__________________________________________________________________ Jacco van Seumeren Playful Order : A Better Metaphor for Hayek ’ s Theory of Spontaneous Order “ Here we come across another , very positive feature of play : it creates order , is order ” — Johan Huizinga ( 1938 ), p . 10 1 . Introduction . The question of the nature of social order was first seriously pondered during the Enlightenment . It only occurred with the realization that society had fundamentally changed . It was now too complex and dynamic to be outlined in the simple hierarchy of a natural or religious blueprint or in the laws of a philosopher-king . However , the early moral philosophers who were preoccupied with explaining the principles that ruled the world of man soon found that the nature of order in society was difficult to capture . The familiarity with man-made order in everyday life proved to be an obstacle for many to perceive the defining properties of social order . Our experience tells us that order ordinarily is designed by an intelligent mind and that it serves a certain purpose : it is conceived as an organization . We are thus inclined to project an anthropomorphic understanding of order on society as well . Even now , many cannot readily accept the notion that a social order is something more , or something else , than the outcome of power politics , deliberate collaborative ( democratic ) organization , or the playground of vested interests . To conceive of a new conception of social order that goes beyond the idea of an organization , the Enlightenment philosophers resorted to the use of images that appealed to the imagination . For this reason De Mandeville ( 1714 ) used the example of the ‘ beehive ’ to point to the possibility of unintentionally generated order on a complex scale . However , De Mandeville did not pursue the profound implications of his radically new conception of society . Instead , he was more interested in the scandalous ethical provocation of the discovery that private vices could produce public benefits . We have to wait for David Hume and Adam Smith to analyze the question of social order in a truly scientific way . Hume was the first moral philosopher to recognize the importance of the principle of self-organization in creating social order . He traced social cooperation back to a system of rules that govern the actions of individuals . These rules minimize conflicts of interest between them and direct all individual action to contribute ‘ unintentionally ’ to a social order that Jacco van Seumeren , University of St . Gallen , St . Gallen , Switzerland ( jacobus . vanseu meren@unisg . ch ). __________________________________________________________________ Laissez-Faire 77

__________________________________________________________________ benefits all . The guidelines themselves are artificial products of an evolutionary process that selects those rules that help people to resolve conflicts of interest between them while discarding others that obstruct mutual cooperation . About the rules proscribed by law , Hume ( 1740 : 339 ) observes that they arise , “ … from natural principles still more oblique and artificial . ’ Tis self-love which is their real origin ; and as the self-love of one person is contrary to that of another , these selfinterested passions are oblig ’ d to adjust themselves after such a manner as to concur in some system of conduct and behaviour . This system , therefore , comprehending the interest of each individual , is of course advantageous to the public ; tho ’ it be not intended for that purpose by the inventors .” Adam Smith ( 1776 ) developed the insights of his friend Hume and made some of the greatest contributions to the newly fledged science of man and society . He also found a metaphor for the principle of social self-organization that lasted : the ‘ invisible hand .’ Like Hume he applied the idea of self-organization to the genesis of social institutions but he noted that an important manifestation could be found in the market process . His profound and lucid analysis of the causal feedback effects that structure the market still forms the basis of economic theory today . At the same time ‘ the invisible hand ’, although not without problems of interpretation , turned out to be a captivating image for social self-organization . In our time Friedrich Hayek ( 1936 , 1968 ) has been the most important social philosopher to recognize that “( t ) he insight that not all order that results from the interplay of human actions is the result of the design is indeed the beginning of social theory .” 1 He acknowledges his debt to the Scottish Enlightenment in his frequent references to Hume and Smith . He also borrowed from Adam Ferguson ( 1767 : 119 ) his famous description of order in society as “ indeed the result of human action , but not the execution of any human design .” 2 Given the advances in the sciences , Hayek could push his social theory much further than his Enlightenment predecessors . He managed to support the theory of social selforganization by relating it to a general theory of behavior in complex systems . At the same time he increased its analytical depth by integrating it with a distinct view of human reason as socially embedded . In this way he was able to show the interconnectedness between the objective or structural elements in social order and the subjective world of individual action . He was , though , not entirely successful in the integration of human action and systems theory , I think mainly because of his choice for the name of his theory . Hayek chose the term ‘ spontaneous order ’ to emphasize the non-designed aspects of social order and to draw attention to its systems-theoretical causality . Indeed , he managed to describe this dimension of social order quite successfully . 1 Emphasis as in original . Earlier he had written that the “ central problem of economics as a social science … ” is “ how the spontaneous interaction of a number of people , each possessing only bits of knowledge , brings about a state of affairs … which could be brought about by deliberate direction only by somebody who possessed the combined knowledge of those individuals ” Hayek ( 1936 : 50 , 51 ). 2 Hayek refers to Ferguson , for instance , in ( 1960 : 57 ). __________________________________________________________________ Laissez-Faire 78

__________________________________________________________________ Nevertheless , his emphasis on systems theory has caused problems of interpretation as well . ‘ Spontaneous order ’ allows but little room to see or understand intuitively the scope for purposeful action in such an order . In this paper I will try to argue why ‘ spontaneous order ’ is not an adequate concept to capture the true integrating potential of Hayek ’ s social theory . It cannot do justice to the interaction and interrelation that exist between the structural causality that produces order on a systems-theoretical level , and the human actions that are purposefully directed at the level of the individual . Instead it suggests a separation of the two sides . I think we should consider an alternative metaphor that would be able to show this interdependency more successfully . I propose that the concept of ‘ playful order ’ can bring this out into the open . In play it is immediately clear to us how the systems-theoretical causality relies on the interplay of individuals , each using rules and local information to act and react to one another . In the last section of the paper I will indicate which distinguishing elements of play can also be recognized in the model of society seen as a selforganizing order . These prove to be manifold . One of the more surprising insights that the metaphor of ‘ play ’ can yield concerns the interpretation of distributive justice within a modern market society . 2 . Hayek ’ s theory of spontaneous order . society ; the rules governing the coordinating processes ; the focus on information and learning ; the extent to which such an order can be considered beneficial to its members ; the direction into which it evolves and thus its predictability ; and the ( im ) possibility of political intervention . But one essential element that Hayek identified is surely that such orders are not intended . The adjective ‘ spontaneous ’ before ‘ order ’ indicates this important aspect . The term ‘ spontaneous order ’ was probably first introduced by Michael Polanyi ( 1951 : 137 , 195 and 196 ), but it was adopted as a central concept by Hayek ( 1960 : 160 ). 3 He specified the distinction between a designed and a spontaneous order in the first part of Law , Legislation and Liberty ( 1973 : 38 ). Here Hayek associated the two kinds of orders with the Greek terms ‘ taxis ’ and ‘ cosmos ’. A ‘ taxis ’ is a man-made , or designed , order while a ‘ cosmos ’ refers to a naturally grown order produced by people who follow rules . A cosmos , “ not having been made … cannot legitimately be said to have a particular purpose , although our awareness of its existence may be extremely important for our successful pursuit of a great variety of different purposes .” 4 The quintessential example of a spontaneous order is the market . In Hayek ’ s thinking , the market is not an institution that achieves the goal of equilibrium between demand and supply , but one that creates non-intended order from the interaction of thousands of individuals , each Hayek tried to make clear a number of times what , in his view , were the essential features of spontaneous order . Some elements figure prominently : the astonishing degree of complexity of modern 3 Hayek explicitly referred to Polanyi when he first used the term ‘ spontaneity ’ in The Constitution of Liberty . 4 Emphasis as in original . __________________________________________________________________ Laissez-Faire 79

__________________________________________________________________ pursuing limited personal objectives . The social importance of the market is not that it will produce an ultimately efficient solution but that it enables cooperation between people who have no common aims in the first place . For Hayek ( 1976 : 109 ), the term ‘ market ’ itself had become so tainted with equilibrium analysis that he preferred a new word that emphasized the wider context of a self-organizing order . He proposed the not particularly evocative ( nor very successful ) term of ‘ catallaxy ’ ( exchange ) to describe “ the order brought about by the mutual adjustment of many individual economies in a market . A catallaxy is thus the special kind of spontaneous order produced by the market through people acting within the rules of property , tort and contract .” 5 Catallaxy emphasizes the element of individual interaction that stands at the heart of the market process . The market seen as a catallaxy is an institution that allows order to grow through the coordination of individual actions . The purely economic aspects that are usually associated with it are merely the means of allowing many people to pursue their own particular ends . As Hayek indicated ( 1976 : 110 ): “ The important point about the catallaxy is that it reconciles different knowledge and different purposes which , whether the individuals are selfish or not , will greatly differ from one person to another .” The social importance of the market order is not that it facilitates efficient resource allocation , but rather that it creates something that did not exist before : social order through coordination . What makes Hayek's theory so successful and what distinguishes it from other social theories that rely on systems 5 Mises had already introduced the term catallaxy before Hayek . See Mises ( 1949 , chapter XIV ). theory ( e . g . Luhmann ’ s ), is that he managed to give his theory great analytical depth through the identification of the pivotal role of information . Information and knowledge are the unifying core concepts of his social theory . They manage to link the different dimensions of the theory into a coherent whole . Hayek ’ s theory of spontaneous order has great explanatory power because it can relate the subjective categories of individual rationality , decision-making and knowledge , to the social categories of information transformation , coordination , and order . The operational links between the two levels of social theory are the rules and institutions that give individuals guidance in their thinking and acting and , at the same time , provide the systemstheoretical structure for society . This is not the only way the two levels are related . The structure of a social order is not fixed or imposed upon it from the outside — the rules and institutions are the objects of a process of cultural evolution driven by individual decision-making . The relation between society and the individual is thus recursive , reflecting the double significance of each event . Not only does social order grow from the interaction of the individual members , each following rules in the pursuit of individual subjective plans and purposes ; the very rules that they follow are the results of similar ordering processes . At the nexus of Hayek ’ s social thought we find the Janus head of information / knowledge : this double-faced core concept manages to connect the subjectivist human sciences to the objectivist theory of systems and order . One side , knowledge , observes how individuals read the social world and how they attempt to partake in it through purposeful , ruleguided , action . The other side , information , shows us how such individual ac- __________________________________________________________________ Laissez-Faire 80