Spontaneous order

Spontaneous order is the spontaneous, unplanned emergence of order out of supposed or actual chaos . Examples of systems of spontaneous order are the evolution of life on earth, language , Wikipedia , free market economy , ecosystems and the universe .

history

According to Murray Rothbard , Zhuangzi (369-286 BC ) first used the concept, long before Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Friedrich Hayek . According to Zhuangzi, order results spontaneously when things are left to their own devices. Proudhon believed that once political functions were replaced by industrial functions, market transactions alone would create a social order. According to Proudhon, freedom is more a prerequisite for spontaneous order than a consequence. Freedom is “not the daughter, but the mother of order”.

Scottish Enlightenment thinkers delved into the market as a system of spontaneous order. Adam Ferguson described the market as “the result of human action, but not of design ”.

The Austrian School , led by Carl Menger , Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, elaborated the concept further. Although many representatives of the Austrian School and other liberal thinkers like Milton Friedman agreed with Proudhon's position, they did not champion anarchism as firmly as Rothbard; many libertarians were more attached to minarchism .

In thermodynamics , spontaneous order follows from the broken symmetry between the principle of entropy and the maximum entropy method , which reflects nature's preference for the path of least resistance.

Examples

Markets

Many classic economists, like Hayek , see the market economy as a mechanism to achieve spontaneous order. The market enables a “more efficient distribution of the resources of a society than any kind of design.” They assume that the spontaneous order caused by markets is superior to the planned economy due to the efficient processing of information . Central, abstracted statistical data is a poor substitute for the details of an individual situation. Planning intervention is more likely to lead to unintended consequences. The market aggregates the information and knowledge of individuals more efficiently with the help of the price mechanism . This idea is illustrated by Adam Smith's concept of the invisible hand .

Game studies

The concept of spontaneous order is also used within ludology . As early as the 1940s, the historian Johan Huizinga wrote that “the important instinctive forces of civilization have their origin in myth and ritual: law and order, trade and profit, craft and art, poetry, wisdom and science. All are rooted in the soil of the game ”. Hayek later wrote that "A game is a clear example of a process in which the observance of generally accepted rules by elements with different and competing interests results in order".

anarchism

Anarchists hold that the state is an artificial creation of the ruling class and that spontaneous order follows the elimination of the state. According to this view, spontaneous order would include the voluntary cooperation of individuals. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Sociology, "the work of many symbolic interactionists is largely compatible with the anarchist view, seeing society as a manifestation of spontaneous order."

Sobornost

The concept of spontaneous order was also used in the work of Russian Slavophiles , especially Dostoyevsky , and is related to the concept of sobornost . This took Tolstoy as the basis of the ideology of Christian anarchism . Lenin used the sobornost as the basis of his reforms to designate a unifying force of the obshchina in pre-Soviet Russia.

See also

• Emergence
• self-organisation
• Stigmergy
• Emergent order
• Sociocracy
• anomie
• Heterarchy

Web links

• Norman Barry: The Tradition of Spontaneous Order. Library of Economics and Liberty. Volume V, No. 2, 1982, pp. 7-58. Arlington, VA: Institute for Humane Studies.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Murray Rothbard: Concepts of the Role of Intellectuals in Social Change Toward Laissez Faire In: The Journal of Libertarian Studies. Vol IX No. 2, autumn 1990, (PDF; 1.3 MB).
2. ^ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: The Federal Principle.
3. ^ Proudhon: PJ Proudhon's Solution to the Social Problem. New York: Vanguard, 1927, p. 45
4. ↑ Adam Ferguson ( Memento of the original from May 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on The History of Economic Thought website 
5. ^ Adam Ferguson: An Essay on the History of Civil Society. T. Cadell, London, 1767.
6. ↑ SP Mahulikar, H. Herwig: Conceptual investigation of the entropy principle for identification of directives for creation, existence and total destruction of order. In: Physica Scripta. 70 (4), 2004, pp. 212-221.
7. ↑ Hayek cited. Christian Petsoulas: Hayek's Liberalism and Its Origins: His Idea of ​​Spontaneous Order and the Scottish Enlightenment. Routledge. 2001. p. 2
8. ↑ Hayek cited. David Boaz: The Libertarian Reader. The Free Press. 1997. p. 220
9. ↑ Gordon Marshall , Diane Barthel, Ted Benton , David Bouchler, Joan Busfield, Tony Coxon, Ian Craib, Fiona Devine, Judith Ennew, Diana Gittins, Roger Goodman, George Kolankiewicz, Catherine Hakim , Michael Harloe, David Lee, Maggy Lee, Mary McIntosh, Dennis Marsden, Maxine Molyneux , Lydia Morris, Sean Nixon, Judith Okely, Ken Plummer, Kate Reynolds, David Rose, Colin Samson, Alison Scott, Jacqueline Scott, Nigel South, Oriel Sullivan, Bryan Turner, Richard Wilson, Anthony Woodiwiss [ 1994]: Gordon Marshall (ed.): Oxford Dictionary of Sociology ( English ), 2nd edition, Oxford University Press , Oxford 1998, ISBN 0-19-280081-7 , pp 19-20.
10. ↑ Harold Joseph Berman: Faith and Order. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1993, ISBN 9780802848529 , p. 388. Restricted preview in Google Book Search