The Road to Serfdom against The Great Transformation: A Comparison with Reference to Unintended Consequences

Year 2019, Volume: 5 Issue: 2, 135 - 154, 30.11.2019

Hüseyin Özel

https://doi.org/10.51803/yssr.592786

Cited By: 1

Abstract

Bu çalışma, 1930’larda Avrupada faşizm ile sosyalizmin gelişimini açıklama amacını güden iki yapıtı, Karl Polanyi’nin Büyük Dönüşümkitabı ile Friedrich A. Hayek’in Kölelik Yolu kitabını, “niyetlenilmemiş sonuçlar” argümanı çerçevesinde karşılaştırma amacı gütmektedir. Genel olarak bireysel eylemin nasıl olup da bir sosyal düzene, ya da onun yıkılışına yol açtığını dikkate alan bu argüman, sosyal teorinin ayrılmaz bir parçası olarak kendini göstermektedir. Bu bakımdan bu iki yazarın aynı argümanı, birbirine tümüyle karşıt sonuçlara ulaşan iki farklı anlayışı geliştiriken kullanmaları ilginç görünmektedir. Bununla birlikte, çalışmada, ilk olarak bu argümanın, özellikle Hayek’te etkin bir sosyal düzeni yaratma “görevini” yerine getiremediği, buna karşılık Polanyi’de daha somut bir düzeyde, sosyal düzenin çelişki ve kurumsal gerilimlerini ortaya koymada daha başarılı olduğu ileri sürülmektedir. Yine de, çalışmanın ikinci bir iddiası, niyetlenilmemiş sonuçlar argümanının kendi başına bir sosyal teori oluşturmak için yeterli olmadığı ve iki düşünür arasındaki temel farkın, insan ve özgürlüğü hakkındaki benimsedikleri “vizyonlar” olduğu ileri sürülmektedir. 

Keywords

Karl Polanyi, Friedrich A. Hayek, niyetlenilmemiş sonuçlar, Büyük dönüşüm, Kölelik Yolu

The Road to Serfdom against The Great Transformation: A Comparison with Reference to Unintended Consequences

Abstract

The present paper attempt at comparing two opposite accounts, developed to explain the same phenomenon, the rise of fascism and socialism in Europe in the 1930s, namely, Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, and Friedrich A. Hayek’s The Road of Serfdom, in reference to the notion of the “unintended consequences.” The idea of unintended consequences, postulates, as an answer to the problem of “order” that even though the actions of individual human beings are carried out on their intentions, they will have some consequences that were not intended by any of these individuals, is taken as a reference point because both Polanyi and Hayek use this idea as an important ingredient of their social theories. However, it is argued in the paper firstly that the idea of unintended consequences cannot fulfil its promise, namely to explain the social order, especially in Hayek’s case. In Hayek, it remains essentially a mere abstraction and reduces to a functional argument based on the “representative individual” whereas in Polanyi it was conceived in terms of interactions between individuals who belong to different sections of the society, and thus it is helpful in presenting the institutional strains and contradictions of capitalism on a more concrete level. But, secondly, it is argued that it is not the differences in the use of the idea of unintended consequences per se but the difference between the respective visions of these two thinkers, concerning human beings and freedom, which actually constitutes the essential, unbridgeable gap between their social theories.

Keywords

Karl Polanyi, Friedrich A. Hayek, Unintended Consequences, Great Transformation, Road to Serfdom

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