New invisible hand? (was: Re: [ox-en] Re: herrschaft)
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2004 17:41:40 +0100
Hi Graham, Casi, all!
3 weeks (21 days) ago Graham Seaman wrote:
On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, Casimir Purzelbaum wrote:
The difference between a one-off reaction to a
need and the organization of life lies within the level of
consciousness. Over most parts of history this
quasi-consciousness was hidden in various myths, because people
could not grasp what they did and how to consciously organize
it... so they pictured it out of themselves and put it into
"inherited wisdom" or "god" or "commandments" or "law" or "habit"
or "tradition" etc.. And that's why this part of history has
been called pre-history of the human kind.
(I'm not sure if it helps to supplement the "need" with "desire"
and "whish"... because all of them exist on fairly unconscious
levels too, and, usually are dealt with, as if they were of
biological nature...)
----
I think this refers to both of your questions, but I'm not sure
how far I'm off the mark by your account (probably very fa...;)
Well, it definitely refers to the question :-)
But...
The classic argument from right-wing economists (eg. Hayek) as to why the
invisible hand is needed is that given the complexity of a modern society,
and the number of sub-products and levels of processing needed to create
any one product, conscious control of production would require
omniscience.
I would agree with them on that point.
And the only way to have omniscience is also to have
omnipotence. Since neither of these is actually achievable, a planning
system like that of the xUSSR is all that can be realized: they pretend to
set realistic targets, we pretend to work, etc...
It is not only achievable it is neither needed nor wantable.
My alternative hidden hand side-steps this argument; it is a
self-adjusting system, or maybe an emergent system, with actions dictated
neither by the needs of the market, nor by a Stalin-like planner. But, as
you point out, it also means that the way the overall system behaves is
not under conscious control.
And it needs not be. That is what the trick is with
self-organizational entities: The individual entity does not need to
know anything about the super-structure to be useful in it.
Similarly I think a society can be thought of: As long as everything
works ok why should someone bother about it at all?
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
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