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F. A. Hayek has had great influence upon recent political thought. Though he presents no organized account of Bentham his many references, mostly uncomplimentary, create the impression that Bentham's presentation was characteristically ‘crudely expressed’ and ‘naive’, and that Benthamite constructivism has been a major threat to individual liberty and a precursor of totalitarian social control. While Hayek has made a valuable contribution to the study of political ideas, this caricature has probably discouraged his readers from studying Bentham. It will be argued, however, that Bentham and Hayek share much common ground (and indeed, that Bentham's work anticipated Hayek's in many areas), and that an appreciation of the ways in which Bentham's position differs from Hayek's may contribute to a useful critique of Hayek's system.
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References
1 Hayek, F. A., Law, Legislation and Liberty 3 vols., London 1982 (hereafter cited as ILL) ii. 45; iii. 32.Google Scholar
2 LLL i. 2Google Scholar. This ‘fundamental insight’ and the other two Hayek identifies, that ‘a self-generating or spontaneous order and an organization are distinct, and that their distinctiveness is related to the two different kinds of rules or laws which prevail in them’, and that ‘the predominant model of liberal democratic institutions, in which the same representative body lays down the rules of just conduct and directs government, necessarily leads to a gradual transformation of the spontaneous order of a free society into a totalitarian system conducted in the service of some coalition of organized interests’, are examined in relation to Bentham's system at greater length in Dube, A., ‘The Theme of Acquisitiveness in Bentham's Political Thought’, Ph.D. thesis, London, 1989Google Scholar. On Hayek's system, see Gray, J., Hayek on Liberty Oxford, 1984Google Scholar, and Hoy, C., A Philosophy of Individual Freedom London, 1984Google Scholar. On the concept of the spontaneous order, see Gray, , Ch. 2, and pp. 118–25.Google Scholar
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40 Bentham distinguishes between ‘natural’ and ‘technical’ arrangements in his writings on the arrangement of laws. A natural arrangement ‘takes such properties to characterize them by, as men in general are, by the common constitution of man's nature, disposed to attend to’. In contrast, however, once a technical arrangement has been made, the technical nomenclature supporting it ‘stands an invincible obstacle to every other than a technical arrangement’. A technical arrangement ‘governed then in this manner, by a technical nomenclature, can never be otherwise than confused and unsatisfactory’. Just as a natural arrangement invites comprehension, a technical arrangement by nature defies comprehension. Sinister interests will encourage technical arrangement—of laws, institutions, and it could be said, society itself—because this arrangement serves their seeking of advantage. Especially when expanded to include the arrangement of institutions and men themselves, Bentham's concepts of natural and technical arrangements in several ways anticipate Hayek's writings on spontaneous and made orders. (See A Comment on the Commentaries and A Fragment on Government ed. Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A., London, 1977 (CW) pp. 414–16Google Scholar.) See also Twining, W.'s exposition of the natural and technical systems of law in Theories of Evidence: Bentham and Wigmore London, 1985.Google Scholar
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85 As Rosen explains, Bentham regarded the ‘delay, vexation and expence’ inflicted upon citizens by government and government functionaries as a form of oppression (pp. 65–7, 109).
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