Will The “Conspiracy Theory of Society” Die One Day?
On the Political Relevance of Social Sciences
It is a truism that one of the biggest contemporary enemies of what Jonathan Rauch calls the “epistemic liberal order” is the popularity of conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories are a full component of the populist phenomenon. They are feeding populism by “justifying” populist leaders’ charge against the elites and are at the same time fed by the polarization, the resentment, and the general lack of trust in any form of expertise that are constitutive of populist attitudes. It is therefore not surprising that social scientists have found a correlation between conspiratorial beliefs and other populist attitudes. For instance, a relatively recent paper by political scientists finds that a “conspiratorial mentality” tends to be associated with anti-elitism. An even more recent paper finds that belief in conspiracy theories is causally responsible for the “Manichean outlook” of politics. Similar results have emerged in the more specific case of the link between populism and conspiratorial beliefs related to COVID-19.
It would be a mistake however to believe that a disposition to believe in conspiracy theories is only to be found in people who are prone to support populist leaders. This disposition is older and far more widespread than the rise of contemporary forms of populism. In The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper for instance singles out what he calls the “conspiracy theory of society”:
“It is the view that an explanation of a social phenomenon consists in the discovery of the men or groups who are interested in the occurrence of this phenomenon (sometimes it is a hidden interest which has first to be revealed), and who have planned and conspired to bring it about.”[1]
As Popper notes, conspiracy theories are widely held. Why this is so remains to be fully established but I think that something like a Hayekian explanation is on the right track. The genetic and cultural attributes of humans have essentially evolved in the context of small, closed tribal societies where, at least for phenomena that were not due to purely natural forces, it was relatively easy for anyone to observe the agentive causes of whatever was happening. In other words, in “closed” societies, there is a relatively straightforward and non-ambiguous causal relationship between the acts of individuals and their social consequences. This causal relationship becomes far more ambiguous and almost impossible to observe directly as society opens and becomes more complex. With respect to both explanation/prediction and justification/evaluation, we tend to continue to postulate that such a simple causal relationship exists. It is difficult to accept that some collective phenomenon (e.g., the rise of the prices of some category of goods) is not entirely causally due to the intentions and actions of a small and well-identified group of persons. It is difficult to admit that this group is not normatively responsible for the adverse consequences generated by this price increase.
That explains why the conspiracy theory of society is oftentimes the simplest and most intuitive available explanation of any phenomenon. For most of our history, it has also very often been the correct one. The more a society is open and complex, the lower the chances that it will still be the case, however. As Popper recognizes, that doesn’t mean that there never are conspiracies. That’s why the conspiracy theory is also very difficult to fight. You cannot counterargue by saying that there is no chance that some phenomenon of interest is due to the will of a small group of conspirators. This is both a logical and social possibility. But it is very unlikely. The problem is that this possibility is salient for our brains used to function in close societies.
As I said above, the disposition to believe in conspiracy theories is not the exclusive property of people who endorse populist attitudes. My favorite example is the view that “planned obsolescence” (i.e., the intentional strategy of a firm to sell short-living products to increase its sales and profits over the long term) is a large-scale phenomenon in capitalist market economies. This belief is largely fed by beliefs in conspiratorial theories according to which cartels of companies have secretly agreed on voluntarily reducing the life span of their products to increase their joint profits. Among the most famous such stories is the so-called Phoebus cartel of producers of incandescent light bulbs. In France, concerns with planned obsolescence are so strong that a law establishing harsh sanctions for any company convicted of a strategy of planned obsolescence has been voted in 2015.
My point here is not to say that companies cannot voluntarily decide to sell products with a relatively short lifespan. Quite the contrary, many of them do. The problem is rather related to the underlying belief that such a strategy is the result of a conspiracy at the sectorial (if not higher) level between producers. Planned obsolescence may exist but as an unintended and unintentional consequence of rational decisions made by companies in a competitive market. Why it is intuitively appealing to think that planned obsolescence is the result of a conspiracy of a cartel of producers to extract more surplus from consumers, the most plausible explanation is elsewhere. Economic theory, especially information economics, suggests that firms are incentivized to trade durability for other attributes in their products because the former is impossible to observe. Of course, producers can guarantee their products – which they do – but even if consumers value durability (which is not necessarily the case), the fact that it is less observable than other attributes led them to discount its importance. A rational response for firms is, in turn, to invest less resources in durability and more in other attributes. This is nothing but a standard case of adverse selection.
The existence of planned obsolescence as an emergent phenomenon in the “spontaneous” market order may justify the intervention of the state through law and public policies. But it is very important to be clear with respect to the underlying cause, something which has not been the case when the French law has been passed. French politicians, especially at the left of the political spectrum, have largely, if only implicitly, entertained the conspiratorial account of planned obsolescence.
As Popper argues, this points out what is one of the main roles of social sciences, “the task of analyzing the unintended social repercussions of intentional human actions – those repercussions whose significance is neglected both by the conspiracy theory and by psychologism”.[2] This gives social sciences a very strong political relevance. As I have acknowledged in my last post, politics is a necessary evil. But it is essential that it is immune from the conspiracy theory of society, for otherwise, it rolls out the red carpet for populists. A minimal acquaintance with social sciences is the best remedy against the populist disease because it helps to realize how unlikely conspiracies are. This is one of the main reasons why I think we should give liberal democracies an epistemic if not an “epistocratic” twist that gives the opportunity to voters, and eventually that requires them, to acquire an understanding of how unintended phenomena emerge in complex and open societies.
[1] Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 5th edition (London: Routledge, 2011 [1944]), p. 306.
[2] Popper, p. 307.
You need to distinguish between serious and fantastical conspiracy theories. It's the latter, whose main motivation is enjoyment, that are attractive to populists.