Scruton on Röpke

[Ronnie Hayek]

Conférence de Roger Scruton sur les leçons que nous pouvons tirer de Wilhelm Röpke :

http://www.mmisi.org/mp3/lectures/a000219_scruton_041208.mp3

La vidéo est accessible sur cette page.

Texte de la conférence :

http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/arti…b&type=cttf

The following comments were originally given as a lecture on April 12 at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s 2008 National Leadership Conference held in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Two Greek words define my topic: nostos and oikos. The first—from which we have ‘nostalgia’—denotes return to the home, and it is the great theme of Homer’s Odyssey. The second—from which we have ‘economy’—denotes the home itself, conceived as a place of settlement, to be defended against marauders and also opened to friends and guests. The most basic social needs and sentiments are summoned by these words, and if we are now living in conditions of hyper-mobility, in which no one is settled deeply enough or for long enough to enjoy the sense of home, then it is not surprising that we are also living in a condition of intense nostalgia. We are constantly seeking for the place of rest, the refuge from change and stress and fleetingness, the condition in which we will be ‘restored to ourselves.’ Some seek this place in the past, believing that we must return to a simpler and more tranquil way of doing things. Others seek it in the future, believing that the stress of competition and mobility is something to be ‘overcome.’ Few if any find the place of refuge in the present.

When Wilhelm Röpke set out to write his defence of the ‘humane economy’ he had fallen under the spell of the Austrian school—of Mises and Hayek especially—whose defence of the market against state planning and socialist distribution had taken on a new credibility in the light of the tyranny and economic disorder of the Bolshevik experiment. At the same time Röpke was aware that markets are not enough. They do not guarantee the goal of economic activity, which is the oikos, the place of settlement and security where people are at home with each other and at peace with their neighbours. The market mechanism may not be sufficient for social order, but it is necessary, for all the reasons spelled out by the Austrians. Only in a market economy can prices serve as a guide to the scarcity of goods, or wages a guide to the supply of labour. Only in a market economy can individuals plan their own budgets and make rational choices for the deployment of their assets, their labour and their bargaining skills. The argument developed by Mises in his critique of socialism was, Röpke thought, demonstrative. The centrally planned economy destroyed the information on which rational economic decisions depend. This information is available in the form of prices and contracts in a free economy; but it is irretrievably dispersed by the attempt to dictate all economic factors from on high.

I don’t think that anyone who has followed the careful arguments of Mises and Hayek would doubt the point. Nor was it a point that Röpke wished to labour. Röpke’s interest was in the oikos, which he believed to be threatened from above by the state—something that he had seen at first hand with his experiences of the Nazis—and also threatened from below, by the anarchy of unbridled self-interest.

It is fairly normal, nowadays, for left-liberal thinkers to pay lip-service to the Hayekian theory of the market. Yes, they will say; the market is necessary as a transmitter of economic signals. And yes, without markets economies have no ready way to regain equilibrium in the wake of a disturbance. But markets have no respect for social order; they neither generate nor perpetuate the sense of community on which we all depend. They depend upon and encourage both self-interest and competition, and regard nothing as sacred, nothing as beyond the reach of buying and selling. Is it surprising, therefore, if capitalist societies today are witnessing social breakdown on a hitherto unimaginable scale, as the pursuit of self-interest drives all concern for the community from the thoughts and emotions of consumers? Isn’t the ‘consumer society’ precisely what we must expect, from a philosophy which makes ‘consumer sovereignty’ into the first principle of economic life?

Röpke would have endorsed some of that. But he was determined not to draw the conclusion that left-liberal thinkers draw, namely that we need to control the market through the state. Powers exercised by the state, he believed, inevitably end up in the hands of unanswerable bureaucrats, and can also never be recaptured by society, whatever the extent of their abuse. If the market needs to be constrained for the common good, then the constraint must come from below, not from above. It must be a social constraint, rather than a political constraint. And thus was born the idea of a ‘social market’ economy—an idea which was to influence German ministers of finance throughout the period of reconstruction following the end of the Second World War. Röpke, who had fled from Nazi Germany to Switzerland, believed that he had found a model for the social market, in the Swiss forms of local democracy. He was also (although of Protestant background) strongly influenced by the social teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, and in particular by the doctrine of ‘subsidiarity’ expounded in the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, which Pope Pius XI issued in 1931. Pius intended this as a description of the Church’s own organisation, through the episcopate, according to which decisions are always taken at the ‘subsidiary’ level—the lowest level compatible with unified government. But he also implied that economic and political life might be similarly organized, so that power was always passed up from the bottom and never imposed from above.

All that might seem like a call for the empowerment of civil society rather than the state, and so it was interpreted by Röpke, who took it as foundational for his doctrine of ‘decentrism.’ However, it should be noted that Quadragesimo Anno marked the first intrusion of genuinely socialist ideas into the teachings of the Church. Economic freedom, the encyclical argued, does not lead of its own accord to the common good, but stands in need of a ‘true and effective directing principle,’ and that principle is ‘social justice.’ Behind that phrase there lurks the whole egalitarian agenda which, in search of an ‘equality of condition,’ looks eventually to the state to impose it. Interestingly enough the first draft of the encyclical was composed by Oswald von Nell-Breuning SJ, professor of moral theology at the Jesuit School in Frankfurt, and a thinker deeply influenced by Marx’s theory of exploitation. And in due course the term ‘subsidiarity’ was to enjoy a second life through the European Union, whose official documents declare that all decisions must be taken at the subsidiary level, while reserving to the unelected and largely unaccountable European Commission the privilege of deciding what level that might be.

It is not Röpke’s fault that he was thinking in a context in which socialist ideas had become common currency. But many of those whom he immediately influenced were unaware of the poisonous nature of the ‘weasel word “social”,’ as Hayek was later to call it—meaning a word that sucks the meaning from every term to which it is attached, ‘as a weasel sucks eggs.’ Social justice, as now understood, is no more a form of justice than fools’ gold is a form of gold. It is not what justice was for Aristotle and Ulpian—a matter of giving to each his due, taking account of rights, obligations and deserts. Social justice, as commonly understood, means the reorganization of society, with the state in charge—there being no other agent with the requisite power or authority—and with equality as the ultimate goal. The social market economy is no more a market economy than social justice is a form of justice. As it has developed, in Germany and France, the social market has become a statist institution, heavily regulated from above, in the interests of powerful lobbies such as the trade unions and the welfare bureaucracy. It is suspicious of private property and free enterprise, is obsessively concerned with equal partnership, and is receptive to every kind of egalitarian dogma. Under the aegis of the social market the state has expanded to the point of controlling more than half of GDP in France and employing more than half of the working population. It has so stifled the economy of Germany that now some 20% of transactions in that once law-abiding country occur in the black economy. And it is steadily making Europe as a whole uncompetitive.

Maybe this story doesn’t need to be told to the present audience. But it is worth noting a few marginal details. Quadragesimo anno introduced two concepts that became critical in our time—social justice, and subsidiarity. Both purport to be about society, its rights, duties and freedoms. But both are actually about the state. And their history shows how easily the concepts advanced to defend society against the state can be turned in the opposite direction, to empower the state against society. One important instance is provided by the European Union, a venture against which Röpke frequently warned, rightly seeing it as a move towards centralisation and a blow to the localism that he supported. (See A Humane Economy, p. 242, and his affirmation, in opposition to the Eurocrats, that ‘decentrism is the essence of the spirit of Europe,’ p. 244.)

The Eurocrats tolds us, when John Major weakly agreed to the Maastricht Treaty, that it was all OK, that national sovereignty would not be sacrificed, that the principle of subsidiarity applied, and that all decisions pertaining to the nation and its specific interests would be taken at the national level, by elected Parliaments. But then comes the catch: it is the European Commission, not the national parliament, which decides that a given issue pertains to the specific interests of a given nation state. National sovereignty is therefore delegated from above, by an unelected Commission which is in the hands of its permanent staff of bureaucrats rather than in those of the sheepish politicians who have been shunted there from parliaments where they are no longer wanted. The principle of ‘subsidiarity,’ which purports to grant powers to local and national bodies, in fact takes them away, ensuring that powers that were once exercised by right are now exercised on sufferance. ‘Subsidiarity’ confiscates sovereignty in the same way that ‘social justice’ confiscates justice, and the ‘social market’ confiscates the market.

So what is the alternative? What was Röpke getting at, and how should we respond to the problems that he wished to address—the problems of social fragmentation and the loss of community feeling, in a world where the market is left to itself? There are those—Milton Friedman, for example, or Murray Rothbard—who have powerfully argued that a genuinely free market will ensure the good government of human communities, through the self-restraining impulse that comes naturally to us. But their arguments, however sophisticated, are addressed to Americans, who live among abundant resources, free from external threat, surrounded by opportunities and in communities where the volunteer spirit survives. And they do not confront the central question, which is how communities renew themselves, and how fundamental flaws in the human constitution, such as resentment, envy and sexual predation, are to be overcome by something so abstract and neutral as consumer sovereignty and free economic choice.

Röpke’s own idea, if I understand him rightly, was that society is nurtured and perpetuated at the local level, through motives that are quite distinct from the pursuit of rational self interest. There is the motive of charitable giving, the motives of love and friendship, and the motive of piety. All these grow naturally, and cause us to provide for each other and to shape our environment into a common home. The true oikos is not a cell shut off from the world, in which a solitary individualist enjoys his sovereignty as a consumer. The true oikos is a place of charity and gift, of love, affection and prayer. Its doors are open to the neighbours, with whom its occupants join in acts of worship, in festivals and ceremonies, in weddings and funerals. Its occupants are not consumers, except obliquely, and by way of replenishing their supplies. They are members of society, and membership is a mutual relation, which cannot be captured in terms of the ‘enlightened self interest’ that is the subject matter of economic theory. For extreme individualists of the Rothbard kind life in society is simply one species of the ‘coordination problem,’ as the game theorists describe it—one area in which my rational self-interest needs to be harmonized with yours. And the market is the only reliable way that we humans know, or could know, of coordinating our goal-directed activities, not only with friends and neighbours, but with all the myriad strangers on whom we depend for the contents of our shopping bags. Membership, if it comes about, is simply another form of quasi-contractual agreement, whereby we freely bind ourselves to mutual rights and duties.

Who is right in this? Well, the position that I have attributed to Röpke is to me transparently obvious, whereas that which I have attributed (for the sake of argument) to Rothbard is to me profoundly mistaken. But two questions arise: how do we spell out, in terms appropriate to modern societies, the implications of the idea of membership that I have attributed to Röpke? And is the dispute here to be defined and fought out in economic terms? In referring to a social market economists leave a large hostage to fortune. For they express the view—endorsed by their socialist opponents—that the ‘social question’ demands an economic solution. And to some extent Röpke should be criticised on this score; he believed that a form of economic order could be developed which would deliver, as a benign by-product, the kind of social cohesion which he had found in the Swiss villages, and which he believed to express the communal heart of European society. This was already to accept one of the most damaging of Marx’s ideas, which is that social institutions are the by-product, rather than the foundation, of the economic order. For if Marx’s view is right, then the cure to social ills must be framed in economic terms. Specifically, if the free market delivers a fragmented society then the solution is to replace the free market with another economic system. And how is that to be done, if not by state action, directing the economy towards defined social goals? All this is contained in that troubling expression ‘a humane economy,’ seeming to imply that it is through economic organization that a society becomes humane, and not—for example—through love, friendship and the moral law. Röpke intended no such implication; but his style everywhere conveys the tension in his thinking between decentrism, as a social movement, and economic policy. (See especially, pp 241–3.)

[Apollon]

Très bon, comme souvent.

[Ronnie Hayek]

Selon moi, le problème de la subsidiarité telle qu'elle est aujourd'hui défendue - y compris quand elle est prônée par les hoppéens, par exemple - est qu'elle demeure cantonnée à la politique au sens fort. Le décentralisation recrée un nouveau centralisme, mais en miniature. L'échelon reste toujours politique et la société lui est subordonnée.

Très féconde est aussi la conclusion de Scruton sur l'ambiguïté des vues libérales, qui restent imprégnées d'économisme, si bien qu'elles sont prisonnières d'un débat posé uniquement en termes matérialistes (la superstructure conditionnée par l'infrastructure matérielle).

[Apollon]

Incidemment comment comprends-tu l'affirmation d'Aristote, repris par Saint Thomas, selon laquelle l'homme est animal politique ? Je l'ai longtemps tenue pour l'équivalent de "l'homme est animal social". Des auteurs font pareil assimilation, d'autres la distinguent pour dire que l'homme se dote naturellement d'un gouvernement.

[Ronnie Hayek]

Incidemment comment comprends-tu l'affirmation d'Aristote, repris par Saint Thomas, selon laquelle l'homme est animal politique ? Je l'ai longtemps tenue pour l'équivalent de "l'homme est animal social". Des auteurs font pareil assimilation, d'autres la distinguent pour dire que l'homme se dote naturellement d'un gouvernement.

Tu penses à la lecture qu'en donne Arendt dans Human Condition ? Elle estime ainsi que la traduction latine de zoon politikon en animal socialis ne modifie pas fondamentalement l'aspect politique au sens d'organisation de la vie en commun, étant donné que le sens grec et latin diffèrent de society ou société pour notre époque. Elle oppose, dans la conception antique, le bios politikos à l'oikia (vie centrée autour du foyer). Si bien que, pour elle, traduire par "animal social" repose sur un malentendu moderniste (dans un autre ordre d'idées, pensons aussi à la révolte des socii, souvent traduite erronément en "guerre sociale") et affaiblit la teneur politique forte du concept.

[Apollon]

Tu penses à la lecture qu'en donne Arendt dans Human Condition ? Elle estime ainsi que la traduction latine de zoon politikon en animal socialis ne modifie pas fondamentalement l'aspect politique au sens d'organisation de la vie en commun, étant donné que le sens grec et latin diffèrent de society ou société pour notre époque. Elle oppose, dans la conception antique, le bios politikos à l'oikia (vie centrée autour du foyer). Si bien que, pour elle, traduire par "animal social" repose sur un malentendu moderniste (dans un autre ordre d'idées, pensons aussi à la révolte des socii, souvent traduite en "guerre sociale") et affaiblit la teneur politique forte du concept.

Non je ne pensais pas à Arendt, j'avais vu la nuance chez Saint-Victor et d'autres ensuite que j'ai oubliés. Merci pour la réponse.

"Animal politique" renvoie donc au caractère naturel de l'organisation délibérée de la cité, au moins en partie. En critiquant la subsidiarité politique pour la raison qu'elle ne fait que déplacer le niveau où le politique s'exprime, tu contestes donc que l'homme soit animal politique, je me trompe ? C'est pourtant une idée que reprends Saint Thomas, cela ne te gêne pas ?

[Ronnie Hayek]

En critiquant la subsidiarité politique pour la raison qu'elle ne fait que déplacer le niveau où le politique s'exprime, tu contestes donc que l'homme soit politique, je me trompe ? C'est pourtant une idée que reprends Saint Thomas, cela ne te gêne pas ?

Pour saint Thomas, animal politique veut dire "vivant en collectivité".

Je ne conteste absolument pas la nature politique de l'homme; je conteste que tout soit politique. Croire que la subsidiarité ne consiste qu'en une décentralisation gouvernementale me semble une erreur fatale.

La subsidiarité est une question politique (au sens de vie en commun), mais qui ne ressortit pas aux gouvernements.

[Apollon]

Pour saint Thomas, animal politique veut dire "vivant en collectivité".

Je ne conteste absolument pas la nature politique de l'homme; je conteste que tout soit politique.

Mais alors qu'est-ce que tu entends par "animal politique" ?

[Ronnie Hayek]

Mais alors qu'est-ce que tu entends par "animal politique" ?

En gros :

Pour saint Thomas, animal politique veut dire "vivant en collectivité".

[Apollon]

En gros :

C'est aussi ma conception mais c'est quand même embêtant si ce n'était pas l'idée d'Aristote.

[CMuller]

Si je me souviens bien, Aristote rappelle que l'homme est doté de parole, ce qui lui permet de délibérer sur l'utile et le nuisible, le bon et le mauvais, le juste et l'injuste, etc. C'est en cela qu'il ne vit pas seulement en groupes comme d'autres animaux, mais en groupes politiques dont la cité est la forme "naturelle" et dont la finalité est de réaliser l'objet des délibérations humaines (le juste, le bien).

Cette idée peut paraître assez dangereuse, d'ailleurs, si l'on ne précise pas comment se réalise la concorde sur le juste et le bien, ni quelles sont ses limites.

[Yozz]

Je m'étonne de l'absence de commentaires sur le passage suivant:

"However, it should be noted that Quadragesimo Anno marked the first intrusion of genuinely socialist ideas into the teachings of the Church. Economic freedom, the encyclical argued, does not lead of its own accord to the common good, but stands in need of a ‘true and effective directing principle,’ and that principle is ‘social justice.’ Behind that phrase there lurks the whole egalitarian agenda which, in search of an ‘equality of condition,’ looks eventually to the state to impose it. Interestingly enough the first draft of the encyclical was composed by Oswald von Nell-Breuning SJ, professor of moral theology at the Jesuit School in Frankfurt, and a thinker deeply influenced by Marx’s theory of exploitation."