Freedom And the Nature of Man; S. Petro

FREEDOM NATURE AND THE OF MAN FREEDOM in society is necessary to man because he can in no other way realize himself, or even be himself. As the great German thinker, Wilhelm von Humboldt, has said: "The true end of man-not that which capricious inclination prescribes for him, but that which is pre scribed by eternally immutable reasonis the highest and most harmonious cultivation of his faculties into one whole. For this cultivation, freedom is the first and in dispensable condition." This insight explains much. Men have painfully and awkwardly and courageously built free societies because it was only natural for them to do so. They have found that freedom in society is after all the best means of achieving their most cherished goals. If all this is true, a stunning conclusion must be drawn: the free society has a much stronger claim to in evitability than communism can boast. The only al ternative is a frustrated mankind doomed to a perpetual Dr. Petro is Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. This article is adapted from one of a series of lectures de livered in May 1961 in Buenos Aires under the auspices of Centro de Estudios Sobre la Libertad, Dr. Alberto Benegas Lynch, President.

358 FREEDOM AND THE NATURE OF MAN 359 failure to realize itself. Communist Russia asserts that it is the society most congruent with the nature of man. It asserts a record of fulfillment already superior to that of the free society. But in terms of either the nature of man or of the historical record, Communist Russia and its fundamental ideology, Marxism, are wrong. Consider the nature of man. This creature has been described in many ways, but I believe man is essentially described as of all earthly creatures the one with the widest known range of desires and the greatest capacity to satisfy a wide range of desires. Man's yearning in the spheres of the mind, the spirit, and the senses is apparently limitless. Men differ among themselves in the relative strength of these desires; not all artists are thinkers, not all priests are artists. But Al bert Einstein took much comfort in his violin, and the most ignorant workingman delights in the moving pic tures or the companionship of the tavern, and he finds solace in religion. The infinite variety which is to be found in all human societies is a reflection of the char acter of the human being. Within a radius of one mile from Times Square in New York, or Piccadilly Circus in London, or Place Vendome in Paris, or Piazza Venezia in Rome, one can find the empirical evidence of the fantastic diversity of the human character.

Equally distinctive is man's capacity to select, adapt, and even create means to serve his diversified ends. No other creature comes close to the instrumental dexterity of mankind with nature-given means, let alone the ca pacity to create new means. Fitting existing means and 360 SYLVESTER PETRO creating new means to serve his ends is as much a distinc tive attribute of man as his apparently limitless appetite for the things of the body, the mind, and the spirit. Full Useo! Potentialities If the goal of mankind is to realize the potentialities of the species to the fullest, it becomes necessary to in sure to all men the fullest possible personal freedom. Confining freedom of action to a few, in the totalitarian way, is simply unintelligent-not to mention its im morality; for such a limitation arbitrarily confines the quantity and quality of service to society which might otherwise be forthcoming.

John Stuart Mill put the case for personal freedom and for the free enterprise system-in its ultimate form when he said: "The only constant and unfailing source of progress is liberty, for by it there are as many centers of improvement as there are individuals." Compulsion may force men to produce as much as their masters in sist upon. I say "may," for it is doubtful that unfree men or slaves ever produce as much as their masters wish, even under the lash. But what is not doubtful at all is this: compulsion wiIl not make men produce more and better things than the masters themselves wish. The theoretical maximum of production in an un free society, therefore, is limited by the imagination of the few who are in control. Since these few are not likely to be the most productive or creative members of society, that theoretical maximum is undoubtedly far beneath FREEDOM AND THE NATURE OF MAN 361 the potential of the society. In the free society, on the other hand, the theoretical maximum is limited only by the productivity and creativity of the most fertile per sons, acting singly or in combinations with capacities to produce and create which are so prodigious as to defy a priori conception.

Quite apart, therefore, from the insuperable technical economic difficulties which Professor Ludwig von Mises has demonstrated in his great work, Socialism~ a com pulsory, totalitarian society is doomed to inferiority by a much simpler and more evident fact. Its productivity must be low because it systematically limits creativity and full productivity to necessarily only a few. It can not be fully productive until it is fully free, and it c~n not be fully free till it abandons the central socialist principle, viz.~ public ownership and operation of the means of production. I The Russian Records We have been hearing a great deal lately about tpe superior productivity of the Soviet Union, especiaVy as measured against the United States of America. But for the fact that so many people are impressed by the Russian claims, little time should be spent on this mat ter. For the truth is that the Russian performance is disgraceful, even when compared to the only-partly-free economy of the United States. If the economy of the United States were rid of the debilitating influence of what is probably the most vexatious structure of govern362 SYLVESTER PETRO ment regulation and the most burdensome taxes in the world-including Russia-we should probably be out producing the USSR by an even greater margin than the present one.

There are in fact no areas in which Russia, with more people and a larger land area and longer and harder work, comes even close to the productivity of the United States. The able economist, Karl Brandt, has made a comparison in agricultural production. Of United States agriculture, he says: "It produces in a year with no more than 8.5 per cent of the national labor force, or 7.4 million work ers, over 200 million tons of grain, 3 million tons of sugar, over 20 million tons of meat and eggs, over 60 million tons of milk, 35 million tons of fruit and vege tables, or 315 million tons of edible products, plus 3.5 million tons of cotton, and nearly 1 million tons of tobacco." (Essays on Liberty) Vol. VIII, p. 364.) Of Russian agriculture, Mr. Brandt notes that "after 40 years of brutal experiment of collectivization, Soviet Russia produces with 4~ times the number of farm workers (33 million) one-third as much meat (7 million tons) as do our farmers; and even of grain, most of which they eat rather than feed to livestock, they pro duce only 60 per cent as much as our output. This in spite of an abundance of natural resources in Europe and Asia. One American farmer produces food for him self and 24 others. A Soviet farmer produces enough for himself and 4 others." In short, the relatively free United States farmer is six times more productive than the en slaved Russian farmer. Think of what the ratio would FREEDOM AND THE NATURE OF MAN 363 be if the farmers of the United States were freed of all government control!

Per capita productivity in the United States exceeds that of Russia to a similar degree in all other areas except probably in government, where, as might be ex pected, per capita productivity is the same all over the world: very low. Perhaps it is just as well. Deceptive Percentages But, the Russian apologists say, Russia's rate of growth exceeds that of the United States, with Russia claiming annual growth rates of something over 6 per cent, while the United States is growing only at the rate of 3 per cent or less. This is the most spurious kind of comparison. For one thing, it presupposes the accuracy of Russian statistics, something which even the Russians themselves periodi cally disavow. For another, it neglects the difference in the rate-base. A child of one multiplies his years by 100 per cent on his second birthday, while his brother of three multiplies his years by only one-third on his fourth birthday-but both have grown only one year older on their respective birthdays. Russia claims a steel-making capacity of some 70,000,000 tons per year, suggesting something like a 500 per cent growth in capacity in the last twenty years. The capacity of the steel industry in the United States has almost doubled in the same twenty years. But that increase, it should be noted, amounted to as much as the total steel capacity claimed by the Rus364 SYLVESTER PETRO sians today, or about 70,000,000 tons; for the total steel capacity of the United States today falls just short of 150,000,000 tons, as against 80,000,000 tons in 1939.

But even if Russia should ultimately produce more steel than the United States, this would prove nothing concerning the relative desirability or productivity of the free society as against the unfree society. The excel lence of the free society does not lie in its gross produc tion figures in any particular industry. The supreme ex cellence of the free society lies rather in its axiomatic response to the wishes of its members. The fact that Russia is producing 70,000,000 tons of steel each year means only that its masters have brutally directed the people to such a rate of production of steel. Left free, the people might have preferred to direct their efforts to other areas of production and consumption. Had the people of the United States expressed the appropriate buying intentions in the free markets which prevail there, the steel industry would have expanded to the degree necessary to supply the demand, whatever that demand might be.

Other Measuresof Growth In comparisons between Russia and the United States, no one ever mentions the aviation industry, or school construction, or the motel (motor-hotel) industry. In the ten years between 1949 and 1959, the commercial aviation industry in the United States more than trebled in terms of number of passengers carried-16,723,000 FREEDOM AND THE NATURE OF MAN 365 passengers in 1949 and 55,875,000 in 1959. I have been unable to find a comparable set of Russian figures. Many in the United States are complaining about the alleged shortages in public school construction. Yet an nual expenditures on school construction have grown more than 500 per cent in less than ten years, from $411, 598,000 in 1947 to $2,850,984,000 in 1956. Again, com parable figures from Russia are unavailable. With private citizens owning few if any automobiles in Russia, one could not expect that nation to have en joyed any growth in the supply of motor hotels. On the other hand, even the less observant motorists in the United States are stunned by the fantastic increases each year in the number of comfortable, convenient, and even beautiful motels which are to be found wherever one looks, even on secondary roads. I do not have exact fig ures here, but I suspect that there may be at least fifty times as many units in the motel industry as there were fifteen years ago in the United States. The significant point is that a strictly private, personal desire has been accorded a royal fulfillment. The average American citi zen on a motor trip stops his car within a few minutes of his first feeling a desire to rest, and with little thought and no effort drives into a handsome, clean, sanitary, and air-conditioned motel in which he and his family may be as comfortable and as private as they are in their own homes.

Commercial aviation, schools, and motels may not be the most elegant materials to illustrate the congruency of the free society with the nature of man, but they are 366 SYLVESTER PETRO serviceable. The prodigious growth in these areas in the relatively free United States over the last ten or fifteen years demonstrates that what people want is what the free society will deliver. Its gross productivity in every area is limited only by the wishes and the capacities of its members. To say that an unfree society can out produce a free society is to voice a contradiction in terms. To say that an unfree society will· produce more of the various things that people want than a free society will is even more obviously absurd. For far too long a time communism has profited from the insupportable assertion of its historical inevitability. Mr. Khrushchev to the contrary notwithstanding, our grandchildren are not going to live in a communist re gime. Russia is not going to bury us. If there is any inevitability at all, it is in favor of freedom. If men sur vive as men, they will survive in freedom, for they can do nothing else and remain men. If the communists bury us, as they boast of doing, they will bury themselves, too.

An ultimate victory for communism necessarily involves the ultimate defeat of the human race. Freedom is the natural condition for realization of the human potential. It is time for the lovers of freedom to claim what is right fully theirs: the only future which men can have as men.