Democracy is fundamentally an epistemic inquiry. Citizens of a democratic polity need to know. They need to have access to knowledge and should be able to produce knowledge themselves. And the institutions of a healthy democracy should play a key role in creating, producing, and diffusing knowledge. But what are the proper relations between democracy and knowledge? What should be the role of various institutions in dealing with knowledge? What should be the role of markets in the “use of knowledge in society,” to use Hayek’s way of talking?
To provide answers to these complex questions is the goal of Lisa Herzog’s extremely exciting and insightful book Citizen Knowledge: Markets, Experts, and the Infrastructure of Democracy. This book lies at the intersection of political philosophy, business ethics, and social or political epistemology, that is, the study of the interconnections between knowledge and social, political, and economic institutions. More specifically, Herzog’s goal is to discuss “how knowledge—understood in a broad sense that includes theoretical and practical knowledge in various fields—is dealt with in societies that combine a democratic political system and a capitalist economic system” (6). In order to do so, she proposes to draw attention to the fact that democracies heavily rely on what she calls “epistemic infrastructures,” namely a wide set of institutions and social practices within which knowledge is created, checked, corrected, and passed along to decision-makers. Such infrastructures are ideally composed of markets, but also of mechanisms governed by the logics of expert inquiry and democratic deliberation. Thus, Herzog argues, and this is the key claim of the book, the relationships between democracy and capitalism go in alarming directions when too much knowledge or the wrong kind of knowledge is being treated by the logics of markets.
Herzog’s approach relies on a conception of knowledge as being socially embedded. Such an approach allows her to draw attention to how knowledge is connected to action and moral responsibility, and how it can contribute to the (re)production of epistemic injustices, namely situations in which individuals are not treated fairly in their role as bearers of knowledge, as epistemic agents. Ultimately, Herzog concludes, this should lead us to take very seriously the idea that “the epistemic is political.” By that, she does not mean that every epistemic issue should be “politicized,” therefore putting aside an easy version of the “everything is political” slogan. Instead, Herzog means that we should account for various forms of “epistemic politics,” that is, forms of politics in which it is knowledge itself, and not only values and interests, that is politically contested (49). However, she argues that it “is deeply problematic when processes in which knowledge is acquired and transmitted get ‘politicized’ in the wrong way” (49). As a matter of fact, we should often separate epistemic questions from politics. To put it in another way, in our collective attempt to build and maintain healthy epistemic infrastructures, some of our political efforts should be dedicated to creating and protecting institutions that can produce nonpolitical knowledge.
Especially insightful for BEQ readers is Herzog’s analysis of the market as an epistemic institution. Her key argument relies heavily on a historical account of the rise of “free market thinking” (Chapter Four), or what is often called neoliberalism, although Herzog does not want to use the term. As her historical account clearly shows, advocates of the market such as Mises, Hayek, and Friedman were actually giving a lot of weight to epistemic concerns in their philosophical defence of a market-based society. The market was not simply celebrated for its ability to promote individual freedom, but also for its epistemic powers. The problem, Herzog suggests, is that the reliance on the epistemic power of the market went way too far. While free market thinking was rising, the importance of experts’ thinking and public deliberation was lost in sight.
In order to “put the market in its place,” she argues that “we can, in fact, meet the epistemic defenders of markets on their own grounds” (145). Indeed, epistemic advocates of the market often claim that it represents a powerful tool to communicate a certain type of knowledge about the needs of millions of consumers and the capacity of businesses to provide goods and services. The key epistemic mechanism here being of course the price mechanism. If the price mechanism works properly, we should end up being collectively more intelligent. However, there are plenty of cases in which things are not working according to the epistemic plan. Market interactions are fraught with information asymmetries, which means that models based on complete and perfect information are, well, models. This is why in the real world advertising is the source of huge inefficiencies and why financial markets are far from always reflecting future expectations. As a matter of fact, the epistemic pitfalls of markets are well identified and well documented. For this reason, “we need to stop treating markets as almighty creators of knowledge” (171). The epistemic case against the market is as good as the epistemic case for it.
However, there is, as Herzog notices, a “strange discrepancy” (94) between academic research in economics and the pro-market attitude displayed in public debates. On the one hand, the best and most sophisticated economists have long identified the limitations, epistemic and otherwise, of the market. As Joseph Stiglitz famously argued, and it matters for Herzog’s purpose, some of the most important developments in economics in the last fifty years go hand in hand with a better understanding of how economic agents treat or mistreat information. And this led to highly sophisticated analysis of the economic uses of knowledge in society, to use Hayek’s parlance again. On the other hand, popular narratives, deeply influenced by a powerful form of free market thinking, tend to present markets as all-powerful, almost God-given, institutions. This, Herzog argues, is an unfortunate imbalance, especially when it comes to epistemic concerns.
Given this, it might be worth giving a little more attention to the second part of the equation, namely the rise of free market thinking. But in order to do this, don’t we have to think more carefully and more seriously about neoliberalism? As mentioned, Herzog does not want to go in that direction, deeming neoliberalism a catch-all concept. Yet, the excellent scholarly works that have been published on the subject over the last fifteen years or so has shown just how effectively free market thinking has organized itself to become a formidable and powerful influence machine. In fact, as Angus Burgin (Reference Burgin2012) argues, whom Herzog quotes, neoliberalism is perhaps best understood as characterized by the rise of an extremely powerful form of market activism. Indeed, in reaction to decades of Keynesianism and the rise of the welfare state, twentieth-century market activists and their followers have been on crusade for decades. They are institutionally and intellectually well organized, they are also well financed and do not hesitate to go very far. Hayek, for example, did not just offer an epistemic defense of the market. He wanted to dethrone politics and crown the market as the key institution of civilization. His animosity towards social justice was not simply epistemic but astonishingly violent. His visceral hatred of the Enlightenment and its “political rationalism,” coupled with his desire to show the epistemic limitations of individuals, often went hand in hand with a contempt for the masses. Milton Friedman, as maybe the public intellectual of market activism, presents us with an often blissful celebration of the market. For instance, the “TV version” of Friedman who sung the praises of the market in his TV show “Free to Choose” was downright populist and demagogic. This is, one could say, market activism at work. It has its dark side, and it is frighteningly effective.
With this in mind, we might also ask whether Herzog is a bit overoptimistic. Indeed, decades of powerful market activism have created a political environment in which the market is over-celebrated in defiance of a whole range of epistemic institutions and practices. As a result, plenty of “market actors” happily contribute to misinformation and climate skepticism, lobby to destroy public institutions of education and knowledge, and even willingly contribute to the rise of fascist politics. But, as she says, and following the footsteps of a philosopher like Hélène Landemore (Reference Landemore2012), Herzog prefers to adopt an optimistic perspective, relying on the hope that our societies will produce a little more collective intelligence. Her answer would consist in saying that the critical diagnosis of our societies, even if it is a harsh one, must also be based on a normative and, one could add, optimistic theory of our epistemic infrastructures. Many will be more pessimistic.
Here, I am of course only asking “big” questions in order to think with Herzog about the kind of research agenda we should pursue as a scholarly community. Of course, members of this community should read Herzog’s amazing book carefully first. This is exactly the kind of excellent scholarship that we need.
Pierre-Yves Néron ([email protected]) is an associate professor of social and political philosophy at the European School of Social and Political Sciences (ESPOL), Lille Catholic University (France). He has been a visiting scholar and guest lecturer at University of Copenhagen, Université Paris-1-La Sorbonne, Sciences-Po Paris, and EDHEC Business School. His publications include Seeing Like a Firm: Social Justice, Corporations, and the Conservative Order (Oxford University Press, 2024).
