By LEONARD E. READ
Published by the Foundation for Economic Education, 1968
To Frederic Bastiat
Contents
THE DEDICATION
To Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850), who sought for truth rather than outcome and never witnessed the fruits his labor bore. Obedience to conscience was his first rule; we witness the results.
1. THE SOURCE OF PROGRESS
Leadership is a matter of enlightenment. Not by following “leaders,” but by exchanging ever-improving ideas, do we leapfrog one another toward higher understanding.
2. ON THINKING FOR SELF
“The man born into a culture confident of its knowledge is in danger of becoming a barbarian.” The political consequences of not thinking for self. Suggested counsel to those who take somebody else’s word for everything.
3. ACCENT ON THE RIGHT
We see mostly what’s wrong and declaim; we should be looking for what’s right and exalt. What’s right, being commonplace, has little recognition, few articulate protagonists, and no press. Yet, what’s right far exceeds what’s wrong.
4. FIND THE WRONG AND THERE’S THE RIGHT
If we will discover what’s wrong and should be prohibited, there will open up to us the infinite realm of righteous activities. We can tell where a person stands in the ideological line-up by observing what he believes should be prohibited. Methods of enforcing prohibitions.
5. RIGHT AND WRONG, SIDE BY SIDE
Progress and regress go on simultaneously, giving the false impression that the regress is the cause of the progress. But entrepreneurial ingenuity exceeds political depravity; capital is formed faster then destroyed; restrictions on exchange do not keep pace with their increase. Not yet!
6. COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS
The personal and social evil of covetousness. The cure. He who is rich in worldly goods but unaware of his blessings is poor, and probably covetous; he who is poor in worldly goods but aware of his blessings is rich, and assuredly without envy.
7. TO EACH HIS OWN
Implicit in the taboo, “Thou shalt not steal,” is the positive assertion of private ownership. The recognition of this principle witnessed the dawn of civilization; and without it, our civilization must fall.
8. COPING WITH POVERTY
Devotees of liberty, with their eye on open opportunity for all and special privilege for none, forget to stress that the poor should look to freedom. As a result, the baton is picked up by the socialists who “play to the grandstand.” Libertarians should accent the point that the alleviation of poverty is a by-product of freedom.
9. IN HARMONY WITH CREATION
The free market relates not only to the exchange of goods and services but also of ideas, knowledge, discoveries, inventions. This free movement is in harmony with Creation. Creative Wisdom, fundamental to social existence, explained. The role of competition in this context.
10. MAN’S MOBILITY
Man and his ideas and his labors and his products are all of a piece. To arrest the movement of persons is no less destructive than to bring the exchange of goods and services to a standstill. The recreational, economic, educational, and political significance of travel within and without the U.S.A.
11. ACCENT ON AWARENESS
Reforming others vs. improvement of self. The communist conspiracy idea used to illustrate the superiority of the latter over the former. Correct method in advancing liberty is the occasion for encouragement.
12. DON’T LOOK BACK
Looking back on “the good old days” is a waste of energy. Nothing can be put back together again the way it was; we are in flight! There are hundreds among us having the stature of our Founding Fathers, but they are sunk in a sea of thinking alien to freedom. They can rise as spokesmen and be in evidence only as libertarian excellence is increased. Your role, and mine.
INDEX
Why a Good Man Can’t Be Kept Down
It is said that there is not enough darkness in the whole world to put out the light of one wee candle. Nor is there enough ignorance and wrongdoing on earth to submerge what’s right. Creation has endowed righteousness with a built-in buoyancy; it persists in rising to the top, often in the most unlikely persons, always in good men!
Frederic Bastiat
Dedication
Dedication of a book is a writer’s way of paying respect to someone, or of acknowledging a devoted helper, or of honoring a loved one—and, as a rule, the tribute is to a contemporary.
Why, then, my dedication to Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)?
First, Bastiat is one of my heroes. I am unaware of anyone who saw more clearly through the political fog than he and who more brilliantly and copiously revealed his insights.1
And what integrity! For instance, his re-election to the Chamber of Deputies was in grave doubt: his constitutents had observed that he voted now with the Left and then with the Right, giving the appearance of inconsistency. This was his defense, “I have not made an alliance with anyone; I have not joined either side. On each question I have voted according to my own conscience.” He was re-elected.
Second, and unconventionally, I think of Bastiat as a contemporary, for he does in fact live on. The fruits of his fertile mind are better known in the U.S.A. today than at any time since he began to write nearly a century and a half ago—perhaps more widely understood and shared here than ever in his own country. This is an important kind of immortality.
However, I pay tribute to Bastiat primarily to portray a truth we so sorely need to recognize. Most antisocialists, frustrated by what goes on, and impatiently looking for immediate remedies, repeatedly resort to useless short cuts. They want action now! And get nothing for their pains, absolutely nothing except, perhaps, discouragement! The hard fact is that the trend lines in social thinking do not alter their direction-much less reverse themselves—at your insistence or mine, however voluble. These trends, particularly when headed toward social decline, move with a near inexorable force and are changed, if at all, by starter stuff—leaven—or, if I may coin a term, intellectual incubation.
The only persons of constructive influence, the ones who really count in social shifts for the better, are those who labor at the incubation level. And they must be those rare individuals who receive satisfaction from following the dictates of conscience; there is no other reward; they seldom, if ever, live to witness the fruits of their labor.
Bastiat’s was a one-man performance, advancing concepts that found little hospitality in his native France, during his lifetime or since. A lesser soul would have been beaten down by discouragement and have thrown in the sponge. How many Americans die on the vine because their compatriots number in the thousands only, instead of in the millions! It takes a man to stand alone!
Free Trade in England
But who can ever know where ideas, once properly incubated, will take root! Here is a striking illustration: one of the most significant turnabouts in Western Civilization—a shift from mercantilism to free trade, from state interventionism to the free market—took place in England some time following the Napoleonic Wars. While Richard Cobden and John Bright have been largely credited with this unprecedented achievement, research reveals that Bastiat was the ideological incubator.2 But he was entombed in Rome—Saint-Louis des Francais—ere his labors bore this English fruit.
An eminent economist3 expressed this view to me: “The two most influential books bearing on Western Civilization have been The Holy Bible and The Wealth of Nations” A debatable opinion, perhaps, but there is no doubt about the enormous influence of Adam Smith’s book. Yet Smith, as Bastiat, searching for what’s right, working at the incubation level, serving as leaven, passed on before his labor bore its remarkable fruit. And more than likely, these men, as others who search for truth and report their findings, never suspected what the results would be. Indeed, they probably never hoped for results; to have focused on outcome doubtless would have corrupted the purity of their investigations. Such men seek truth and not outcome—and get results. Others seek outcome rather than truth—and get neither truth nor results.4
The spirit of seekers after truth, the attitude of those who do in fact serve as agents of civilization, is illustrated by Karl Jaspers. He was dismissed by the Nazis from his professorship at the University of Heidelberg and forbidden to teach or publish. Yet Jaspers used the years of his retirement for reflection and writing. He himself tells the story:
When in 1938 a young friend said to me: “Why are you writing, it can never be published anyway, and one day all of your manuscripts will be burned,” I replied playfully: “One never knows; I enjoy writing; what I am thinking becomes clearer in the process; and finally, in case the overthrow should occur someday, I do not wish to stand there with empty hands.”5
Frederic Bastiat was not present at the overthrow of mercantilism in England but, had he been standing there, his would not have been empty hands. May you and I be entitled to as salutary a verdict!
1 His collected works in the original French—in FEE’s Library—run to some 1,200,000 words!
2 See Frederic Bastiat: Ideas and Influence by Dean Russell. (175 pp., a multilithed, bound volume) (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1965.)
3 Dr. Thomas Nixon Carver, for 32 years Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University.
4 C. S. Lewis put it: “Aim at Heaven and you get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you will get neither.” (Mere Christianity. London: Geoffrey Bles, Ltd., 1953, p. 106.)
5 Taken from “A New Humanism” by Karl Jaspers, appearing in Adrienne Koch (ed.), Philosophy for a Time of Crisis (New York: E. P. Dutton Co., 1959), pp. 320-21.
1
The Source of Progress
All aspects of life are in flux; nothing stays put. There is progress in some sectors, accompanied by regress in others. For instance, there is economic progress, only to be followed by a decline of material wellbeing. And there is moral, social, political, scientific, technological, intellectual, as well as spiritual progress—and regress.
Most everyone prefers progress in the above areas to regress. Progress is the direction man goes when fulfilling his destiny; regress, his direction when “reverting to type.” Progressing, emerging, hatching, evolving are in the same harmonic scale.
Attaching such value as we do to progress requires, also, that we give a prime value to leadership, for it is an observed fact that progress is a phenomenon flowing from leadership. Thus, when leadership is not understood or when it is sought where it does not exist, progress is not only in jeopardy, it becomes impossible for it has lost touch with its source. It is important, therefore, that we try to discover for ourselves what true leadership really is. The following is an attempt to pinpoint that type of leadership from which progress springs.
A Judas goat, one trained to lead innocent sheep to slaughter, is a leader of sorts. But, obviously, this is not the kind of leadership which serves as the source of progress: the goat is no more conscious of betrayal than are the sheep of their fate. This is simply a case of the blind leading the blind, the leader having no role other than that of being followed.
Similar behavior among men is not difficult to observe: our history books are filled with accounts of leaders, so called, who have been in the vanguard of movements ending not only in economic disaster but often in slaughter. These “leaders” have been distinguished more by their lack of understanding than by any conscious malevolence. They knew not where they were going; they found themselves out front only because millions of people, suffering from prevailing fallacies and emotional enthusiasms, saw in the “leader” an energetic personification of their own illusions. Enormous energy and personality quirks—and little else—have marked these “leaders.” The sad part is that we need not turn to history for examples; we are now experiencing a rash of these “leadership” situations, not only abroad, but at home as well.
Let us not, however, confine our reflections to those in the vanguard of destructive movements. That would be to miss the point of this analysis. For example, those of us with a libertarian bent will, unless we are extremely careful, think of Frederic Bastiat as a leader. But that excellent spokesman for liberty would have been the first to reject any such accolade. He denied the leader-in-person notion when explaining to some of his supporters why he sometimes voted in the French National Assembly with the socialists and communists: “One must base his vote on for what instead of with whom.” Here we find a cue as to the meaning of true leadership. First, however, a few thoughts on the dangers of thinking of any person as a leader.
When we think of a person—Bastiat, or anyone else, for that matter—as a leader, two kinds of disaster are likely to follow. The first is more than likely; it is certain: we who commit this error in our thinking resolve ourselves into blind followers; we limit what we perceive to nothing more than the personality traits of an individual. Whatever he does is right for no more reason than it is he who does it.1
The second disaster, if it happens, is an outgrowth of the first: any individual widely hailed as “our leader” is in grave danger of actually believing what he hears; he may conclude that multiple errors add up to truth—that he is, in fact, a Leader. Acceptance of this distorted view of self dangerously weakens one’s resistance to the messiah complex.
The messiah complex is a common failing, readily detected: those who suffer this psychosis think of themselves as the fountainhead of truth; they see nothing in the cosmos above their own finite minds and, thus, quite naturally become intellectual and/or political authoritarians: “Believe precisely as I do or act as I command lest you stand condemned in my eyes.” They will forsake their role as students or workers in the vineyard, and will pontificate as oracles, on any subject; indeed, they may even aspire to usurp the role of God! Thus, disaster comes to both the followed and the followers: “If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”
Success May Destroy You
Dean Inge once observed, “Nothing fails like success.” Why is the good Deans observation so often confirmed? Success is heady stuff; few can experience it and remain sober. When a student of liberty, for instance, gets ahead of others in his own little orbit, he has a measure of success. But let the others embrace him as their leader (a common failing) and let him, as a consequence of this unwarranted flattery, look upon them as his disciples (an infatuating weakness), and his initial “success” must turn to failure. The studying, which accounted for his success, is at an end. As the saying goes, “He’s a big-shot.”
To bring this analysis into sharper focus, contemplate two relatively intelligent individuals exchanging ideas in a two-way inquiry of serious import. While both leadership and followership would then be in evidence, we could not accurately ascribe the attraction and response to either one of the individuals themselves, but to some object beyond both individuals, which one understands better than the other. The leadership and followership we observe in this situation has only an ideational explanation: one of the persons embodies an idea, an insight, a perception, a new spark of consciousness which he shares; the other, who perceives the point, remarks, in effect, “I follow you.” This means that he, also, perceives the idea. Leadership, in this significant sense, is enlightenment, not the making of carbon copies. Nietzsche once observed that it is no credit to a teacher if a student resembles him overly much.
Followership, in this sense, means to partake of the enlightenment. “To improve oneself,” wrote Ortega y Gasset, “one must first admire perfection in others.” If it is ideational perfection that is admired in another, then it is ideational perfection of self, not imitation, that one will strive for.
Individuals, when discoursing in a spirit of inquiry, will experience light and interchanges of light—that is, the teacher and student positions will alternate, each feeding on the other, the baton of leadership passing back and forth. It is worthy of note that writing, reading, and printing have done away with many of the limitations once imposed on this process by time and space; we find ourselves enlightened by ideas recorded in the distant past.
The Measure of a Man
Refer again to Frederic Bastiat. We of recent generations have not had him as a personal acquaintance; thus, the leadership we are prone to ascribe to his person is patently false. The for what—the work—of this French philosopher and statesman constitutes the sole leadership we follow. His writings are clear expositions of ideas he perceived or consciousness he attained or principles he deduced; they are the fruits of his studies, gleanings from his devoted and intensive search for truth. His awareness that leadership is an ideational phenomenon rather than a personality trait caused him to conclude, “One must base his vote on for what instead of with whom.”
When Abraham Lincoln in his Peoria speech said, “Stand with anybody that stands right. . . . Part with him when he goes wrong,” he was advocating a disregard of who the person was and a skeptical look at what the person stood for. In short, when looking for leadership, look right through the individual in order to see the nature and quality of the idea or principle he espouses; look through the person, be he labeled friend or foe, Republican or Democrat, clergyman or layman, the great, the near-great, or the commoner. If what is found be adjudged valid and also helpful and enlightening—that is, above or beyond one’s own lights—then there is leadership, the only kind that generates progress.
Leading Thoughts
To test yourself for qualities of this “thought leadership,” stand before a mirror. Then switch off the lights, or close your eyes, or imagine that your visible image completely disappears—that nothing remains but your invisible essence, your consciousness or range of perception, your thoughts and ideas. This is all the genuine leadership you possess; and the amount of it is to be measured by the extent to which others, looking through you, find enlightenment in your ideas.
Searching for and finding leadership as it shows forth in others is nearly as difficult as developing it in self. For no one can comprehend a superior consciousness except as his own consciousness, in some measure, approximates the higher one.2 Thus, the search for leadership demands a continuing growth in healthy skepticism, discrimination, awareness, wisdom. That the search becomes more difficult as one advances is conceded, the difficulty accounting for much of the misconstruction put on leadership; discrimination in ideas is denied to those who find the required labor and self-discipline too difficult. Yet, sensing the need to follow something—all of us are followers in most respects—many people turn to “leaders”; they follow the reputations of fallible men—ready-made and shallow answers to this native necessity—and thus never discover the kind of leadership on which all progress, all human emergence, is founded.
Where there is no leadership—that is, good ideas being sought, grasped, explained, understood—there is no economic freedom, no liberty. Thus, we need to know what true leadership is, lest we be misled in our quest. Such truths as are perceived, not the persons advancing them, constitute the sole source of progress; only these truths qualify for that type of leadership worth developing or following.
1 A noted clergyman of the last generation, S. Parkes Cadman, lamented, “Do you know what is wrong with my church? My people like me, but they don’t love God.” In short, they were following a person; they were not embarked on the Eternal Search for Truth.
2 “A man only understands that of which he has already the beginnings in himself.” An entry of December 17, 1854, in Journal Intimé of Henri Frederic Amiel.
2
On Thinking for Self
During the discussion following one of my recent lectures, it occurred to me that the questions fell into a pattern, and that this pattern was the same—whether in Manila, or Boise, or wherever. Each question was based on something the inquirer had heard or read; no questions appeared to stem from a genuine impasse in the persons own effort to solve a problem. These people were merely repeating questions someone else had raised for them; they weren’t seeking directions by reason of having lost their way for, in fact, they had done no exploration on their own!
What a fearful thought—if this situation is general: a nation of people the vast majority of whom do no thinking for themselves in the area of political economy! Positions on matters of the deepest social import formed from nothing more profound than radio, TV, and newspaper commentaries, or casual, off-the-cuff opinions, or the outpourings of popularity seekers! “The quality and influence of an idea, Ortega saw, was not so much in the idea as in a man’s relation to it. Has he made the idea his own, or merely inherited it? . . . The man born into a culture confident of its knowledge is in danger of becoming a barbarian.”1
Granting the correctness of this gloomy thought, what are the political consequences? And what counsel can you and I offer individuals who are doing no thinking for themselves? So, let’s explore the two significant questions this deplorable situation seems to pose.
To assess the political consequences, view the American populace as a market. Suppose, for instance, that the consumer tastes in literature have deteriorated until there is demand for pornography only. Pornographic authors and publishers will spring up by the thousands; authors and publishers of ethical, moral, and spiritual works will fade away for lack of a market. Reverse the market situation and assume only highly elevated tastes in literature. Authors and publishers of pornography will then be displaced by authors and publishers of high-grade literature.
One needs no poll to determine the literary tastes of a people. Merely observe the kind of literature that is gaining in favor and profit. We can infer from this that it is useless to blame commentators, authors, and publishers for purveying trash. They are merely irresponsible responses to the general taste—the market—whatever it is.2 The market determines who are to be the successful purveyors.
The Political Climate
Market demand also determines the kinds of persons who vie with each other for political office.
Assume a people who do no thinking for themselves. Theirs is a stunted skepticism. Such people only react and are easy prey of the cliché, the plausibility, the shallow promise, the lie. Emotional appeals and pretty words are their only guidelines. The market is made up of no-thinks. Statesmen—men of integrity and intellectual stature—are hopelessly out of demand. When this is the situation, such statesmen will not be found among the politically active.
And who may we expect to respond to a market where thinking for self is absent? Charlatans! Word mongers! Power seekers! Deception artists! They come out of their obscurity as termites out of a rotten stump; the worst rise to the political top. And when our only choice is “the lesser of two evils,” voting is a sham.
Now assume a society of persons who do their own thinking and, as a consequence, possess a healthy and intelligent skepticism, persons who cannot be “taken in,” hardheaded students of political economy graced with moral rectitude. The market for charlatans is dead; we are scarcely aware of such people. Instead, we find statesmen of character and integrity vying for political office.
There is no need for a poll to determine whether original or introspective thinking is declining or rising. Merely keep in mind that whatever shows forth on the political horizon is the response to the market, an echoing or mirroring of the preponderant mode in thinking. When thinking for self is declining, more charlatans and fewer statesmen will vie for office. Look at the political horizon to learn what the thinking is, just as you look at a thermometer to learn what the temperature is. So, blame not the political opportunists for the state of the nation. Our failure to think for ourselves put them there—indeed, brought them into being. For we are the market; they are but the reflections!
An interesting fact intrudes itself into this analysis: approximately 50 per cent of those who do not think for themselves are furious with what they see on the political horizon—which is but their own reflections! And to assuage their discontent they exert vigorous effort to change the reflection from Republican to Democrat, or vice versa. As should be expected, they get no more for their pains than new faces masking mentalities remarkably similar to those unseated. It cannot be otherwise.3
No improving trend on the political horizon is possible except as there is an improvement—quantity and quality—in thinking for self. Thus, it is of the utmost importance that we seriously attend to our thinking. What helpful points can we make?
The Proper Role of Government
Given the present situation, where government is recklessly out of bounds and has its hand in practically every aspect of life, the well-informed citizen is expected to know all about everything: how to deliver mail, poverty the world over, give-aways to foreign countries, you name it, are up for public discussion. Most of these so-called national or world problems are of similar origin and nature—each one trying to manage everyone’s business but his own. This hopelessly impossible challenge doubtless accounts in no small measure for so many having “thrown in the sponge” when it comes to thinking for self. No person on the face of the earth knows how to make socialism work. And don’t try! Instead, concentrate the thinking on what the principled and proper scope of government really is. This is easily within the realm of any reasonably intelligent person, and is first of all the kind of thinking for self in political economy one should cover.4 All else—welfare, security, prosperity—is in the realm of the free market: you to your affairs, me to mine.
The Individual’s Role
Most individuals who have abandoned thinking for self in matters of political economy are unaware that they thus dry up the source of Creative Wisdom. Such wisdom as society requires does not and cannot exist in any one person, though each of us should be responsible for his own part. Each of us views the world through a tiny aperture. No two apertures, no two views, are identical. Your and my disparate wisdoms, such as they are, these minuscule dividends of exercising the introspective faculty, can be likened to two wee candles, each different from the other and each, by itself, barely perceptible. But when all persons with any capabilities in this respect are realizing their potentialities, there is a remarkable wisdom, a Creative Wisdom that can be likened to an over-all luminosity, a great light.5 To understand the nature and origin of Creative Wisdom is sufficient to inspire many persons to introspective action.6 The responsible citizen insists on knowing what is his part and then doing it.
There are obstacles, of course, on this path to wisdom. One is a lack of faith in an over-all wisdom representing a coalescence of tiny bits of individual understanding. There are numerous reasons why it isn’t trusted. Obviously, it cannot be seen with the eye; it can be apprehended only by abstract thinking. Nor have enough people been thinking for self to make an impressive demonstration. Yet, this is the nature of knowledge in society and it behooves each of us to make the best of it.
Another obstacle is busy-ness, a consuming preoccupation with housework, children, the job, a business, making a living, or whatever. But these amenities of life are impossible in the absence of a good society and a good society cannot be developed except through the process of thinking for self. Until such introspection becomes as natural as eating and breathing, there is little prospect for the good life.
The essential critical faculty cannot be developed when we copy-cat the questions and conclusions of others. Each to his own thinking! The rule, therefore, is not to take somebody else’s word for it. And to be consistent, what must my counsel be? Don’t take my word for it! Scarcely any self-anointed seer or prophet wants to go that far; but, unless he will, write him off as an intellectual authoritarian, a be-like-me god.
Does this counsel, “Don’t take my word for it,” mean that others should close their minds to my word? Not necessarily. Indeed, one who would think for himself should look not only among his contemporaries but also among his predecessors, even among the ancients, for any bits of wisdom that can be garnered. Take full advantage of one’s environment, experience, and heritage, but let each thoughtfully do his own selecting, evaluating, and reasoning.
To trust this Creative Wisdom reflects an abiding faith in self and in all free men—really, a faith in the creative process. But don’t take my word for it; think that one through for yourself.
1 Manas, October 25, 1967.
2 Exception: Men of virtue and talents—the natural aristocracy, to use Jefferson’s term—would never irresponsibly respond to the lure of either fame or fortune should the response contradict their concept of righteousness. Man cannot stoop below his goodness.
3 In the above I have assumed the two extremes: nobody and everybody thinking for self. In society this is never the case; it’s always a tendency toward one extreme or the other. The societal tendency, of course, is not swayed or determined by the many who fail to think for themselves but by the few who strive to do their own thinking. The thinkers ultimately govern.
4 Commended for reference reading is The Law by Frederic Bastiat (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1962).
5 See “The Use of Knowledge in Society” by F. A. Hayek. The Freeman, May, 1961.
6 More of an explanation of “Creative Wisdom” appears in Chapter 9.
3
Accent on the Right
A student turned in his paper, “What’s Wrong with America.” After pronouncing it “excellent,” his teacher advised, “Now write another essay and show what’s right with America.”
Could it be that we of the libertarian persuasion have, like that student, spent too much time with the negative and the critical? Might it not be better to concentrate our thinking, talking, writing on what’s right with our country? This thought, at least, deserves a hard look.
Reflect on what, for the most part, we have been doing. We have clearly seen and duly deplored the striking shift toward Federal responsibility for security and welfare and prosperity, political determination and dictation of human affairs, “public” ownership and control of property, price and wage and interest and rent controls, and centralized government growing out of bounds.1 We have been so engrossed in denouncing these things that are wrong that we have lost sight of much that is right. To verify this, try committing to paper everything you can think of that’s right and observe how short the list is!
Righteousness Loses by Default
I do not mean to suggest that what’s wrong is negligible; our society appears headed toward collapse. Nor do I mean to condemn the reporting and analysis of wrongdoing. The scholarly diagnosis of fallacies, as distinguished from diatribes and polemics, is an absolute necessity. But the direction in which we are headed may be a significant signal that the libertarian tactic itself, viewed over-all, has been wrong. Look at the result, in which we have been unwitting accomplices: It is self-evident that what’s right has no supporters among the wrongdoers; nor has right action any vocal protagonists among those of us who keep our eye on and criticize only the wrongdoing. The upshot is that right action has no voice, no announcers, no press; even worse, the wrongdoing faces no well-known alternatives. That which is right is buried in silence; it loses by default. How, then, can right action be expected to assert itself and, thus, prevail?
Perpetual declaiming has another fault: it quickly becomes boring and tiresome; it tends to seal all ears. Would-be teachers and preachers of the libertarian philosophy reach a low point of simply crying on one another’s shoulders, often misleadingly phrased as “talking to ourselves.” This hopeless situation, as much as anything else, causes them to throw in the sponge, give up the ghost.
Were we to pursue the proper tactic, we would first acquaint ourselves with all the right actions we can inventory. We would next bring these to light, enshrine and ennoble and sanctify them as we do motherhood, for instance—make them politically untouchable. This is the kind of intellectual nurture that righteousness requires in order to expand and grow. Further, when we accent what is right, we put ourselves in the realm of the positive; our message becomes attractive, for it is one of hope rather than despair. This approach also strips the wrongdoing of its plausibilities and without any declamation on our part—leaves it bare, naked, and exposed.
While I am conscious of the libertarian plight brought on by our tactical errors and am aware of the dividends that would accrue were we able to accent the right, the positive, and the hopeful, I confess to a frustrating lack of ability to practice expertly that which I now commend. In the practice of what I am preaching here, I stand, as do many others, an utter neophyte. For this demands of me that I break with habits of long standing and embark on a wholly new and unpracticed approach. Bluntly, I have been so overwhelmed by the wrongdoing that I am hardly conscious of those actions that are right, nor am I capable of itemizing them without resorting to a difficult concentration. Any libertarian who questions the sincerity of this confession should give himself the test.
The Exceptions Make News
Yet, there is one obvious fact from which we may draw comfort and help: What’s right with America exceeds what is wrong! Were this not true, the wrongdoing would have taken over completely by now. And it has not!
Why, then, is the wrongdoing so glaringly evident and right action so hidden from view? The answer to this is simple: The wrongdoing is exceptional and makes news; hardly anything else do we read about in the press and listen to over radio and TV. Doing right, on the other hand, is so commonplace that it never “makes the papers.” Actually, we couldn’t manufacture enough newsprint to report all the kindly acts, the honest transactions, the intelligent thoughts and observations. Right actions are taken for granted and no more impinge upon our consciousness than does the air we regularly breathe or the rhythmic beat of our hearts.
The wrong is seen; the right is not. So, let us try to become aware of the commonplace, that we may focus on what is right until we are better able to emphasize and enshrine it.
Consider, for instance, what it would be like to sponsor a FEE Seminar in Russia, or in any of the Iron Curtain countries, or in China, or even in Spain. You would be confronted by men with weapons.
In America, regardless of ominous signs, we are still free to speak and write our thoughts and to assemble, even though our views may be diametrically opposed to those of the presiding political establishment. Liberty can never be counted out where and when freedom of speech, of press, of assembly prevail. Why not take note of these blessings, praise them to the skies, and make them sacrosanct? While they stand, authoritarianism cannot overcome us!2
Despite the infringements upon religious freedom cast by programs such as social security and mass medication, freedom of worship is largely intact in the United States.3 This falls in the category of that which is right and stands in important opposition to the total state. Glorify religious freedom!
A Powerful Constructive Force
Every time you make a phone call, this is a willing exchange and reflects a gain on the part of both you and the telephone company. Consider the grocer, the dairyman, the candlestick maker, and the countless others with whom you daily deal. Billions of these exchanges, free of coercion, take place every day. In their incredible sum total, they constitute a constructive force out of all proportion to the destructive, coercive forces. Adequately demonstrate the virtues of these right actions and you automatically curb the wrong ones.
Suppose, for example, that we had been extolling the economic, educational, political, and recreational advantages of travel to countries around the globe to the point of general appreciation and acceptance. The Washington hierarchy would no more dare suggest a restriction on foreign travel than it would dare to deny travel between the fifty states. We may be late in our enshrinement of this item among the things that are right; but if we are late, this further illustrates the value of accenting the positive.4
Aside from the restrictions imposed by minimum wage laws, licensing, trade union compulsions, and the like, there remain literally millions of willing exchanges between the sellers and buyers of personal services, transactions in which the market is unfettered. Let us take cognizance of these and show the benefits they confer on all parties concerned. By so doing, the legally rigged, coercively restricted transactions will be exposed for what they really are: impediments to the long-range interests of everyone.
It is true that we are people-controlled to a marked extent in the name of rent and price controls, farm price supports, and other political interventions.5 But, for the most part, producers and consumers are still free to engage in open competition, guided by the unerring signals of ever-changing market prices. It takes an enormous amount of observation and learning to uphold open competition interestingly and attractively. But it is an important part of the tactic of accenting right action.
Angels and Whipping Boys
Perhaps these few examples may suffice to suggest that right action exceeds the wrongdoing in America. No mention has been made of the little personal charities, thoughtful deeds, kindly sentiments, helping hands, fair dealings, integrity, initiative, acceptance of responsibility, piety, love, wisdom—angels, Emerson called them—that manifest themselves in nearly every American to some extent. So, let us not only take note of these exemplary attributes but put them on parade, extol and pay tribute to them, that is, exalt them.
Do we run a risk in shifting from the declamation of wrongdoing to the enshrinement of rightdoing? Will we, perhaps, leave the wrongdoers without opposition? Would they not then be free to run rampant, even more so than now?
First, we should know that there is a better tactic than declaiming, grumbling, growling, name-calling.
Second, upholding right actions is a form of presentation that leaves wrongdoers nothing to scratch against; its practitioners remove themselves as “whipping boys” who serve to distract attention from the wrongdoers and their deeds.6 When we accent right-doing, we move into a realm beyond the range of wrongdoers. Darkness cannot penetrate light; it is the other way around. Increasing the candlepower is what counts!
Finally, there is the prospect that as one learns to put his emphasis on right actions, he simultaneously withdraws any support he may have been giving, however unwittingly, to the wrongdoing.
I insist that the individual himself is upgraded to the extent he succeeds in understanding, accenting, and living by what is right. And if this isn’t worth the candle, pray tell, what is!
1 See my “Reflections on Coming of Age.” A copy of this monograph on request.
For a much more detailed outline of what’s wrong, see “The Task Confronting Libertarians” by Henry Hazlitt. The Freeman, March, 1968. Copy on request.
2 A critic of this conclusion is correct in claiming that freedom cannot exist in the absence of private ownership, but he may not be right when he insists that private ownership can be abolished in the presence of free speech, press, assembly. Yes, it can be greatly impaired, as we are now witnessing; but, ultimately, the institution of private ownership must stand among a free people unless, of course, they degenerate to the point where they no longer prize the right to the fruits of their own labor. In this unhappy event, there isn’t anything remaining to argue about. The idea of liberty must grow weak in the hearts of men before it can be killed at the hands of tyrants.
3 For instance, a religious feature of the Latter Day Saints, of the Amish, and others is looking after their own. Compulsory social security is a denial of this. Fluoridation of the water supply is mass medication which contradicts the tenets of Christian Science. Freedom to worship as one chooses has been chipped away to some extent.
4 My associate, Dr. Paul Poirot, on reading this manuscript, volunteered to “accent the positive” as related to travel. See “Progress Through Travel,” The Freeman, April, 1968. My attempt appears as Chapter 10. But, more important, try your own hand at this.
5 See “Price Control Is People Control” by Dean Russell. The Freeman, October, 1961.
6 Supply your own names; the “whipping boys” are legion, the ones who indulge in extravagant, unverifiable claims, name-calling, and so on; in short, the opponents of socialism who say things the socialists can legitimately point to as absurd. The public eye is thus fixed on these absurdities and thereby distracted from the absurdities of the socialists. But the brash opponents serve the socialists in yet another way: all opponents, because they are associated as opponents, are made to look absurd.
4
Find the Wrong, and There’s the Right
As in most disagreements, the current politico-economic controversy revolves around what’s right. And contrary to what a socialist or a libertarian usually thinks of his opponents, each is as convinced of his righteousness as the other. A consciously malevolent person is seldom found.
That this contest as to what’s right in social relationships will ever be resolved is doubtful; for what’s right is to be found only in what’s true, and who among us is qualified to settle on that? As do most others, I have numerous views which I believe to be right and not even debatable. But to list or classify them? Far easier, I think, to define right actions as those which are not demonstrably wrong. For it is possible to bring within our purview and make some reasonable assessment of the wrong; what’s right is so vast that it hardly lends itself to any such analysis.
Those actions which are wrong in social relationships are the ones we should aim to prohibit by personal endeavor, by education and, as a last resort, by society’s formal agency of organized force: government. Thus, to analyze what should be prohibited is a means of opening to our vision the infinite realm of righteousness.
As an introductory thought, reflect on how misled we so often are when judging people by first appearances! To dramatize the fact that what first meets the eye is often deceiving, imagine identical twins. They do indeed look alike, but how they can differ in other respects! One brother can be an out-and-out collectivist, statist, mercantilist, interventionist; the other an ardent believer in individual rights, free market practices, and private ownership of property. For reasons difficult to explain, one has a socialistic orientation while the other has a libertarian devotion.
But even these opposed designations—socialist and libertarian—do not accurately or revealingly stake out the significant differences between these two men. Such labels may have considerable emotional impact, but they do not precisely distinguish the conflicting philosophies. What really, in the ideological sense, marks the one from the other? Is there some one characteristic that can be identified and evaluated? Yes, I believe there is, and this brings me to my point: The difference between the socialist and the libertarian thinker is a difference of opinion as to what others should be prohibited from doing.
Let’s use this claim as a working hypothesis, think it through, and test its validity. If the claim proves irrefutable, then we have come upon a fairly simple method of evaluating our own or anyone else’s authoritarianism or, conversely, libertarianism.1 Further we shall, by identifying what should be prohibited, discover what’s wrong and, thus, expand our awareness of what’s right. But first, some reflections on prohibitions in general.
Rules for Survival
How many animal species have come and gone no one knows. Many thousands survive and the fact of their survival, whether guided by instincts or drives or conscious choices, rests, in no small measure, on the avoidance of specie-destructive actions. Thus, all surviving species have, at the very minimum, abided by a set of prohibitions—things not to do; otherwise, they would have been extinct ere this.
Certain types of scorpions, for example, stick to dry land; puddles and pools are among their instinctual taboos. There is some prohibitory force that keeps fish off dry land, lambs from chasing lions, and so on and on. How insects and animals acquire their built-in prohibitions is not well understood. We label their reactions instinctual, meaning that it is not reasoned or conscious behavior.
Man, on the other hand, does not now possess a like set of instinctual do-nots: built-in prohibitions. Instead, he must enjoy or suffer the consequences of his own free will, his own power to choose between what’s right and what’s wrong; in a word, man is more or less at the mercy of his own imperfect understanding and conscious decisions. The upshot of this is that human beings must choose the prohibitions they will observe, and the selection of a wrong one may be as disastrous to our species as omitting a right one. Survival of the human species rests as much on observing the correct prohibitions as is the case with any other species.
But in our case, the observance of the correct must-nots has survival value only if preceded by a correct, conscious selection of the must-nots. When the survival of the human race is at stake and when that survival rests on the selection of prohibitions by variable, imperfect members of that race, the wonder is that the ideological controversy is not greater than now.
When Homo sapiens first appeared he had little language, no literature, no maxims, no tradition or history to which he could make reference; in short, he possessed no precise and accurate list of things not to do. We cannot explain the survival of these early specimens of our kind unless we assume that some of the instinctual prohibitions of their animal cousins remained with them during the transition period from instinct to some measure of self-knowledge for, throughout many millennia, we know nothing of man-formalized prohibitions. Then appeared the crude taboos observed by what we now call “primitive peoples.” These have survival value in certain conditions, even though the reasons given for the practice might not hold water.
Enforcing the Rules
If prohibitions are as important as here represented, it is well that we reflect not only on the man-contrived thou-shalt-nots but particularly on the several types of persuasion to make them effective. For it is self-evident that there can be no thou-shalt-not worth the mention unless it is backed by some form of persuasion. So far as this exploration is concerned, there are three forms of persuasion which make prohibitions effective or meaningful. I shall touch on the three in the order of their historical appearance.
The Code of Hammurabi, 2000 B.C., is probably the earliest of systematized prohibitions. This is considered one of the greatest of the ancient codes; it was particularly strong in its prohibitions against defrauding the helpless. To secure observance, the persuasiveness took the form of organized police force. The Columbia Encyclopedia refers to the retributive nature of the punishment meted out as a “savage feature . . . an eye for an eye literally.” Not only is this the oldest of the three forms of persuasion as a means of effectuating prohibitions, but it is today very popular and much employed all over the “civilized” world, in the U.S.A. as elsewhere.
The next and higher form of persuasion appeared about a millennium later—the form employed to effectuate the thou-shalt-nots known as The Decalogue. Here the persuasiveness was not organized police force but, instead, the promise of retribution: initially, the hope of tribal survival if the commands were obeyed and the fear of tribal extinction were they disobeyed and, later, the hope of heavenly bliss or the fear of hell and damnation. It may be said that The Decalogue was backed by moral rather than political law, that is, the persuasion advanced from a physical to a spiritual force. We witness in this evolutionary step the early emergence of mans moral nature.
The latest and highest form of persuasion is that which gives effectiveness to the most advanced prohibition, the Golden Rule. As originally scribed, around 500 B.C., it reads: “Do not do unto others that which you would not have them do unto you.” What persuasiveness lies behind this prohibition? Not physical force! And not even such spiritual force as hope and fear! This latest force is a sense of justice, perhaps the inmost law of one’s being. That this is a recently acquired human faculty is supported by its rarity. Ever so many people will concede the soundness of the Golden Rule, but only now and then is an individual to be found whose moral nature is elevated to the point where he can observe this do-not in daily living. The person who achieves mastery of this discipline moves beyond a satisfaction with external rewards and punishments to the profound conviction that virtue and excellence are their own reward. Doing what’s right counts above all else.
The Emerging Moral Faculty
It is relevant to that which follows to reflect on what is meant by an elevated moral nature. To illustrate the lack of such a nature: We had a kitchen employee who pilfered, that is, she would quietly lift provisions from our larder and tote them to her own larder. This practice did no offense to such moral scruples as she possessed; she was only concerned lest anyone see her indulge in toting; nothing was wrong except getting caught! My point is that this individual had not yet acquired what is here meant by an elevated moral nature.
What distinguishes the individual who has an elevated moral nature? For one thing, he cares not one whit about what others see him do. Why? He has a private eye of his own, far more exacting and severe than any force or fear others can impose: a highly developed conscience. Not only does such a person possess a sense of justice but he also possesses its counterpart, a disciplinary conscience. Justice and conscience are two parts of the same emerging moral faculty. It is doubtful that one can exist without the other.
It seems that individual man, having lost many of the built-in instinctual do-nots of his animal cousins, acquires, as he evolves far enough, a built-in rational, prohibitory ethic which he is compelled to observe by reason of his sense of justice and the dictates of conscience. I repeat, proper prohibitions are just as important to the survival of the human species as to the survival of any other species.
Do not do unto others that which you would not have them do unto you. There is more to this prohibition than first glance reveals. Nearly everyone, for instance, will concede that there is no universal right to kill, to steal, or to enslave—because these practices cannot be universalized, if for no higher reason. But only the person who comprehends this ethic—the Golden Rule—in its wholeness, who has an elevated sense of justice and conscience, will conclude th