The Exception Makers; L.E. Read

A few examples of the exception maker's "but": I am for free enterprise but I favor federal aid to education. I believe that each person has the right to the fruits of his own labor but I am for compulsory social security. I stand four-square for private property but we need subsi dized navigation in order to obtain cheaper coal for our steam plants. I favor the market economy but TVA has my endorsement. I subscribe to the principles of limited government but it is quite all right for the State to prescribe and enforce mini mum wages and maximum hours of work. You bet I am for the American way of life but we must Mr. Read is President of the Foundation for Economic Education. [108 ] have a foreign aid program to protect it against communism. Besides, it helps our prosperity. Although in common with all business firms we would like to see a reduction in federal expenditures wherever possible, it seems to us that this is scarcely the place to begin. (A book publisher arguing against a cut in the government's rural library program.) Similar declarations by the exception makers could be cited endlessly. My point is that socialism rests on noth ing more than these inconsistencies-aggregated.

Intellectually, every tenet of socialism has been demol ished; practically, the beheaded corpse shows a frighten ing vitality. Its intellectual demise is reflected in the fact that neither Marxist nor other socialistic schemes are any longer defended as consistent theoretical systems; instead, they are relied upon merely as practical politics or devices of sabotage. This writer does not believe there is a consistent supporter of socialism inside or outside of the Iron Curtain. This statement, however, needs explanation. SocialismMeans Coercion Socialism, the brand here discussed, the kind that is the enemy of society, can be defined as the government ownership and control of the means of creative activity or production. Its essential ingredient is coercive force. Be it federal aid to education, subsidies to farmers, grants-in-aid, TVA, social security, foreign aid, the rural library program, government housing, or whatever, the [109 ] attainment of the objective calls for coercive force.

Government housing is as useful for illustrative pur poses as any other of the· socialistic items. There was a time when we relied entirely on voluntary exchanges to supply our housing. First, we relied on the person who wanted a house; second, on the one who competed to construct it; and third, on the one who saw some advan tage to himself in loaning the money for the material, the tools, and the labor. And, this system was successful. It resulted in more square feet of housing per person than otherwise existed in any country at any time in all history. "Ah," imply the exception makers, "we can have all of this and heaven, too." And they proceed forthwith to apply coercive force as the means of attaining what to them are worthy ends. They use government-the organ ized police force-forcibly to take some of everybody's income in order that they may give it, in the form of housing, to those they rate as needy. The point is plain enough: Remove the coercive force, and there can be no such thing as government housing or any socialism at all, as here defined.

Degrees of Intervention Now no person consistently believes (100 per cent) in coercive force as a means to creative or productive accomplishments. No one believes that initiative should be dispensed with entirely. No one believes in total enslavement. No one believes: [110 ] The greatest principle of all is that nobody, whether male or female, should be without a leader. Nor should the mind of anybody be habituated to letting him do anything at all on his own initiative; neither out of zeal, nor even playfully. But in war as well as in the midst of peace-to his leader he shall direct his eye and follow him faithfully. And even in the smallest matter he should stand under leadership. For exam ple, he should get up, or move, or wash, or take his meals ... only if he has been told to do so.... In a word, he should teach his soul, by long habit, :p.ever to dream of acting inde pendently, and in fact, to become utterly incapable of it.!

Shouldn't Happen to a Dog Indeed, no one believes that the above "greatest prin ciple of all" should apply even to dumb animals, let alone to human beings. Yet, the sponsor of legal plunder-from each according to his ability, to each according to his need and by coercive force-goes beyond this. He doesn't attempt to persuade by this sponsorship that we should merely train ourselves to become abject followers; he would compel us to be servile by coercive force. Does this sound farfetched? Well, it isn't at all. Said sponsor insists that we should exercise no initiative whatever over that portion of the fruits of our own labor which his particular government grantin-aid would require. This takes on real significance when one realizes that the wherewithal to sustain life is an integral part of life itself. Remove the right to sustain life, and the right to life is meaningless. 1 Plato of Athens. A satirical statement, no doubt.

[ 111] The TVA exception makers have succeeded in remov ing from the realm of initiative, from freedom of choice, a fraction of every citizen's income. Other exception makers with their successes at other politically extorted pittances are responsible for the grand total of socialism in America today. Nothing else is to be blamed. Even this country's leading socialist is not a consistent believer in coercive force as a means of creative or productive accomplishment. He is on record as saying, "There is room ... for individual ownership and individ ual effort."2 Dictators Also Make Exceptions Marx, Lenin, Stalin were glaring examples of exception makers. Their "buts" were simply more numerous than the "buts" of most Americans. Proof of this is Stakhanov ism, introduced into the Soviet Union in 1935, a plan which approved piecework, reward according to merit, higher wages for greater individual production. The Kremlin crowd-exception makers all-differ from Amer ican exception makers only in degree, not in kind.

Most exception makers would cease and desist if they were aware that their "buts" give the evil principle of coercive force as a means to creative ends the only back ing it has and if they knew that these little drops of corroding action were the stuff that is destroying "the last best hope of earth." However, until they gain this aware2 Thomas, Norman. Democratic Socialism. New York: League for Industrial Democracy, 1953. pp. 27-28. [112 ] ness, they no doubt will continue to believe in and insist upon a little coercive force providing it seems to help them or gives the appearance of gaining ends they think good. Short of awareness, they will favor coercive be haviors in particular instances while vigorously con demning the general practice of the destructive principle. Russians are much less our Nemeses than are the "buts" in the belfry of Americans who more or less prefer free dom to coercive force.

[ 113] THE SOURCES OF INVENTION IT SEEMS to be almost universally assumed that the launching of the space satellites was made possible only by employing vast teams of technicians working together in large research institutions under close central guid ance and with unlimited resources and equipment. This may be true, although nobody in the Western world can actually know that it is so. Any suggestion that the difference between failure and success might have re sulted from a pathbreaking discovery by some worker not in a large institution and perhaps not even interested primarily in high-altitude rockets would, nearly every where, be instantly dismissed as ludicrous. All this is indicative of the degree to which we are now dominated by the doctrine that technical progress can come only from mass attacks upon set problems. In fact, a glance at the history of the high-altitude rocket hardly supports such a theory. Some of the more important early scientific writings on this subject, pub lished in 1903, were those of a Russian schoolmaster, The author is Professor of Economic Organization in the University of Oxford. This article first appeared in the January 1958 issue of Lloyds Bank Review.