Hayek on Coercion

Disclaimer: So far as I know Hayek has never actually coerced a kitten.

The idea of coercion is central to many strands of Libertarian thought, held up as the summum malum and opposed to voluntarism. But to actually define coercion precisely enough to build a political theory on it is a bit trickier. In general, definitions can be grouped into two broad categories:

1) Rights-based definitions
One starts with a series of rights, and coercion is defined as the violation of these. Such a definition, however, just moves the problem to the definition or delineation of rights. Natural rights don’t stop the buck; their assertion must be backed up with a further “why”. Nor is the distinction between positive and negative rights viable as anything but a rule of thumb.

The problem may be solved by the empirical (or evolutionary) natural rights approach, in which rights evolve through institutional selection toward the best bundle. In doing so it makes irrelevant many classic moral dilemmas. This evolutionary process is in fact thwarted by the kind of rationalistic philosophizing used in traditional rights theories: to derive and institute a set of rights from pure reason erases all institutional memory. The consistent application of a rationally derived ethical theory to edge cases¹ is profoundly dissatisfying, and awkward to explain away. The margin at which any ethical principle becomes inappropriate is a question only such a process can settle (which suggests that such ethical theories are not axiomatic and cannot be derived from pure reason).

If, therefore, rights are defined or found to include life, liberty, and property, then coercion is identified with aggression, and comports with the classic Libertarian treatment. If (according to the various theories of rights, respectively) reason were to show or institutions prevailed in which employment were a right, then to threaten termination would be coercion as well. And in Finland, the threat to terminate internet service would count too. In short, the concept of coercion is exactly as clear cut as the theory of rights behind it.

2) Rights-prior definitions
Alternatively coercion can be defined as a thing-in-itself, without reference to rights.

[W]e are tempted to define “coercion” by the use of such terms as “the interference with legitimate expectations,” or “infringement of rights,” or “arbitrary interference”. But in defining coercion we cannot take for granted the arrangements intended to prevent it. . . . Coercion not only would exist, but would be much more common if no such protected sphere existed [i.e. if there were no rights]. Only in a society that has already attempted to prevent coercion by some demarcation of a protected sphere can a concept like “arbitrary interference” have any meaning.²

Hayek identifies the first definition with “arbitrary interference”, but maintains the concept of coercion itself as something independent of rights and institutions. But an independent definition comes at the cost of clear delineation between “coercion” and “not coercion”. Notwithstanding the (not unproblematic³) examples earlier in the chapter which read as an attempt to draw such a line,⁴ Hayek admits that “coercion is, in the last resort, a matter of degree”⁵. Any definition independent of a clear-cut series of rights permits only that more or less severe coercion be spoken of.

Hayek’s own definition, being subjected to the arbitrary will of another, is problematic for Libertarian theory. For many things subject us to the arbitrary will of another which a natural rights theorist would not consider coercive. To return to the threat of termination, this sanction is great enough that the employee is generally pliable under the direction of his superior, even to be directed to do specific things, something Hayek indicates as a sine qua non of coercion.⁶ The employer need not be a monopsonist to exercise a great deal of control this way. And given his admission that a monopolist of necessities may be coercive (see footnote 3), it would be somewhat inconsistent to call the threat of termination noncoercive.

Indeed, from the perspective of the employee, for the purposes of his action the employer is not much different from a government. Yes, one can find another employer, but one can also leave the country. The fact that the latter is usually much more difficult only shows again that the difference is one of degree, not of kind.

Coercion’s opposite therefore, voluntarism, must likewise be a matter of degree. Hayek refers at the beginning to the case where “my handed is guided by physical force to trace my signature”,⁷ somehow distinguishing this from “coercion proper” by the fact that one has not acted, but treating it as essentially the same. It would perhaps be more apt to call this perfect coercion, in that all options but one have been removed from the array of choices. Further down the scale are situations he calls the more severe forms of coercion – the threat of physical force. “While we may pity the weak or the very sensitive person whom a mere frown may “compel” to do what he would not do otherwise, we are concerned with coercion that is likely to affect the normal, average person.”⁸ And below his threshold of relevance to policy lie voluntarily entered coercion: “A morose husband, a nagging wife, or a hysterical mother may make life intolerable unless their every mood is obeyed. But here society can do little to protect the individual beyond making such associations with others truly voluntary.”

But as we have seen, “voluntary” must be as much a matter of degree as coercion. If there is no “true coercion”, then there is nothing “truly voluntary”. We are all forced to a greater or lesser extent to adapt our actions to the outside world. In another work Hayek even speaks of the “impersonal coercion” of the market.⁹ His argument appears to be that a line is impossible to draw, but we have to draw one somewhere. Perhaps the impossibility indicates instead that the justification for liberty must rest on a more solid foundation than its juxtaposition against coercion. To thus define liberty as the absence of coercion is, as he (rightly) accuses John Stuart Mill of doing in On Liberty, and for the same reasons, to “overstate the case for liberty.”¹⁰

As a final note, Coase saw the firm as an island of central planning in a sea of voluntary market operations. In the same way, we might see the morose husband and nagging wife as islands of coercion in a more broadly voluntary system. Besides identifying the poles at a particular level, the distinction between planned and emergent must also be a matter of degree, for even a truly free market is made up of many plans. Even a series of planned economies could conceivably arrive at some sort of emergent order (market-like, though not a market) from competition with one another. Hayek’s vision of pervasive small-scale coercion existing within and supporting a broader voluntary framework is the more general version of Coase’s vision, generalized outside the firm and stripped of the language of intention. The firm centrally plans by coercing, in a sense, and coerces in order to plan.

It is misleading therefore to rail against coercion as such, as Mill did in On Liberty, and as Hayek does in The Constitution of Liberty. Mill saw that social opprobrium, for the purposes of human action, is not essentially different from coercion by force. Hayek saw that the obliteration of this distinction inevitably led to the centralization and expansion of coercion to prevent the smaller forms. But neither was willing to conclude that coercion as such is not the problem. Coercion in a sense exists everywhere we are required to adjust our actions to the existence of others. Economics should teach us, therefore, to look for an optimum at the margin, and to seek institutions which may approximate that optimum through spontaneous processes. A categorical opposition to coercion is ultimately a poor foundation for a political philosophy.

1. The classic example for the non-aggression principle is the misanthrope whose genome fortuitously contains the cure for cancer. Unfortunately he will not part with a single hair for any price, and it would violate the non-aggression principle to retrieve it against his will.
2. Hayek, F.A. The Constitution of Liberty (1960), p. 139.
3. For example, in the discussion of resource control (Ibid., pp. 135f), any line between the “coercive” water monopolist and the “noncoercive” portrait monopolist must be arbitrary. Necessity is relative.
4. For example immediately prior to the initial discussion of the coercive monopolist he says “Coercion should be carefully distinguished from the conditions or terms on which our fellow men are willing to render us specific services or benefits,” as if there were indeed a clear categorical line (Ibid., p. 135). Later he speaks of “true coercion” (p. 137) implying the same thing.
5. Ibid., p. 146.
6. “So long as the act that has placed me in my predicament is not aimed at making me do or not do specific things, so long as the intent of the act that harms me is not to make me serve another person’s ends, its effect on my freedom is not different from that of any natural calamity.” (Ibid., p. 137) The employer-employee relationship would appear to satisfy both these conditions of coercion.
7. Ibid., p. 133.
8. Ibid., p. 138.
9. Competition as a Discovery Procedure (1968).
10. The Constitution of Liberty, p. 146.