ABOUT CONSTRUCTIVISM

GUILLERMINA SUTTER SCHNEIDER

Gerald Allan Cohen was a marxist political philosopher at All Souls College, Oxford. On Why not socialism? he expressed that «the market is intrinsically repugnant…Every market, even a socialist market, is a system of predation.»Cohen would prefer to move away from a market-ordered society toward a society organized like a camping trip, where people contribute to the fishing, cooking, and cleanup out of generosity and a concern for the good of the community. Food, treats, and opportunities for relaxation and recreation would be equally distributed on the basis of a principle of solidarity.

Why did Cohen consider the possibility of organizing society? Even thinking about this possibility is as constructivist as what Cohen presents.

According to Hayek, constructivism consists in the belief of man’s capability to create and modify institutions of society and civilization in order to satisfy their desires and wishes. This conception of society creation withstands that man totally comprehends the environment and feels capable of modifying it. Therefore, the complex order of society would be due to human design.

On The Errors of Constructivism Hayek states that rules, which guide society, are not the result of deliberate election of man in order to achieve a goal but a process of selection in which groups with a more efficient order displace or imitate others. This group of rules not only includes legal, moral and custom rules, but every value that governs society. As constructivists only consider deliberately created rules, it leaves behind the ones that can be actually observed but have never been put down in words and rules that despite having been established with words, they express roughly what it has been observed in the action. By no means, not every regularity of behaviour can be thought as an order applicable to the whole of society.

On the other hand, it is possible to think about the possibility of the existence of a society as Cohen wishes. In a free society people can voluntarily associate with others aiming at their own happiness lacking restrictions. If a group of people voluntarily associate and establish their own rules similar to the ones that Cohen presents, a little community where food, treats and opportunities for relaxation and recreation are equally distributed on the basis of a principle of solidarity can be thought coexisting with other ways of organization. In order to manage communal property, ElinorOstrom proposes: a) defining limitations to resources in order to preserve them easily, b) resource dependence so as to avoid the diminution of it and the creation of rules and c) procedures with incentives for a responsible use and punishment for overuse.

Whenever individuals associate voluntarily, different ways of organization are capable of coexisting in a free society. Unless these associations and the creation of rules are carried out freely, the existence of the community will be possible and desirable.

Guillermina Sutter Schneider, estudiante avanzada de Licenciatura en Economía, ayudante de cátedra de Macroeconomía I en la UNR, miembro fundador del Grupo Joven Fundación Libertad, y miembro fundador y responsable del área de Comunicación del Partido Liberal Libertario de Santa Fe.