ESSAYS ON LIBERTY VOLUME VIII THE FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION, INC. IRVINGTON-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK 1961 EDITOR'S NOTE The study of freedorn and presentation of the findings in a manner helpful to anyone who is interested is the objective of the staff and the friends of the Foun­ dation for Economic Education. The studies are dis­ tributed, as completed, in the form of separate releases and as articles in The Freeman, a monthly study journal. This is the eighth volume of Essays on Liberty, all of the selections in it having previously appeared in The Freeman, or in Leonard E. Read's Notes !ro,m FEE" between July 1960 and June 1961. The first seven volumes of Essays on Liberty, covering earlier Foundation releases, are still available. Permission is hereby granted to reprint these essays in whole or in part, except the following: Freedom of Choice by Arthur Kemp Equality Versus Liberty: The Eternal Conflict by R. Carter Pittman Soviet Economists Part Company with Marx by Trygve J. B. Hoff It Isn't Insurance by Morley Cassidy Gifts from the Maharajah from The Wall Street Journal What Rent Control Does by Henry Hazlitt A Tale of Two Railroads by Howard Stephenson Published October 1961 Copyright 1961 by The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc. PRINTED IN U.S.A. CONTENTS Page The Coming Renaissance Leonard E. Read .. ......... 9 How To Win a War Ed Lipscomb 17 Who's To Blame? Benjamin A. Rogge 34 The Miracle of Individual Responsibility Carlton Williams 40 Insuring Irresponsibility W. M. Curtiss .... 50 The Man Who Smelled the Future John Chamberlain ........... 54 That Extra Mile George D. Scarseth 70 ANew Order of the Ages Samuel B. Pettengill .......... 76 Freedom of Choice Arthur Kemp ......... 89 Conscience of the Majority Leonard E. Read. .. ..... 94 Freedom: The Mortar of Maturity Stephen B. Miles) Jr. ...... .. 115 Equality Versus Liberty: The Eternal Conflict R. Carter Pittman ........... 122 CONTENTS Page A Matter of Common Interest Paul L. Poirot .... 138 Union Power and Government Aid Sylvester Petro ..... 144 Surplus Labor H. P. B. Jenkins ........... 166 Death in the Afternoon George Winder 168 Four Foundations of Freedom Kenneth W. Sollitt 176 The Lessons of Lost Weekends Melvin D. Barger ........... 188 On a Text from The Federalist Frederick A. Manchester 195 "We Never Had It So Good" Leonard E. Read 214 The Economic Growth of Soviet Russia Hans F. Sennholz ....... 222 Soviet Economists Part Company with Marx Trygve J. B. Hoff ..... 231 Centralized or Multiple .Economies George Winder ...... 240 Statistics: Achilles' Heel of Government Murray N. Rothbard .......... 255 Our Secret Government V. M. Newton, Jr. ...... 262 Five Ways to Nowhere Thomas W. Phelps 272 CONTENTS Page America Is Many Million Purposes William Henry ,Chamberlin 275 Let's Not Do It Ourselves Paul L. Poirot · 286 Armaments and Our Prosperity Edmund A. Opitz ........... 292 It Isn't Insurance Morley Cassidy ............ 301 Monetary Crossroads Hans F. Sennholz ........... 305 Seventeen Arguments Against Socialized Medicine Darryl w. Johnson~ Jr. ......... 319 Keeping the Peace W. M. Curtiss ..... · 326 Only If Free Can We Compete Leonard E. Read .... 345 The Hard Core of the Fann Problem Karl Brandt ............. 351 Gifts fro,ill the Maharajah The Wall Street Journal ......... 369 The Art of Deception John C. Sparks ............ 373 What Rent Control Does Henry Hazlitt 383 A Tale of Two Railroads Howard Stephenson · 389 "I'm for Free Enterprise-But!" Willis H. Hall ............ 401 CONTENTS Page Christianity and Education Edmund A. Opitz .405 The Power of Truth Leo N. Tolstoy ....... 414 The New Science and the New Faith Donald H. Andrews ..... 418 How To Reduce Taxes Leonard E. Read . ... .... 431 AUTHORS, listed alphabetically . .443 INDEX. ••• . ... 446 THE COMING RENAISSANCE tg ofeonard G. Read A RENAISSANCE suggests. something that once existed, was lost, and is being born again. The thing I have in mind is freedom. We once had it in good measure but have lost it to slavery. Yes, to slavery! Slavery in 1961 Amer­ ica? Seems incredible, but it is so! Our drift into slavery has been so gradual that it is almost impossible to dis­ cern short of rigorous analysis: Whoever controls a good or a service is the owner of that good or service. Ownership, in any genuine sense, is an empty term without control. In Russia, for example, where the political apparatus controls all goods and services, the individual does not own the products of his labor. Indeed, state socialism, whether Russian or any other brand, has as one of its cardinal tenets the rejection of private property and of personal ownership. Further, whoever controls an individual's actions can be described as the owner of that individual. To the extent that a person is under the arbitrary control of Mr. Read is Founder and President of the Foundation for Economic Education. 9 10 LEONARD E. READ another or others, to that extent is the persona slave.1 Slavery-man-control of man-has its roots in antiquity. "Its validity as a system of labor was never seriously questioned. No attempt to abolish it was made by any ancient government. Nor did any· ancient religious body, even Christianity, challenge the right of its believers to own slaves. Greek political philosophy discussed the institution of slavery, but only as to whether it was a condition grounded in natural law or made by man. ... To the ancient mind slavery was a fixed and accepted element of life, and no moral problem was involved."2 Slavery, as a system of labor, persisted through the medieval period, extending itself into modern times. The framers of the American government-a political arrangement more consistent with freedom than any other ever devised-ignored their own revolutionary idea that men derive their right to life from their Cre­ ator, when, in the Constitution, they failed to challenge the institution of slavery. More can be said about man's illiberality: The insti­ tution of slavery has never been downed, even in the 1 "What is essential to the idea of a slave? We primarily think of him as one who is owned by another ... That which funda­ mentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy another's desires ... What ... leads us to qualify our conception of the slavery as more or less severe? Evidently the greater or smaller extent to which effort is compulsorily expended for the benefit of another instead of for self-benefit." From "The Coming Slavery:' a chapter in Herbert Spencer's The Man Versus the State. This book (213 pp.) belongs in every libertarian thinker's library-$3.50 cloth. 2 See Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. New York: The Mac­ millan Company, 1937. Vol. XIV. p. 74. THE COMING RENAISSANCE 11 U.S.A.! Most Americans harbor the false notion that we did away with slavery when we "freed the slaves," that is, when we illegalized the holding of Negroes as chattels, as if that act-proper and long overdue-rooted out the evil. It left the real problem untouched. The Urge To Coerce The institution of slavery is only incidentally a color problem; definitively, it is the practice of the coercive inclinations of man to rule his fellow men. It is the tendency in many of us to play God, to lord it over others, to force compliance to our own wills. It is an inherited trace of barbarism, stubbornly unyielding to the whispers of civilization. This tendency to man-mastery, to rule, to "ride herd" over the actions of others, is strong and overpowering in a few of us and hangs on to some extent in most of us. Yet, this vestige of uncivilized man is relatively harm­ less so long as individuals with these despotic inclina­ tions cannot compel others to join them in their designs. As much as we may deplore robbery as a labor-saving device, the common thief, acting singly, may get away with only a job or two before being apprehended. Most of us escape his control, which is to say, we are not en­ slaved by him; we get off scot-free when thieves are left to their own resources. But when an adult, failing to rid himself of the "cops and robbers" attitude of childhood, obtains the backing of the State in order to control the life and life sub- 12 LEONARD E. READ stance of others-either to feather his own nest or to gratify his compassionate instincts-then every person in the nation suffers as a consequence. His more or less harmless individual barbarity will turn to effective col­ lective despotism. To illustrate: If a person wanted the rest of us to help pay for his power and light, but had no means of com­ pulsion at his disposal, quite likely his wish would go ungratified. But give him and a few of his like-minded friends the police power of government, the power to force a nation of people to do their bidding, and we get ourselves a TVA. Remove this compulsive force, and TVA, as a formal, legal agency to subsidize some at the expense of all, would automatically terminate. The compulsion observed in TVA is no isolated in­ stance. Rather, the same compulsive principle that makes TVA a reality is part and parcel of national polity. Compulsive political management, not competitive pri­ vate enterprise, is now the way to characterize the Amer­ ican economic system. We must not lose sight of the fact that our present system is founded on compulsion, and that this compulsive power has been captured by those whose object is to make everyone else behave their way. This is slavery pure and simple-if slavery be defined as the coercive imposition of someone's will upon others as relating to productive and creative actions.