of prescripting
the right course of action or consciously reform the institutions that govern our society just like the
priestess of Apollo used to do to her vast clientele in Delphi.
The problem with the Rational Pythias lies in the excessive faith on their god (reason), which doesnt even allow
them to contemplate beyond its limits. Rational Pythias just like most staunch believers of any faith, arent willingly
to acknowledge the limitations of their mighty god because those limitations, are in fact their own limitations in
other words, their ignorance. They arent willingly to face it.
Meanwhile, the recognition of the problem of knowledge or rather the problem of ignorance, was from the
beginning one of the banners of the Austrian School of Economics21. In the Methodenstreit (battle over methods)
that opposed him to Gustav Schmollers German Historical School, Carl Menger himself maintained that there are
limits to 'what we can know' and ipso facto, abstracting the regularities of a side of human life was inevitable in
establishing and analysing economic policy (i.e, social analysis). It is this humbleness that led the Austrians to early
recognize the epistemological validity of such abstract theoretical principles as the ceteris paribus.
The equivoque of the German Historical School which Menger opposed to and Weber perfectly described as
naturalistic monism, was the naive over-optimistic faith in human reasoning typical of the Cartesian constructivistic
rationalism, which leads to not only the belief that their conceptual system could attain knowledge of the totality of
reality and human values (Hayeks synoptic delusion), but also to the predominantly historicist approach
commonplace in post-Kantian Germany philosophy22.
Mengers argument, which was firmly inherited by fellow-Austrians Wieser, Bhm-Bawerk and later decisively carried
on by Mises, translates what F. Hayek would later restate as the need for the acknowledgement of the ranges of our
ignorance as a sine qua non condition for the scientific understanding of the functioning of society (Hayek, 1960:23).
Hayeks restatement of Mengerian-Misesian theoretic, deductive and subjectivist epistemology amidst an academic
environment much dominated by the objective logical positivism of the Wiener Kreis, was not perhaps without the

21

In his static and narrow view of the Austrian School Thought, Rothbard (1992:19-22), discards the Hayekian elaboration of the knowledge

problem in the Socialist Calculation Debate, regarding it as non-Misesian and ipso facto non-Austrian. However, his counter-arguments (i.e.,
the supposedly pure-Misesian elaboration of a calculability problem), lacks plausibility because not only he misinterprets Mises buth he also
strangely seems to see in a hampered-market economy, [unconstrained] entrepreneurs appraising prices and allocating resources [at will].
Hence, Rothbards elaboration of the Misesian formulations for the Socialist Calculation Debate is utterly misconceived and rather than reclarifying the Austrian doctrine as he claims (p.6), he fallaciously confuses it.
22

Weber, Max. Objectivity in Social Sciences and Social Policy. Available at http://jthomasniu.org/class/Stuff/PDF/weber-objectivity.pdf

influence of Poppers establishment of refutability/falsifiability, as a new criterion of scientific demarcation23 in The

Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934).
Hayek and Poppers agreement with respect to the inherent and irremediable fallibilism and limitation of human
reasoning as well as the risks of an inflated confidence on it, was evidenced further when in his 1962 essays The
Open Society and Its Enemies, Popper suggested that a philosophy/school that fails to make its practitioners aware
of their own limitations, and of their Pharisaism, is one of little success24.
But Hayeks insight on the knowledge problem went beyond the mere theoretical ground. By rejecting the synoptic
delusion, i.e., the implicit [and sometimes explicit] belief of the Rational Phytias in a totally attainable knowledge,
Hayek debunked the fundamentals of their cornerstone concept of a Pareto maximizing optimization, a move of
monumental implications because it set the ground for the birth of the Simonian satisficier, a realistic behavioral
model of a [human] decision-maker25, which, instead of the former [maximization model], does not ground itself in the
empty promise of total welfare in a desperate attempt to make it into public policy.
As a consequence of what he sees as an irremediably limited human rationality, Hayek abhors the idea of social
planning and rejects the belief that scientists in general or economists in particular can effectively predict and
prescript specific policy interventions to society 26 . After all, social planners or public decision-makers arent
themselves but poor mortals, whose own rationality cannot escape the natural constraints to which humans are
subject.
It is my view that perhaps Hayek would have never broken away from the neoclassical infallible total rationality
paradigm in economics. But, his personal experience with the sequence of social, political and economic events
following the Great Depression and the role played by the active prescriptivism of the Keynesian Solution,
apparently led him to realize with a profound clarity that if the Constructivistic Social Scientists [or rather Rational
Pythias] lived up to the Socratic Virtue (i.e., with recognition of their own ignorance), a great deal of harm derived
from their scientific prescriptivisms could have been avoided. In other words, the Socratic Virtue is not just an
epistemological attitude of scientific humbleness, but, it is above all an attitude of moral responsibility
towards the ontological implications of science.
This skeptic attitude is progressive in nature, in the sense that it opens room for further developments in science
because it translates into a permanent, tireless pursuit of truth. Therefore, the Hayekian recognition of ignorance

23

As opposed to the empiricist Verifiability of the Vienna Circle

24

Popper, Karl R. The Open Society and Its Enemies. Complete: Volumes I and II. 1962

25

Frantz, Roger. Frederick Hayeks Behavioral Economics in Historical Context. Palgrave Macmillan.

26

Hayek, Friedrich A. Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 1: Rules and Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.

should never be confused with a praise of ignorance as some detractors seem to suggest (e.g: Birzner, 201327). The
Hayekian epistemological skepticism might explain his constant disquiet with the quality of his own work which led
him to revise much of his concepts throughout his entire brilliant career. On the other hand, its probably the most
meaningful legacy he leaves for the scientific community.
IV. TO WHAT DEGREE IS HUMAN LIBERTY IMPORTANT FOR THE PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION?
Hayek the Liberal and the Rule of Progress for a World of Minorities
...if allowed to go his own way he [the individual] will on average serve the rest of us better than under any orders we
know how to give.
H.B. Phillips
The above quote perhaps best synthesizes the traditional libertarian concept and argument for [individual] Liberty.
Indeed, one would find such a repetition [libertarian Liberty] awkward, yet it makes sense because the word Liberty
invariably falls victim of the perversion of language that allows even the totalitarian propaganda to make free use of
it28. Therefore, the above quote, serves for demarcation purposes.
In the Introduction to their highly influential book Free to Choose: A Personal Statement, Milton & Rose Friedman
explain the American Miracle as the natural by-product of the economic and political freedom that characterized the
New World stressing that the combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for
tyranny and deprivation29.
In fact, their observation simply corroborated earlier claims by von Mises that whatever pattern of socialism, either
the Russian Marxist Bolshevism, the Italian National Fascism, the German Nazi Zwangswirtschaft or the Third World
Socialism, invariably gave rise to anti-democratic, dictatorial and violent tendencies 30 , with globally catastrophic
consequences for which Sachs (2005), provides a glaring example. When the Nazi-waged II Word War ended in
1945 the global economic plumbing and particularly the international trade and currency convertibility systems,
where brought to levels prior to 3 decades earlier (1914) due to physical infra-structure destruction but also to
complete disarray of the institutional arrangements that had already been set31.

27

Birzner, Bradley. Hayek and the Praise of Ignorance, 2013. Available at http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2013/12/hayek-praise-

ignorance.html
28

Hayek, F. The Road to Serfdom. Routledge Classics, London and New York. 2006. Chapter IX, p. 162.

29

Friedman, Milton & Friedman, Rose. Free to Choose: A Personal Statement. HBJ. 1980

30

Von Mises, Ludwig. Planned Chaos. Introduction

31

Sachs, Jeffrey. The End of Poverty: How we can make it in our lifetime. Penguin Books. 2005, p. 46.

10

Milton & Rose Friedmans description was a modern account of a rather classical reckoning that capitalism means far
more than a mere order for economic organization of a society. In fact, the defence of what K. Marx termed
capitalism has always been a defence of individual liberties. After all, liberty is not merely one particular value but it
is the source and condition of most moral values32, which underlie the progress of free societies. This could perhaps
not be as much evident as it is today, if the socialist experiment hadnt had the historical chance to prove its worth
or, (in Popperian terms), to falsify itself.
Whatever sort of hampered economy either by Restrictions on Production or Interference with the structure of prices,
is nothing but a politically-disguised collectivistic attempt to control the choices and behaviour of individuals or rather
infringing their liberties and ultimately paving the Road to [totalitarian] Serfdom. History has proved how effective
collectivistic doctrines are in neutralizing individual freedoms and more critically at attempting to frame individual
thought. In the case of Socialism, non state-controlled thinking is seen as subversive as regretfully confessed by
Trotsky In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old
principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat."33
Bottom line is that either by infringement and coercion, restraint or constraint, the ubiquitous obedience-demanding
State of the sort Trotsky was lamenting, hinders society from reaching its full potential by force of an Orwelliantype34 mind control apparatus over the individuals that harshly stifles the creative entrepreneurial individual initiative
needed for the progress of all and any viable Civilization35.
On the other hand though, by unchaining individual energies (individualism)36, while simultaneously permitting the
[peaceful] coexistence of different sets of values [and moral convictions that obviously emerge]37, liberal abstract
principles unleash the diversity in which progressive societies thrive. At this part Hayek admits to be making the an
intellectual commitment typical of the kind of concessions the liberal is willingly to make for the sake of a type of
order in which one can live and work successfully with others, in pursuit of different ends 38. Hence, Tolerance
understood as an inner value of Liberty, characterizes progressive Societies.

32

Hayek, F. The Constitution of Liberty. p 6 (Introduction).

33

Hayek, F. The Road to Serfdom. Routledge Classics, London and New York. 2006. Chapter IX, p. 123.

34

Reference to George Orwells novel 1984.

35

Hayek, F. The Constitution of Liberty. p 3.

36

Hayek, F. The Road to Serfdom. Routledge Classics, London and New York. 2006. Chapter I, pp. 15-16.

37

Hayek, F. The Constitution of Liberty. p 402 (Postscripts - Why am I not a Conservative).

38

Idem. p 402.

11

In our days, well beyond Fukuyamas End of History39 (i.e., after the global retreat of socialism and the waves of
liberal democracy), the Hayekian concession echoes far beyond political lines, targeting a subtle yet preying
expression of collectivism the tyranny of the majorities over the ever growing minorities and identities be they
sexual, ethnical, racial, cultural, religious, migratory,...
As majorities increasingly dissolve into these minorities, we will have to resort more and more to the liberal
ability to concede/compromise for the sake of a progressive coexistence. The Hayekian liberal therefore, is
likely to be the last man standing for his best fit for a century of identities.
Liberal tolerance will allow our civilization to unleash and benefit from the creative potential of those diversified
minorities, transforming the diversity into a dynamic booster of progress. On the other hand, Majority Prejudice (i.e.,
denial of minority rights), will render us a fragmented and volatile society/world. After all, Poppers warning to the
paradoxes of the Open Society, suit perfectly well to make the point here freedom might lead to its own
disappearance unless the strong are restrained; unlimited tolerance might lead to its own disappearance if extended
to the intolerant40.

39

Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. The Free Press. New York, 1992

40

Popper, Karl R. The Open Society and Its Enemies. Complete: Volumes I and II. 1962

12