Hayek and the spontaneous order

The discovery that there exist in society orders of another kind which have not been designed by men but have resulted from the action of individuals without their intending to create such an order, is the achievement of social theory—or, rather, it was this discovery which has shown that there was an object for social theory. It shook the deeply-ingrained belief of men that where there was an order there must also have been a personal orderer. It had consequences far beyond the field of social theory since it provided the conceptions which made possible a theoretical explanation of the structures of biological phenomena.4 And in the social field it provided the foundation for a systematic argument for individual liberty.

This kind of order which is characteristic not only of biological organisms (to which the originally much wider meaning of the term organism is now usually confined), is an order which is not made by anybody but which forms itself.

It is for this reason usually called a “spontaneous” or sometimes (for reasons we shall yet explain) a “polycentric” order. If we understand the forces which determine such an order, we can use them by creating the conditions under which such an order will form itself.


Source: New Individualist Review, editor-in-chief Ralph Raico, introduction by Milton Friedman (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981). Chapter: F. A. HAYEK, Kinds of Order in Society
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