A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles by Thomas Sowell
Awareness of inequalities and revulsion toward them have not been confined to those with the unconstrained vision. Similar reactions have been common to Adam Smith in the eighteenth century and to Milton Friedman in the twentieth century.23 In Friedman's words:
Everywhere in the world there are gross inequities in income and wealth. They offend most of us. Few can fail to be moved by the contrast between the luxury enjoyed by some and the grinding poverty suffered by others.24
While both Smith and Friedman (as well as others with the constrained vision) have proposed various ameliorative schemes to help the poor,25 neither was prepared to make fundamental changes in the social processes in hopes of greater equalization. A vision of constrained options and greater dangers in alternative processes limits the scope of remedies. Moreover, these inequalities were not assumed to be products of the given social system, which Friedman saw as mitigating rather than aggravating them, but as a common misfortune far worse in other systems. According to Friedman: "Wherever the free market has been permitted to operate, wherever anything approaching equality of opportunity has existed, the ordinary man has been able to attain levels of living never dreamed of before."26 While the material abundance of modern capitalist nations has created fortunes here and there, its main beneficiaries have been ordinary rather than wealthy people, according to Friedman. Modern technological wonders brought little improvement to what the rich already had, however much they revolutionized the lives of the masses:
The rich in Ancient Greece would have benefitted little from modern plumbing: running servants replaced running water. Television and radio- the patricians of Rome could enjoy the leading musicians and actors in their home, could have the leading artists as domestic retainers. Ready-towear clothing, supermarkets- all these and many other modern developments would have added little to their life. They would have welcomed the improvements in transportation and in medicine, but for the rest, the great achievements of Western capitalism have redounded primarily to the benefit of the ordinary person.27
In the constrained vision of Friedman and others, "exploitation" situations have been seen as more effectively eliminated by the systemic characteristics of a competitive economy than by the deliberate intervention of political leaders in complex economic processes that they cannot comprehend. The danger was not only in the adverse consequences of their intervention on the economy, but still more so in the dire consequences of such an increased concentration of political power. In short, attempts to equalize economic results lead to greater- and more dangerous- inequality in political power. This was the central theme of Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, where the goal of simultaneously combining freedom and equality of outcome in democratic socialism was declared "unachievable" as a result,28 but dangerous as a process change pointing toward despotism.
Democratic socialists were not accused of plotting despotism, and were in fact regarded by Hayek as genuinely humane individuals lacking the "ruthlessness" required to achieve their social goals,29 but were seen by him as paving the way for othersincluding both fascists and communists-who complete the destruction of freedom, after the principles of equality before the law and limitations on political power have been fatally undermined in pursuit of "the mirage of social justice."30
As in other issues, while followers of the unconstrained vision speak in terms of the goals being sought, followers of the constrained vision speak in terms of the incentives being created by the processes being changed.
Irremediable ignorance and irremediable inequality go hand in hand, according to Hayek. It is precisely our "inescapable ignorance" that makes general rules necessary31 and general rules of social processes are incompatible with explicit determination of particular individual or group results. Those who "postulate a personified society"32 assume an intention, purpose, and corresponding moral responsibility where there is in fact an evolved order-and "the particulars of a spontaneous order cannot be just or unjust."33 Government, as a deliberately created entity, may act on intention and be morally judged by its acts, but not society.34 Government, as a limited set of decision-makers, cannot possess all the knowledge in a society, or anything approaching it, and therefore lacks the omniscience in fact to prescribe just or equal results.
A "society of omniscient persons" would have no need for a process-conception of justice or equality. The "social justice" of the unconstrained vision could be imposed or agreed to in such a society, where- Hayek concedes- "every action would have to be judged as a means of bringing about known effects."35 But the constrained vision of human knowledge precludes the existence of a society with any such capability, so that the moral criteria appropriate to such a society become moot. The moral principles insisted upon by those with the unconstrained vision are thus rejected, not as wrong, but as irrelevant to the social choices actually available, and dangerous in the concentration of governmental power implied by the pursuit of such ideals.
Because it is "absurd" to demand social justice from an uncontrolled process, according to Hayek,36 such a demand implies the substitution of a very different kind of process. The moral issue thus becomes one of the relative merits of alternative processes. Hayek questioned "whether it is moral that men be subjected to the power of direction that would have to be exercised in order that the benefits derived by the individuals could be meaningfully described as just or unjust."37
In short, the constrained vision does not defend existing inequalities, or any given pattern of economic or social results, as just. According to Hayek, "the manner in which the benefits and burdens are apportioned by the market mechanism would in many instances have to be regarded as very unjust if it were the result of a deliberate allocation to particular people."38 The moral justification of the market process rests on the general prosperity and freedom it produces.
The issue between the two visions is not simply one of the existence, magnitude, and persistence of inequalities but also of the extent to which those inequalities are merited. This issue, like the others, goes back for centuries. In the eighteenth century, Godwin wrote of "a numerous class of individuals, who, though rich have neither brilliant talents nor sublime virtues."39 The privileged and powerful readily become "indifferent to mankind, and callous to their sufferings."40 A king is "nothing but a common mortal, exceeded by many and equalled by more, in every requisite of strength, capability and virtue."41 "Garlands and coronets," according to Godwin, "may be bestowed on the unworthy and prostituted to the intriguing."42 His target was not simply inequality as such, but especially "unmerited advantage."43 Variations on these themes have remained a prominent feature of the unconstrained vision. In the twentieth century, Shaw declared that "enormous fortunes are made without the least merit,"44 and noted that not only the poor but many welleducated people "see successful men of business, inferior to themselves in knowledge, talent, character and public spirit, making much larger incomes."45
Because those with the unconstrained vision emphasize the unmerited nature of many rewards, it does not follow that those with the constrained vision assume rewards to be individually merited. Merit justifications have been very much the exception rather than the rule, and largely confined to secondary figures such as Samuel Smiles, Horatio Alger, and Social Darwinists like William Graham Sumner- all of whom have been explicitly repudiated by Hayek, for example.46 Nor was Hayek unique. The leading figures in the tradition of the constrained vision have for centuries pointed out that many rewards are personally unmerited. The moral justification of the constrained vision is the justification of a social process, not of individuals or classes within that process. They readily concede that "inevitably some unworthy will succeed and some worthy fail," that rewards are "based only partly on achievements and partly on mere chance."47 This is a trade-off they accept, on the conviction that no solution is possible. But those with the unconstrained vision do not share that conviction and therefore find acceptance of known inequities intolerable.
Although the two vision
Both visions agree that equality of process can mean vast inequalities of results, and that equal results may be attainable only by causing processes to operate very unequally toward different individuals or groups. The differences between the two visions are in the priority that they attach to each goal-and that in turn reflects the extent to which they conceive of man as capable of morally and causally determining the appropriate goal for society. One of the bitter contemporary clashes between the two visions, in various countries around the world, is over compensatory preferences for particular social groups, for purposes of enabling those groups to reach results more nearly like those of more fortunate groups in their respective societies. Although this specific issue has emerged very recently, as history is measured, it reflects a conflict of visions that goes back for centuries.
The relationship between equality and freedom is also seen in opposite terms in the two visions. In the unconstrained vision, equality and freedom are not in conflict, but are in fact twin applications of similar principles, sometimes summarized as "political democracy" and "economic democracy." As results, this is clearly so, since equalization is central to both concepts. As processes, it is by no means clear that it is so. The constrained vision, which focuses on processes, sees a major conflict between allowing freedom of individual action and prescribing equality of social results. Moreover, it is considered illusory in this vision to expect that prescription of economic results can be achieved while maintaining freedom in non-economic areas.49
KINDS OF EQUALITIES AND INEQUALITIES
If individuals were all equal in their developed capabilities and shared the same values and goals, then equal processes could produce equal results, satisfying both visions. But neither vision believes this to be the case. Some in both camps believe that innate potentialities do not differ greatly among individuals or groups, but this does little to reconcile the conflict of visions, since it is not potentialities but the actual application of developed capabilities which determines results.
No one believed in the innate equality of human beings more than Adam Smith. He thought that men differed less than dogs,50 that the difference between a philosopher and a porter was purely a result of upbringing,51 and he rejected with contempt the doctrine that whites in America were superior to the blacks they enslaved.52 Yet the social inequalities of wealth and status that have been burning issues in the unconstrained vision were of little concern in Smith's constrained vision of man in society. He opposed slavery as a social process, on both moral and economic grounds.53 But such general social results as differences in income and privilege were not deemed sufficiently important to override the process goals of freedom of civil and economic action.
Nor was this a matter of partisanship for the wealthy and powerful. Smith's low opinion of businessmen has already been noted in Chapter 2. He also repeatedly pointed out how the aristocracy, royalty, and the privileged or mighty in general were foolishly worshiped by the masses 54 even to the point of imitating their vices55-and how this huge psychic windfall gain was taken for granted by its recipients, who did not even regard ordinary people as their fellow men.56 A distinguished scholar once pointed out that several socialist orations could be put together out of quotations from Adam Smith.57 But Smith's constrained vision of man and society led in the opposite direction- to laissezfaire capitalism.
Adam Smith's sweeping egalitarianism was by no means unique among those with the constrained vision. Alexander Hamilton, for example, had similar views regarding the moral level of different groups:
Experience has by no means justified us in the supposition, that there is more virtue in one class of men than in another. Look through the rich and poor of the community; the learned and the ignorant. Where does virtue predominate? The difference indeed consists, not in the quantity but kind of vices, which are incident to the various classes .... 58
To those with the unconstrained vision, to say that people are innately equal, but that vast differences in economic and social results exist, and that privileges are both taken for granted and repaid only in arrogance, is to say that the existing society is intolerably unjust and must be drastically changed. Some would say that such a system must be changed "at all costs" or by "whatever means are necessary." At the very least, social mobility must be increased. Smith reached none of these conclusions. William Godwin once more serves as a perfect counter-example of the unconstrained vision, for he agreed completely with Smith on the innate equality of human beings,59 on the inequalities of wealth and status 60 and on the arrogance of privilege 61 but reached opposite conclusions on the need for drastic change (though by entirely peaceful means in Godwin's case62). The difference between them was in their respective visions of man and of social causation.
Many of those with an unconstrained vision and a passionate opposition to inequality of results assume that those who oppose them must be in favor of inequality of results, either on philosophic grounds or as a matter of narrow self-interest. In reality, those with the constrained vision may be passionately devoted to certain processes (freedom to choose, the "rule of law," etc.) and only secondarily concerned with whether any particular result is equal or unequal. They may not be at all opposed to the advancement of untouchables in India or blacks in the United States, or similar groups in other countries- and may even have contributed efforts toward such advancement themselves- but nevertheless fight strongly against process changes intended (by those with an unconstrained vision) to aid such advancement.
While the belief that people's capabilities are equal can be found among exponents of both visions, so can the belief that these capabilities vary enormously between social groups. The view that races, classes, or sexes innately differ greatly in capabilities would be a conclusion for which a constrained vision would be necessary, but not sufficient, and is in fact rejected by many for whom intellectual or moral constraints apply to all human beings, without group distinction. As for developed capabilities, these are often conceived as being far more unequal by believers in the unconstrained vision than by believers in the constrained vision.
As noted in Chapter 3, the distribution of knowledge and reason is vastly more unequal in the unconstrained vision, because its definition of knowledge and reason as articulated information and syllogistic rationality puts them much more in the province of the intellectual elite. But the cultural conception of knowledge in the constrained vision makes it far more widely diffused, and the systemic logic of cultural evolution and survival in competition dwarfs to insignificance the special logical talents of the intellectual elite. Thus, while the common man was seen by Hobbes to be more capable in some respects than his more highly educated social superior,63 and the latter's social claims were at least viewed very skeptically by Smith, Friedman, and Hayek, a vast chasm between the existing intellectual and moral capabilities of the common man and those of the intellectual elite has been an enduring characteristic of the tradition of the unconstrained vision.
In an eighteenth-century world where most people were peasants, Godwin declared that "the peasant slides through life, with something of the contemptible insensibility of an oyster."64 Rousseau likened the masses of the people to "a stupid, pusillanimous invalid."65 According to Condorcet, the "human race still revolts the philosopher who contemplates its hist
While the unconstrained vision has featured egalitarianism as a conviction that people should share more equally in the material and other benefits of society, it tends to see the existing capabilities of people as far more unequal than does the constrained vision. Among contemporary economists proposing ways of advancing Third World nations out of poverty, those representing a constrained vision (P. T. Bauer and T. W. Schultz, for example) depict the peasant masses of the Third World as a repository of valuable skills and capable of substantial adaptations to changing economic conditions, if only the elite will leave them free to compete in the marketplace 6s while those further to the left politically, such as Gunnar Myrdal, depict the peasant masses as hopelessly backward and redeemable only by the committed efforts of the educated elite.69
It is only when estimating the potential intelligence of human beings that those with the unconstrained vision have a higher estimate than those with the constrained vision. When estimating the current intelligence of human beings, those with the unconstrained vision tend to estimate a lower mean and a greater variance. It is the greater variance which lends logical support to surrogate decision-making, whether in the form of more government planning in economics, judicial activism in the law, or international-agency efforts at population control or control of natural resources under the sea. Counter-examples can be found on both sides, of course, as for example among the leaders of the French Revolution or V. I. Lenin in modern times, both of whom praised the masses. But the public statements of those holding or aspiring to power are hardly decisive evidence. On the other side, Burke's famous outburst against the "swinish multitude" supporting the French Revolution was atypical even of Burke, 70 much less of the tradition of which he was part.