Eine sich selbst bildende Ordnung für die Gesellschaft

Hayek’s text is a short translated conference lecture rather than a systematic treatise. Its scope is deliberately compressed: from a historical sketch of social evolution it derives a political argument about law, coercion, peace, and international order. The central thesis is that large-scale peaceful society cannot be built by organizing people around shared concrete purposes; it arises when persons who do not share ends nonetheless obey common abstract rules.

Hayek begins with the passage from tribal closure to open society. Small groups are “teleocratic”: held together by shared aims and a hierarchy of concrete purposes. The decisive civilizational innovation is cooperation among strangers without a common collective goal.

Die Menschen lernten miteinander zusammenzuarbeiten, obwohl sie nicht den gleichen gemeinsamen Zweck verfolgten.

English translation: Men learned to cooperate with one another even though they did not pursue the same common purpose.

From this point Hayek develops his main conceptual opposition: organization versus spontaneous order. An organization is directed toward known ends; a society, in the liberal sense, is not itself such an organization. Roman law and Christianity matter in his account because they helped transform tribal rules into universal rules applicable to anyone willing to obey them.

Die große Errungenschaft der offenen Großgesellschaft besteht darin, daß sie spontan Ordnung hervorbringen kann, dadurch daß die Individuen abstrakten Regeln gehorchen, das heißt, daß sie eine sich selbst bildende Ordnung ist.

English translation: The great achievement of the open Great Society consists in its being able to bring forth order spontaneously through the fact that individuals obey abstract rules—that is, that it is a self-forming order.

This spontaneous order does not select substantive ends for its members. Its achievement is more modest but, for Hayek, more important: it creates a framework in which dispersed persons may use their own knowledge for their own purposes.

Sie produziert lediglich Gelegenheiten für jeden einzelnen.

English translation: It merely produces opportunities for each individual.

The epistemological argument follows directly. Social science has a peculiar object because such orders arise from innumerable bits of knowledge no single mind can possess. The theorist can grasp the type of order, but not command or predict all its concrete results.

Alles, was wir tun können, ist, den abstrakten Charakter der Ordnung zu beschreiben.

English translation: All that we can do is to describe the abstract character of the order.

The political consequence is Hayek’s defense of the rule of law as a system of purpose-independent constraints. Peace in an extended order is not achieved by stronger organization, but by limiting organizations—including governments—through general rules of justice. His warning is especially directed against the idea that international peace can be produced simply by constructing more international bodies.

Wir haben noch nicht gelernt, was ich gerne die Zähmung der Organisation nennen möchte.

English translation: We have not yet learned what I would like to call the taming of organization.

A further move is his insistence that the rules appropriate to a great society are mainly negative: they do not command people to pursue common ends, but prevent forms of conduct that make coexistence impossible. This reverses the common assumption that positive directives are morally superior.

Was nun aber die für eine Großgesellschaft benötigten Regeln angeht, so bin ich sicher, daß die Großgesellschaft sich ausschließlich auf negativ gefaßte Verhaltensregeln gründen muß.

English translation: As regards the rules required for a Great Society, however, I am certain that the Great Society must be founded exclusively on negatively formulated rules of conduct.

Hayek also separates abstract order from personal virtues such as love. Love belongs to concrete relations and chosen attachments; it cannot serve as the principle of a universal legal order. The legal framework is impersonal, but it protects the space in which personal commitments can exist.

The lecture culminates in an international application. Hayek does not reject institutions altogether, but he denies that peace follows from organization as such. What must be extended globally is the principle of general law limiting coercion, not a hierarchy of collective purposes.

Wonach wir streben müssen, ist das, was viele Leute vage als eine internationale Herrschaft des Gesetzes bezeichnet haben.

English translation: What we must strive for is what many people have vaguely described as an international rule of law.

The relevance of the lecture lies in its concise statement of Hayek’s mature liberalism: order without design, cooperation without shared ends, law without substantive collective purpose, and government restrained as one organization within a wider spontaneous order. Its core warning is that modern politics repeatedly mistakes society for an organization and therefore tries to plan peace, justice, and solidarity through command. Against this, Hayek argues that freedom and peace depend on abstract, negative, general rules under which individuals and groups may pursue their own concrete aims.