Utopia and Social Structure: A Brief Introduction

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edavismail Posted: Mon, Apr 18 2011 6:32 AM

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It is useful to differentiate four aspects of social structure: the (1) personal, (2) socio-ontogenetic [organismic], (3) cultural, and (4) societal.  The socio-ontogenetic or organismic, via bodily changes and affectual motivations, operates at the deep-structural level; cultural tradition, via institutions, functions at the meso-structural level; and society, via various organizations and corresponding obligations, functions at the surface-structural level of social dynamics.  Persons, as the wellspring of human action, are situated bodily, culturally, and socially.  The aspects loosely correspond to Max Weber's taxonomy of motivations: the socio-ontogenetic, as we have already mentioned, corresponds to affectual motivations; the cultural-traditional corresponds to traditional motivation; while the societal corresponds to value-rational motivation. 

These aspects also reflect the organizing principles of past and present societies: the socio-ontogenetic, tied to the family, corresponds to the kinship relations of early societies; the cultural-traditional corresponds to the traditional domination of feudal or patrimonial societies; and the societal corresponds to the organic solidarity of modern societies.  It is dubious to propose stages of social development, but we can see that the latter are preceded by the former.  Patrimonial and feudal societies, as instances of traditional domination, are rooted in kinship relations.  Organic solidarities, as instances of extended order, are rooted in the ongoing application of principles that emerge from traditions.  The aspects tend to favor certain relationships or orientations: the personal, tied to the self, favors the I or me relationship; the socio-ontogenetic favors the we relationship; the cultural-traditional favors the relationship with the predecessor (across the dimension of historical time); and the societal favors the relationship with the contemporary (across the dimension of social space).  Most importantly, as I will elaborate below, the socio-ontogenetic, cultural-traditional, and societal aspects correspond to what Jürgen Habermas has proposed as the reproductive processes of the life-world: (i) the socialization of succeeding generations, (ii) the propagation of cultural traditions, and (iii) the integration of groups via preferences, goals, or norms.

Within some of the ideal-typifications offered below, agents act according to the principle of collective individuation: every person should respect every person as one who should actively pursue happiness (http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/24094/414485.aspx#414485).  This entails that they do not exercise bad preference; in other words, they do not exercise choices in violation of the principle of collective individuation; but it does not exclude the possibility of mistake or error.  In everyday language, "mistakes" or "errors" can result from bad preference; we capture these "mistakes" or "errors" under the umbrella term of negligence.  For example, a reasonable person would turn on the lights of their car before driving at night, while a neglectful person might forget to turn on their lights, thereby resulting in an collision.  When a person acts according to the principle of collective individuation, she is never negligent; but she may still engage in other forms of mistake or error.  This is enormously important because mistakes or errors entail the possibility of learning and progress in the Hayekian and Popperian sense.  Even the utopian forms of social order outlined below allow for ongoing adjustment and relative improvement.  Likewise, even where there is no bad preference, there remains a need to clearly define relations of body, property, and authority so as to avert conflict.  Even under ideal social-systemic conditions, there remains the need for the law.  Under the guise of the rule of law, the ideal polity provides a legal framework based on the principle of liberalization within which adult agents achieve their goals, and in so far as the polity has a goal, it should be limited to that. 

Social integration results from mutual understanding and intersubjective coordination addressed in terms of the lifeworld; system integration results from functional interdependencies and unintended consequences that transcend the lifeworld.  In this sense, the lifeworld and system perspectives retain distinction (http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/24096/414599.aspx#414599).  As I shall elaborate below, the utopian forms of judge-made law, market, and civil society involve both social and system integration.  Nevertheless, as we shall see, when we understand the lifeworld in terms of collective individuation rather than merely communicative action, we can no longer sharply distinguish the symbolic from the material reproduction of the lifeworld.  We find the first approximation of this insight in Ludwig von Mises's recognition that all human actions—communicative, affectual, traditional, value-rational, and instrumental—involve the application of means toward ends.

(2) Socio-ontogenetic Orders

The male and female genitalia make it evident that human beings have evolved among one another, not in isolation.  Sexuality, as an affectually motivated behavior, is typically social yet phylogenetically based.  Here, I will briefly address how socio-ontogenetic orders pertain to (i) the socialization of succeeding generations. Procreation, of course, as a particular manifestation of human sexuality, has typically brought about the agents who have participated in this process.  A highly relevant socio-ontogenetic manifestation is the human capacity for language and communication.  What the well-known linguist Noam Chomsky has termed the ‘language acquisition device’ is an inherited, phylogenetic potential that anticipates a social environment and which allows children to rapidly acquire the language of their given social environment. By analogy, one can understand the more elaborate culture acquisition device that anticipates a pre-existing network of knowledge (beliefs) and preferences (effective rules or norms) including, for example, recipes for handling materials, and which allows children to quickly absorb this surrounding culture. This inherited ability to take over the social stock of knowledge and preferences through the process known as primary socialization is what gives social agents the capacity for tradition.

A closely related socio-ontogenetic manifestation is the family.  Via the meaningful actions of parents or appointed guardians, knowledge and preferences pass between generations. To be sure, the family has become more fluid in modern society; it no longer strictly corresponds to the phylogenetic form, but it remains a significant agent of socialization and mediator of cultural traditions.  As children grow older they often acquire well-differentiated stocks of knowledge through educational institutions outside the family, but our aim here is to emphasize the function of socio-ontogenetic orders. Still, the developmental process points to the closely related phenomenon of the life cycle, which in its utopian form consists of (a) childhood, (b) adolescence, (c) maturation, and (d) old age.  The life cycle constitutes the deep-structural level of individual biographies, and it thereby functions as an over-arching constraint. Like the family, the life cycle can be manifested in countless variations, according concrete conditions and decisions; it is in this sense that one speaks of individuation.

Together, the culture acquisition device, family, and life cycle structure (i) the socialization of succeeding generations—a primary reproductive function of the lifeworld.  Socio-ontogenetic orders constitute the deep-structural background for social dynamics as general, psycho-physiological constraints.  They do not completely or mechanistically determine human actions, yet they naturally condition them through bodily changes and affectual motivations.  In this sense, socio-ontogenetic orders are actualized though human action, but not merely via human design.

(3) Cultural-Traditional Orders and the Predecessor

Cultural traditions are the outcome of interactions among various persons in diverse situations over time.  Edmund Burke (1729-1797) understood tradition as the inter-generational transmission of preferences and knowledge; yet Burke also acknowledged that culture taken over via tradition might or might not be in conflict with humanity’s wider instinctual nature. In other words, he understood that one’s second nature—which consists of institutionalized and habituated knowledge and preferences—might or might not be in conflict with one’s first nature—which consists of one’s affectual predispositions (Canavan 1981, 660-62).  Accordingly, Burke overcame that prejudice in Enlightenment thought which presupposed instinct and tradition to be inherently in conflict and which led several scholars to fail to respect that cultural traditions might exist in the service of instinct itself.  The richness of diverse culinary traditions and the subtlety and severity of forms of courting and romance ... a good meal and a few pages from the Kama Sutra ... reflect that instinct and tradition are not necessarily in conflict. However, it is still possible for one’s second nature to beexceedingly in conflict with one’s first, just as it is possible for active preferences to be in conflict with the principle of collective individuation. 

Judge-made law is a representative example of traditional order.  Rather than legislating a dictate or mandate that enframes society within an overarching plan, each judge within the ideal-typical system of judge-made law addresses the specific case at hand. Moreover, he-she addresses this case in the light of an elaborate system of previous and relevant cases by applying these cases to formulate a concrete verdict or judgment. In this manner, each judge differentiates, cultivates, and preserves an elaborate network of precedents where these precedents are relevant to her case at hand.  In the utopian form of judge-made law, each judge does not formulate her decisions merely on the basis of previously existing cases; rather, her verdicts embody the principle of collective individuation in the light of previous and relevant cases.  Accordingly, each judge critically applies the knowledge and preferences expressed in previously legitimate cases into her own decisions and judgments.  Because judges who have presided over previous cases will have applied insight expressed in still earlier cases, each judge who subsequently draws upon previous cases will have drawn tacitly upon the wisdom expressed in still earlier cases as well, etc.  In this manner, a system of precedents emerges which is in general agreement with the principle of collective individuation, and which is the result of several and various judges rather than the dictate or mandate of any single legislator.  In the transitional form of judge-made law, the judge also applies previous and relevant cases according to the principle of collective individuation.  However, she decides over and against previous cases when they are in conflict with the principle of collective individuation.  As one can see, in all types judge-made law is a distinctly social process, and therefore the system of case law or judge-made law requires the capacity of several and various persons rather than the ability of merely a single mind.  Judge-made law does not enframe society within an over-arching plan.

As a representative traditional order, Judge-made law is analogous to tradition in general.  In the ideal type of transitional tradition, each agent engages in a continuous dialogue with the institutionalized knowledge and preferences that she has absorbed or taken on from her predecessors by means of cultural tradition. One cannot legitimately criticize the new only because it is the new nor criticize the old merely because it is the old; rather, one must cautiously address traditional knowledge and preferences because they might or might not be in conflict with the principle of collective individuation, and one must cautiously address non-traditional preferences and knowledge because they might or might not be in conflict with the principle of collective individuation.  However, simply because cultural knowledge and preferences can at times be addressed by conscious decisions does not imply that they have been, should be, or even can be fully mastered by them.  Active preferences and communicative actions can influence and even change formerly tacit constraints—whether bodily, cultural, or societal—but they can never completely replace them.

From the standpoint of the principle of collective individuation, traditions should not be approached as though they were something to be engineered from the outside according to an over-arching plan, and therefore traditions should not be approached as though they could be reconstructed through a Maoist “Great Leap” (Johnson 1992, 550-52). Such approaches illegitimately disturb the gradual process of cultural transmission by violently imposing one system of knowledge and preferences at the expense of another; in other words, they illegitimately subvert legitimate manifestations of tradition. Instead, (ii) preservation, propagation, and transition should be manifested endogenously by every adult agent according to the selectivity, relevance, and attention that her legitimate happiness entails.This means that cultural knowledge and preferences, as reflected in case law or judge-made law, should be addressed by agents within the situation or “case” at hand—which might be a specific instance of consensus formation in language.  An agent could be like Václav Havel’s dissident-greengrocer (39), who refrains from putting up slogans and stops voting at elections, because he concludes that they are a sham; it could also be a conscientious agent who, as a conservative, upholds established traditions of “living in truth” (44, 94-95).

Because everyagent has the socio-ontogenetic capacity to absorb or take on pre-existing complexes of knowledge and preferences, within the utopian form of cultural tradition, everyagent who seeks to uphold the principle of collective individuation critically cultivates, applies, and preserves cultural traditions which facilitate collective individuation—that is, those diverse networks of knowledge and preferences which exist in agreement with the principle of collective individuation and which can legitimately constitute each agent’s second nature—and each agent thereby respects those (3) cultural traditions that have evolved in the service of life itself.

(4) Societal Orders and the Contemporary

Certainly one is justified in questioning how a generally favorable, macro-social order could emerge if each person's knowledge and preferences were directed—according to the principle of collective individuation—primarily toward the micro-social task of legitimately bringing about happiness.  This question appears especially justified when, due to the influence of much modernistic thought, one equates a generally beneficial, social-systemic order with an order that must be constructed according to an over-arching plan—a “social good”, “national good”, or “common will” (Arendt [1958] 1989, 38-49; Hayek [1952] 1979, 141-182).  In such a case, one might ask, just how could it be possible for a macro-social order to emerge without an overarching plan? Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian School, provided the rudiments to the answer when he placed the following question at the center of his institutional-economic analysis:

How can it be that institutions which serve the common welfare and are extremely significant for its development come into being without a common will directed toward establishing them?  (Menger [1883] 1985, 146)

Insofar as one seeks to bring about collective individuation in a manner that involves the body, property, or authority of another person, one (a) engages in communicativeaction in order to obtain this other agent’s explicit or implicit consent or (b) assumes the consent of the other on the grounds of previous communicative action which has established this consent.  Communicative action, as a social manifestation of active preference, involves a degree of variability in the institutional-economic environment, yet the possibility of reaching consensus emerges according to institutional-economic, social-systemic constraints.  (We here must acknowledge the possibility of externalities; I will address this below.)  If the consent of the other has not been achieved, then—on the basis of the principle of collective individuation—non-intervention in her body, property, and authority constitutes a legitimate constraint.  If one has not established the other's consent with regard to her body, property, and authority, then they are simply not available. 

Where one does achieve the other's consent through a concrete face-to-face or we-relation, one incorporates the basis of this consent—the consent condition—into the formulation, articulation, and enactment of one’s projects.  For example, one borrows Lisa's book under the consent condition that it be returned the following Sunday morning.  Through such obligations and commitments, one’s preferences (and relevance structures) and knowledge (and stock-of-knowledge) reflect the consent conditions of others.  Accordingly, one will not deliberately destroy the book or throw it into the garbage.  More importantly, the others whom one has encountered have already enacted and formulated their projects and consent conditions in a manner that acknowledges, respects, and incorporates the consent conditions of those others whom they have previously encountered or have expected to encounter.  Lisa checked out the book from a library, and the book loan only lasts till Sunday.  One borrowed the book because one is writing an article that must be submitted by following Wednesday.  Again, those other persons whom they have previously encountered have already formulated their projects and consent conditions in a manner that takes into account the consent conditions of those other persons whom they have previously encountered or have expected to encounter, etc.  For example, the library belongs to a university, and a professor there has the book on call, so the library refused to renew Lisa's loan; the professor is expecting the book to be available the following Monday. 

By defining and bringing about her happiness in a manner that respects every other as one who should actively seek happiness, each agent intentionally brings about integration between and among the knowledge and preferences of specific social agents; yet because those others whom others have encountered have already integrated their knowledge and preferences with others whom they have previously encountered or have expected to encounter, each person also unintentionally merges his-her knowledge and preferences with others whom these others have previously encountered, etc.  Accordingly, one who engages in communicative action unintentionally dissipates knowledge and preferences that reflect the consent conditions of agents whom she has rarely or never directly encountered; and thereby one's actions and interactions tacitly incorporate an elaborate, dynamic, and relatively anonymous network of specific consent conditions—via aggregated and mediated obligations, commitments, and interlocking expectations—of which he-she could not possibly be explicitly aware.  Social and system integration are inextricably linked.

Furthermore, collective individuation entails coordination between the authority, body, and property of every participating agent. Because one's interactions incorporate the consent conditions of every other whom one has directly encountered, and one's actions and interactions thereby unintentionally incorporate the consent conditions of others whom one has rarely or never directly encountered, each agent exercises his-her actual authority, directs his-her actual body, and applies his-her actual property in a manner that intentionally and unintentionally incorporates the consent conditions of other agents.  Hence, within the utopian form of civil society, symbolic and material reproduction of the lifeworld are inextricably linked.  Such a complex and dynamic embodiment of consent conditions could not be fully grasped by any individual consciousness; this is simply because one’s actions always already participate within it and would always already be incorporated within it; and one would have to achieve a breadth of knowledge and exercise a capacity for understanding more inclusive than that of one’s own in order to fully comprehend a social-systemic process which incorporated one’s own (Hayek [1952] 1979, 158-159).  Nevertheless, it is precisely through the unintentional distribution of knowledge and preferences that reflect the concrete situations of every social agent that (3) societal orders emerge; they can be legitimate orders that are the result of human interaction, yet which are not the result of a “common will” or “collective will” that has been consciously directed toward establishing them.

The market is a representative example of societal order.  In the ideal-typical market for goods and services that emerges according to the principle of liberalization, each agent must continuously adjust his-her projects according to the projects of other market agents whom she has directly encountered or has expected to encounter.  Insofar as an instance of exchange does not entail the intervention by one agent in the body, property, or authority of another agent against this other agent’s consent, such an instance of exchange must involve the following, rule-based process:

(i) Agent X originally owns good b or can bring about the product of service b in a manner that does not entail intervention in the body, property, or authority of another agent against this other agent’s consent.

(ii) Agent Y originally owns good a or can bring about the product of service a in a manner that does not entail intervention in the body, property, or authority, of another agent against this other agent’s consent.

(iii) Agent X prefers the ownership of good a or the product of service a over and above the ownership of good b or the product of service b.

(iv) Agent Y prefers the ownership of good b or the product of service b over and above the ownership of good a or the product of service a.

(v) Agent X gives the ownership of good b to Agent Y or performs service b for Agent Y under theconsent condition that Agent Y gives the ownership of good a to Agent X or performs service a for Agent X.

(vi) Agent Y gives the ownership of good a to Agent X or performs service a for Agent X under the consent condition that Agent X gives the ownership of good b to Agent Y or performs service b for Agent Y.

The basis of this process is commonly known as the market principle (Mises [1949] 1966, 194-198), and through these instances of exchange each agent acquires the ownership of a good or the product of a service that, at the time of consensus, he-she values with more esteem by foregoing the ownership of a good or the product of a service that in itself, at the time of consensus, he-she values with less esteem.

Because a price-offer is a market agent’s consent condition for the exchange of a given good or the performance of a given service, each agent within the ideal-typical market formulates and articulates her own price-offers in a manner that takes into account the price-offers of other, relevant market agents.  At the same time, her price-offers respect the prior consent conditions she has established in previous instances of consensus formation.  In the formulation of his-her own price-offers, for example, an automobile manufacturer (or firm) attempts to take into account the price-offers of those other market agents (or firms) who bring about relevant services, parts, or materials. In order to produce automobiles, the automobile manufacturer typically purchases goods, such as tires, wires, and spark plugs, that have already been produced earlier in the production process by other market agents.  In this case, these other market agents (suppliers) will themselves have already taken into account the price-offers of still other relevant market agents who had earlier supplied them with still other more basic goods and services, such as readily available metals and plastics, which they had needed in order to manufacture their products, etc. 

Originally, the potential automobile manufacturer attempts to take into account which price-offers are or will be acceptable to potential retailers or consumers, who themselves will take into account the price-offers of still other automobile manufacturers; and if this potential automobile manufacturer (firm) assumes or expectsthat the price-offers acceptable to these potential retailers or consumers are or will be inadequate for its purposes (projects), then this potential automobile manufacturer may partially or completely refrain from producing automobiles (Skousen 1990, 134). Likewise, if a potential supplier of a more basic yet relevant part or service, such as tires, wires, or spark plugs, assumes or expects that the price-offers acceptable to potential automobile manufacturers later in the production process are or will be inadequate for its purposes, then the potential supplier of this part or service may also, partially or completely, refrain from producing this part or service, etc.

Where a market agent has refrained from demanding or producing—that is, preferring within legitimate constraints—one good or service, he-she will likely demand or produce other goods or services (which may be previously unimagined goods or services [such as a new gadget] or future goods or services [in the form of investment or savings]).  In such cases, this elaborate and dynamic social-systemic process will take place with respect to these other goods and services, thereby dissipating consent conditions with respect to these other goods and services, etc.  Through intentional adjustment and re-adjustment of one’s own consent conditions according to the consent conditions of other market agents, and through communicative course-of-action types such as (a) advertising, (b) bargaining, and (c) contracting, each market agent intentionally and unintentionally dissipates information regarding the desirability and availability of various goods and services. Advertising, understood as an ideal-typical course of action, communicates to others one’s general desire for exchange (Mises [1949] 1966, 320-322); bargaining establishes each agent’s concrete consent conditions for an exchange; and, where legitimate instances of exchange are possible, contracting fixes each agent’s detailed grounds for an exchange.  These communicative acts, atthe same time, unintentionally dissipate consent conditions—whether obligations or commitments—previously established by the participating agents as well as consent conditions established by previously encountered agents, etc., which thereby function in subsequent instances of communicative action as tacitly acknowledged, societal possibilities and constraints. 

The societal structure of the market will spontaneously reflect this intentional and unintentional exchange of obligations and commitments.  Clearly, such a complex and dynamic system of specific price-offers (consent conditions) could not be fully grasped by any individual consciousness; again, this is because one’s actions and interactions would always already participate within it and be incorporated within it as well, and one would have to achieve a breadth of knowledge and exercise a capacity for understanding more inclusive than that of one’s own in order to fully comprehend a social-systemic process which incorporated one’s own.  However, it is through the unintentional distribution of knowledge and preferences that a market system can emerge: a social order which is the result of consensual interaction, but which is not the direct result of a deliberate human design.

Because the principle of collective individuation prohibits the intervention by one agent in the body, property, or authority of another agent against this other agent’s consent, organizations and firms that emerge from legitimate social processes—of which the free market, tied to pecuniary motivations, is only a particular instance—must reflect the selectivity, relevance, and attention of those specific agents who establish and support them. Of course, these organizations and firms, with their manifold obligations and commitments, will themselves emerge amidst socio-ontogenetic (organismic), cultural, and societal constraints.  Here, an organization or firm is understood as a group of individuals who fulfill a common end, aim, or goal; and this goal may well be spiritual or aesthetic, as in the instance of a temple or gallery. Within the utopian form of civil society, numerous groups of individuals establish or sustain various organizations and firms only in so far as the general interest of any given organization or firm legitimately serves as a means toward the happiness of all persons who establish or sustain this organization or firm. In this way, the diverse, collective forms of life intentionally and systemically harmonize with individual motivations and identities. 

For these reasons, an organization or firm will rarely, if ever, involve the participation of every agent within the given nation or society, and the existence of an organization or firm will rarely, if ever, entail intervention within the body, property, or authority of every agent within the given nation or society. This is why it is most often intellectually and ethically dangerous to address a nation or society as though it were or should be a single organization or firm; and this is, of course, what Václav Havel refers to when he writes that ”the essence of life is infinitely and mysteriously multiform, and . . . cannot be contained or planned for, in its fullness and variability, by any central intelligence.” (Havel 1992, 62). It is not a coincidence, therefore, that at the onset of dysfunctional, mass-totalitarian societies, public officials typically take on the role of parents—as a communist “mother” or fascist “father”—while many citizen-“children” look to these officials for guidance or welfare (Klima [1990] 1994; Stevens 1983, 118-139); in this way, they conspire to conceive of society as a single “household” rather than as an elaborate network of various households, organizations, and firms (Arendt [1958] 1989, 39-40).  However, a nation or society is most often a dynamic complex of relationships between and among various organizations and firms—in the words of Friedrich Hayek, a catallaxy—rather than a single “economy” in the strict sense of this latter term, which unfortunately suggests an over-arching household or firm (Arendt [1958] 1989, 28-49; Hayek [1967] 1984c, 367-368).  Furthermore, within the ideal social-systemic condition, this network nevertheless forms a legitimate and harmonious macro-social order that allows every adult agent to actively bring about his-her happiness. Through concretely embodied instances of consensus formation in language, legitimate interactions facilitate coordination within the wider social-systemic condition. Each agent, through piecemeal and selective interactions, intentionally and unintentionally (iii) integrates preferences and knowledge that reflect the specific consent conditions of various other persons. Societal spontaneous orders emerge according to the principle of collective individuation through each agent’s attentiveness to concrete situations; they are not the direct result of an over-arching plan, and they therefore cannot be properly understood as though they were a single household or firm (Menger [1883]  1985, 193-196; Hayek [1937] 1948).