A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles

by Thomas Sowell

  Table of Contents

  PART I: PATTERNS

  PART II: APPLICATIONS

  Preface Xi

  1: The Role of Visions

  2: Constrained and Unconstrained Visions

  3: Visions of Knowledge and Reason

  4: Visions of Social Processes

  5: Varieties and Dynamics of Visions

  6: Visions of Equality

  7: Visions of Power

  8: Visions of Justice

  9: Visions, Values, and Paradigms

  Notes

  Index

  A CONFLICT OF VISIONS

  RELATED BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  The Vision of the Anointed

  The Quest for Cosmic Justice

  Knowledge and Decisions

  On Classical Economics

  A CONFLICT

  OF VISIONS

  Ideological Origins of

  Political Struggles

  Thomas Sowell

  To my wife Mary, with love

  Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.

  Bertrand Russell

  CONTENT S

  Preface Xi

  PART I: PATTERNS

  1: The Role of Visions 3

  2: Constrained and Unconstrained Visions 9

  3: Visions of Knowledge and Reason 36

  4: Visions of Social Processes 69

  5: Varieties and Dynamics of Visions 102

  PART II: APPLICATIONS

  6: Visions of Equality 133

  7: Visions of Power 156

  8: Visions of Justice 192

  9: Visions, Values, and Paradigms 230

  Notes 265

  Index 307

  Preface to the 2006 Edition

  'his is a revised edition of my own favorite among the books I have written- mainly because it addresses a fundamental question that seldom gets the attention it deserves: What are the underlying assumptions behind the very different ideological visions of the world being contested in modern times? The purpose here will not be to determine which of these visions is more valid but rather to reveal the inherent logic behind each of these sets of views and the ramifications of their assumptions which lead not only to different conclusions on particular issues but also to wholly different meanings to such fundamental words as "justice," "equality," and "power." Although this is in one sense a book about the history of ideas, it is also very much about our own times, for this conflict of visions is as sharply contested today as it has been over the past two centuries.

  Two other books of mine do seek to examine the validity of different visions- The Vision of the Anointed and The Quest for Cosmic Justice- but that is not the task in A Conflict of Visions. Together these three books might be considered an informal trilogy, though each was written to stand alone. However, I cannot claim to have stood alone when preparing this revised edition, for my two assistants Na Liu and Elizabeth Costa have made major contributions in ferreting out errors and inconsistencies and in preparing the computerized work for publication.

  Thomas Sowell

  The Hoover Institution

  Stanford University

  Preface to the 1987 Edition

  conflict of visions differs from a conflict between contending interests. When interests are at stake, the parties directly affected usually understand clearly what the issue is and what they individually stand to gain or lose. The general public may not understandand indeed may be confused precisely because of the propaganda of the contending parties. But such public confusion is the direct consequence of the clarity of the interested parties themselves. However, when there is a conflict of visions, those most powerfully affected by a particular vision may be the least aware of its underlying assumptions- or the least interested in stopping to examine such theoretical questions when there are urgent "practical" issues to be confronted, crusades to be launched, or values to be defended at all costs.

  Yet visions are not mere emotional drives. On the contrary, they have a remarkable logical consistency, even if those devoted to these visions have seldom investigated that logic. Nor are visions confined to zealots and ideologues. We all have visions. They are the silent shapers of our thoughts.

  Visions may be moral, political, economic, religious, or social. In these or other realms, we sacrifice for our visions and sometimes, if need be, face ruin rather than betray them. Where visions conflict irreconcilably, whole societies may be torn apart. Conflicts of interests dominate the short run, but conflicts of visions dominate history.

  We will do almost anything for our visions, except think about them. The purpose of this book is to think about them.

  Thomas Sowell

  The Hoover Institution

  Stanford University

  PART I: PATTERNS

  Chapter 1

  The Role of Visions

  ne of the curious things about political opinions is how often the same people line up on opposite sides of different issues. The issues themselves may have no intrinsic connection with each other. They may range from military spending to drug laws to monetary policy to education. Yet the same familiar faces can be found glaring at each other from opposite sides of the political fence, again and again. It happens too often to be coincidence and it is too uncontrolled to be a plot. A closer look at the arguments on both sides often shows that they are reasoning from fundamentally different premises. These different premises- often implicitare what provide the consistency behind the repeated opposition of individuals and groups on numerous, unrelated issues. They have different visions of how the world works.

  It would be good to be able to say that we should dispense with visions entirely, and deal only with reality. But that may be the most utopian vision of all. Reality is far too complex to be comprehended by any given mind. Visions are like maps that guide us through a tangle of bewildering complexities. Like maps, visions have to leave out many concrete features in order to enable us to focus on a few key paths to our goals. Visions are indispensable- but dangerous, precisely to the extent that we confuse them with reality itself. What has been deliberately neglected may not in fact turn out to be negligible in its effect on the results. That has to be tested against evidence.

  A vision has been described as a "pre-analytic cognitive act."1 It is what we sense or feel before we have constructed any systematic reasoning that could be called a theory, much less deduced any specific consequences as hypotheses to be tested against evidence. A vision is our sense of how the world works. For example, primitive man's sense of why leaves move may have been that some spirit moves them, and his sense of why tides rise or volcanoes erupt may have run along similar lines. Newton had a very different vision of how the world works and Einstein still another. For social phenomena, Rousseau had a very different vision of human causation from that of Edmund Burke.

  Visions are the foundations on which theories are built. The final structure depends not only on the foundation, but also on how carefully and consistently the framework of theory is constructed and how well buttressed it is with hard facts. Visions are very subjective, but well-constructed theories have clear implications, and facts can test and measure their objective validity. The world learned at Hiroshima that Einstein's vision of physics was not just Einstein's vision.

  Logic is an essential ingredient in the process of turning a vision into a theory, just as empirical evidence is then essential for determining the validity of that theory. But it is the initial vision which is crucial for our glimpse of insight into the way the w
orld works. In Pareto's words:

  Logic is useful for proof but almost never for making discoveries. A man receives certain impressions; under their influence he states- without being able to say either how or why, and if he attempts to do so he deceives himself- a proposition, which can be verified experimentally.

  Visions are all, to some extent, simplistic- though that is a term usually reserved for other people's visions, not our own. The ever-changing kaleidoscope of raw reality would defeat the human mind by its complexity, except for the mind's ability to abstract, to pick out parts and think of them as the whole. This is nowhere more necessary than in social visions and social theory, dealing with the complex and often subconscious interactions of millions of human beings.

  No matter what vision we build on, it will never account for "every sparrow's fall." Social visions especially must leave many important phenomena unexplained, or explained only in ad hoc fashion, or by inconsistent assumptions that derive from more than one vision. The purest vision may not be the basis of the most impressive theories, much less the most valid ones. Yet purer visions may be more revealing as to unspoken premises than are the more complex theories. For purposes of understanding the role of visions, William Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) may tell us more than Marx's Capital. Indeed, we may understand more of Marx's Capital after we have seen how similar premises worked out in the less complicated model of William Godwin. Likewise, the vision of social causation underlying the theories of the Physiocrats was in its essentials very much like the vision elaborated in a more complex and sophisticated way by Adam Smith and still later (and still more so) by Milton Friedman.

  A vision, as the term is used here, is not a dream, a hope, a prophecy, or a moral imperative, though any of these things may ultimately derive from some particular vision. Here a vision is a sense of causation. It is more like a hunch or a "gut feeling" than it is like an exercise in logic or factual verification. These things come later, and feed on the raw material provided by the vision. If causation proceeds as our vision conceives it to, then certain other consequences follow, and theory is the working out of what those consequences are. Evidence is fact that discriminates between one theory and another. Facts do not "speak for themselves." They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theory or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

  Ultimately there are as many visions as there are human beings, if not more, and more than one vision may be consistent with a given fact. Theories can be devastated by facts but they can never be proved to be correct by facts. Facts force us to discard some theoriesor else to torture our minds trying to reconcile the irreconcilable- but they can never put the final imprimatur of ultimate truth on a given theory. What empirical verification can do is to reveal which of the competing theories currently being considered is more consistent with what is known factually. Some other theory may come along tomorrow that is still more consistent with the facts, or explains those facts with fewer, clearer, or more manageable assumptions- or a new theory may fit both this and other empirical phenomena hitherto explained by a separate theory.

  Social visions are important in a number of ways. The most obvious is that policies based on a certain vision of the world have consequences that spread through society and reverberate across the years, or even across generations or centuries. Visions set the agenda for both thought and action. Visions fill in the necessarily large gaps in individual knowledge. Thus, for example, an individual may act in one way in some area in which he has great knowledge, but in just the opposite way elsewhere, where he is relying on a vision he has never tested empirically. A doctor may be a conservative on medical issues and a liberal on social and political issues, or vice versa.

  The political battles of the day are a potpourri of special interests, mass emotions, personality clashes, corruption, and numerous other factors. Yet the enduring historic trends have a certain consistency that reflects certain visions. Often special interests prevail to the extent that they can mobilize support from the general public's responsiveness to visions which can be invoked for or against a given policy. From the standpoint of personal motivation, ideas may be simply the chips with which special interests, demagogues, and opportunists of various sorts play the political game. But from a broader perspective of history, these individuals and organizations can be viewed as simply carriers of ideas, much as bees inadvertently carry pollen- playing a vital role in the grand scheme of nature while pursuing a much narrower individual purpose.

  The role of rationally articulated ideas may be quite modest in its effect on a given election, a legislative vote, or an action of a head of state. Yet the atmosphere in which such decisions take place may be dominated by a particular vision- or by a particular conflict of visions. Where intellectuals have played a role in history, it has not been so much by whispering words of advice into the ears of political overlords as by contributing to the vast and powerful currents of conceptions and misconceptions that sweep human action along. The effects of visions do not depend upon their being articulated, or even on decision-makers' being aware of them. "Practical" decision-makers often disdain theories and visions, being too busy to examine the ultimate basis on which they are acting. However, the object here will be precisely to examine the underlying social visions whose conflicts have shaped our times and may well shape times to come.

  Chapter 2

  Constrained and Unconstrained

  Visions

  At the core of every moral code there is a picture of human nature, a map of the universe, and a version of history. To human nature (of the sort conceived), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history (so understood), the rules of the code apply.

  -Walter Lippmannl

  i -I ocial visions differ in their basic conceptions of the Linature of man. A creature from another galaxy who sought information about human beings from reading William Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political justice in 1793 would hardly recognize man, as he appears there, as the same being who was described in The Federalist Papers just five years earlier. The contrast would be only slightly less if he compared man as he appeared in Thomas Paine and in Edmund Burke, or today in John Kenneth Galbraith and in Friedrich A. Hayek. Even the speculative pre-history of man as a wild creature in nature differs drastically between the free, innocent being conceived by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the brutal participant in the bloody war of each against all conceived by Thomas Hobbes.

  The capacities and limitations of man are implicitly seen in radically different terms by those whose explicit philosophical, political, or social theories are built on different visions. Man's moral and mental natures are seen so differently that their respective concepts of knowledge and of institutions necessarily differ as well. Social causation itself is conceived differently, both as to mechanics and results. Time and its ancillary phenomena- traditions, contracts, economic speculation, for example- are also viewed quite differently in theories based on different visions. The abstractions which are part of all theories tend to be viewed as more real by followers of some visions than by followers of opposing visions. Finally, those who believe in some visions view themselves in a very different moral role from the way that followers of other visions view themselves. The ramifications of these conflicting visions extend into economic, judicial, military, philosophical, and political decisions.

  Rather than attempt the impossible task of following all these ramifications in each of the myriad of social visions, the discussion here will group these visions into two broad categories- the constrained vision and the unconstrained vision. These will be abstractions of convenience, recognizing that there are degrees in both visions, that a continuum has been dichotomized, that in the real world there are often elements of each inconsistently grafted on to the other, and innumerable combinations and permutations. With all these caveats, it is now possible to turn to an outline of the two visions, and specifics on the nature of man, the nature of knowledge
, and the nature of social processes, as seen in constrained and unconstrained visions.

  THE NATURE OF MAN

  The Constrained Vision

  Adam Smith provided a picture of man which may help make concrete the nature of a constrained vision. Writing as a philosopher in 1759, nearly twenty years before he became famous as an economist, Smith said in his Theory of Moral Sentiments:

  Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connection with that part of the world, would react upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would, too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquility as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger tomorrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he would snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred million of his brethren .... 2