A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles by Thomas Sowell
The complexity of social processes is a recurrent theme in both visions, but in very different senses. To those with the constrained vision, it is axiomatic that no individual or council can master this complexity, so that systemic processes- market economies, social traditions, constitutional law- are relied on instead. But to those with the unconstrained vision, individuals and councils can and must wrestle with social complexity. The summary descriptions of systemic processes by their adversaries are considered "simplistic," since they do not specify particulars, though specifying particulars would be self-contradictory under the assumption of the constrained vision, which is precisely that no one is capable of specifying the particular.
The preoccupation with process characteristics among those with the constrained vision extends to many specific kinds of social processes, just as in all the same processes those with the unconstrained vision seek directly to create particular results. Where there are, for example, people living below some economic level defined as poverty, those with the unconstrained vision tend to wish to subsidize them in some way to produce directly a more desirable result in the form of a higher standard of living. Those with the constrained vision focus on the process incentives created by such schemes and their consequences on future behavior, not only among these particular beneficiaries, but also on others who may become less assiduous in avoiding unemployment, teenage pregnancy, or other factors considered as contributing to the general incidence of poverty.
Now that the analysis of visions has proceeded from the two fundamentally different assumptions about man's moral and intellectual potentialities to the concepts of knowledge and reason appropriate to each assumption, and has now applied these concepts in social processes, the basic foundation for the conflict of visions has been established. What remains to be built on that foundation are (1) more awareness of the diversity of visions and their dynamics and (2) special attention to visions of equality, visions of power, and visions of justice which are central to the ideological conflicts of the age. These are the subjects of the chapters that follow.
Chapter 5
Varieties and Dynamics of Visions
'hus far the discussion has centered on what might be - called pure visions or consistent visions, clearly either constrained or unconstrained. But, as noted at the outset, these are by no means the only possible kinds of visions. There are not only degrees in each vision but also inconsistent and hybrid visions. Moreover, beliefs in visions are not static. Both individuals and whole societies can change their visions over time. These changes may be sudden "road to Damascus" conversions, where a particular event reorients one's whole thinking, or the change may be more like water wearing away rock, so that one vision imperceptibly disappears, to be replaced by a changing set of implicit assumptions about man and the world. This second kind of change may leave no clear record of when or how it happened, nor perhaps even an awareness on the part of those concerned, except for knowing that things are no longer seen the same way they once were.
Some changes of visions tend to be associated with age. The cliche of radicals in their twenties becoming conservatives in their forties goes back many generations. Karl Marx predicted that the Russian radicals he met in Paris in the 1840s would be staunch supporters of the czarist regime in another twenty years-though he clearly did not expect any such conversion in his own case.
Although visions can and do change, the persistence and vitality of both constrained and unconstrained visions over a period of centuries suggest that such changes are not easy. The anguish of the apostate comes from within, as well as from the condemnation of his former comrades. Those who lose their faith but continue the outward observances, or who quietly withdraw if they can, are likewise testimony to the power of visions and the pain of change. The terms in which such changes of social vision are discussedconversion, apostasy, heresy- are borrowed from religious history, though they apply equally to secular creeds which evoke similar emotional commitments.
No comprehensive survey of visions seems possible and none will be attempted here. However, it will be useful to consider a few kinds of visions and the dynamics of visions in general. But before surveying a variety of visions, it will be necessary to define more specifically constrained and unconstrained visions.
OPERATIONAL DEFINITIONS
No theory is literally 100 percent constrained or 100 percent unconstrained. To be totally unconstrained in the most literal sense would be to have omniscience and omnipotence. Religious visions may ascribe omniscience and omnipotence to God, but that in itself constrains man, and so precludes a completely unconstrained social vision. A 100 percent constrained vision would mean that man's every thought and action are predestined, and would be equally incompatible with advocating a particular social vision to be followed.
Although the classic social visions considered here do not go to such ultimate extremes, there are still very real differences in kind between them, as well as differences in degree within each kind. Once it is acknowledged that the dichotomy between constrained and unconstrained visions is simply a convenient way to separate some portions of a philosophical spectrum from others, the question becomes one of choosing operational criteria for placing a particular range of visions in one of these categories rather than the other-and of recognizing that still other ranges of visions cannot be fitted into either category, since constrained and unconstrained visions do not jointly exhaust all philosophies of man and society.
The simplest case is when someone such as William Godwin elaborates the scope of human reason and the individual and social decisions which fall within its domain. When the vast bulk of these decisions are deemed to be amenable to deliberately articulated rationality, then there is clearly an unconstrained vision- not in the sense that man is literally omniscient, but rather that whatever limitations there are in human knowledge and reason do not affect the analysis sufficiently to become an integral part of the theory. But few writers in either vision have systematically spelled out their assumptions, and the conclusions which follow from them, as explicitly as Godwin.
Adam Smith incorporated his vision of man's limitations into his social theory explicitly in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and largely implicitly in The Wealth of Nations. Others vary greatly in the extent to which they explicitly state their vision of man or connect that vision with their social conclusions. But where two thinkers have virtually identical social analyses and advocacy, to include one and exclude the other from the boundaries of a particular set of visions on the basis of their elaboration or non-elaboration of their premises would be arbitrary. Moreover it would be inconsistent with our initial definition of a vision as a "pre-analytic cognitive act"- a set of assumptions not necessarily spelled out even in the individual's own mind.
Seeking operational definitions of the two visions means going beyond suggestive contrasts to decisive distinctions. The difference between the trade-offs commonly found in constrained visions and the solutions found in unconstrained visions is suggestive but not decisive. So too is the distinction between seeking the social good through incentives rather than by changing the dispositions of human beings- this being a special case of trade-offs versus solutions. It is not simply the seeking of trade-offs but the systemic mode of trade-offs which is at the heart of the constrained vision. A central planning commission or an activist judge can make trade-offs, but this is clearly not what the constrained vision has in mind, however congenial that may be to the unconstrained vision.
The systemic versus the deliberate mode of social decision-making comes closer to the central issue of human capability. To allow social decisions to be made as collective decisions by given individuals acting as surrogates entrusted with the well-being of others is to claim a much larger capability for man than allowing those social decisions to be whatever systemic interaction produces from the innumerable individuals exercising their own individual discretion in their own individual interests.
In short, the t
Both visions acknowledge inherent limitations in man, but the nature and degree of those limitations are quite different. The need for food, the reality of death, or the ignorance of newborn babes are of course readily conceded by those with the unconstrained vision. What distinguishes those with the constrained vision is that the inherent constraints of human beings are seen as sufficiently severe to preclude the kind of dependence on individual articulated rationality that is at the heart of the unconstrained vision. The knowledge, the morality, and the fortitude required for successful implementation of the unconstrained vision are simply not there, according to the constrained vision- and are not going to be developed, either by the masses or by the elite. The best kind of world for man as conceived in one vision is disastrous for man as conceived in the other vision. Believers in the two visions are thus foredoomed to be adversaries on one specific issue after another. Issues new to both of them- such as compensatory preferences for disadvantaged groups- evoke the same opposition between them insofar as they depend on the implicit assumptions of different visions.
The Constrained Vision
A necessary but not sufficient condition for a constrained vision is that man's intellectual, moral, and other capabilities are so limited, relative to his desires (not only for material things but also for justice and love, for example), that his desires inherently cannot all be fully satisfied. However, insofar as man's reason is not only capable of grasping this in the abstract for mankind, but also of accepting it in the concrete for himself individually, and of voluntarily adjusting to it, there is no need for social institutions or systemic processes to impose trade-offs. Trade-offs freely accepted are essentially solutions. Such a world would be like that envisioned for the future by Godwin and Condorcet. It is the unconstrained vision.
For a constrained vision, it is necessary not only that (1) man's resources, both internal and external, are insufficient to satisfy his desires, but also that (2) individuals will not accept limits on the satisfaction of their own desires commensurate with what is socially available, except when inherent social constraints are forcibly imposed on them as individuals through various social mechanisms such as prices (which force each individual to limit his consumption of material goods) or moral traditions and social pressures which limit the amount of psychic pain people inflict on each other. The second criterion- the need for systemic processes to convey inherent social limitations to the individualapplies to all mankind, including the wisest thinker, the noblest leader, or the most compassionate humanitarian. Only when all are included within the human limitations it conceives is the constrained vision complete.
Man, as conceived in the constrained vision, could never have planned and achieved even the current level of material and psychic well-being, which is seen as the product of evolved systemic interactions drawing on the experiences and adjusting to the preferences (revealed in behavior rather than words) of vast numbers of people over vast regions of time. The constrained vision sees future progress as a continuation of such systemic interactions- and as threatened by attempts to substitute individually excogitated social schemes for these evolved patterns.
The enormous importance of evolved systemic interactions in the constrained vision does not make it a vision of collective choice, for the end results are not chosen at all- the prices, output, employment, and interest rates emerging from competition under laissezfaire economics being the classic example. Judges adhering closely to the written law- avoiding the choosing of results per se- would be the analogue in law. Laissez-faire economics and "black letter" law are essentially frameworks, with the locus of substantive discretion being innumerable individuals.
The Unconstrained Vision
The operational definition of an unconstrained vision in terms of locus of discretion and mode of discretion avoids the ultimately impossible task of determining just how unconstrained a vision must be to receive this label. Even the classic unconstrained visions- such as those of Godwin and Condorcet-acknowledged human mortality and the existence of erroneous ideas, which they actively sought to banish. Success in this endeavor would lead ultimately to a society in which the necessary social trade-offs would be voluntarily accepted individually, and so become for all practical purposes solutions. Both Godwin and Condorcet acknowledged that, even in such a world, man's biological capacity to generate an ever-larger population would contain the potentiality for producing catastrophic poverty-but their crucial premise was that this potentiality would indeed be contained by rational foresight of the consequences.) There would be an abstract trade-off but a practical solution.
It is unnecessary for the unconstrained vision that every single human being individually and spontaneously arrive at this ultimate level of intellectual and moral solution, much less that they do so at the same time or pace. On the contrary, those in the tradition of the unconstrained vision almost invariably assume that some intellectual and moral pioneers advance far beyond their contemporaries, and in one way or another lead them toward ever-higher levels of understanding and practice. These intellectual and moral pioneers become the surrogate decision-makers, pending the eventual progress of mankind to the point where all can make social decisions. A special variant in Godwin is that each individual acts essentially as a social surrogate, making decisions individually but with social responsibility rather than personal benefit uppermost in his thinking. This tradition of "social responsibility" by businessmen, universities, and others implies a capacity to discern the actual social ramifications of one's actsan assumption implicitly made in the unconstrained vision and explicitly rejected by those with the constrained vision.2
Central to the unconstrained vision is the belief that within human limits lies the potentiality for practical social solutions to be accepted rather than imposed. Those with the unconstrained vision may indeed advocate more draconian impositions, for a transitional period, than would be accepted by those with the constrained vision. But the very willingness of some of those with the unconstrained vision to countenance such transitional methods is predicated precisely on the belief that this is only necessary transitionally, on the road to far more freedom and general well-being than exist currently.
Moreover, not all believers in the unconstrained vision accept even a transitional necessity for forcible impositions. Godwin repudiated any use of force to bring about the kind of world he wished to see,3 and Fabian socialists such as George Bernard Shaw considered it wholly unnecessary, at least in England.4 In both cases, it was not merely that violence was deemed repugnant, but that alternative methods were deemed effective. The greater intellectual and moral capabilities of man in the unconstrained vision permit a greater reliance on the direct creation of social results by those with the requisite moral commitment and intellectual skills. It is this locus of discretion and mode of discretion, rather than the presence or absence of violence, which defines the vision.
Although modes of discretion are related to the locus of discretion, they are distinct considerations. Fascism, for example, heavily emphasizes surrogate decisionmaking but is not an unconstrained vision, because neither the mode of decision-making nor the mode of choosing the leader is articulated rationality. It is not merely that non-fascists find fascism non-rational, but that fascism's own creed justifies decisive emotional ties (nationalism, race) and the use of violenc
Operational definitions make it more feasible to place social theories-especially complex ones-under either constrained or unconstrained visions, or to leave them out of both categories, for these twin criteria provide a more definitive method than simply surveying an author's isolated remarks on human nature. It is, after all, not simply the presence of particular assumptions but the incorporation of those assumptions into the substantive analysis which determines the nature of a vision.
By the standards of locus of discretion and mode of discretion, John Rawls' A Theory of Justice, for example, is an unconstrained vision- even though its central theme is the trade-off between equality and the need to produce material well-being. In Rawls, the locus of discretion is the surrogate decision-maker "society" which can choose the trade-off collectively and arrange results in accordance with principles of justice- these principles being derived in explicitly rationalistic terms. While the principles of justice are logically derived from the presumed preferences of hypothetical individuals, "in the original position" of the yet unborn, deciding what kind of world they would like to inhabits the locus of discretion in applying these principles is "society" or a collective "we"- that is, surrogate decision-makers.