O Paradoxo dos Indignados

(Artigo publicado no n.º 3 do Lado Direito, jornal da Juventude Popular de Lisboa)

O mês que passou viu as ruas de centenas de cidades em todo o mundo serem varridas por uma vaga de indignações e ocupações. Enquanto na Europa o efémero movimento já perdeu força, nos Estados Unidos da América os ocupantes de Wall Street continuam a aumentar os seus números. Motivados pelo livro panfletário Indignez-vous! da autoria do intelectual francês Stéphane Hessel e, certamente, pelo revanchismo patente em Inside Job, uma película cinematográfica à boa maneira de Hollywood, plena de pseudo-moralismo esquerdista, os “indignados”, a começar por Hessel, acertam no diagnóstico mas falham redondamente na cura, conforme Axel Kaiser e Russ Roberts evidenciam.

O ultra-neo-liberalismo, o capitalismo selvagem, os especuladores e o mercado

No título, todos os culpados da crise financeira internacional que se iniciou em 2008. O governo é que não e o que precisamos é de mais intervenção governamental, diz a maioria da opinião publicada. Em 1984, John Gray escrevia um pequeno livrinho a respeito de F. A. Hayek, intitulado Hayek on Liberty. Deixo a sua breve abordagem à teoria dos ciclos económicos da Escola Austríaca de Economia, que se pode encontrar nas páginas 84 e 85 da 3.ª edição. Qualquer semelhança com o que se tem passado nos últimos anos deve ser pura coincidência.

Liberdade como difusão de poder

Deixo à consideração dos preclaros leitores uma breve descrição do conceito de liberdade no entendimento inglês, da autoria de Michael Oakeshott ("The political economy of freedom", in Rationalism in Politics and other essays, Indianapolis, Liberty Fund, 1991, pp. 388-389). Em Portugal é mais ou menos o mesmo:

"Liberties, it is true, may be distinguished, and some may be more general or more settled and mature than others, but the freedom which the English libertarian knows and values lies in a coherence of mutually supporting liberties, each of which amplifies the whole and none of which stands alone. It springs neither from the separation of church and state, nor from the rule of law, nor from private property, nor from parliamentary government, nor from the writ of habeas corpus, nor from the independence of the judiciary, nor from any one of the thousand other devices and arrangements characteristic of our society, but from what each signifies and represents, namely, the absence from our society of overwhelming concentrations of power. This is the most general condition of our freedom, so general that all other conditions may be seen to be comprised within it. It appears, first, in a diffusion of authority between past, present and future. Our society is ruled by none of these exclusively. And we should consider a society governed wholly by its past, or its present, or its future to suffer under a despotism of a superstition in which forbids freedom. The politics of our society are a conversation in which past, present and future each has a voice; and though one or other of them may on occasion properly prevail, none permanently dominates, and on this account we are free. Further, with us power is dispersed among all the multitude of interests and organizations of interest which comprise our society. We do not fear or seek to suppress diversity of interest, but we consider our freedom to be imperfect so long as the dispersal of power among them is incomplete, and to be threatened if any one interest or combination of interests, even though it may be the interest of a majority, acquires extraordinary power. Similarly, the conduct of government in our society involves a sharing of power, not only between the recognized organs of government, but also between the Administration and the Opposition. In short, we consider ourselves to be free because no one in our society is allowed unlimited power – no leader, faction, party or ‘class’, no majority, no government, church, corporation, trade or professional association or trade union. The secret of its freedom is that it is composed of a multitude of organizations in the constitution of the best of which is reproduced that diffusion of power which is characteristic of the whole.”

A persistência no igualitarismo

Já aqui fiz referência ao artigo de Roger Scruton intitulado "Hayek and conservatism". Deixo agora a última secção deste, simplesmente demolidora quanto ao erro do igualitarismo:

«This same weakness infects Hayek’s response to socialism. As I remarked above, Hayek fails to account either for the passion among intellectuals for equality, or for the resulting success of socialists and their egalitarian successors in driving the liberal idea from the stage of politics. This passion for equality is not a new thing, and indeed pre-dates socialism by many centuries, finding its most influential expression in the writings of Rousseau. There is no consensus as to how equality might be achieved, what it would consist in if achieved, or why it is so desirable in the first place. But no argument against the cogency or viability of the idea has the faintest chance of being listened to or discussed by those who have fallen under its spell. Why is this? I shall conclude with a suggestion.

Tradição, moralidade e mercado

Aqui fica uma secção de um artigo de Roger Scruton inserido no Cambridge Companion to Hayek, intitulado "Hayek and Conservatism", precisamente acerca de uma temática sobre a qual muitos debates se debruçam, a da compatibilidade entre a tradição e o mercado (a secção do artigo intitula-se "Tradition, Morality and the Market"):

«For a contemporary conservative, the most profound aspect of Hayek’s extended epistemological argument is the alignment between the defense of the market and the defense of tradition. Indeed, as Edward Feser has argued, the defence of tradition, custom, and common sense morality could well constitute the most important aspect of Hayek’s social and political thought. Hayek’s theory of evolutionary rationality shows how traditions and customs (those surrounding sexual relations, for example) might be reasonable solutions to complex social problems, even when, and especially when, no clear rational grounds can be provided to the individual for obeying them. These customs have been selected by the ‘‘invisible hand’’ of social reproduction, and societies that reject them will soon enter the condition of ‘‘maladaptation,’’ which is the normal prelude to extinction.

Crenças e factos

Embora Hayek o tenha escrito num contexto em que os partidos conservadores europeus haviam capitulado ante o colectivismo do pós-guerra, em 1960, o poderoso post-scriptum a The Constitution of Liberty, intitulado "Why I Am Not a Conservative", continua a ser uma fonte de onde várias ilações podem ser retiradas, quer quanto ao caminho prosseguido pelos partidos conservadores, ao apropriarem-se do que comummente se designa por neo-liberalismo, quer quanto ao que conservadorismo e liberalismo devem compatibilizar para fazer frente ao socialismo. Não por acaso, uma e outra doutrina reclamam-se herdeiras dos mesmos autores (Hume, Burke, Tocqueville, Acton, Smith, p. ex.). A versão integral pode ser consultada aqui, deixando ficar à consideração dos preclaros leitores e leitoras esta passagem:

«Personally, I find that the most objectionable feature of the conservative attitude is its propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge because it dislikes some of the consequences which seem to follow from it - or, to put it bluntly, its obscurantism. I will not deny that scientists as much as others are given to fads and fashions and that we have much reason to be cautious in accepting the conclusions that they draw from their latest theories. But the reasons for our reluctance must themselves be rational and must be kept separate from our regret that the new theories upset our cherished beliefs. I can have little patience with those who oppose, for instance, the theory of evolution or what are called "mechanistic" explanations of the phenomena of life because of certain moral consequences which at first seem to follow from these theories, and still less with those who regard it as irrelevant or impious to ask certain questions at all. By refusing to face the facts, the conservative only weakens his own position. Frequently the conclusions which rationalist presumption draws from new scientific insights do not at all follow from them. But only by actively taking part in the elaboration of the consequences of new discoveries do we learn whether or not they fit into our world picture and, if so, how. Should our moral beliefs really prove to be dependent on factual assumptions shown to be incorrect, it would hardly be moral to defend them by refusing to acknowledge facts.»