It’s the funniest thing. I was just writing last time about how American conservatives have gotten into the rather annoying habit of referring to their political and intellectual adversaries as Nazis and commies and hey presto I happened to read a rather funny article by the always entertaining E.J. Dionne that bears on just that subject. The starting point for Mr. Dionne’s discussion was a statement ultraconservative politician Ron Paul (former Representative for the state of .... drum roll please .... Texas; in case you had to ask) made during the 2012 presidential campaign season: “We are all Austrians now.”
WTH?! Could this be why conservatives always seem to be living in some type of parallel universe? Because they’re all Austrians? OK, I suppose I’d better explain a bit before we continue. First of all, the “we” in that sentence presumably refers to American conservatives or perhaps the particularly virulent subset of American conservatives that support so-called “libertarians” like Mr. Paul. One thing’s for sure: I know it can’t refer to Americans in general because I’m an American and I’m not an Austrian. Secondly, we’re obviously not talking about Austrians in the normal sense of the word, that is, in terms of national identity or allegiance. Mr. Paul was not suggesting American conservatives have any special relationship with the country of Austria. We’re talking about the co-called “Austrian school of economics” (or that’s what they call it here in the US anyway; I’d be willing to bet they don’t call it that in other places, such as Austria). In case you’ve forgotten or managed to avoid ever having learned in the first place (in which case I salute you) the “Austrian school of economics” is named for two illustrious Austrian immigrants who were moderately influential academic economists back in the mid-20th century: Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. Personally I think it’s a bit funny to insist on calling them and their followers the “Austrian school of economics” as both gentlemen emigrated from Austria as young men. Mr. Hayek spent most of his working life first in England and then the US, while Mr. von Mises lived in the US from age forty or so. But I guess if we called them and their followers the “English” or “American” school of economics things would get even more confusing so let’s just go ahead and keep referring to them as the “Austrian school” for want of a better term. (If you don’t mind I’ll just keep the quotation marks throughout since we’re not all academic economists and I’d hate for anyone to get confused and think we were talking about Austrians in any more general sense, which wouldn’t be fair to our Austrian friends. Economists living in Austria are basically on the same page as economists living in any other country. They don’t follow a special school of economics.)
Now I suppose you’re wondering what’s so special about the “Austrian school of economics” compared to, say, the neoclassical school of economics I’m usually talking about? Well, I think the most salient point for our purposes is that as a practical matter adherents of the mainstream neoclassical school of economics are just a heck of a lot more careful about how they handle value issues and hence what they are willing to say about broader social and political matters than are adherents of the “Austrian school,” who like many other conservatives have trouble seeing the limitations of economic theory and imagine their ostensible insight into that theory gives them a suitable basis for a complete system of social and political philosophy.
I suppose to avoid confusion somewhere down the road I should clarify that the “Austrian school” initially had mostly to do with what economists refer to as macroeconomic issues, that is, the analysis of large scale economic phenomenon such as unemployment, and thus was formerly most commonly contrasted with other schools of macroeconomic theorizing such as Keynesian economics. So they made their name so to speak arguing that government activity cannot really help the economy even in the case of demand side slumps. Of course at some point during the Great Depression we tried it and it pretty much worked so the conventional opinion is they were apparently mistaken. However, it takes a lot more than that to convince some people, especially when value issues gets mixed in with empirical issues. And in this case the significance of the value issues eventually became all too obvious. The “Austrians” really, really wanted government to fail because they had witnessed the rise of fascism in Germany, didn’t like what they saw, and became highly suspicious of or maybe we should just say paranoid about government in general. Thus, for the “Austrians” the idea government might ever play any positive role in society was anathema. They considered any discussion along those lines to be little more than a not very subtle means of allowing fascists in through the back door. I mean, I understand where they were coming from and I’d probably have had the same reaction if I had been there myself. Indeed, I’d probably have insisted on any number of unlikely proposition such as, I don’t know, wearing brown shirts can make one’s brain go funny. I guess sometimes people can overreact a little to these sorts of traumas, do you think?
Now back when I was studying economics in ... well, the year doesn’t matter ... we all considered the “Austrian school” to be very much a strange and rather archaic outlier in the field of economic thought. It’s not that we considered them complete crackpots per se, more like people who were clearly motivated much more by their own ideological biases than by either rigorous logic or empirical results. From my own possibly somewhat idiosyncratic perspective as a budding liberal I considered neoclassical economic theory insufficiently rigorous with respect to how it handled value issues, which I concluded pretty early on led to certain conceptual errors I’ve discussed a number of times now in previous posts. (See My Own Favorite Posts at the bottom of the page or probably any of the posts tagged as having to do with economic theory in the labels section.) But you know, I had the impression mainstream neoclassical economists were at least trying to think straight about value issues. Well, I had that impression about some of them anyway. Nevertheless, I’ve always sympathized with people who reject economic theorizing as too intellectually sloppy and polemical to warrant further study. I think that’s a rather drastic reaction to what is now for better or worse a very influential way of making sense of the world, but never mind. However, the way neoclassical economic theory handles value issues is a beacon of clarity and rigor compared to how the “Austrian school” handles those issues. I’ve just never really understood people who reject standard economic theorizing to go in that direction. It’s like out of the frying pan into the fire. But I guess you have to be in the right frame of mind, and that frame of mind I think must involve value issues one perceives to be so important the dictates of rhetorical effectiveness overwhelm the rather more level headed dictates of logic and reason. Note that I’m not talking right now about the actual values held by devotees of the “Austrian school.” As I’ve said before I’m actually fine discussing any perspective on values issues one cares to take. That’s not the problem at all. I love to discuss ethical issues. Let’s get it on! But we’re not even at that point. What I’m talking about right now is how certain people discuss value issues. I’m saying my impression is that adherents of the “Austrian school” of economics do not appear to recognize the limitations of economic theory and the severely attenuated conceptualization of utility used in that theory and therefore are not really defending their values in an appropriate way. I’m suggesting they use economic theory as little more than a rhetorical device to advance values they are not arguing for directly and honestly.
Let me give you an example of the type of thing I’m talking about. In addition to his more serious work on macroeconomic issues I mentioned previously Mr. Hayek is also famous or perhaps even more famous for authoring a book with the rather frightening title The Road To Serfdom in which he argued the typical conservative line that any government activity beyond the sort of activity wealthy conservatives find personally useful, such as defending property rights, leads inevitably to the erosion of personal freedom and thus puts us all on the road to serfdom. So, for example, if the government uses any form of economic stimulus to break a demand side slump and get people working again then one thing will follow another and we will all end up as slaves. Of if the government provides some help to unemployed people or poor people then, again, we will all inevitably become slaves. Or if the government changes the tax rates to make them a bit more progressive and spread the wealth around, well you know in that case we’ll all become slaves right away.
For me it’s just such a strange way of thinking about the world. For one thing, it doesn’t seem to attach any significance at all to the issue of the relative legitimacy of different forms of government. Basically any government activity Mr. Hayek doesn’t approve of ends up being branded a harbinger of slavery. It doesn’t seem to matter what anyone else thinks about it at all. I mean, shouldn’t it matter if we’re talking about the government of fascist Nazi Germany, the government of the Stalinist USSR, or the government of the USA? It doesn’t matter if we have democracy or not? All governments are essentially the same? Then what did we fight all those wars for? No, but seriously, I think for me this must be the single most serious and dangerous failing of modern conservative thought. They just don’t seem to have any appreciation of the value of our democratic form of government. It gives me the creeps.
For another thing I just can’t understand what they think or want to suggest is so different and special about government activity they like and accept, such as enforcing current distributional arrangements via contracts and property rights (and police and jails). Why doesn’t that government activity also lead us down the road to serfdom? I mean, there’s certainly a lot of it about, right? Here in the US we have loads of prisons and lawyers and cops and all that. I don’t see much minimization going on. Should we do away with these oppressive governmental institutions and become anarchists? OK, that’s what they call a rhetorical question. The answer is pretty obvious. I’m just saying when you think about those types of questions enough to hit upon the obvious answer, that we’re all better off if we accept some government activity to resolve these conflicts of desires so we don’t have to shoot it out on the street whenever we’re at cross purposes, then you’ll also understand the rationale for using democratic government to pursue broader social aims, such as creating a stable economy that distributes resources in an equitable, just, and appropriate way (with the details depending on one’s ethical leanings, which as I said before is something we can talk about and is intellectually speaking one step away from the point I’m trying to make here). My point is simply that we’re not really talking about the pros and cons of serfdom here, are we? We’re talking about the pros and cons of various types of government activity in light of various opinions about how we should resolve interpersonal conflicts on an ethical basis. Looking at the issue as though it has to do with freedom versus serfdom demonstrates a distinctive form of confusion I think is rather similar to that of anarchists who perceive only the restrictive aspect of government power and can’t seem to recognize the corresponding liberating aspect. Yes, a law against violent crime constrains one’s impulse to bash someone over the head with a rock and thus clearly limits one’s freedom if that’s what one had in mind to do. However, it also makes one a bit less leery of walking down the road next to the old village rock pile, doesn’t it? Such a law enhances one’s personal freedom in that respect. The discussion about how to handle interpersonal conflicts of desire, such as whether one should be able to hit someone else on the head with a rock, should be about the ethical resolution of these sorts of interpersonal conflicts, not about the red herring of how important we all feel it is to be free.
Lastly, the anti-government hand wringing of the “Austrian school” just doesn’t comport with my own feelings at all. Sorry conservatives. I realize the US government does all manner of things these day and consequently conservatives probably suppose I must feel myself to be little more than a serf, but I just don’t really feel much like a serf at all. I feel I have quite a bit of freedom actually. I think I probably have more personal freedom than nearly anyone else in the world. And where I’ve given up some of my personal freedom because other people are involved I think it sort of makes sense. That’s what happens when you live in human society. Sometimes you can’t do whatever you want because you have to consider how your actions affect other people. I don’t know, maybe we need to talk a bit about how we define the word “serf.” I know I talked a little bit in an earlier post about what I was calling wage slavery, which I suppose might sound suspiciously like a form of serfdom, but in that case I was just talking about the typical conditions of life under a market economy. (November 28, 2013) I realize market systems only work if they’re backed up with government power to enforce the rules but I didn’t really mean to imply I felt the government was at fault for making me a wage slave by enforcing a market system. In a democratic system like ours the government does more or less what we tell it to do via the voting booth. That’s why I was talking about it in the first place. I was wondering what, if anything, we can or should do about the phenomenon.
So have we made any headway into understanding the enduring mystery of the conservative mind? Well, I’m not sure. We have Mr. Paul’s assertion that American conservatives are now all “Austrians,” that is, adherents of the somewhat weird blend of economic, social, and political theorizing known as the “Austrian school of economics,” which paints democratic governments as trying to enslave their populations if they regulate the economy or pay any attention to distributional issues and so on. And yes, I suppose that does help us understand why conservatives always seem to be charging their opponents with being Nazis and commies. But for me the underlying mystery remains. Why do they find that particular perspective so appealing and persuasive? They didn’t escape from Nazi Germany themselves. Do conservatives like multibillionaire Mr. Perkins, who I wrote about last time, really feel they are in danger of becoming serfs if our government tries to help out poor people? Or are they just talking funny because they’re trying to manipulate other people into continuing to allocate them disproportionate economic power and they know most Americans (including especially liberals like me) place a great premium on personal freedom and don’t really like Nazis very much? And if the latter is what’s going on, are they all in it together, winking at one another behind closed doors as conservatives are wont to do, or is it more a matter of moneyed bigwigs supporting and encouraging sincere ivory tower academics, provincial amateur philosophers, and late night radio talk show hosts and other media types? How can we ever know for sure? Who can we talk to straight? Anyone? Hmm, that’s a tough one. Well, I suppose that’s what makes trying to understand conservatives such an entertaining if maddening project. I guess all we can really do is just keep trying to talk as honestly as we can about our own values and beliefs and see what happens.
References
An economic school has led to gridlock in Washington. Dione, E. J. Washington Post. February 9, 2014. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ej-dionne-jr-an-economic-school-has-led-to-gridlock-in-washington/2014/02/09/12de8df0-9020-11e3-b46a-5a3d0d2130da_story.html?hpid=z6.
