https://medium.com/p/56de17a921b1 ( https://medium.com/p/56de17a921b1 )
Debates over positivism in twentieth‑century social theory are commonly framed as struggles between defenders of scientific rationality and critics of it. This framing is misleading. In the central disputes linking Friedrich Hayek, Otto Neurath, and later the Frankfurt School, the real point of contention was not whether reason and science have limits, but what follows from those limits. All of the principal figures involved rejected Cartesian rationalism — the idea that social order could be deduced from self‑evident foundations or governed by complete, transparent knowledge. As Hayek later put it, the error he opposed was the belief that social problems admit of solutions “as if all the relevant facts were known to some single mind” (Hayek 1996, 20). Rather, their disagreements arose from the sharply different political conclusions they drew from this shared anti‑Cartesian insight. For Hayek, the critique of positivism emerged from his opposition to socialist economic planning. Reacting in part to the work of Otto Neurath — a socialist economist and a founding member of the Vienna Circle of logical positivists— Hayek argued that logical positivism encouraged a “scientistic” misunderstanding of the social sciences. By modeling social inquiry too closely on the natural sciences, positivism appeared to legitimate the belief that all relevant social knowledge could be made explicit, formalized, and centrally coordinated. Hayek warned against this tendency to “imitate the procedure of the physical sciences” in domains where the subject matter consists of complex, meaning‑laden human actions rather than law‑governed physical objects (Hayek 1996, 15). He rejected the assumption that social knowledge could be fully articulated and centrally aggregated, insisting instead that “the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form” (Hayek 1945, 519). The price system, on his account, is indispensable precisely because it enables coordination without requiring that knowledge be unified in any single place (Hayek 1945; Hayek 1973, 59). Neurath, however, rejected Cartesian rationalism and technocratic planning no less firmly than Hayek did, though he drew nearly opposite conclusions. His physicalism and advocacy of in‑kind calculation ( Naturalrechnung ) were not based on a belief in uniquely optimal, technically computable solutions to social problems. On the contrary, Neurath explicitly denied that social decision‑making could be reduced to any single algorithm or maximization principle. As he wrote, “There is no way of calculating a total pleasure or a total utility for society,” since neither cardinal utility measurement nor interpersonal comparison is possible (Neurath 1920, 417). Accordingly, Hayek’s portrayal of Neurath as a proponent of Cartesian rationalism or technocratic optimization rests on a misreading, since Neurath explicitly rejected both epistemic omniscience and uniquely determined “optimal” social outcomes (Neurath 1935, 121–31). For Neurath, monetary calculations falsely impose a spurious unity on inherently plural and incommensurable social values. He contended that economic life involves “a plurality of life‑conditions which cannot be reduced to a common denominator,” and that reliance on money disguises rather than resolves this plurality (Neurath 1930, 102). Conscious economic planning, in his view, did not and cannot promise perfect rational control; instead, it made value conflicts explicit and open to political judgment. As he emphasized, social decisions necessarily involve choosing “between different ways of living,” not computing an objectively optimal outcome (Neurath 1935, 125). A similar anti‑positivist impulse animated the Frankfurt School, though it was directed against capitalism rather than socialism. Frankfurt theorists argued that positivism reified existing social relations by treating them as neutral facts governed by technical necessity, thereby obscuring their historical and ideological character. Horkheimer criticized positivism for reducing reason to “the mere ordering of facts,” thereby evacuating its critical and emancipatory dimensions (Horkheimer 1982, 244). Where Hayek saw positivism as enabling socialist planning through an overconfidence in scientific reason, the Frankfurt School saw it as legitimating capitalist domination through technocratic rationality (Adorno 1976, 34–35). Seen in this light, positivism did not function as a straightforward ally of either capitalism or socialism. Instead, it served as a contested methodological orientation whose political implications depended on how one interpreted the limits of knowledge, rationality, and social prediction. Hayek, Neurath, and the Frankfurt School all rejected Cartesian rationalism; they parted ways over whether those limits pointed toward markets, planning, or critical emancipation as the appropriate response. In recent years, Neurath’s work — especially his notion of “calculation in kind” (Naturalrechnung) and his holistic attention to life‑conditions and use‑values — has experienced a modest revival of interest among scholars in ecological economics and ecosocialist circles. Contemporary commentators have begun to explore Neurath as a precursor of ecological planning and as a historical resource for envisioning just ecological transitions that engage with environmental limits outside conventional monetary calculation. (Colamban, 2025) ---------- References ---------- ------------------ Friedrich A. Hayek ------------------ * *Hayek, Friedrich A.* The Counter‑Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1996. ( https://archive.org/details/counterrevolutio030197mbp/page/n5/mode/2up ) * *Hayek, Friedrich A.* “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” American Economic Review 35, no. 4 (1945): 519–30. ( https://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw.html ( https://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com ) ) * *Hayek, Friedrich A.* Law, Legislation and Liberty , vol. 1: Rules and Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. ------------ Otto Neurath ------------ * *Neurath, Otto.* “Economic Calculation in Kind.” Economic Journal 30, no. 120 (1920): 417–32. * *Neurath, Otto.* Through War Economy to Economy in Kind. Vienna: International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, 1930. * *Neurath, Otto.* “Pseudorationalism of Falsification.” Erkenntnis 5, no. 1 (1935): 353–65. Reprinted in Otto Neurath: Philosophical Papers 1913–1946 , edited and translated by Robert S. Cohen and Marie Neurath, 121–31. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1983. * *Neurath, Otto.* Otto Neurath: Philosophical Papers 1913–1946 , edited and translated by Robert S. Cohen and Marie Neurath. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1983. * *Colomban, Jean‑François.* “Otto Neurath, a Pioneer of Ecological Economics? The Strange Relevance of Otto Neurath’s Thought [Otto Neurath, précurseur de l’économie écologique ? L’étrange actualité de la pensée d’Otto Neurath].” Revue de Philosophie Économique / Review of Economic Philosophy, 2025. Post‑print available via HAL / RePEc:hal:journl:hal‑05248560. ------------------------------ Frankfurt School (for context) ------------------------------ * *Horkheimer, Max.* “Traditional and Critical Theory.” In Critical Theory: Selected Essays , translated by Matthew J. O’Connell, 193–246. New York: Continuum, 1982. * *Adorno, Theodor W.* The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology. 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