Book Reviews

Mr. Read, of course, would deny that he is an originator. In his new book, To Free or Freeze: That is the Question (Foundation for .Economic Education, $3 cloth, $2 paper), he remarks that "prac tically every idea we espouse and pass off as our own is unknowingly taken from others." Even so, I find Mr. Read an original in the way he combines his ideas and his methods. 506 Where else in the country will you find a man who really believes that the way to reform others is to reform yourself in hopes that the example will lead to self-discovery along similar lines in whoever cares to listen? Max Eastman, the crusader who became more con templative in later life, used to re fer to Mr. Read's Foundation for Economic Education as "the mon astery," which I am sure Mr. Read would take -as a compliment. After all, it was the monastery that kept the lamps of learning burning through the Dark Ages. "FEE,"

says Mr. Read in his essay, "Speak for Yourself, John," "is not an in stitutional spokesman nor an or ganization trying to 'reach' any one. Rather, ours is, one might say, no more than an agency offering such services as you may think of 1972 TO FREE OR FREEZE 507 value in your own search and per sonal growth .... Instead of play ing the utterly futile game of try ing to 'reach' others, we can con centrate on getting enough into our own mentalities and improv ing our services to the point where others will reach for us." Emphasis on the Individual In keeping with his pHgrim's accent on first principles, Mr. Read dispenses with the "scientific" jar gon which tries to make political economy over into a predictive natural science like Newtonian physics. To Mr. Read, everything goes back to the individual (no two people are alike!) whose free will and unforeseeable subjective valu ations put an aberrant factor into every economic equation. It is ob vious that economics does not be come a statistical subject until after the fact of choice. The whole question of choice leads from con siderations of GNP and chatter about "parameters," whatever they are, to moral philosophy, with its concern for right and wrong. Mr.

Read wants to think about good and evil, not about the technical questions that lead to so much manipulation of individuals as though they were pawns.~ in some dictator's game of chess. ' The good, to Mr. Read, is any thing that adds to the sum of creativity. Force must sometimes be used to keep one man from in juring another, but this does not alter the truth that what Mr. Read calls "viewpoints, evaluations, in ventions, insights, intuitive flashes, think-of-that's" do not thrive in a world of controls and govern ment seizures. When force, going beyond the police power, is used to transfer wealth, it hurts the sum total of creativity by enfee bling the injured person and en couraging laziness in the supposed beneficiary. Contemplation of the nature of force leads Mr. Read back to the State-as-night-watch man and away from the modern heresy of the State-as-quarter back. The State's proper business is protection against such things as fraud, the spread of disease, and attack from abroad.

Actions Have Consequences Mr. Read does not believe in crystal balls. But he does believe in "ifs." For example, if we per sist in our present course of price and wage fixing, or "incomes pol icy," the "if" will lead to· more scarcities. Scarcities under condi tions of continuing price control, will lead to rationing, to be fol lowed in turn by black markets. The fabric of law will suffer, and the accompanying growth of cyni cism will make for increased vio lence. To control the violence, the government will have to use 508 THE FREEMAN August strong-arm means. And, to admin ister the strong-arm medicine, a tough guy will have to take over. As Hayek said long ago, the goons, in a world of controls, rise to the top. Now, Mr. Read is not saying that the U.S. is bound to persist in its present foolish course; the politicians may come to their senses when they discover that in flation (a matter of the money and-credit supply) cannot be stopped by price and wage boards issuing their ukases. All Mr. Read is uttering is a little "if." The future is not to be glimpsed in any crystal ball for the simple reason that it depends on what is being done by "our actions now."

Change in these actions naturally changes the "if." A Vicious Circle of Subsidies The other day I listened to a plausible plea for State subsidy to the arts. Taken on its own terms, the argument seemed to me at least morally irrefutable. We have had inflation, which means that people have been robbed of· the purchasing power they might have spent on going to plays, or on buying books or visiting museums. As a matter of retributive justice, why shouldn't the State return some of the stolen purchasing power to the art-loving individual? I put this question to Mr. Read. "The trouble," he said, "is that the money is no longer there. There's nothing to be re turned." Of course, there is money there for the arts - and for a million other things - on a short-term basis, provided we are willing to let our children pay the bills. Meanwhile, the quarrel between hundreds of separate pressure groups, each intent on retributive justice, puts an intolerable strain on government, which cannot hope to conjure up the necessary "just"

payments out of a top-heavy tax structure and more inflation. What Mr. Read was really saying is that "pretty soon the resources won't be there." This is something that our politicians, along with the people who prod them, have not yet faced. The Victims of "Help" Mr. Read, "bonded to consci ence," wonders how we are to re verse the drift that is taking our society to "all-out" statism. As a first order of business he insists that those who would stop the downward plunge must "develop the quality of personal incorrup tibility." Politically speaking, the "incorruptible" man should "never give approval to a law that 'helps' anyone." This is hard doctrine for the modern age, which· believes in so1972 TO FREE OR FREEZE 509 called ~~positive" action by the State. But Mr. Read says that "pity, unless spiced with common sense, is what's heartless." Pro viding people with "governmental feeding stations" kindles the vice of avarice. Beyond that, it tends to render people helpless by atro phying their faculties. "Helping people to become helpless,'" says Mr. Read, "is no act of kindness."

If you look at what is taking place in the political and social arenas, it might seem that Mr. Read and his "saving remnant" are hopelessly out of fashion. Nev ertheless, "the freedom philos ophy" has many' more adherents than it had in the Nineteen For ties, .when I first heard Mr.' Read talk about tapping the emergent energy of the ind'ividual. At long last the intellectual currents are not all going the same way, which gives us ground for hope that we'll be free before we freeze. ~ WHAT, HOW, FOR WHOM: The Decisions of Economic Organiza tion by Henry N. Sanborn (Box 8466, Baltimore, Md.: Cotter Barnard, 1972, 356 pp., $5.20) Reviewed by Gary North FIVE YEARS AGO, supporters of the free market who wanted a text book for an introductory course at the college' level in economics had Allen and Alchian's University Economics as the one reasonable selection. Now we have Thomas Sowell's Economics, a reprint of Rothbard's Man, Economy and State, and Prof. Sanborn's new book. Things are looking up.

Sanborn teaches at Towson State College in Baltimore. His perspecti ve is Chicago oriented, i.e., he follows Milton Friedman on monetary theory, George Stig ler on antitrust laws, and positiv ists in general on methodology. He refers constantly to the MV = PT monetary equation, and from this he concludes that a steady increase of the money supply by .the gov ernment will eliminate serious de pressions. A teacher would be wise to assign Rothbard's What Has Government Done to Our Money? along with Sanborn's book. Generally he favors the market as a means of both human freedom and efficiency. He also avoids the use of the "indifference curve" ap proach which has done so much to confuse a generation of students. He writes in a folksy, nonpreten tious. style, which is probably the best reason for the book's superi ority. His footnotes are not bur dened with citations from obscure professional journals, but are graphic and illustrative, using such sources as· the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, News week, Barron's. The inclusion of 510 THE FREEMAN August cartoons also makes it lively; their impact may remain when the mem ory of marginal cost curves hag long faded.

This would be an ideal book for a one semester course, especially for nonmajors. It should also be a source of classroom controversy. For example, on page 299, he simultaneously praises military conscription laws and calls for the abolition of laws against prostitu tion and narcotics. His basically pragmatic approach mars the final chapter especially, where he calls for various. kinds of government intervention to eliminate minor de fects of the market system ("neighborhood effects," natural monopoly), but on the whole these deviations are few. The first half of the book is exceptionally good. The one major flaw is his explana tion of profits: he accepts the en trepreneurial theory of Frank H. Knight (and Mises), only to aban don it in later pages for a "return on company inputs" theory which is distressingly vague, for good reason. If this is cleared up in later editions, it will be a very good introductory textbook.

~ IMPUTED RIGHTS by Robert v. Andelson (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1971, 153 pp. $6.00) Reviewed by Edmund A. Opitz IN VIEW of the central importance of the idea of rights to the philos ophy of liberty it is astonishing that books dealing with the subject are so few. Professor Andelson's formidable little volume stands virtually alone; interest in the idea, either for its own sake or for its significance in our history, has inspired few researchers and writ ers. There are other puzzling ques tions. The doctrine of individual rights is an idea of the first mag nitude, to be ranked alongside the idea of gravity or the theory of relativity. Why, if the idea is so important, did it take Western civilization more than two thou sand years to grasp it? Why has no other civilization even come close? Why, having once embraced the idea of rights, did we abandon it in a fraction of the time it took the West to gain it? And after having largely let go of the sub stance, why do we so pathetically cherish the label of "rights" that we now paste on patents of privi lege granted by the state!

Things were different in the eighteenth century. Men of that era echoed Locke when they talked about the right to life, liberty, and 1972 OTHER BOOKS 511 property. What began with Locke as a philosophical speculation worked its way into men's bones and became something they could almost taste. Conditions in the American colonies gave eaeh man unaccustomed liberty to live his life and be responsible for the property he produced. And there were, in addition, religious convic tions about a protected, private domain in each individual whose invasion would violate the sacred prerogatives of the person. Mon archy broke itself against these convictions, which in turn were strong enough to generate the ideal of a government instituted solely to secure these rights. It is to the idea of rights in this tradi tion that Dr. Andelson addresses himself, and in a closely reasoned, gracefully written book, he vindi cates this idea in a masterful way.

Briefly surveying the history of his subject, the author finds three distinct theories of human rights, as analyzed in .terms of ground, end, and regulating principle. He finds strong reasons for rejecting the radical-humanist and utilitar ian arguments for rights and places himself in the metaphysical tradition which "derives rights from man's place in a purposive order." The book's frame of refer ence is theological; it is an exami nation of "the nature of man in the light of the distinctive end for which he was created." A society which maximizes personal liberty for all and jealously guards indi vidual rights provides the context in which men and women may best fulfill their earthly purposes and achieve their transcendent goals. The first half of the book lays the theoretical groundwork for what the author terms "a, rationalized soeial structure deduced from Christian premises," and it is a pleasure to watch a carefully ar ticulated argument unfold. The author's orientation is broadly Calvinistic, and he views man as "fallen." That is to say, man's na ture is out of joint; so an empir ical examination of human nature as it is does not disclose any such thing as "rights" organic to man as such. But human nature is more than natural, which is to say that rights are imputed to man by his Maker. Even those who do not ac cept the author's theology will find this a meaty discussion.

So much for the theoretical groundwork; now for the practical application. Professor Andelson proves to be tough-minded and co gent· as he tests his philosophy of personal rights against a number of vexed issues. Guided by "the evidence of social data. and the rules of logical consistency," the author proceeds to spell out in some detail that "structure of mu tual noninterference which pro512 THE FREEMAN August vides the only rational criterion for adj udicating competing claims to personal fulfillment." There is no room in Professor Andelson's philosophy for government welfare programs: H •••the alleviation of misery is not, as such, a right, and ought not, as such, be coercively enforced. For the use of coercion, other than to guarantee rights, is an infringement upon righ¥s . . ." Beyond this, he would not counte nance any effort to legislate mor als; conduct which merely offends sensibilities and is not clearly pre datory is no concern of the law.

The author champions the right of private association (and dissoci ation) and thus comes into conflict with aspects of current civil rights legislation. The law should enforce contracts and protect rightful property. The laborer is not a com modity, the author affirms, but "his labor is. the commodity par excellence" - a position at vari ance with monopoly unionism. And as for the United Nations, its ab surd Declaration of Human Rights "is proof of its untrustworthiness to wield supreme authority." This brief resume· of some of the issues may convey the notion that Dr. Andelson is forthright to the point of abrasiveness. Correct! The reviewer dissents vigorously from several of the opinions ex pressed but applauds the candor which makes this a cleansing book and an important one. , HANDSOME BLUE LEATHERLEX FREEMAN BINDERS $2.50 each ORDER FROM : THE FOUNDATION fOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION IRVINGTON-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK 10533 the Freeman VOL. 22, NO.9. SEPTEMBER 1972 Advertising Israel M. Kirzner 515 The positive role of advertising in a capitalistic, free-market economy.