Polanyi's and Hayek's spontaneous orders diverge on purpose: Polanyi's serve ideal ends that are aims in themselves, Hayek's cosmos has none

michael-polanyifriedrich-hayekspontaneous-ordercatallaxypolitical-philosophyteleologylogic-of-liberty

Where Polanyi and Hayek share the term "spontaneous order", they diverge on what such an order is for. In Polanyi's account the spontaneous orders of science, law, and the market are not open-ended: each is, in his own words, the method for managing purposes that are ends in themselves —

"Public liberty can be fully upheld as an aim in itself, insofar as it is the method for the social management of purposes that are aims in themselves. Freedom of science, freedom of worship, freedom of thought in general, are public institutions by which society opens to its members the opportunity for serving aims that are purposes in themselves." — Polanyi, The Logic of Liberty (1951), p. 193

Per Struan Jacobs's comparison, this contrasts with Hayek's own position that "not having been deliberately made by men, a cosmos has no purpose" (Hayek, "The Confusion of Language in Political Thought," as quoted by Jacobs, pp. 22–23): Hayek's catallaxy — the market's spontaneous order — serves an indefinite plurality of individually chosen purposes rather than one shared, predetermined ideal end. Jacobs's summary: "Polanyi and Hayek's interpretations of a free society are found to differ, Polanyi emphasizing the responsible exercise of freedom in the service of (mostly) ideal ends, Hayek the use of knowledge in pursuit of freely chosen purposes" (Jacobs 1997, p. 23).

The Polanyi side is Tier 1 against the primary; the comparison, and the Hayek quotation, are Tier 2 through Jacobs. This is the substantive content of the "break" that Polanyi never staged in his own book, and it bears on the automation cluster's interest in ends-directedness only obliquely — it is a claim about political teleology, not codifiability (claim-polanyis-paradox-tacit-tasks-resist-automation).