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Chris Sciabarra’s Trilogy on the Dialectics of Liberty

By Winton Bates

July 27, 2024

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In his introduction to Total Freedom, the third book in his trilogy, Chris Matthew Sciabarra suggests that dialectics might help libertarians “to escape the quagmires that exist in libertarian thought.” He states: “My goal is to challenge the reader to think differently, to think dialectically; only then can we begin to engage anew the complex substantive arguments about the validity and desirability of freedom.”

In writing this review my goal is to assess the strength of the arguments that Sciabarra presents in support of his view that dialectical thinking might help us to escape from quagmires in libertarian thought.

The three books in Sciabarra’s trilogy are:

Marx, Hayek, and Utopia, State University of New York Press, 1995.

Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, second edition, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013. (The first edition was published in 1995.)

Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000.

Rather than consider the three books in sequence, the approach I have adopted here is to begin by discussing what Sciabarra means by dialectics and then to consider, from that perspective, what he sees as strengths and weaknesses of Karl Marx, Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard.

 

The Meaning of Dialectics

Before reading Total Freedom for the first time, about 20 years ago, I associated dialectics exclusively with the philosophies of Hegel and Marx. That narrow view of dialectics reflected gaps in my knowledge about the history of ideas, but I think such views may still be fairly common today.

In Part One of Total Freedom, Sciabarra considers the use of dialectics by Aristotle—whom he views as the Fountainhead—as well as Hegel, Marx, Hayek, Rand, and Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian school of economics.

The author draws mainly upon the contribution of Menger when he comes to develop his own conceptual approach. He notes that his approach was inspired by the taxonomy of research orientations developed by Menger.

There are five broad methodological orientations in Sciabarra’s classification: dialectics, strict atomism, strict organicism, dualism, and monism.

Dialectics, according to Sciabarra, “is an orientation toward contextual analysis of the systemic and dynamic relations of components within a totality.”

The author explains that “a totality” “is not simply an undifferentiated or all-encompassing whole.” He suggests it could be a two-person dialogue, an economy, or a social system. I take “the totality” to encompass everything that can be shown to be relevant in defining the system being considered. The task of defining the relevant components of the system would be intrinsic to adopting a dialectical approach in any specific context.

Sciabarra emphasizes that dialectics “is a thinking style that emphasizes contextual analysis of systems across time.” In a dialectical approach, “the aspects of a totality are understood systemically—that is, according to their spatial, or synchronic, interconnections—and dynamically—that is, according to their temporal, or diachronic, interconnections.”

Strict atomism looks at the world as if each aspect of it is separable from every other aspect. Neoclassical economics is cited as an example of strict atomism because it tends to overlook the fact that the actions of purposive individuals may be influenced by specific social and historical conditions. That can be a source of error when economists are attempting to explain complex social phenomena.

Strict organicism relies on an illusory synoptic vantage point and views all relationships encompassed within the topic under discussion as constituents of a holistic principle at work. The author suggests that, although not claiming transcendental omniscience, “Platonic synopticism, Hegelian Spirit, and Marxist historicism display some strict-organicist elements.”

Sciabarra considers dualism and monism under the same heading. “Dualism is an orientation towards analysis by separation of a system’s components into two spheres.” “Monism is an orientation towards analysis of a system’s components as manifestations of a single factor.” Monists often embrace the dichotomies defined by dualists, while advocating a one-sided monistic resolution.

The division of the social world into two spheres—the state and civil society (including the market) is an important example of dualism. Sciabarra notes that dualist statists and dualist anarchists perceive these two spheres as fundamentally opposed and propose to resolve the conflict between them via monistic absorption of one sphere by the other. One side proposes a statist solution whereas the other proposes a civil society (or anarcho-capitalist) solution.

It is far easier to accept as a theoretical principle that good thinking requires context-keeping than to execute this principle consistently.

The main advantage of dialectics over the other methodological orientations, according to Sciabarra, is that it avoids taking parts of a system out of context. He notes that some of his critics have suggested that the emphasis on context-keeping in his definition of dialectics makes it innocuous: “Who on earth could possibly be in favour of context-dropping.” His response is that it is far easier to accept as a theoretical principle that good thinking requires context-keeping than to execute this principle consistently.

The author acknowledges that use of dialectics in a project does not guarantee that the conclusions will be valid. In his words, “dialectics has been used by the followers of many false gods.” Nevertheless, in my view, the fact that some dialectical thinkers base their thinking on false premises does not weaken the case Sciabarra makes that dialectical thinking has the potential to enrich our understanding of the world.

 

Marx’s dialectical hubris

In Total Freedom, Sciabarra summarises the essence of Marxism’s achievements and failures as follows:

“Its central achievement lies in its challenging integration of Aristotelian and Hegelian insights, as applied to a systemic and dynamic analysis of society. Its chief failure lies in an intellectual hubris about the epistemic potential of the human mind to construct social institutions with virtually no concern for unintended consequences.”

I focus here on chapters in Marx, Hayek, and Utopia discussing Marx’s criticism of liberal economists, his dialectic analysis of social change, and his utopian vision.

Sciabarra notes that Marx criticised the liberal economists for “failing to grasp the essential exploitive nature of capitalist production.” In Marx’s view, the liberal economists of his time were guilty of “reifying the exchange relation as the animating principle of all aspects of the capitalist system.” Marx argued that capitalist production processes were inherently exploitive because they generated “surplus value” appropriated by the owners of capital.

Unfortunately, Sciabarra’s focus on methodological orientations didn’t require him to consider whether Marx’s views about surplus value and exploitation of workers were correct. In my view, the most charitable interpretation possible of Marx’s position is that he was misled by the labor theory of value into believing that capitalist production is inherently exploitive. Since the alleged exploitive nature of capitalism plays a central role in Marx’s dialectics, this analytical error seems to me to be an example of a dialectical thinker basing his thinking on a false premise.

I found Sciabarra’s discussion of Marx’s analysis of social change to be illuminating. This book has not changed my view of Marx’s dialectics as being materialistic, class-based and deterministic—predicting that the inexorable advent of communism would resolve the “internal contradictions” of capitalism. However, Marx’s thinking was in some respects more subtle than I had imagined it to be. For example, Marx rejected the “vulgar” materialist view of consciousness as a special arrangement of matter. He attempted to transcend the materialist-idealist dichotomy. The author explains:

“Marx views consciousness as an ontological category. Consciousness exists. It is awareness of material existence.”

Sciabarra suggests that when Marx argues that people’s “social existence determines their consciousness” he is providing consciousness with concrete specificity. As he explains, however, Marx’s claim that both the contents of human consciousness and methods of awareness are historically conditioned became problematic when Marx attempted to envisage the nature of society that would replace capitalism. Marx’s dream was that socialism could transcend social fragmentation, making it possible to dispense with market exchange and enabling “the development of the richness of human nature as an end in itself.”

Marx argued that once people had reached the highest stage of communism the social process would somehow be consciously directed by a highly efficacious collective humanity. People would achieve a rational regulation of their natural and social existence “with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, human nature.”

Although Marx presented a utopian vision of life after capitalism, he was trenchantly critical of the utopianism of socialists who endorsed the “modern mythology” of bourgeois rights and liberties. Sciabarra observes:

“Marx was fully cognizant of the limits of reason. He criticized Utopians for their belief that people can achieve collective competence instantaneously. For Marx, such collective competence emerges through historical action, not through constructivist plans based on contrived premises.”

Sciabarra suggests that Marx’s attitude towards utopianism was similar to that of Friedrich Hayek. Both argued that “Utopians internalize an abstract, exaggerated sense of human possibility, aiming to create new social formations based upon a pretense of knowledge.”

He concludes:

“Ultimately, what separates Marx from Hayek is an epistemological assumption about the efficacious potential of the human mind. Hayek rejects Marx’s historical projections for their reliance on constructivist and synoptic fallacies.”

 

Hayek’s cultural context-keeping

Marx, Hayek, and Utopia offered a novel perspective on Friedrich Hayek’s contribution to libertarian thinking. Sciabarra sums up his contribution thus:

“In a unique synthesis, Hayek integrated a classical liberal commitment to the free market, a classical conservative commitment to evolutionism, and elements of a profoundly radical, dialectical method of social inquiry.”

The first two elements in the quoted passage would not surprise anyone familiar with Hayek’s writings. Hayek was obviously a classical liberal who was strongly influenced by Scottish Enlightenment thinkers as well as by those who preceded him in the Austrian school of economics. Although he didn’t like to be called a conservative, his commitment to social evolutionism obviously entailed a conservative regard for custom and tradition.

The new and interesting perspective offered by Chris Sciabarra is the suggestion that Hayek adopted a profoundly radical, dialectical method of social inquiry. In this review I will focus particularly on the reasons he offers for considering Hayek’s methodology to be dialectical.

Sciabarra explains:

“Throughout Hayek’s writings, there is a crucial emphasis on historical and systemic context, on the complex, evolving, organic unity of the social world.”

He quotes passages from Hayek which identify organic conjunction between adaptation of individual behavior to rules of conduct which preserve communities and the survival of communities in which individuals adopt rules of conduct that are conducive to group survival. In my view, the way Hayek perceived rules of just conduct contributing to group survival is more clearly explained in the following passage from Law, Legislation and Liberty:

“These rules of conduct have thus not developed as the recognized conditions for the achievement of known purposes, but have evolved because the groups who practiced them were more successful and displaced others. They were rules which, given the kind of environment in which man lived, secured that a greater number of the groups or individuals practicing them would survive.” (Law, Legislation and Liberty, V1, 18)

Sciabarra notes that Hayek identified a deep polarity between designed and spontaneous order. He argued that deliberate efforts to bring about an arranged order must have unintended consequences because they take place within the broader context of social formations that are not the direct result of human design. He argued that constructivist rationalists—those seeking to design social institutions as though they were outside the context of history—suffered from a synoptic delusion.

In my view, Sciabarra correctly identifies what could be described as a quagmire in Hayek’s dialectical libertarianism. Hayek describes how rules of just conduct may have evolved to protect individual liberty but does not “provide a substantive ethical defence of the free society.” Some libertarians have pointed out that evolutionism can have “nonlibertarian” consequences. In Hayek’s defence I note that in recognition of problems posed by “unlimited democracy” he was willing to step into the realm of institutional design at one point to outline the characteristics of an ideal constitution. (See Law, Legislation and Liberty, V3, Chapter 17)

I concur with Sciabarra’s conclusion that the value of Hayek’s dialectical framework lies in his suggestion that genuine radicals must defend reason “against its abuse by those who do not understand the conditions of its effective functioning and continuous growth.”

 

Rand’s dialectical model of social relations

Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical is a monumental intellectual history of Ayn Rand, discussing her education in Russia and her novels, as well as her philosophical contributions. My focus here is on the dialectics of Rand’s social philosophy but I will begin with her views on individual flourishing because that provides the basis for her view of society.

Sciabarra acknowledges that Rand might not have approved of his view that she was a dialectical thinker. However, he argues that Rand’s context-keeping is a good enough reason to view her as a dialectical thinker. He observes a dialectical orientation at the foundation of Rand’s ethical system:

“She traced an internal relationship between life and value, such that neither phenomenon is possible in the absence of the other. The pursuit of values is not possible without the context provided by life, which is both the existential basis—and the ultimate value—constituting the relationship.”

It is not entirely clear what Rand meant by suggesting that life is the ultimate value. Since Rand was a follower of Aristotle, it would make sense for her to have viewed life in terms of personal flourishing and actualization of human potentialities. However, this ‘flourisher’ interpretation has been opposed by ‘survivalists’ who argue that Rand established a strictly causal relationship between virtues and survival. Sciabarra suggests that the ‘survivalist’ interpretation is fundamentally flawed because Rand was merely arguing that life and value cannot be separated from each other.

Rand argued that rationality is the basic virtue and the source of all other virtues. Sciabarra notes, however, that Rand’s emphasis on the centrality of reason does not negate the role of emotions or “the automatized integration of the subconscious.” She didn’t regard reason as the enemy of the emotions. She accepted that it is via awareness and articulation that people grasp the metaphysical value judgements that they have tacitly absorbed or articulated into their subconscious. Nevertheless, as noted by Sciabarra: “At times, Rand tended to evaluate reason and emotion somewhat monistically, purely from the vantage point of reason, paying less attention to the reciprocal effects of evaluation on cognition.”

The author offers interesting insights into what Rand meant in arguing that selfishness is a virtue. She was not intending to advocate a vulgar selfishness, which consists of sacrificing others to self. Rather, in suggesting that we must be the beneficiaries of our own moral actions, she was offering an alternative to traditional altruist and egoist alternatives.

Sciabarra notes the relationship between Rand’s endorsement of the nonaggression principle and her observation that minds cannot work effectively under compulsion or threat. To take efficacious action people must operate on the conviction that their goals are capable of attainment. Physical force is a threat to a person’s body, but it achieves a corresponding nullification of his or her mind. For Rand, “reason and freedom—are corollaries and their relationship is reciprocal.”

Rand argued that the concept of individual rights provides a moral bridge between individual ethics and social relations. Sciabarra suggests that her concept of rights is also metanormative, i.e. related to political/legal conditions. He notes that Rand’s philosophy aims for a free association of persons united by their own choice.

Sciabarra mentions that Rand sometimes insisted that “there is no such entity as society”. As he observes, however, it is undeniable that she discussed society as the product of the interactions of the individuals that comprise it. He points out that by stressing the ontological priority of individuals, Rand rejected the metaphysical basis of organic collectivism.

Sciabarra observes that Rand seemed to embrace a philosophic version of determinism that mirrors the materialist determinism sometimes espoused by Marx. She held that if you understand the dominant philosophy of a society, you can predict its course. Rand, the philosophic system-builder, hoped to be the source of a massive social transformation:

“She hoped to be the fountainhead of a philosophical renaissance that would culminate in the establishment of a society based upon the principles of laissez-faire capitalism, individual rights, and nonexploitive social relations.”

Rand envisaged that the Objectivist movement would seek to overturn the dynamics of power by sparking a revolution on each of three levels in which power is manifested: the personal level; the cultural level; and the structural level, where it would end the domination of statist brutality.

At one point, Sciabarra acknowledges “it is difficult to grasp the Randian ideal if only because today’s world is composed of many different types of people, many—if not most—of whom are not rational.” That raises in my mind the question of whether Rand’s vision of an Objectivist society is utopian, in the sense of embodying an exaggerated sense of human possibility. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any more explicit discussion of that question in the trilogy of books being reviewed here.

The author does note the claim by Milton Friedman that Rand’s “utopian” moral streak is “productive of intolerance” and suggests “such intolerance was endemic in the organized Objectivist movement.” However, Sciabarra does not agree with critics who have suggested that Rand’s vision of a totalistic revolution could translate into a form of totalitarianism.

Chris Sciabarra argues that Ayn Rand’s project “is infused with a communitarian impulse . . . that is founded on the moral authority of the individual.” He suggests that Rand offered an alternative to Marxism that, in many ways, “redeems the integrity of dialectics as a radical method by rescuing it from it from its mystical, collectivist, and statist incarnations.”

 

Rothbard’s anarcho-capitalist “constructivism”

As Sciabarra notes in Total Freedom, Murray Rothbard had a major influence on libertarian scholarship:

“No thinker enunciates the libertarian, especially the extreme anarcho-libertarian, intellectual project more explicitly than Rothbard. A brilliant and lively theorist and controversial strategist, he integrated into a coherent whole many of the disparate strands of the libertarian tradition, combining an economic defense of the market with an ethical defense of justice in property acquisition.”

As in his discussion of Marx, Hayek, and Rand, the author’s focus is on Rothbard’s methodological orientations rather than the validity of the positions he took. He mentions that his goal is to reveal the tensions that exist within Rothbard’s system.

Like Rand, Rothbard subscribed to the nonaggression principle. However, as Sciabarra points out, Rothbard argues for radical separation between personal morality and political ethics and assumes that nonaggression is all that is required of a libertarian society. Sciabarra offers support for Rand’s contrary view that the experience of political freedom is not likely to be fully efficacious in the absence of a supporting edifice of cultural and personal practices.

Sciabarra argues that Rothbard’s most dialectical insights have to do with interconnections between market and state. Rothbard endorses the view that the ruling class is the group that has seized state power and the ruled are the groups who are taxed and regulated by those in command. However, he recognizes the difficulty of separating the beneficiaries from the maleficiaries of state action. The long-term expansion of state intervention into the economy leads people increasingly to “scramble for loot.” As business relies more and more on predatory rather than productive skills, each additional act of intervention generates unintended consequences, engendering additional interventions. There is an endless quest for “victim status” among the privilege-seeking groups. The result is barbarism and social disintegration.

Rothbard’s advocacy of anarchism was based on his belief that the state is inherently parasitic. As Sciabarra explains, Rothbard believed that economists who advance arguments that public goods require collective provision are “simply engaging in a technocratic and ideological legitimation of contemporary power relationships.” In his view, minarchists—who want the role of the state reduced to defense and judicial functions—observe the way things have been done and assume their historical necessity.

Sciabarra observes that while Rothbard stresses the dualism of market and state he views the fragmented reality of moral, cultural, and structural distortions in social life as resulting from the very presence of the state. He writes:

“In one sense, Rothbard seems to be animated by a dialectical vision: the full integration of fractured social spheres. But his projected synthesis retains a monistic quality, since it requires the absorption of the ‘public’ by the ‘private,’ and the one-sided accentuation of the market principle, which comes to dominate all of social life.”

Rothbard envisages that after government ceased to exist, freely competing judicial agencies would be guided by a body of absolute law, the Libertarian Law Code, that would enable them to defend person and property from acts of invasion. He claims that his proposed system is not impractical. It faces only “a problem of human will, of convincing enough people of the rightness of the doctrine.”

It seems to me that the problem of human will has much to do with skepticism that Rothbard’s proposed system would in fact be more conducive to human flourishing than alternatives in which government continues to exist. Sciabarra notes that the jury is still out on many of the questions raised by either side of the anarchism-minarchism debate. He suggests that the “critical problem is dialectical since it relates to the interconnections of philosophy, culture, and history.”

Did Rothbard lead libertarianism into the quagmire of presenting a vision of an ideal society that many people found to be unattractive? Sciabarra doesn’t accuse him directly of having done that. He sums up Rothbard’s contribution to social philosophy as follows:

“Rothbard abstracts a single principle of nonaggression and creates a dualistic tension between theory and reality. Armed with his principled social philosophy, Rothbard stands like Archimedes, on the outside looking in. He sees state institutions at odds with human nature, as he defines it, and seeks to bridge the gap between ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be.’ That bridge that construction—that constructivism—is the essence of his Libertarian Law Code. Given the dualisms that pervade reality as he sees it, he is led towards a monistic strategy of resolution.”

Chris Sciabarra goes on to discuss the context in which Rothbard came to believe that the paleoconservative movement required a “paleolibertarian” turn within libertarianism. He argues that Rothbard’s paleo turn was problematic because “cultural conservatism cannot be a viable foundation for a free society.” Nevertheless, he concludes that Rothbard’s recognition of the importance of culture amounted to an “intellectual evolution . . . toward fully dialectical thinking.”

 

The dialectical libertarian turn

In the final chapter of Total Freedom, Sciabarra briefly surveys some of the dialectical tendencies on display within the “libertarian academy.” The survey includes dialogical models, the resurgence of Austrian economics and Randian radicalism. A more extensive survey, including a wide range of contributions by different authors, has recently been published in a book entitled The Dialectics of Liberty (see references).

Sciabarra mentions the work of Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl among those who are rethinking the foundations of libertarianism to reassert the classical conception of human beings as social actors in a complex environment. In my view, Rasmussen and Den Uyl have been able to provide a strong normative foundation for individual rights in their book, Norms of Liberty, because they have asked the right question:

“How do we allow for the possibility that individuals might flourish in different ways (in different communities and cultures) without creating inherent moral conflict in the overall structure of the social/political context—that is, in the structure provided by the political/legal order?”

People need liberty to flourish.

 

Summing up

In the Epilogue to Total Freedom Chris Sciabarra states:

“The presence of dialectical thinking within contemporary libertarianism is inconsequential . . . unless it leads explicitly to a new non-utopian radicalism, one that recognizes complexity and seeks social change on the basis of the conditions that exist.”

Immediately afterwards he goes on to note that “we must always be aware of the values that inspire us” and to explain that “the new radicals need not be afraid to proclaim boldly their dedication to free minds and to free markets and to develop both the methodological and substantive tools by which to test and validate these ends.”

That answers a concern I had with Sciabarra’s assault on utopian thinking. He does not have a problem with the kind of utopian thinking that helps us to be aware of the values that inspire us. In Marx, Hayek, and Utopia, he quotes Hayek as endorsing the kind of utopian thinking that can “make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage.”

I began this review with the goal of assessing the strength of the arguments that Sciabarra presents in support of the view that dialectical thinking might help us to escape from quagmires in libertarian thought. My conclusion is that he has presented a strong case that context-dropping has led some libertarian thinkers into quagmires. He has also made a strong case that libertarian thinkers should take account of interactions between existing political and legal frameworks, culture and cultural change, and the aspirations of individuals.

As well, Chris Sciabarra’s trilogy of books has made an outstanding contribution by helping readers to come to terms with the social philosophies of Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard, three of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century.

 

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References

Bissell, Roger E., Chris Matthew Sciabarra, and Edward W, Younkins, (eds). The Dialectics of Liberty: Exploring the Context of Human Freedom, Lexington Books, 2019.

Hayek, Friedrich A. Law, Legislation and Liberty. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.

Rasmussen, Douglas B., and Douglas J. Den Uyl, Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005.

 

 

 

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