Is freedom as non-domination a right-wing idea?

Abstract

Sean Irving’s book Hayek’s Market Republicanism: The Limits of Liberty shows that the commonly accepted reading of Hayek as a liberal thinker is mistaken, and that his political writings are best understood as belonging to the broader tradition of republicanism. The distinction is important for understanding many aspects of Hayek’s thought, and especially his rejection of social justice and majoritarian democracy. In that sense, one of the book’s more general merits is its implicit contribution to ongoing debates between republican ‘freedom as non-domination’ and liberal ‘freedom as non-interference’. Irving focuses on what he sees as a contradiction between Hayek’s chief concerns about the state as the main source of domination and his disregard for private forms of power, and especially within the capitalist firm. I argue, however, that the example of Hayek should lead us to consider a more prosaic conclusion: freedom as non-domination is a concept less useful for criticising the free market than Irving and left-leaning Republicans seem to assume.

Revisiting ancient and modern liberty: On de Dijn’s Freedom: An Unruly History

“…Thatcher famously held Hayek’s free market economics to be ‘what we believe’, but what Hayek feared as the road to serfdom was not the old concept of freedom but what he saw as a loss of spontaneity through planning (as an aside, the belief in the power of spontaneity makes a curious connection between Hayek and the revolutionary communist Rosa Luxemburg; nothing is straightforward here). It has recently been argued in this journal that Hayek’s liberalism rests on the neo-roman view of freedom (Irving, 2020; see also Richard, 2020).…”

Epistemic problems in Hayek’s defence of free markets

“…For instance, Hodgson (1991) focuses on Hayek's evolutionary theory and argues his endorsement of group selection allows for higher levels of institutional competition within a mixed economy, contradicting his free-market prescriptions (for discussion see Caldwell 2001). Irving (2019), alternatively, interprets Hayek as adopting a republican view of freedom but as underestimating private power as a source of domination (for discussion see Richard 2022). My critique focuses not on Hayek's account of freedom or evolutionary economics, but on the relationship between his epistemic assumptions and welfarist arguments.…”