Laissez-Faire Darwinism?

Copyright 2007 © Alex Binz
Do not reprint or quote without permission by the author

 

History textbooks typically treat laissez-faire economics as an unfortunate by-product of an ideology of Social Darwinism. However, there is not so direct a connection between the two theories, for there are in fact two schools of laissez-faire thought. One arises from rationalism and the French Enlightenment; the other, from traditionalism and the British Enlightenment. The first is associated with René Descartes, Jean-Baptiste Say, and Ludwig von Mises; the second with Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, and Friedrich Hayek. I argue that Social Darwinism permeated only the British School, while it left the French School largely untouched. In fact, it seems that Social Darwinism is linked to polar opposites: as laissez-faire, it is associated with traditionalism, while in its socialist forms (Marxism and the eugenics movement) it is tied to utopian rationalism. Thus, there is no direct connection between Darwinism and laissez-faire: for even when they can be associated, it is principally through a parallel ideology of traditionalism.

While its precise origins may never be known, the French School of laissez-faire can be traced back to Catholic monks in the late medieval School of Salamanca, known alternately as “Thomists” (for their head, St. Thomas Aquinas), “Scholastics” (for their method), or simply as “the Schoolmen.” These monks adored Aristotle like chaste groupies; they devoted their lives to translating his works and carrying on his rationalist legacy. After a brief decline during the Protestant Reformation, Scholastic theory was picked up during the French Physiocracy. These writers attacked the policy-rationalism of European mercantilism—which asserted government’s role in controlling the market—by reviving the theory-rationalism of the Scholastics and formulating a theory of laissez-faire as a platform for their critique. The Physiocratic mindset was epitomized by Jean-Baptiste Say, a later French economist with an eye for analytic and logical rigor. In his Treatise on Political Economy, Say systematized economics, and placed the French School of laissez-faire thought on a firmly rationalist foundation.

Yet at the zenith of the Physiocracy, a counter-movement arose from within free-market thought. Adam Smith, then a renowned moral philosopher who had been hired to tutor the young Duke of Buccleuch, encountered the Physiocrats in the famous salons of Paris. He left France thoroughly impressed with their work… and determined to infuse it with a sufficient dose of British conservatism. Like his friend David Hume and the great conservative Edmund Burke, Smith preferred a kind of traditionalist realism to the rationalist idealism of the French School. This new breed of laissez-faire captured the popular imagination, and the British School quickly gained ascendancy. The moral philosopher was succeeded by a Reverend; Smith’s mantle was inherited by Robert Thomas Malthus, whose apocalyptic musings on population were to inspire a generation of evolutionists. In his famous Essay on the Principle of Human Population, Malthus argued that population and production were fundamentally disconnected; that population would grow exponentially, while production would increase linearly. Thus, general poverty and indeed starvation was inevitable. However, Malthus rejected rationalist population control; he asserted that it only remained to let Nature take its course, by letting the impoverished starve themselves back to subsistence. Malthusian fatalism, though enormously controversial in Britain, was in fact informed by the British veneration for tradition; these ratios were imprinted in the laws of Nature and could not be annulled by mere human action.

Malthus, though controversial himself, would inspire the even more contentious theory of Darwinism. He depicted a world of scarce resources and infinite mouths, one marked and marred by starvation and a relentless struggle for existence. This ‘survival of the fittest’ motif rang true for Darwin, not only as applied to society but to nature as well. But while he drew inspiration from Malthus in his theory of natural selection, Darwin also inherited the mantle of historical traditionalism and determinism, which had an equal (if not greater) influence. Malthus’s scenario of economic apocalypse relied heavily on a historical assumption: that these ratios of population and production were embedded in the very nature of things. There is a strong sense of fatalism in his writings, for these forces were too powerful for mere man to handle. In Malthus, then, the disparate strains of “social Darwinism” and traditionalism were united for the first time.

Yet, just as soon as Malthus had been removed from the economic sphere and applied to the natural world, his theory was returned to the social sciences. Early proponents of evolution—Herbert Spencer, Francis Galton, even Darwin himself—were quick to apply their biological explanation to society. The British School soon adopted this Social Darwinism in its defense of free markets, accepting Upton Sinclair’s portrayal of capitalism in The Jungle as “a war of each against all, and devil take the hindmost.” In his essay The Forgotten Man, Yale economist William Graham Sumner advocated this same ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality which first gave laissez-faire a bad name. “If we let nature alone, she cures vice by the most frightful penalties…. A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be. Nature is working… to get him out of the way” (76). Sumner, like Malthus, weds this apathetic laissez-faire, laissez-passer attitude to Darwinian determinism. As he wrote in The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over, “It is only in the imagination that we stand by and look at and criticize [society] and plan to change it” (80). Sumner argues that government should not do anything, simply because it cannot do anything. “Compared with [the forces of history,] our efforts are like those of a man trying to deflect a river…. The great stream of time and earthly things will sweep on just the same in spite of us….” (80). This deterministic attitude reflected the influence of traditionalism; thus, Sumner married Social Darwinism (as a theory of laissez-faire) to the conservative British School.

A third proponent of the British School would shortly emerge from Austria. Unlike other enthusiasts of evolutionary sociology, Hayek rejected the crude Social Darwinism of Malthus and Sumner, but developed a subtler approach of his own in such works as The Fatal Conceit and Rules and Order.  As he wrote in the latter: “The error of ‘Social Darwinism’ was that it concentrated on the selection of individuals, rather than that of institutions and practices” (23). Social Darwinism should not directly entail laissez-faire; a genuine application of Darwin to markets should not subject individuals to a ruthless process of natural selection. On the contrary, Hayek wrote in his Constitution of Liberty that “the institutions evolved to secure ‘life, liberty, and property,’ [to make] individual efforts beneficial” (59). The selection mechanism applied to cultural norms and traditions; over time, this evolution gradually began to favor the free market. In this sense, Hayek had no thought of a grand synthesis of Social Darwinism and traditionalism; for him, the terms were equivalent.

Yet we must ask: why did Malthus, Sumner, and Hayek all draw such a connection? Why did these laissez-faire theorists integrate Social Darwinism into their system, when others did not? What is it about traditionalism that so consistently leads to Darwinism? Following Hayek, I would argue that synthesis was unnecessary, since both theories relied on a common element: the supreme importance of deterministic forces. Traditionalism essentially argues that human reason cannot and ought not affect the forces acting on society; likewise, Darwinian evolution relies on mechanistic forces (necessity and chance) which determine the future and survival of a species. Even more, traditionalism required a mechanism, and Social Darwinism offered an effective one. Natural selection, acting on either individuals or social groups, would ensure the relentless march of progress superseding mere individual action. Determinism is the common thread that joins the two theories.

Yet, in weaving these formerly disparate doctrines of Darwin and Burke into a coherent whole, the British School has unraveled its support for laissez-faire. Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises was a leading disciple of the French School from whom Hayek learned laissez-faire. Yet Hayek’s capitalist tendencies are baseless if divorced from Misean rationalism. Hayek and the others can well be described as optimistic fatalists. Like Thomas Friedman in advocating globalization, they describe a future beyond our control, yet good ne’ertheless. Yet their error lies in optimism: for what if tradition fails? How could we even define what future is good, if reason cannot improve on tradition? How could we implement our definition, if individual action is rendered moot by historical forces? Yet here is one instance where those forces failed. Quite simply, laissez-faire is not: it is nowhere implemented, and exists only as theory, as extrapolation from patterns of known phenomena. But we cannot critique this ‘what is’ without a ‘what ought to be.’ We require a statement of ideals, and thus rationalism. To fully endorse laissez-faire, we must repudiate pure traditionalism; thus the French School rejected Social Darwinism.

From this division between schools of laissez-faire thought, we may discern two different factions within modern conservativism. Those in the British School are true conservatives; they are interested in preserving the current social traditions, and espouse Darwinism as a natural apology for their cause. But with the disciples of the French School lies a conservativism of ideals, better styled “classical liberalism.” This is the crucial point in the debate of Darwinian Conservativism; Larry Arnhart cites Burke and the British School, where John West cites Bastiat and other French rationalists. It is too easy to equate their definitions of conservatism, yet we must recognize that there are two separate ideologies, and learn to distinguish between them.

 

Works Cited

Arnhart, Larry. Darwinian Conservativism. Charlottesville, VA: Imprint Academic, 2005.

Davis, Reed ed. Social Darwinism & Politics Reader. Seattle: Seattle Pacific University, 2007.

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

— — —. The Constitution of Liberty. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960.

Sumner, William Graham. “The Forgotten Man.” Davis 73-79.

— — —. “The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over.” Davis 80.