Date: Mon, 06 Nov 1995 07:57:39 -0800
From: knoWWare-AT-mindlink.bc.ca (Tom Walker)
Subject: HAB: Legitimation crisis/Eternal recurrance


I wonder if there isn't something faintly "Deweyian" about Habermas' work? 
Or perhaps a slight wavering between critique of the myth of progress and 
instantiation of a more articulate version of the myth?

I'm looking at F.A. Hayek's _Road to Serfdom_ as a kind of ideal expression 
of the currently fashionable call for competition, entrepreneurship and self 
reliance. And I must say this at the outset: Hayek's vision is far more 
humane and well reasoned than that of his neo-liberal disciples who 
uncritically uphold the free-market as a cure-all (while fervently pleading 
their own special interests, exemptions and subsidies -- but that's another 
story). 

Hayek's book, although intended as a repudiation of socialism, presents an 
anticipatory critique of the neo-liberal frenzy. Vulgar neo-liberalism 
throws these reservations overboard as just so much cumbersome ballast.
 
Generally speaking, the main opposition to the neo-liberal dogma comes from 
defenders of the social gains of the welfare state. I would describe this 
defensive tendency as fundamentally Deweyian, in that the writing of John 
Dewey could be taken as an ideal representation of its main tenets. Again, I 
have to caution that Dewey's writing is far more subtle and nuanced than the 
faith of his followers (whether or not they know they're his followers). I 
would also have to confess to being Deweyian, at heart -- but I'm struggling 
against it. 
 
Deweyians and Hayekians agree on one major point: that there is an 
underlying progressive factor in human history. They disagree over how to 
define this progressive factor. Where Hayekians would point to competition 
between individuals as the fountain of progress, Deweyians would emphasize 
collective knowledge as the repository of progress. For Deweyians, this 
accumulated human knowledge facilitates social and economic planning. The 
preceding is, of course, a simplification but it is a useful one. 
 
In a head on contest between Hayek and Dewey, Hayek wins. Even if we accept 
complaints about media bias (which I do), it hardly matters. Hayek would win 
on any conceivable "level playing field." To put it crudely, this is because 
when we meet goods in the market place, they put on a happy face. We don't 
know, and rarely care, if they've been made by child slave labour or by 
seven merry dwarves. The same doesn't hold for government services (in a 
democracy) because the services themselves, and the conditions under which 
they are produced, are explicitly contested through the political process. 
 
Hayek argues that "collectivism" inevitably leads to totalitarianism, hence 
the title of his book, _The Road to Serfdom_. But here's the scary part that 
Hayek and his admirers have conveniently missed: if we accept Hayek's 
critique of collectivism and if we apply his argument consistently to the 
competitive road, then we end up with equally totalitarian implications. 
Hayek's universe of sovereign individuals is as one-sided a figment of the 
imagination as any collective. If collectivism is a road to serfdom,  
competitive individualism is a superhighway. 
  
Followers of Hayek sneer at the element of wishful thinking inherent in 
social welfare schemes. And their skepticism has a ring of truth. There _is_ 
an element of wishful thinking. There is, however, an element of wishful 
thinking in ANY fantasy about the inevitability of human progress, including 
the neo-liberal one. If the Deweyians lean a bit more toward the wishful 
part, the Hayekians lean toward the thinking part at first, but end up every 
bit as wishful -- and just a shade more hypocritical and predatory.
 
But if both Hayek and Dewey are tainted, what is the alternative? A full 
blown "critique of progress" is a non sequitur in a debate over the best 
means to achieve economic and social progress. To criticize the myth of 
progress is to make oneself "incomprehensible", "irrational", "obscure", 
"pessimistic", "impractical", etc., etc., etc. So a way must be found to 
contest the myth of universal progress on something like its own ground. 
 
Stories of local, but enduring, progresses (with an emphasis on the plural) 
are "something like" the myth of universal progress but different enough to 
allow an opening for human agency -- _real_ human agency, not the 
neo-liberals' heroic puppetry. Unlike the myth of progress, these multiple 
stories don't supply us with all the answers ready made. But they help us 
ask the questions about things that really matter. 

Somehow, though, I don't think the multiple stories can stand on their own 
as a "diversity". This is the "identity politics" strategy of divide and be 
conquered.
 
There is no one, all encompassing "true story" (the relentless march of 
progress) against which these multiple stories can be evaluated. However, it 
is still possible to tell another story -- a "*meta* narrative" -- that 
makes unified sense of the muliple stories without thereby advancing any 
claim for its own superior truth. This construction of metanarratives is the 
task of narrative policy analysis (and I'll take this opportunity to mention 
the book by Emery Roe called _Narrative Policy Analysis_). 
 
Having said all of the above, I now have to challenge myself as to the 
difference between what I've said and some platitudes about "thinking 
globally and acting locally." I guess the difference would be that narrative 
policy analysis advocates acting locally, _thinking locally_ and, in the 
process, patiently disclosing how the self-styled "global" stories possess 
neither global nor local omniscience. 
 
This approach may be called a sadder but wiser one. Sadder, in that 
advocates of more compassionate social and economic policies must give up 
their claim to superior insight into the inner workings of historical 
progress. Wiser, in that the claim to superior insight wasn't winning any 
battles anyway.




Shalom,

Tom Walker
knoW Ware Communications
knoWWare-AT-mindlink.bc.ca
http://mindlink.net/knoWWare/