The market as disciplinary order: A comparative analysis of Hayek and Bentham

Abstract

This paper compares Hayek's market order (supposedly maximising individual freedom) and the social order arising out of Bentham's panopticon (an institution of confinement, surveillance and extraction of labor). Although at first the two institutions appear to belong to two quite different categories, the author identifies at least eight similarities between the two orders and argues that both are disciplinary mechanisms faced by individuals whose “freedom” is confined to a range of choices set by an agency outside them (the “planner”). This opens the way to understand the contemporary market order as a modality of power that rests on the panoptical principle of “seeing without being seen”.

Citation

De Angelis, M. (2002), "The market as disciplinary order: A comparative analysis of Hayek and Bentham", Zarembka, P. (Ed.) Confronting 9-11, Ideologies of Race, and Eminent Economists (Research in Political Economy, Vol. 20), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 293-317. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0161-7230(02)20009-7