On Hayek and Smith on the/a Great Society

Regular readers may enjoy Lea Cantor’s (Cambridge) review in Mind of Neglected Classics of Philosophy: Volume 2 (OUP, 2022), that I edited. It’s a very generous review, especially pleasing because such heterogeneous (specialisation-transcending) collections rarely get reviewed.

Last week (recall), I noted that in many of the classics of twentieth century liberalism, ‘open society’ lacks a clear definition, and where it has been defined it’s not always attractive. Since, Cyril Hédoin (here) has extended my argument in a way I find very congenial by drawing on Constant and Tocqueville to claim “that political freedom must be one way or another promoted within the open society.” So, I have to expand on my substantive argument. However, today’s post is more historical and exegetical in character.

In particular, I noted that back in 1973, Hayek was responsible for identifying “that spontaneous order which Adam Smith called 'the Great Society', and Sir Karl Popper called 'the Open Society'” in Volume 1 of Law, Legislation and Liberty: Rules and Order (p. 2). Now, ‘great society’ is a rather important term in the history of neoliberalism. It’s a key concept in Lippmann’s The Good Society, which gave rise to the Lippmann colloquium and the Mont Pelerin Society. Lippmann himself credits Graham Wallas’ (1914) The Great Society: A Psychological Analysis. Interestingly enough, the preface of that book, in turn, traces the ideas back to a course Wallas taught while visiting at Harvard where Lippmann joined in discussion. Hayek is familiar with both works, and credits Wallas for reviving the term, ‘great society.’

Now, Smith uses ‘great society’ in three perhaps four different senses. In the first kind, ‘great society’ has a cosmopolitan texture. It means something like ‘humankind.’ We see that use in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (hereafter: TMS) 6.2.2.4, “We do not love our country merely as a part of the great society of mankind: we love it for its own sake, and independently of any such consideration.” (p. 229 of the Glasgow edition. This was added to the sixth 1790 edition of TMS.) This paragraph uses ‘great society’ three times and it is clearly a broadest possible category of humans. Smith uses ‘great society’ in this sense also at TMS 6.2.3.3 (p. 235) and Wealth of Nations (hereafter: WN) 5.1.f.30 (p. 771 in the Glasgow edition), where he seems to have the Stoics, in particular, in mind.

In all these cosmopolitan instances Smith talks of “the great society” with the definite particle. Wallas’ own conception is also cosmopolitan in character. But rather than treating it in moral terms, he is describing a new sociological order. So, when Wallas introduces his topic, he makes clear that he is speaking of the 19th century integration of the world’s population as an effect of modern technologies:

One effect of this transformation is a general is the change of social scale. Men find themselves working and thinking and feeling in relation to an environment, which, both in its world-wide extension and its intimate connection with all sides of human existence, is without precedent in the history of the world. (p. 3)

By contrast, and this is the second kind, when Smith uses ‘a great society,’ (with the indefinite particle) he is not referring to all of mankind, but rather to a large society or a great state. For example, In WN Smith writes, in an important passage, “[T]he third and last duty of the sovereign or commonwealth is that of erecting and maintaining those publick institutions and those publick works, which, though they may be in the highest degree advantageous to a great society, are, however, of such a nature, that the profit could never repay the expence to any individual or small number of individuals, and which it, therefore, cannot be expected that any individual or small number of individuals should erect or maintain.” (WN 5.1.c.1, p. 723; for nearly identical phrase, see WN 4.9.51, p. 688.) This is, in fact, a passage quoted by Hayek in The Road to Serfdom and The Constitution of Liberty (without ‘great society’ eliciting further comment from Hayek in context). Similar enough use can be found at WN 5.1.g.12, p. 795.

A third kind of use, closely connected to the second, is the following: Smith treats ‘a great society’ as nearly synonymous with an advanced/extensive division of labor (that is, what he defines as a commercial society at WN 1.4.1, p. 37). For example, Smith writes, “What takes place among the labourers in a particular workhouse, takes place, for the same reason, among those of a great society. The greater their number, the more they naturally divide themselves into different classes and subdivisions of employment.” (WN 1.8.57, p. 104) See also the Introduction to Book II (paragraph 4), p. 278. Sometimes, it’s not clear whether Smith means the second or third kind of use (see WN 4.2.3, p. 453)).

I have marked off a final/fourth use to discuss separately. It’s a passage in Smith that Hayek is fond of quoting. It’s, for example, the epigraph to chapter 2 (COSMOS AND TAXIS) of Volume 1 of Law, Legislation and Liberty: Rules and Order (p. 35). And it is very popular among neo-Hayekians. I quote:

The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder. TMS 6.2.2.17, pp. 233-234 (emphasis added).

Let’s leave aside what this passage means for the role of system in Smith. Smith clearly treats arranging different members of a great society as a bad thing to imagine. But in so far as a great society picks out anything here, it’s not a spontaneous order, but a directed order of a particular state.

I stress this last point because of the four kinds of use of ‘great society’ in Smith only the third kind may be thought of as a spontaneous order (not a term Smith himself uses). In both the second and fourth kinds of us usages, Smith treats a ‘great society’ as something that can be at least somewhat directed from above. Given that Hayek quotes the salient passages it’s somewhat peculiar he associates a great society with a spontaneous order (or, as he sometimes does, a spontaneous order of spontaneous orders).