Hayek comments in a related matter, liberalism “derives from the discovery of a self-generating or spontaneous order in social affairs” (Hayek 1967, 162, cited in Kley 1994, 1, emphasis mine); that is, it is grounded in science and facts.
This claim for the liberty of individuals has also been articulated in Hayek’s social theory around the concept of “methodological individualism,” which suggests that “all actions are performed by individuals; therefore analysis of social reality must start from individuals.” Moreover, it suggests that “a social collective has no existence and no reality beyond the actions of its individual members” (Gamble 1996, 53). This atomized conception of society, where society is “nothing more than a collection of individuals” (Rapley 2004, 77), has also been popularized by a slogan coined by Margaret Thatcher—a central protagonist in putting neoliberal theory into practice—who famously announced that there was “no such thing as society, only individual men and women” (cited in Harvey 2005, 23).
The digital discourse follows much of the neoliberal, scientific legitimation, especially in arguing that spontaneous order is a predominant phenomenon in nature. But it also transforms the argument for individual liberty into a technologistic legitimation. To the extent that individuals are reconceived as nodes within a technological network, and to the extent that these nodes must be atomized, flexible, and adaptable to network fluctuations, individuals must be free in order for spontaneous order to occur. Hence, the argument for the liberty of individuals in the context of free markets is asserted thrice: first, on normative grounds, second, as a scientific discovery, and, finally, as a technological necessity.
Like the digital discourse, neoliberal theory, too, is concerned with explaining how market rationality emerges from what might be seen as haphazard, disorganized, individualistic, ungoverned, and even conflicting actions. In neoliberal theory, spontaneous order mediates individual “micromotives” into “macrobehavior” (Sally 1998, 1) and “private vices” into “public benefits,” in Mandeville’s terms (see Petsoulas 2001, chap. 3). Spontaneous order accounts for what might seem an unbridgeable gap between irrationality and rationality, between multiple particularities and universality. According to Hayek, spontaneous order does the trick by providing the best tool for the allocation of knowledge; it is the best solution for individuals’ epistemic limitation. Sally explains, “The genius of the market economy is that it allows individuals to use freely what partial knowledge they have in everyday activities of production and consumption. The competitive market is by a long shot the best available device to coordinate existing (fragmented, dispersed and tacit) knowledge, as well as to create new knowledge, in order to cater for material wants” (Sally 1998, 19).
Network Market
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