ABSTRACT
Introduction This chapter explores some surprising and underappreciated commonalities between F.A. Hayek and Henri Lefebvre’s writings on the market. The hope is that a richer conception of the market might result – i.e. one that corrects for Lefebvre’s “anti-market bias” and Hayek’s “abstractness” – by facilitating an exchange between these two thinkers. Along with Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek is one of the two most significant figures in the Austrian school of economics. His reach, however, extends beyond Austrian economics. He has also made significant contributions to political theory and jurisprudence and has influenced complexity theory and psychology. Lefebvre is an important Marxian philosopher and sociologist who has critically explored dialectal materialism, alienation, the political aspects of everyday life, and most famously, the production of social space. He has been quite influential in urban studies, geography, philosophy, musicology, and applied sociology. At first blush, we would expect a Marxian like Lefebvre and an Austrian like Hayek to have little in common. Marxists are strong critics of capitalism. They have consistently highlighted the dehumanizing and exploitive aspects of a socio-economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and the unrestrained rule of chaotic and impersonal market forces. Capitalism, for them, is a “vampire,” attacking and disfiguring human souls as it expands into every quarter of our lives and ultimately every sphere of the globe in its never ending quest for more peoples and more territories to exploit. Its survival is contingent on its ability to conscript new victims and its modus operandi is to obscure and distort the relationships that individuals have with their labor product, their labor, themselves, and each other. Austrians, on the other hand, have an altogether different view of capitalism. For Austrians, private ownership of the means of production, the defining feature of capitalism, is simply necessary for rational economic calculation. Without it, they argue, there is no rivalry between firms over resources, and so prices which reflect relative scarcities do not emerge. Absent meaningful prices and there can be no profit and loss accounting and so no rational economic calculation. In addition to pointing out the calculation problems that a socialist state would have
to overcome, Austrians have also focused on the knowledge and incentive problems that socialist states would suffer. Rather than speaking to the potentially alienating nature of economic relationships under capitalism, Austrians have instead focused on the potential of markets to promote peaceful dealings between individuals, even between strangers. Although these differences between Marxists and Austrians seem quite stark, however, there are a number of similarities between (at least some) Austrian and Marxian approaches. Sciabarra (1995), for instance, has argued that one can find dialectical sensibilities and strong indictments of utopian thinking in both schools. Likewise, Fleetwood (1997) has argued that Austrians and Marxists have similar methodological and philosophical perspectives. Lavoie (1983), Hong (2000), and Tomass (2001) have, similarly, highlighted a number of commonalities in Marxian and Austrian theories of money. Despite having almost opposite attitudes toward the capitalist system, Hayek and Lefebvre have a great deal in common. They, for instance, shared the same philosophical enemies. Both objected to scientism and the hubris of central planners and social engineers (Hayek 1979; Lefebvre 2003a, 2003b). They also had similar conceptions of the market order. Both stressed that the market is a social space (in the language of Lefebvre) or a spontaneous order (in the language of Hayek) that is produced by the (inter-)actions of individuals competing against and cooperating with each other. Similarly, they had a similar blind spot when it came to the market. Neither paid any attention to the socially beneficial extracatallactic relationships that can and do develop in capitalist markets. A number of meaningful social relationships, however, are buttressed by markets and could not develop if markets did not exist. Paying attention to these beneficial extra-catallactic relationships is critical for at least two reasons (Storr 2008). First, economists of all stripes have been criticized by sociologists, anthropologists, and others for having too narrow a conception of the market. Although heterodox economists like Austrians and Marxists inarguably have richer conceptions of the market than their brethren in the mainstream, broadening their discussions of the market to include an appreciation for extra-catallactic relationships should lead to a better understanding of the various roles that the market plays in everyday social life. Second, recognizing that extra-catallactic interactions can occur in capitalist markets should improve their understanding of the relationship between the market and the community. It is commonplace to think of the market and the community as separate, antagonistic spheres where the growth of one means the decline of the other (Gudeman 2001) or to conceive of the market as being embedded in community and supported by social networks (Granovetter 2004). Focusing on beneficial extra-catallactic relationships augments these formulations by emphasizing that the market and the community need not be thought of as separate, competing spheres and that communal relations are also embedded within the market. Although it is not particularly surprising that the Marxist Lefebvre does not highlight these beneficial extra-catallactic relationships, it is somewhat surprising that Hayek ignored this additional “benefit” of markets (beyond efficiency
and coordination). After all, recognizing that significant social relationships can actually develop between market participants in addition to or instead of the distorted relationships that Marx believes necessarily develop under capitalism is another important argument that Hayek could have used in his defense of markets against Marx, Lefebvre, and others. Hayek might have argued, for instance, that the market not only encourages us to treat strangers as if they were honorary friends (as the term catallaxy suggests and Seabright 2004 explicitly argued) but it is also a space where actual, deep friendships can and do develop. Interestingly, it is Lefebvre’s spatial theory rather than Hayek’s spontaneous order approach that most readily accommodates a discussion of extra-catallactic relationships. Because there is so much connecting the two thinkers, I propose using Lefebvre’s spatial theory to extend Hayek’s spontaneous order thinking in a way that opens the door to a discussion of extra-catallactic relationships. The next section, thus, focuses on some of their important differences and, then, on some surprising similarities in their approaches. The following section discusses the importance of paying attention to beneficial extra-catallactic relationships and some possible objections to extending both Hayek and Lefebvre’s discussions of the market to include them. The final section offers concluding remarks.
