The Texture of Society

Mr. Foley, a partner in Souther, Spaulding, Kinsey, Williamson & Schwabe, practices law in Portland, Oregon.

Society refers to an interrelation­ship or association between human beings. In its true sense, the con­cept postulates a sharing, exchang­ing, voluntary kind of fraternity, although in a convoluted sense the term has been employed as synonymous with the coercive force of the state. Yet the state differs marked­ly from society: the former remains forceful, all-inclusive, difficult to leave, involuntary, as compared to the peaceful, dynamic, mobile and voluntary structure of society. The state encompasses a society; it does not form one.

Society exists by reason of the need for, and desirability of, human intercourse and exchange—exchange of goods, exchange of ideas, exchange of values, exchange of warmth and understanding. It de­veloped because of the nature of man, not in spite of his essence. Man, by nature, exhibits a need for relationships with other human be­ings; he does not tolerate alienation well. To be certain, civilization bears witness to an occasional her­mit, to the self-reliant mountain men of the American west, but by and large mankind produces crea­tures who interact with their fellows in such a manner as to pro­duce a higher, more creative life.

Despite the absence of certain knowledge, one can conjecture the beginnings of society in the remote past. The urge to reproduce im­pelled mating and the family unit; the need for the communal warmth of social exchange occasioned groupings of families into tribes. Two basic drives, fundamental to the nature of mankind, fostered the genesis of society and state: (1) the cluster of persons enabled the em­bryonic group to repel intruders and predators; (2) the assembly of persons fostered trade of ideas and products in an elementary kind of specialization and division of labor. The growth of knowledge forged ever more complexities into the civilization, but these two basic drives still undergird society.

Enter, The State

Couple this simplified model with another element of essential human nature, the tendency to power, and one immediately perceives the early intertwining of society and state. The state gained ascendancy, in ru­dimentary form, when the strongest in the encampment ex­erted their strength to compel or restrain the actions of others within the clan. Power and the lust to might pre-existed the relatively re­cent concept of the state; the philo­sophy of the state supplied a justi­fication for the use of force which in­heres in the sinister side of all human creatures.

The state, in its elemental con­figuration, encompassed some per­sons not sure they wanted it. Man became chained to the abstraction of state by birth, family, residence, annexation, or compelled fealty, rather than by choice or reason. One does not volunteer for citizenship: the law thrusts that status upon in­dividuals because they happen to inhabit a given territory, or because of their parentage, or by force of arms. Moreover, the law imposes obligations of allegiance and sup­port upon unwilling residents and often renders severance difficult and impractical.

One cannot disavow allegiance to most states without actual emigra­tion and probable forfeiture of basic human rights to life, liberty, proper­ty and choice. And migration to foreign shores often carries with it the concomitant command of that state to offer obeisance or forfeit rights. In short, statehood imposes a leash upon a citizenry, willing or unwilling to accept fetters in vary­ing degrees, with legally-sanctioned options to lengthen or shorten the restraint.

Society vs. State

Contrast society, as that term is accorded understanding. Society should not constrain individual members unwilling to meet its demands. It depends upon voluntary association, not coerced allegiance to outmoded symbols or irrational codes. One lives as a citizen because of fear of reprisal should he disavow citizenship: he fears forfeiture of rights or deporta­tion. One lives as a member of society because he chooses to inter­mingle with others in that setting: he computes the value he will derive from his association and determines to pay the cost attached to his choice. He may opt out of society without legal penalty, although he may incur the social result of ostracism and alienation. He can adopt, or adapt to, a new or different society without paying dues or saluting a flag or mouthing a creed.

Mark well that society does not offer a free ride; it only lacks (or should lack) legal restraints normal­ly attendant to a coercive state. One may wish to join in society yet be deprived of that enjoyment by the free choice of other members. A cannot insinuate himself into the society of XYZ unless X, or Y, or Z, or any or all of them, accept him, in whole or in part. The freedom to enter society must work identically to all visitors: each receives like helpings of free choice. Free choice means liberty for all to assess value and to choose relationships. Noth­ing could be more incompatible with liberty and disconsonant with reali­ty than forced friendship.

Something in Common

Friendship, or any human rela­tionship, depends in large part upon the perception of the parties and the linkage of their values. One can enter into a friendship in a real sense, although separated by miles of space and eons of time, but no meaningful relationship develops in the absence of interwoven values. I think I would count myself as a friend of Leonard Read, although a continent separates our physical persons, and I believe that I possess a bond with Frederic Bastiat, although he perished almost a century before my birth. In each case our values link us together despite physical separa­tion. The ancient truth residing in the saying, “we have something in common” permeates any analysis of friendship and society. Circumstances can place individuals in close proximity, prompting an observer to predict a glowing rela­tionship and inducing surprise when no such affinity develops. The reason: nearness, without a sharing of values, results in disinterest.

This truth explodes a common fallacy underlying much of the misuse of law so prevalent today: the employment of organized force as a tool to implement social engineering schemes, euphemisti­cally termed “achieving social justice.” Social justice serves to disguise the forceful intervention by one man or group of men into the lives of others; those occupying an ascendant political or legal position impose their subjective values upon others who would prefer another course of conduct. Thus analyzed, “social justice” fails to comport with true justice, respect for free choice; ¹ indeed, the phrase provides an apt example of a contradiction in terms—justice focuses upon in­dividual action, social justice upon concerted coercive conduct.

Nonetheless, the proponents of social architecture persist in deny­ing human nature when it conflicts with their particular dreams and schemes. Thus come programs to bus children away from their neighborhoods, to “integrate” swimming pools, to deny “neces­sary” licensure to private clubs which maintain a selective member­ship, to compel hiring quotas`’ in higher educational institutions, and a host of disciplinary or affirmative action activities. Each of these plans involves goals of varying degrees of laudability: man should treat other men humanely, as creatures of inherent worth, not as objects to be used.

Yet, the social engineers fall prey to the very quality they decry in others. In their zeal to assure social justice they treat all persons, the privileged as well as the coerced, as unworthy of merit unless they ap­plaud (or at least willingly par­ticipate in) the master design. In their very effort to guarantee a fair treatment of people as people, they in fact deal with the noncomplying citizen, the dissenter, as an object.³ Legislation cannot guarantee friendship or moral treatment in the absence of common values, any more than it can turn iron into gold, or men into women. Human nature establishes the criteria and the perimeters of social and societal interaction; compulsion induces, at best, an uneasy truce, and at worst, internecine warfare. Human beings dislike being forced against their will into a course of action: note the age-old tendency of the child to resist parental suggestion as to friendship or mating; indeed, as many parents have discovered to their dismay, filial disparagement of a prospective suitor or comrade tends to produce a result directly contrary to the desired goal, driving the child and compatriot more closely together. Coercive legisla­tive acts produce a similar effect, resulting in the alienation of per­sons or groups which, if left alone, might individually discern a con­fluence of values.

A Voluntary Aggregate

Society, then, in final analysis, must represent a linkage of in­dividual actors who share common values. Since friendship and social intercourse necessarily flow from voluntary action, society, properly comprehended, exists as a volun­tary aggregate. Formed to perform mutually desirable tasks and to facilitate a willing exchange of goods, services, and ideas, the concept of society serves its purpose adequately when it allows the melding of the subjective values of each of its participants.

State and society coexist in a sort of ambivalent condition, an am­biguity occasioned in large part by the inaccurate employment of these discrete terms as synonymous. The state represents the political monopoly of organized force; socie­ty consists of a voluntary ag­gregate of individuals within the boundaries of the state. A state may contain several societies; a society receives no necessary hin­drance from state territorial divi­sions. The two concepts lack necessary identity in space, in time, and in content.

However, state and society each describe imperative functions in relation to human existence and ac­tion. Accurately defined and ra­tionally analyzed, state and society complement each other and reflect human nature. By nature, man possesses conflicting drives: to create and to coerce. Society fosters the creative nature, while the state constrains the coercive tendency. Creation to the zenith of individual ability is patently impossible in a world of predators; one finds it dif­ficult to concentrate upon produc­tive activities when he must main­tain a constant wariness for those who would prey upon his person or effects. The state, limited to the duty of resisting aggression and settl­ing disputes which arise between in­habitants, makes possible the vol­untary interchange which charac­terizes society.

Texture and an Apparent Dichotomy

Societies possess textures, like bread or steel. These textures serve to describe the human relations which permeate the particular society under discussion. Such descriptive textures appear in sub­tle, almost infinite, gradations on a spectrum arrayed from the free or open society on the right to the restricted or closed society on the left. The amount of human creativi­ty, happiness, and meaning depends upon the particular position of the society in that spectrum. Individual man enjoys greater well-being the more nearly his particular societal association approaches the ideal of openness or freedom.

A cursory glance reveals an ap­parent blurring of the terms in this description of the texture of socie­ty. By apt definition, society represents a voluntary or open aggregate. Yet this ideal definition suffers from the extravagances of the state which intrudes into social affairs by means of its sole at­tribute: force. Society remains free and open so long as the state re­tains its natural and appropriate character as policeman and judge; society becomes increasingly closed as the state assumes such addi­tional tasks as planner, social engineer or distributor of property. These adjunct functions destroy the symmetry of the state/society essence and so pervert the meaning of “society” as to require the use of descriptive adjectives (open, closed) to illuminate and convey the speaker’s meaning.

The Essence of the Free Society

One essential attribute distinguishes the free society from a closed society: a free society rests on contract, not coercion. Men voluntarily live in proximity and in relative harmony; they exchange products as their needs dictate; they receive the benefits of interper­sonal relationships; they rest their bargains upon the binding nature of human promises, intentionally made.

The harmonious nature of the free society should not delude one into belief in the existence of some earthly Utopia. Friction follows in­dividuals, be it internally caused by man’s fallibility, or externally occa­sioned by the interaction with neighbors (resulting, incidentally, from the same root cause). This fric­tion emanates from the necessary clash of subjective values held by countless human actors: each un­ique individual consists of differing ideas, talents, and ambitions; none of us enjoys total identity in es­sence. These differences inevitably come into conflict with one another; A prefers a sylvan glade, B a brick warehouse; the same plot of ground cannot be both at the same time.

The vitality of the free society derives not from the nonexistence of disputes but rather from the means of adjusting individual dif­ferences of opinion. The clash of subjective values means adjust­ment and accommodation, not war­fare and bloodshed. People living in a free society tend to settle most disputes voluntarily and in an amiable fashion; those few cases which cannot be compromised by the parties reach private arbitra­tion or public halls of justice. And, most members of society willingly abide by the final decision of the private arbitration or public judge, even if they feel genuine dissatisfac­tion with the results.

The strength of the free society appears in the nature of choice under that system. A closed society constricts choice to the limits of the minds of a relatively few persons; an open society imposes no barrier to the evolution of the human character. Constriction in the closed society develops in two ways.

First, the political system employs coercion to inflict the sub­jective values (and the choices emanating there from) of A upon B, of the planner upon the landowner, of the social architect upon the citizen. Thus, at least in part, the closed or limited society moves in the direction of A’s choices alone whereas the open society receives the alternatives derived from A +B choices. Quantitatively fewer choices result even if A is far superior (the usual justification) to B in his choice-making ability because A cannot make B’s choices better than B himself.⁴ As a prac­tical matter, history and empirical fact teach all but the most obtuse among us that political A’s do not represent the highest and best brainpower in any event: those who base their philosophy on the con­cept of power seldom if ever com­prehend its antithesis: moral choice.

Second, the remaining choices and talents deteriorate qualitative­ly in a restricted society. Where A usurps B’s right to choose in one field, B’s creativity falters in other arenas: the welfare recipient becomes so befogged by his cons­tant dole that he loses all desire and ability to become productive once again; the homeowner restricted in his land use by the county commis­sioners becomes chary of “rocking the boat,” of calling attention to himself, for fear of political reprisal; the brilliant creator of widgets raked by the burden of excessive taxation finds it more personally profitable to turn his business over to the government and take a vaca­tion instead of continuing his creative efforts for insufficient return.

How the Market Functions

By some natural but inexplicable phenomenon, the intertwining of thousands of subjective values of millions of distinct human actors produces better material and social results than all the planning of all social engineers or government administrators in history.⁵ The very friction which afflicts any society, free or closed, lubricates the market mechanism of the free society. The market—a voluntary agency of the aggregate—settles most disputes, and it decides them in such a manner that abrasion vanishes, creativi­ty increases, and a better (more goods, services, and ideas at a lower unit cost) end result obtains.

One may find it instructive to ponder just how the market mechanism adjusts differences and employs the scarce resources of the earth and the fleeting resources of the human mind and body. Every exchange requires a cost: no one receives something for nothing; the concept “exchange” by definition describes a transfer from A to B with a related passage of something in return from B to A.

In the open society, each actor evaluates his own needs and desires and measures the cost he is willing to pay for the particular item sought. The actor, more truthfully than any other person, can deter­mine his subjective values, his in­ternal scale of preferences; he reveals this preference in the man­ner in which he employs his life in the market, in many instances in a much more articulate manner than if he had been asked whether he preferred coffee or cocoa. That which each person trades (property, created value) represents an exten­sion of his very life; the trade reveals the importance of life to the actor and the concordance of trades in society more nearly depicts the amalgamation of subjective values in that society than can be achieved by any other method.

The market mechanism may be described as “dollar democracy.” The individual trades his created value for a medium of exchange—the dollar—which forms his stockpile of stored labor or trade goods. He votes on every occasion when he spends his dollars for some good or service or idea. The vote does not perform a narrow choice between two or three political par­ties, each promising to use force (the state) to achieve given ends. In­stead, the user chooses between (votes for or against) alternatives beyond measure: he not only chooses whether to spend his dollar for Leslie Salt or Morton’s Salt, but whether to spend his dollar for salt, or sugar, or soybeans, or army surplus, or sweaters, or whether to spend it at all or to save it (invest it in the production of capital or con­sumer goods for a future return of greater value to him). Again, the dollar vote seems to reflect subjec­tive values more accurately than a political vote: even those who opt for all manner of coercive national spending orgies seem likely to be wise shoppers at the supermarket.

Given the flexibility of the market, open societies reveal an open, porous texture where ideas and products flow freely and without discord. It produces better choices and a greater number of choices. It attends to the unan­ticipated need and the unexpected result, free from the stultifying, smothering tendency of the con­stricted alternatives of a closed society which presents a shiny if brittle facade like steel which can­not be penetrated with ease or ac­curacy.

The Disciplinary Fallacy

Description of society in market terms compels exorcism of the devil fallacy that the discussion concerns material matters alone and ex­cludes spiritual considerations. We discourse here upon a philosophy of life, a social theory, the manner in which man should treat his fellow man, the path to the goal of human happiness, creativity and value. Such a subject deserves inter­disciplinary comment; it does not belong in the exclusive province of the economist, merely because men and women rooted in the free market tradition have carried the banner for such a long time and in such a grand manner. Dr. Mises termed his discipline praxeology, the scientific study of human ac­tion,⁶ and indeed that aptly touches the essence of the investigation.

Yet, application of the appellation “scientific” obscures the philoso­phical aspects of the devotion, for the study of the free society and the proper role of the state involves a melding of science and philosophy. Science describes what is, philosophy delineates what ought to be. The praxeological, or scien­tific, aspects of the study of man­kind reveal certain natural rules of order, of cause-and-effect, which in­variably apply to human action: for example, free men thrive, slaves wither.

Overemphasis on the scientific realm conceals the moral and ethical aspects of human behavior. The study of human action is, at its core, a moral or philosophical endeavor which counts among its inquiries such questions as the in­dividual’s ethically proper relation­ship to other human beings. In sim­ple terms, the scientific and the moral norms coalesce in the ex­amination of society and state, for society concerns voluntary human relationships and the state depends upon involuntary action.

Thus, the so-called Austrian vanguard of the freedom movement has produced paradoxical results. On the one hand, the eminence of thinkers like Menger, Roepke, Mises, and Hayek bring credence to the ideas espoused and attract hordes of new disciples regularly. Their contributions to the study of individual conduct in the market realm deserve far-ranging applause and their way of life merits emula­tion. They have refined old ideas and developed new donations to freedom’s fund of knowledge.

On the other hand, the formal academic credentials and chosen subjects of commentary of such giants tend to misrepresent the real nature of their devotion. Listeners and readers fail to appreciate the broad ethical base undergirding the study of society and state; they con­sign the speaker or writer to the confining classroom (or boardroom) of economics, without cognition of the impact of the study upon such diverse, but interrelated categories as history, psychology, philosophy, sociology, epistemology, axiology, and the like.

The proper role of the state is to foster and protect the free society. The free society consists of an open and voluntary aggregate of numer­ous individuals who freely seek the benefits of exchange with their fellow man while retaining untram­meled ingress and egress to the group. The strength of the free society lies in its open grain, its flexibility, its lack of centralized planning, for it is only through such a ductile mechanism that growth becomes possible and mankind can meet and deal with the dynamics of living. The task of all who favor the free society and fear the excesses of the state transcending its ap­propriate functions is twofold:

(1)  learn the rudimentary concepts of state and society and their distinguishing characteristics;

(2)  speak truth to those who wish to listen, no matter the speaker’s station in life or formal discipline.

 

—FOOTNOTES—

¹See Foley, Ridgway K., Jr., “In Quest of Justice”, 24 Freeman ³01-³10 (May 1974).

²Roche, George Charles III, The Balancing Act (Open Court, LaSalle, Illinois 1974).

^³Recall Kant’s dictum: “So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as means only.” Kant, Im­manuel, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals (The Liberal Arts Press, New York 1949) 46.

⁴For a further exposition see, Foley, Ridgway K., Jr., “Choice or Chains”, 24 Freeman 199-204 (April 1974(.

⁵1974 Nobel Prize Winner (Economics) Pro­fessor Hayek has made this observation in the past. See Hayek, F.A., “A Case For Freedom,” 10 Freeman ³2, ³4 (1960).

⁶Mises, Ludwig von, Human Action (³rd rev. ed., Henry Regnery Company, Chicago, 1949) ³.