Abstract

GOMEZ ALBARELLO, Juan Gabriel. Squaring the Circle: Friedrich von Hayek's Attempt to Solve the Tension between Political Equality and Economic Inequality. Pap.polit. [online]. 2014, vol.19, n.1, pp.77-101. ISSN 0122-4409.

The purpose of this article is to highlight the most important contributions Friedrich von Hayek made to social and political theory, and to review various critiques directed against his ideas. This article also traces back those contributions to Hayek's engagement in the debate about socialist planning. Hayek's most important idea is that the market offers the best solution to the fact that social knowledge is always dispersed and incomplete. In tandem with this idea, Hayek opposed to the model of a centralized and planned order another one in which that order is spontaneous, being the market its paradigmatic instance. From this conception, Hayek derived the corollary that the idea of social justice is a mirage for, in a complex society, each one's position and income is the result of uncountable interactions. Following this line of reasoning, Hayek strengthened his conviction that democratic governments' intervention in the market should be severely limited. From left and from right, various critics have shown shortcomings in Hayek's arguments that concern the idea of incomplete and dispersed social knowledge, the relevance of social justice, the interdependence between the rule of law and democracy and the idea that the market is not a self-generating order but rather depends on a larger set of social institutions.

Keywords : Hayek; incomplete knowledge; spontaneous order; market; social justice; rule of law; democracy.

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