Book Reviews

A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK JOHN CHAMBERLAIN KONRAD ADENAUER'S Memoirs 1945-53 (Regnery, $10) is a work that is best described by such ad jectives as "dogged" and "slog ging." But if there is no genius in the telling of this story, there was genius in the way Adenauer, as the postwar leader of West Ger many's Christian Democratic Union, lived it. A seventy-year-old ex-Mayor of Cologne when the war was nearing its end, he was the figure on whom the history of West Germany - and therefore the entire West -was to pivot. His life since 1945, both as party lead er and as his country's Chancellor, may be taken as a virtually com plete refutation of the materialist, or economic determinist, theory of history. If it hadn't been for his pres ence on the scene, West Germany would surely have returned to the 60 so-called comity of nations as a Marxist state, or group of states, complete with nationalized indus tries, planning boards, directed labor, and all the rest of it. This is what Dr. Schumacher's Social Democratic PaTty was proposing, and this is what the British, who were in charge of Adenauer's state of North Rhine-Westphalia, were disposed to accept. After all, there was a labor government in London after Churchill's dismissal in 1945, and "planning" was what Clement Attlee, Ernie Bevin, and Herbert Morrison, the British socialists, thought they understood.

As a pa.rty with a long German tradition, the Social Democrats should have walked away with the crucial election in 1949 that sig naled the rebirth of a German na tion. But Adenauer, the Rhine lander who had been thrown out 1966 ADENAUER'S MEMOIRS 61 of his job as Mayor of Cologne by the Nazis, tapped spiritual re sources that had been dormant in Germany for well over a decade. He was not an economist himself, but, as a Christian philosopher, he believed in the, primacy of the freely-choosing individual. He went up and down West Germany preaching that the· sort of cen tralized economic control that was advocated by Dr. Schumacher's so cialists would not differ, in es sence, from what the Germans had known under Hitler. It was his genius as a politician to recognize the. voltage in the phrase, "the social market economy." Erhard, the present Chancellor of West Germany, had brought this to him as a disciple of the Roepke school of neoliberal economics, and it was semantically right for the times.

For, in its implicit assertion that the market creates social values out of individual and group com petition, the new phrase chal lenged the Marxist shibboleths on a ground that could appeal to the Christian conscience. The Marlcet Economy As Erhard, who was to become Adenauer's Minister of Econom ics, put it, the social market econ omy would produce a maximum of well-being and social justice by letting free individuals make an efficient contribution to an order that embodies a social conscience. Where state welfare was neces sary to sustain war cripples in their hospitals, and to provide for the stream of refugees and dis placed persons from the Commu nist East, the affluence created by the market economy could be taxed. A government committed to social market competition would see to it that taxes were not levied in a way to discourage incentive, and it would also insist on an in dependent control of monopolies to safeguard genuine competition.

No doubt the coupling of the adjective "social" with the noun "market" could be utilized to justi fy the wildest aberrations of state welfarism. We in America are well aware of what can be done by canny manipulation of the "gen eral welfare" clause of the Consti tution. But the Christian Demo cratic Union governments of West Germany have not been sophistical in their application of the Roepke Erhard theories. They have pro vided incentives to invest, they have steered cle,ar of inflation, and they have done more than their part in the attempt to create a wide free-trade area in western Europe. A Touchy Situation Looking back on the history of 1945-53 which is covered in this most impersonal of autobiogra62 THE FREEMAN August phies, the whole story may seem inevitable. The Soviet Russians, by their aggressive post-1945 be havior, forced the nations of the West to regard West Germany as their own particular buffer against communism. It would have been silly to pulverize a buffer by ap plying the Morgenthau plan for turning West Germany into a re gion without industry; this would have created such chaos that the Communists would have been able to take over from within. So the decision to rebuild the British, American, and French zones as a viable modern economic unit was made. The Marshall Plan took hold at the end of 1948, raw m,aterials poured in, individuals were per mitted to start their own busi nesses, and to support everything else there was a currency reform.

Yet it was actually touch and go when it came to creating a form for the first new national govern ment in West Germany in 1949. After the Christian Democrats had won their surprising victory, many in Adenauer's own party wished to form a coalition with the Social Democrats. The Social Democrats were willing, but they demanded the Ministry of Eco nomics as their price for collabo ration. After all, they held 131 seats in the new Bundestag as against the Christian Democrats' 139. Potentially, this made them an extremely powerful opposition, and in a parliament in which ten separate parties were represented there was always a possibility that they might have their way. So they felt justified in wishing to have the power to create the indus trial shape of the new nation. Principle Prevailed Adenauer, however, was con vinced that the election consti tuted a mandate for a generally free economy. The Social Demo crats and the Communists had polled eight million votes, which, presumably, had been cast for so cialism of one kind or another.

But thirteen million votes had been cast for the antisocialist parties. The CDU's Minister Pres ident Altmeier of the Rhineland Palatinate spoke plausibly for a coalition with the Social Demo crats, and his words were greeted with applause. He raised the fear that a strong Social Democratic opposition in the Bundestag would use nationalist arguments to at tack every effort at understanding with the occupying powers. But Adenauer insisted that a coalition would be taken as a breach of faith by a vast majority of the voters if the Social Demo crats were to get the Ministry of Economics as their share of the bargain. "There is a great dif ference," he said, "between our1966 ADENAUER'S MEMOIRS 63 selves and the Social Democrats regarding the principles of Chris tian conviction. Moreover, there is an unbridge,able gap between our selves and the Social Democrats in the matter of economic structure.

There can only be either a planned economy or a social market econ omy. The two will not mix. In view of these differences it would not even be possible to have a Christian Democrat as Minister of Economics and a Social Democrat as Under-secretary of State. We could never get things moving." The words of Der Alte Ade nauer were convincing, and a coali tion of anti-Marxist parties fol lowed. So it was Erhard, and not the Social Democrats' Professor Nolting, who took charge of West Germany's economic future. The German "miracle" followed. And when relative stagnation and in flation continued to dog the efforts at recovery in "Keynesian" nations such as Britain, the Erhard-sup ported economies of Roepke-and, incidentally, the Mt. Pelerin So ciety - began to take on a luster which nobody save a few FEE die hards would have deemed possible. Adenauer's reconstitution of far-off things and battles long ago lack Churchillian sparkle. But the events create their own drama.

This is a document for FEE-ers to read with pride. • .. THE INTEMPERATE PROFES SOR AND OTHER CULTURAL SPLENETICS by Russell Kirk. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965. 163 pp. $5.00.) Reviewed by Robert M. Thornton RUSSELL KIRK'S credentials as a critic of higher education are im peccable. A well-educated, widely traveled man of letters, he has ob served at first hand teachers and students and administrators on the 200 or more campuses where he has lectured in the past dozen years. He does not like what he sees. Many professors are more in terested in indoctrinating' those sitting under them than in de veloping a disinterested love of truth. Embracing relativism and/ or nihilism, some teachers are eager to upset whatever ideals and convictions their students bring with them from home. Students should learn to think for them selves, but our institutions of learning were founded to conserve and extend the nation's heritage, not to destroy it.

Dr. Kirk, unlike many today who write on the subject,under stands education to be, not the pouring of facts or techniques into a young person's head, but a spirit ual process, if you will - a certain relation between teacher and pupil 64 THE FREEMAN August and the object of their studies. This being the case, the remedy for the ills of education is not more money, bigger plants, or more classroom gimmicks; and definitely not more funds from Washington which will be fol lowed, quite naturally, by Federal controls. The most provocative essay in this collection of fourteen is, in my opinion, "The Rarity of the God-Fearing Man." We like to be told that God is love, a "Chum, never to be dreaded because He is indiscriminately affectionate." This notion would have scandal ized the tough-fibered Calvinist who settled our land and developed its institutions. Such a man, "knowing that divine love and di vine wrath are but different aspeets of a unity, is sustained against the worst this world can do to him; while the good-natured unambitious man, lacking religion, fearing no ultimate judgment, denying that he is made for eter nity, has inhimno iron tomainta.in order and justice and freedom.

. . . If the fear of God is ob scured," Kirk continues, "then ob sessive fear of suffering, poverty, and sickness will come to the front; or if a well-cushioned state keeps most of these worries at bay, then the tormenting neuroses of modern man, under the labels of 'insecurity' and 'anxiety' and 'con stitutional inferiority,' will be the dominant mode of fear." This is spiritual bondage, and once it set tles in, political and economic en slavement are not far behind. ~ HANDSOME BLUE LEATHERLEX FREEMAN BINDERS Binders with Issues inserted for Calendar Years 1963 and 1964: $ 5.00 10.00 Either year Both Binder only, $2.50 each Also available in standard clothbound volume, $2.50 in a new, attractive, low~priced paperback: $ .95 2.00 6.00 45.00 Single copy 3 copies 10 copies 100 copies Cj •••••• '" ' ~~:I~O=--J ~of MAINSPRING (279 pp., in dexed) was published in 1947. Since Mr. Weaver's passing, this great book has been the property of FEE. Previous to this new paperback edition, 350, 000 copies have been pri nted.

One large company's circulating library for em ployees required 150 volumes to meet the demand. Based on FEE's experience, MAl NSPRING tops all books as a starter for any aspiring student of liberty. Easy reading - indeed, exciting - the be ginner becomes so interested in freedom that he can hardly help pursuing the subject further. FEE's recommendation: Keep a good supply of the paperbacks on hand to present to any individual who shows a spark of interest in freedom. THE FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION, INC. IRVINGTON-ON-HUDSON,NEW YORK, 10533 TO ESTABLISH A DESPOTISM • A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominantpower in the government,whether this be a monarch, a priesthood,an aristocracy,or the majorityof the existinggeneration;in proportionas it is efficientand successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leadingby natural tendencyto one over the body.

J. S. MIL L, On Liberty The Vital Secret • Paul L. Poirot 23 The Voice of a Brother's Blood Kenneth W. SoWtt 14 Socialism, U. S. Style Henry Hazlitt 33 62 59John Chamberlain Books: Too Much Secrecy Other Books • SEPTEMBER 1966 Freedom to Sift and Winnow • Loyal Meek 50 Values, Exchange, and Profits: The Bedrock of Economic Science. Frederick B. Jennings, Jr. 52 Dr. Johnson's Defense of Property • Stephen R. Vallance 16 The Flight from Reality: 24. The Flight from the Constitution, II. Clarence 8. Carson 35 The Case for Willing Exchange Leonard E. Read 25 The Safety of the People • Ben MoreeU 3 COAST FEDERAL SAVINGS AND LOAN ASSOCIATION Department Fl, 9th & Hill Sts., Los Angeles,California90014 o Please send me a FREE copy of "What's Inflation?" o I enclose my check (or money order) for $ _ o Please open a Coast Federal Savings accountD Individual o Joint in the name(s) of NAME _ STREET --------CITY STATE _ 6-112A2 ":\:}}tn_ ~ ~ COAST FEDERAL SAVINGS ~< ANO LOAN ASSOCIATION .'~ -3 "'~ THE FREEMAN SEPTEMBER 1966 Vol. 16, No.9 '" Admiral Ben Moreell reminds us of Cicero's observation that the safety of the people depends upon their knowing and observing the Higher Law p. 3 '" From the Biblical account of Cain and Abel, Dr. Sollitt draws a lesson: that we start living for the ideals for which young Americans are asked to die on far-flung battlefields ........ p. 14 yI More than two centuries ago, Dr.