Two Ways To Stop Strikes; L.E. Read

The collectivist method of stopping strikes is primitive; it is the normal emotional response, the animal solution to the problem. It is the use of violence and compulsion. And compulsion is, of course, the essence of collectivism as we [205 ] now know it. Practically, in the world of today, this collec tivist answer would require that strikers be drafted into the army, or that they be regimented under some other part of an all-powerful government-for example, through nation alization of the railroads or the steel industry. To be effec tive, this requires an enormous and brutal police force, as in Russia; there were no strikes in Stalin's U.S.S.R. The Cure That Kills Mere brute effectiveness in stopping strikes, however, is not the answer sought by men of justice and intelligence, for the cure may be more deadly than the strikes. If strikers can be put under compulsion as to where and how they work, what assurance can other citizens have against the same enslavement? Being enslaved by government has lit tle, if anything, to commend it over being enslaved by strikers.

The libertarian proposal for stopping strikes can be stated in three words: Free the market. In order to grasp this idea, it must first be recognized that there is nothing ethically or economically wrong with a person's quitting his job. Nor is there necessarily any thing wrong if a number of persons quit their jobs in uni son-which is to say, there is nothing wrong, per se, with a "strike" in this sense. Wrong begins when coercion is introduced-that is, when freedom of choice is denied, when violence or intimi dation is used either to keep a satisfied employee from re maining on the job or to prevent a nonstriker from taking [206 ] the job that has been struck. # If there is no coercion, the market is automatically free; for by definition a free market means "a condition of unrestricted competition" -no coer cion or violence whatsoever I Free the market, and the matter of job-quitting will be of no more concern to the general public than is the non buying of buggy whips. If one or more workers choose not to remain at their jobs--ifthey step opt of the market at that time and place-the situation is precisely the same as if one or more consumers choose not to buy buggy whips.

In the one case, an employer may have to look elsewhere for workers and perhaps offer a higher wage. In the other case, the person who has a stock of buggy whips may have to lower his asking price or perhaps even junk his entire supply. But the general public need not be greatly con cerned in either case. Those who really believe in freedom of choice will admit the right of any person to tum down any job opportunity or to reject anything offered for sale. But by the same token, the person who rejects a job oppor tunity or refuses to buy a product should desire no author ity to keep others. from accepting the job or from buying the product. Freeing the market would end strikes which exist by rea son of coercion; it would, of course, still permit job-quit ting. But the market will not be freed until certain concepts are more generally understood and supported than they now are. These concepts will require a great deal of study to win any general understanding and favor. Freeing the (l: It is equally wrong if coercion is used by employers or by the gov ernment to force workers to stay on jobs they want to quit. This essay, however, purports to deal only with strikes.

[207 ] market is impossible unless libertarian principles and con cepts be substituted for collectivist concepts enforced by violence or by the threat of violence. Four of these libertar ian principles are brieRy outlined here. Principle No.1 No person has any' natural or logical right to control the productive actions of any other person unless the latter consents. This principle was accepted in America with the abolition of slavery. A person does have the right-that is, he has the responsibility-to defend his person and his property against the aggressions of others. Individuals can not properly delegate to any agency-government or other wise-rights which they themselves do not first possess as individuals. But since individuals do possess the' natural right of self-defense (by force, if necessary), they may transfer it to government if they wish. Governments limited in authority to the defense of the life and property of all citizens equally-in short, limited to invoking a common justice-must, therefore, acknowl edge and defend the right of anyone to produce what he chooses. And, likewise, a just government must acknowl edge and defend the right of the producer to use his prod uct-to consume it or to give it away or to offer it for ex change on whatever terms he chooses, so long as he does not infringe on the equal rights of others. This also in cludes the acknowledgment and defense of a person's right to offer his services for hire as he chooses. Govern ment's function is to defend the freedom of the market, [208 ] which is to say, freedom of choice. Stated negatively, the government's only function is to help suppress any inter ference with life or trade or property which involves fraudulent or coercive means.

Under this concept, government would tolerate no in terference with the freedom of anyone willing to work at a struck job, and would protect him in his working. Govern ment has no legitimate right to abandon its protective functions by permitting strikers to rule in its stead. 0 Principle No.2 An individual's services, whether performed with his hands or with his head, are properly his own personal property. His services-his labor-are the extension of his being, his life. They are as much his life as the beat of his heart. Like wise, the fruits of one's labor, be they in the form of oats or manuscripts or pay checks, are one's personal property -.;.merelya further extension of his life.t ~ It should be said that unions have the same potentialities outside the field of compulsion as does any other type of voluntary associa tion. The widespread practice. of unions imposing their collective will on management-and thus on consumers and the economy-is a perversion of justice in association.

t Karl Marx used almost this same terminology to claim all wealth for the "proletariat." Such a claim has been widely accepted as valid only because of confusion as to what are properly "the fruits of one's labor." An extreme example of this error would be to conclude that auto fenders coming from a million·dollar stamping machine are the fruits of the attendant who pushes the buttons. In simple fact, those fenders are the fruits of the labor of thousands, not the least impor tant of whom are the persons who save their earnings for the purchase of the machine. In a free market economy, the attendant can properly regard his pay check as the fruit of his labor, to use in any manner he chooses, to buy fenders or whatever. [209 ] In brief, insofar as the. market is concerned, there is no distinction whatsoever between one's services and one's products. Each is for his own use or for exchange as he chooses, and any restraint of choice with respect to either -from whatever source-is an infraction of the free market, an infraction that any person has a moral right to oppose as being a hazard to his own freedom. This moral right to oppose any and every infraction of the free market is part and parcel of the right to defend life itself. For if a person loses freedom of choice and responsibility for his own deci sions and actions, life becomes meaningless.

Under this concept, the unsupportable distinctions be tween services and commodities would disappear. There can be no freeing of the market as long as services are not subject to free market processes-free to be offered at the owner's choice. Principle No.3 The value of the fruits of one's labor is determined by what others will willingly exchange for what he has to offer. Ar gument on this fact would not arise if a person consumed only what he himself produced. The question originates with exchange: What part of the fruits of the· labor of others am I to obtain in exchange for the fruits of my own labor? This is another way of asking: What is the value of my labor, be it in the form of services or commodities? Clearly, this question must go beyond my own person for its answer. I must allow others to judge the value to them of what I have to offer, if there is to be free exchange. [210 ] But suppose I used government-either in the form of the organized police force (as in NRA or OPS) or in the form of a coercive strike (government in one of its numerous forms) -to force others to give me more in exchange than they would give of their own free will? Then I would have substituted a form of dictatorship for the right of free men to exchange their labors and their products. I would have used violence to destroy the freedom of the market. I would have resorted to compulsion and denied to others that their livelihood is their own-which is to deny, in prin ciple, the very grounds upon which I would defend my own life and liberty.

If a person understood the results of violence in the mar ket place, he would never attempt to force his own sub jective opinion of value upon others. The market can exist -and exchange can thrive-only as other persons (the mar ket) decide how much they will oHer in exchange for my offering. Under this concept, contracts must be mutually acceptable without any intervention of force whatsoever. Principle No.4 Coercive strikes cannot be logically rationalized on the grounds of balancing the low bargaining power of workers with the great economic power of large corporations. In discussing the validity of this principle, let us assume that government is performing its function of exercising collec tively the right of all citizens to the defense of their lives and livelihood; let us assume that government is restrain ing and penalizing all fraud, all violence, all predatory [211 ] practices; let us assume that government has given to cor porations no special privileges in the form of tariffs, sub sidies, and the like. Under these assumptions, it follows that no citizen nor any aggregation of citizens could exer cise coercion over any other citizen or citizens.·Monopoly would have no way of manifesting itself. The market would be free, for anyone could compete if he so desired. The gov ernment-the police force-would always be available to prevent skulduggery and the use of violence.

In such a circumstance, the largest corporation could exercise no more economic power over my employment than could the one-man-owner of a grocery store. Either could offer me a job on whatever terms he laid down. I could accept or refuse the offer of either one. And I could bargain with one as easily as with the other. Persons holding this concept would be rid of the errone ous and damaging theory that employers have economic power or bargaining power not possessed by individuals who have services to offer. We would no longer rationalize and justify the very real coercive power of most present day unions as a means to offset or balance the presumed power of anyone who has developed an enterprise to the point where he needs more·hands than his own. In summary, it would appear that the citizens of this country have only one real alternative to the present ar rangement whereby a labor leader is able, at will, to choke the economy until his demands are met. (The proposal to "cure" the disease by making it general-that is, to use force and continue the trend toward an all-powerful gov ernment with serfs instead of citizens, as in Russia-can [212 ] hardly be called an alternative.) The only. reasonable choice is to free the market. This would deny to anyone any special privilege from government. It would permit a tremendous release of human energy and would result in higher production and more goodsand more services for all.

The free market is the only system of economic justice known to man. [213 ] THE POWER OF AN IDEA blJ Ra'jJnondcfejhe Bue!! IN spite of the popular belief that the world today is domi nated by new and terrible problems, the fact is that the latter part of the eighteenth century bears certain similariI ties to the present time: The continent of Europe, as well as Britain, was then dominated by "mercantilism" -a form of "planned economy" arising out of feudalism. National governments narrowly prescribed the rules for trade and labor, and fostered exports while discouraging imports except for gold. In Britain, the semi-feudal Statute of Artificers imposed the obligation to work, fixed wages in relation to cost of liv ing, allocated the supply of labor, and prescribed appren ticeship rules. Although Britain was then primarily an agri cultural country, it supported the "ancient trade" of wool ens and worsteds. This trade was strong enough to induce Parliament to require everyone to wear woolen caps on Sundays and Holy Days and to prohibit the wearing of printed or dyed calicoes, all to "protect" wool against East Indian cotton.