Individual and Order in Liberal Social Theory: Weber, Mises, and Hayek

Abstract

Context: This article examines the methodological and political implications of liberal-individualist social theory through the contributions of Max Weber, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich von Hayek.
Methodology: Throughout the text, fundamental theoretical categories are reconstructed, such as action, value, ideal type, methodological and ontological individualism, the conception of history, and the notions of spontaneous and domination social orders. Through theoretical comparison among the authors, the epistemological and political assumptions underlying their formulations are examined, with particular attention to their divergences regarding the scope of knowledge in the human sciences.
Conclusions: The study seeks to contribute to philosophical reflection on this theoretical tradition, particularly regarding the Austrian School, whose influence has gained increasing relevance in the context of the strengthening of right-wing currents in Latin America. Specifically, the Chilean and Argentine cases illustrate how this perspective has begun to shape political discourses from a specific understanding of social order. Confronting the ideal of "spontaneous order" promoted by this ideological current, we argue that the market social order is not the result of a progressive evolutionary process, but has been arbitrarily driven within the framework of political and ideological conjunctures. In this regard, the Weberian concept of order of domination reveals the central contradiction of the Hayekian proposal: every social order requires structures of domination and legitimacy that the evolutionist ideal of spontaneous order denies or conceals. This immanent critique finds confirmation in Raymond Aron's reading, who warned that the Hayekian social order could only materialize through the establishment of a non-spontaneous order of domination, imposed de facto through violence.