Preface

What usually is torture for me, she has made a pleasure, and she has lifted me from Inferno to Paradiso. To be quite honest, it was not an unmitigated pleasure, for she has humbled me by discovering an undue number of errors in the German original. The reader of the English version is the gainer. Indeed, its only essential differ ence from the German original is the absence of these errors. I am afraid, however, that even the qualities of this English rendering, while perhaps disposing my critics in the Anglo-Saxon world towards a little more indulgence, will not disarm them. As in the German -speaking world, I expect that my book will meet with four major types of response. One group of critics will rej ect the book en bloc because it is in flat contradiction with their more or less collectivist and centrist ideas. Another will tell me that in this hook, called A Humane Economy: The Social Framework of the Free Market, they really appreciate only what is to he found in the world of sup ply and demand-the world of property-and not what lies beyond.

These are the inveterate rationalists, the hard-hoiled economists, the prosaic utilitarians, who may all feel that, given proper guidance, I might perhaps have attained to something better. Third, there will be those who, on the contrary, blame me for being a hard-boiled economist myself and who will find something worth praising only in that part of the book which deals with the things beyond supply and demand. These are the pure moralists and romantics, who may perhaps cite me as proof of how a pure soul can be corrupted by political economy. Finally, there may he a fourth group of readers who take a favorable view of the book as a whole and who regard it as one of its virtues to have incurred the disapproval of the other three groups. It would be sheer hypocrisy on my part not to confess quite frankly that the last group is my favorite. WILHELM ROPKE Geneva January, 1960 To make a government requires no great prudence. Settle the seat of power; teach obedience: and the work is done. To give free dom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government; that is, to temper together these opposite elements cO f liberty and restraint in one consistent work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a saga cious, powerful, and combining mind.

-EDMUND BURKE, Reflections OTt the Revolution in France, 1790 Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in pro portion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in propor tion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less oj it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordaineain the eternal constitution of things, tha1~ men of intemperate minds can not be free. Their passions forge their fetters. -EDMUND BURKE, A Letter from Mr. Burke to a Member oj the National Assembly in Answer to Some Objections to His Book on French Affairs, 1791 A HUMANE ECONOMY The Social Framework oj the Free Market CHAPTER I Reappraisal A.fter Fifteen Years Personal About fifteen years ago I undertook the task of organizing into something like a coherent whole my ideas and opinions on The Social Crisis of Our Time, as my hook was called. That first outline was subsequently filled in by two more rather detailed works, Civi tas Humana and Internationale Ordnung-heute, which also ap peared nearly as long ago, while even the papers later brought to gether in Mass und Mitte are now some ten years old. Much has happened since then, much has been thought and written, and the political, economic, and spiritual development of society since the collapse of National Socialist totalitarianism has been somewhat stormy. I feel now that it is incumbent upon me to take up once more my original subject, and to do so in a manner which will bring out what is permanently valid in the various topical and frag mentary contributions which I have tried to make in the meantime to the discussion of the old questions as well as of some new ones.