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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Richard Hull
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A central feature of neo-liberal thought is the twin claim that firstly, markets are more efficient at resource allocation than centralised government planning, and secondly that central planning leads to infringements on the freedom of individuals. The first argument is often justified through Hayek’s ‘problem of knowledge’ – the problem of co-ordinating all the diverse knowledge required for central decision-making. This connection between markets, co-ordination and knowledge has apparently become a deeply-held belief, even on the part of some left-leaning academics. This paper challenges this connection by suggesting that its history reveals the social and political context for two significant and related intellectual inventions – Hayek’s ‘problem of knowledge’ and Michael Polanyi’s ‘tacit knowledge’. These inventions will both be shown as politically-motivated intellectual devices, as opposed to the reasoned advancement of thought. The story emerged from historical research into how, exactly, ‘knowledge’ had come to be seen as an entity that could be studied and managed to such an extent that people would start talking about ‘managing knowledge’, and about a ‘knowledge economy’ or a ‘knowledge society’. The chapter suggests that the emergence of the notion of ‘knowledge as a unit of analysis’ can be traced through two separate problematisations, that were however closely connected in terms of the ideas, concepts, political critiques, and the personnel involved. In the early years, from the 1920s to the 1940s, these connections were especially evident in their political positions with respect to the Russian Revolution, the varieties of Marxism, and concerns about totalitarianism, especially couched in terms of ‘freedom versus planning’. In the first strand ‘knowledge’, and specifically the sociology of knowledge, emerges as a pivotal issue in debates within political and social theory about questions of science, culture, ideology and the role of intellectuals in social change. In the second strand, new ‘problems’ of knowledge are mobilised in debates within economics and political economy over ‘scientism’ in methodology, about the relative merits of markets versus planned economies, and about the character of complex markets which rely on the distribution of data and information. Crudely speaking, both strands have at their heart the opposition between 'knowledge and freedom' versus 'ideology and totalitarianism'. More specifically, there is a determination to develop critiques of, and alternatives to Positivist methods in social science, philosophy and the natural sciences. In the course of this, the understanding of knowledge is transformed from the traditional Analytic and Positivist position that it is something that is only of interest in terms of whether it is true or false, into something that can take an increasingly wide range of forms and types, and can additionally be mapped and measured. The two problematisations became more closely linked in the UK between the 1930s and late 1940s, as the ideas of four key refugee intellectuals – Michael Polanyi, Friedrich Hayek, Karl Mannheim and Karl Popper – moved closer together. The ideas of Polanyi, Popper and Hayek became even further bound together as they each worked within the Mont Pélerin Society, one of the key institutions in the development of neo-liberal thought and practice.
Author(s): Hull R
Editor(s): Cushman, M
Publication type: Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstract)
Publication status: Published
Conference Name: ICTs in the contemporary world: Work, Management and Culture: Inaugral seminar for this ESRC Seminar Series
Year of Conference: 2002
Pages: Online
Publisher: LSE
URL: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/informationSystems/newsAndEvents/2002events/hull.htm
