Cumpulsary Public-Sector Bargaining; S. Petro

494 sentatives of government employ ees. Although this movement rests upon a series of incredible distor tions and misrepresentations of fact, it is propelled by premises, theories and arguments which can not withstand serious examination, and creates chaos in every branch and sector of government where it takes hold, it is nevertheless gain ing ground year by year, even day by day, in all our governments federal, state, and local. My thesis here is that this move ment must be stopped if decent social order and effective represen tative government are to survive in this country. The nation, the states, the cities large and small, are already besieged by a horde of other destructive threats. Every1975 COMPULSORYPUBLIC-SECTORBARGAINING 495 one knows this. Because under standing of these other threats is so widespread, however, there is at least room for hope that they will be dealt with more or less effec tively. But profound ignorance at every level prevails on the issue of compulsory public-sector bargain ing, and the powerful forces deter mined to inflict it upon thecountry therefore meet almost no resist ance at all, let alone informed, de termined, and effective resistance.

My purpose is to stimulate such re sistance, to inform it, and thus to contribute to its effectiveness. For if such resistance fails to appear, the virtually certain emergence of compulsory public-sector bargain ing universally in this country especially when this destructive in stitution combines with the other crises which are breaking the coun try apart - is bound to bring about chaos, anarchy, and, ultimately, tyranny. Factual Distortions and Misrepresentations The first thing we need readily at hand is hard and accurate informa tion concerning the condition of public employment in this country, the status of our public servants, the way they are treated, the rights, powers, privileges, and immunities which they already possess. For among the most serious misrepre sentations fueling the drive for compulsory public-sector bargain ing are the contentions that our public servants are underpaid and mistreated, that they are denied the rights of "freedom of associa tion" which prevail in the private sector, that they will never be sat isfied till they have those same "rights," and that until they do there will be serious "unrest" in government employment, strikes, and all the other bad things which, the leaders of organized labor say, union representation magically causes to disappear.

The fact of the matter is that public servants in this country have always enjoyed the right of free association when that right is properly understood as meaning the privilege of joining any lawful private association. It is true that till recently in some states a person wishing to retain civil-service stat us might have to forego joining labor associations not composed exclusively of civil servants of the same governmental unit. However, this could in no proper view be re garded as an unconstitutional or even unfair disability. As Justice Holmes said, in upholding the au thority of government to insist that its employees not play politics: ... the petitioner may have a consti tutional right to talk politics, but he has no constitutional right to be a policeman. Be that as it may, civil servants 496 THE FREEMAN August have now for many years in most states had a right to join full fledged trade unions without en dangering their government em ployment. Indeed for the last six or seven years they have enjoyed such rights, under the U. S. Con stitution, even in the few states which positively prohibited public employees from joining unions.

This result was reached without the benefit of any statute, state or federal, protecting the jobs of civil servants who wished to join un ions. That being the case, it is ac curate to say that the associational rights of civil servants are greater than - not inferior to - those of private employees. For private em ployees acquired such rights only from labor statutes like the Na tional Labor Relations Act. Prior to those labor relations statutes, private employers were privileged to refuse to employ persons who insisted upon joining unions. Failure to Join In view of these facts and devel opments, it seems fair to conclude that what bothers the unions is not that public servants are denied the rights of free association but that too few have availed them selves of this "right." The latest available figures indicate that of well over 11 million state and local civil servants only a little over one million have chosen to join unions, while another two million have pre ferred to join associations of other kinds, despite their universally prevailing right to join unions without fear of loss of employment.

One of the reasons, perhaps, for this failure of more civil servants to join unions is that in a substan tial majority of the states right-to work laws are in effect for civil servants, even when they are not in effect for private employees. In those states more employees have not joined, probably, simply be cause they have not been forced to join. Weare now in a position to understand why unions are so anx ious to have the states and the fed eral government pass compulsory public-sector bargaining laws. Those laws, at least in the version pushed by the unions, usually pro vide for either permissive or man datory "union shops"; that is, they contain provisions imposing union membership as a condition of em ployment. The insistence upon such laws demonstrates that unions are not really interested in extending the right of free association to pub lic employment. That right is al ready there. What the unions want is to demolish the right; they want to be in a position to force union membership upon unwilling civil servants.

As yet only a minority of the states have passed full compulsory 1975 COMPULSORY PUBLIC-SECTOR BARGAINING 497 public-sector bargaining laws; and a still smaller minority (11 or 12) have passed laws under which union membership may be made a condition of public employment. This is the state of affairs which the public-sector unions find unsat isfactory. The contention that pub lic servants are denied rights of free association is false - a smoke screen designed to conceal what is really going on. LeadersSeek Power To sum up: the union drive for compulsory public-sector bargain ing laws has nothing to do with any desire to expand the rights of public servants. What it has to do with is the overweening lust for power which characterizes most union leaders, especially in the pub lic sector. They want such laws be cause when they get them they will be in a position to arrogate to themselves, out of the fund of rights which now belongs to public servants, the power to compel all civil servants to accept them as ex clusive bargaining representatives and then, on top of that, the addi tional power to make unwilling civ il servants pay for the union ser vices which they do not want.

Naturally, no public-sector union leader will admit to such im politic objectives. He will move on, instead, to the second series of contentions which, he hopes, will con vince legislators and an unwary public that compulsory public-sec tor bargaining laws are needed. Weeping copiously, he will lament the sad conditions in which public servants work, how terribly abused they are in terms of wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment. His contention will be that if only public servants have universally conferred upon them the blessings of collective bargain ing all their complaints, all their troubles, will disappear. Here again, what the public and the legislators need is a good strong dose of fact. The truth of the mat ter is that the wages of govern ment employees have easily kept up with, when they have not ma terially surpassed, those of compar able private-sector employees. Ac cording to the U. S. Department of Commerce, while state and local government employment was rising by 151 per cent between 1951 and 1972, their monthly payrolls in creased by 596 per cent.

The most detailed and authori tative private reporting service i'n the field, the Government Employ ee Relations Report, published by the Bureau of National Affairs, carries, almost each week news items indicating that government employees are by no means coming out on the short end. There is no need here to place undue emphasis 498 THE FREEMAN August upon such extraordinary phenom ena as the $17,000 annual wage re cently extracted from the taxpayers by San Francisco's street-sweepers. The average hourly wages of all civil servants for actual working hours are: in Ohio, $4.94; Min nesota, $5.13; Michigan, $6.67 ; Alaska, $9.53. Federal Employees As to employees of the federal government, a December 1974 ar ticle in The Washington Monthly, interestingly entitled "Government Unions: The New Bullies on the Block," tells an even more dra matic tale concerning the gener osity with which public employees are treated. All government wage scales - federal, state, and local are by law required to be compar able with those prevailing in the private sector. (Incidentally, they have to be if government is to at tract employees.) Perhaps the most suggestive fact pointed out by The Washington Monthly article is that at least federal government em ployees are quite markedly out distancing their colleagues in the private sector: ... [FJederal employees are among the highest-paid workers in the country.

One third of all federal workers on GS scale are paid nlore than $15,000, and receive supplelYlental benefits equal to a third of their salaries. Officially, federal white-collar employees are supposed to be paid salaries 'com parable' to what they would earn in private industry. But in practice, many federal employees, especially those in the middle grades and those just below the highest paid 'super grades,' are paid significantly more than they would get on the open mar ket. For example, the appropriate salary for all GS-13s is determined by examining only five professions - at torneys, chief accountants, chemists, personnel directors, and engineers. Each of these positions (with the ex ception of personnel directors) de mands greater training and technical skill than most government GS-13s possess. And the federal government has become so top-heavy that, for ex ample, 52 per cent of the employees of the Department of Transportation are GS-12s or above. The starting salary for a GS-12 is $18,463.

The Question of Happiness We hear a great deal about how gravely abused public employees are under the civil service merit system - and how much they would be benefited by replacing that sys tem with union representation. Two comments should suffice here. In the first place, the civil service merit system, now in effect in all public employment, represents the most serious and most comprehen sive attempt ever made anywhere to insure just treatment of em ployees on the job. In the second place, the assertion that union rep.;.

1975 COMPULSORY PUBLIC-SECTOR BARGAINING 499 resentation will insure better, fair er, more humane treatment for em ployees than the civil service merit system does is only assertion. All experience from the private sector seems to indicate that employees represented by unions are, to say the least, no happier or more con tented than the vast majority of private-sector employees who have chosen to remain nonunion. By the latest count union members con stitute considerably less than one fourth of the private labor force. Moreover, it is reasonable to believe that a large number of that one fourth belong to unions only be cause they must in order to keep their jobs. For something on the order of 80 per cent of all collec tive agreements contain provisions requiring union membership as a condition of employment. The state of soul or mind called "alienation" may exist in govern ment employment, but it is certain ly not confined uniquely to non union civil servants. In all prob ability it is a permanent and in eradicable aspect of the human psyche. We live in a universe which we have not made and which we can remold nearer to our desires, apparently, to only a very small degree, if at all. The idea that the brutal, insensitive collectivism which animates unions will provide a cure for alienation is absurd and ridiculous. Alienation is a condition of the individual mind or soul; mass, collective action cannot cure it. By expanding the size and scope of the authority of large collec tivities at the expense of individual autonomy, compulsory public-sec tor bargaining is more likely to in crease alienation and individual discontent than to reduce it. One thing is certain: forcing civil ser vants to accept union representa tion when they do not wish to do so is not going to make them any happier.

Fallacious Premise: The "Private-Sector Analogy" The factual misrepresentations, rank as they may be, are far less serious than the false premises and lame logic of the drive for com pulsory public-sector bargaining laws. We must have such laws in government employment, we are told, because we have them in the private sector, because they have worked so well there to produce industrial peace and worker satis faction (so they say), and because without them there will be great strife and unrest in government employment. It is difficult to judge which is worse - the bold and brassy error in these contentions, or the pro foundly significant omissions they tend to conceal. . Quite obviously it would not fol low that we should have compul500 THE FREEMAN August sory collective bargaining in the public sector merely because we have it in the private sector - even if the claims made for it in the private sector were true. One would have to establish (at least) that there are no material differences between the public sector and the private sector: no mean task, since, as we shall see, the public and pri vate sectors are basically and radi cally different in all the ways that matter most.

Before going into that, however, I believe it desirable to make some brief observations about our pri vate sector labor policies. In the first place, as already noted, only a minor fraction of private-sector employment is subject to collective bargaining, despite the fact that for forty years now the federal government - and especially the National Labor Relations Board has been doing its best to induce all private-sector employees to ac cept unionization. Year after year hundreds of thousands of private sector employees have spurned the NLRB's inducements. Moreover they have spurned them in the most definitive manner possible: in secret-ballot elections conducted by the NLRB itself under rules heavily weighted in favor of the unions. One would need to be out of touch with reality to contend seri ously that there is more strife, more labor unrest, or more aliena tion in the vastly preponderant non unionized part of private employment' than there is in the unionized quarter. In those sectors of private employment where they have taken hold, our compulsory collective bargaining laws have not produced labor peace and harmony, much less consumer-serving pro ductivity. On the contrary, the re sults have been disastrous in at least six ways.

(1) Our private-sector compul sory collective bargaining policy has condemned countless thou sands of working persons who ac tively oppose union representation to a condition of serfdom by forc ing them to accept and to pay for union representation which they do not want. (2) It has severely hampered and rigidified and thus made much less profitable and efficient many of our basic industries, to the en during harm of the communities served by those industries. (3) In the opinion of many if not most of the outstanding econo mists of this country and of Eu rope, it has done great damage to the market economy in general and to the interests of workers and consumers in particular. (4) The industries most subject to union control may be character ized by high nominal wages, but, as in construction and the rail1975 COMPULSORY PUBLIC-SECTOR BARGAINING 501 roads, they are likewise character ized by extensive and apparently permanent under-employment. A bricklayer's scale of $15 per hour is not all that great if as a result bricklayers are unable to find work.

(5) Our private sector labor pol icies have placed in the leaders of the big unions enormous political power, power which is normally directed in vicious, antisocial ways. Examples are minimum wage laws which make supernumeraries of our young people, especially young blacks; and the numerous types of interference with free trade which are pushed mainly by the big un ions. In such instances - and in countless others which could be listed - the leaders of the big un ions created by our compulsory collective bargaining policies have set themselves boldly and arro gantly against the best and most humane interests of the commun ity as a whole. (6) Finally, it is simply untrue to say that the introduction of compulsory collective bargaining statutes in the private sector brought labor peace where strife existed before. Take a look any year at the Handbook of Labor Statistics, prepared by the U. S.

Bureau of Labor Statistics. Strikes more than doubled the year after the National Labor Relations Act became fully effective. This had· to happen. As we shall presently see in more detail, unions are nothing at aU if they are not highly pro fessional strike agencies. Encour age unionization and you encour age strikes. It is as simple as that. To believe that this universal truth would not apply in the pub lic sector would be to deny the val idity of all relevant experience and assert that reason has become ob solete. Remove the Coercion If my all too abbreviated cri tique of our private-sector experi ence has any merit at all, it sug gests that we should repeal the statutes compelling collective bar gaining in the private sector rather than extend them to the public sec tor. However, even if we were to shut our eyes to that experience, even if we were inclined to agree that compulsory collective bargain ing has "worked" in the private sector, it would remain true that universalizing compulsory collec tive bargaining in the public sec tor would be· an extremely unwise and probably a fatally destructive move.

There is no proper analogy be tween the public sector and the private sector. Business is one thing. Government is, in every sense relevant to this discussion, entirely and 'categorically another. As Woodrow Wilson once said, 502 THE FREEMAN August The business of government is to see that no other organization is as strong as itself; to see that no group of men, no matte-r what their private business is, may come into competi tion with the authority of society. In his Farewell Address, George Washington said that, The very idea of the right and power of the people to establish gove,rnment presupposes the duty of every indi vidual to obey the established gov ernment. John Austin, one of the greatest jurists of the last two centuries, understood the concept sovereign ty as few before or after him have understood it. His position was that "the all-powerful portion of the community which makes laws should not be divisible, that it should not share its power with anybody else."

What these great men were say ing is that if government is to serve the role in society which must be served if there is to be society - civil order - it must have sovereign, supreme and undiluted, power: power greater than that possessed by any other person, or group, or group of groups. Where the Analogy Fails This is the fact which utterly demolishes the private sector anal ogy. There is nothing basically de structive of private business in a law, however unwise that law may be, which forces employers to deal collectively with employ,ee rep,re sentatives on terms and conditions of employment. To repeat: it may be wrong to force dissident private employees to accept unions which they do not want and to compel private employers to bargain col lectively with unions when they prefer to deal with their employees individually. However, no social breakdown occurs as a consequence of compul sory private-sector bargaining.

This is true in part because em ployers are compelled by the nature of things in a free society to bar gain with their employees indi viduaIly or collectively, anyway, if they wish to have employees; in part because few private employ ers, if any, are inclined to yield without resistance to extreme, anti-economic union demands; in part because private employers rarely if ever provide goods and services which cannot stand inter ruption for more or less sustained periods; and in part, finally and most importantly, because no pri vate employer occupies a role so central and so indispensable to the survival of civilized society as all our governments - federal, state and local - do. Monopoly is normally a bad thing in the private sector. In the public sector undivided, monopoly, 1975 COMPULSORY PUBLIC-SECTOR BARGAINING 503 sovereign power is absolutely in dispensable to any civilized social order. Law is either universal, su preme, and exclusive - or it is nothing. Imagine two competing police forces, two competing ar mies, two competing judicial sys terns! The name for such a state of affairs is anarchy, not civilized order.

Because government is and has to be monopolistic in character, it a.lso must perforce stand outside the market. Political considera tions, not economic considerations, must direct its activities. The con sensus of the whole community, not the private interests of indi vidual producers and consumers, must determine the way in which government operates. Political Decisions Government cannot, as private business does, allocate its resources and expenditures on the basis of balance sheet considerations of profit and loss. All its decisions as to how many police or fire sta tions or schools or garbage trucks should be bought or employees hired - all such decisions are po litical decisions. Ludwig von Mises has made the poin t : The objectives of public adminis·· tration cannot be rneasured in nloney terms and cannot be checked by ac countancymethods. Take a nationwide police system like the F .B.I.

There is no yardstick available that could establish whether the expenses incurred by one of its regional or local branches were not excessive. In public administration there is no market price for achievements. This makes it indispensable to operate public offices according to principles entirely different from those applied under the profit motive. . .. [The government] must define in a precise way the quality and the quantity of the services to be rend ered and the commodities to be sold, it must issue detailed instructions concerning the methods to be applied in the purchase of material factors of production and 1:n hiring and reward ing labor . .. [Emphasis supplied.] ... It would be utterly impractic able to delegate to any individual or group of individuals the power to draw freely on public funds. It is necessary to curb the power of man agers of nationalized or municipal ized systems ... if they are not to be made irresponsible spenders of pub lic money and if their management is not to disorganize the whole budget.

It should be obvious by now that - and why - government cannot share with uni ons its power over the public service and at the same time retain its character as gov ernment, responsible to the conl Inunity consensus alone. Even if decisions concerning the course of government and of government ernployment could be made jointly by duly elected or appointed offi504 THE FREEMAN August cials and union negotiators, there would be a dissolution of sover eignty and a dissipation if not de struction of popular government. But the unfortunate fact is that under compulsory public-sector bargaining there will not be merely a sharing of sovereignty; common sense and experience indicate that the sovereignty is bound to come to rest, ultimately, in the public sector unions. Strife Is Assured I repeat: this is bound to hap pen. Proponents of compulsory public-sector bargaining contend that it is the only way to eliminate strife ard unrest in public em ployment, but the fact of the mat ter is that such bargaining is a means of insuring strife and un rest, in the government service.

From such strife and unrest the public-sector union leaders are bound to emerge in this country as they already have in England and in Italy - as our ultimate rulers. For, as Henry C. Simons called them, unions are "battle agencies." They have to be. In order to get and keep members, they must continuously seek and bend every effort to get more than the employers of their members are willing to pay. By now, even the dullest observers of this field are aware that politicians and po litical officials tend to be far more generous with taxpayer money than private businessmen are with stockholders' money. Nevertheless, there comes a point, even in gov ernment, when the never-ending demands that unions are compelled to make must be met with a straightforward "No." What happens then? Well, the history of the last decade is in structi vee In order to keep their members, the unions must refuse to take "no" for an answer. Over the last decade the number of pub lic-employee strikes has increased by well over 1100 per cent. This is what refusing to take "no" for an answer means among the public sector unions: Striking. And the fact that until just the last year or so (and then in just a few states) public-employee strikes were (and are even now in most states) un lawful - this fact has neither dis couraged the union leaders from calling strikes, nor made their members hesitate to participate in them.

If these facts prove anything, they prove that - not the law, not duty to the public, not respect for judicial orders - but union leaders have become for unionized public servants their sovereign liege lords. When I say that widespread adoption of compulsory public-sec tor bargaining laws will inevitably result in the destruction of popu lar sovereignty and in its replace1975 COMPULSORY PUBLIC-SECTOR BARGAINING 505 men t with the virtual anarchy of a sovereignty split among the lead ers of the more critically placed public-sector unions, these are the facts and the common sense anal yses upon which I rest the predic tion. It is strictly speaking absurd to suggest that compulsory public sector bargaining laws are needed in order to eliminate strife and un rest in public employment. Before such laws were passed in the late fifties and the sixties, there were no strikes to speak of and no other significant forms of mass unrest in public employment. Before pub lic agencies, especially in such places as New York City, began bargaining collectively with unions representing their employees -Le., began recognizing unions as ex clusive bargaining representatives and thus· abdicating to unions the sovereign powers of government there were no public-sector strikes, none to speak of anyway.

The strife and the unrest have come since unions have been rec ognized in some states and cities as exclusive bargaining represent atives. Significantly, the strife and unrest have been localized in pre cisely those jurisdictions. It is largely absent in the localities which refuse to recognize unions as exclusive bargaining represent atives of public employees. And one may confidently conclude that it would be entirely absent if mili tant trade unions were excluded from public sector employment as a proper respect for the duties and powers of government would require. Such a state of affairs - leading to peace and harmony rather than chaos and war between govern ment and their employees - would not require that the right of free association be denied to public em ployees. Public employees might very well join or even be encour aged to join associations confined to civil servants. Indeed, as we have seen, ever since the first civil service laws were passed in this country (and they are now uni versal), public servants have been free to form and join their own civil service organizations.

A Dubious Progression: Chaos to Anarchy to Tyranny In a drastic reversal of former opinion, state courts all over the country have been upholding the constitutionality of recently passed compulsory public-sector bargain ing laws. Less than thirty years ago, the consensus among judges was precisely to the contrary. All across the land they had been hold ing that for a public agency to bar gain collectively on the terms and conditions of public employment would involve an unconstitutional abdication and delegation of gov506 THE FREEMAN August ernmental power and thus a be trayal of representative govern ment. Nowadays, however, we read re peatedly in judicial opinions that there is nothing wrong in such laws. Some of the state courts have gone so far as to uphold laws pro viding for compulsory arbitration of public sector labor disputes. Go ing even further, some have held that public servants have a right to strike.

Despite these abrupt changes of opinion, however, a curious move ment is afoot among the judges. Several of the courts which have gone furthest in welcoming the ab dication of sovereign power im plicit in compulsory public sector bargaining laws, have begun qui etly and unobtrusively to see to it that their sovereign powers remain unimpaired! Some have been hold ing that court employees are ex cluded from the compulsory bar gaining laws. Others have been holding that insofar as court em ployees are concerned, the proper party to do the bargaining with them is not a state or local admin istrative officer, but the presiding judge. When the state or local adminis trative officers object to these de..; cisions, contending, among other things, that they are scarcely like ly to get fair hearings on the mat ter from judges who are themselves interested parties, the courts are brought face to face with the destructi ve and contradictory char acter of all compulsory public-sec tor bargaining laws. They are forced to see willy-nilly that such laws simply cannot be reconciled with any intelligible concept of sovereignty.

In one case the complaining county commissioner charged that the county was being denied due process of law and equal protection of the law because his opponent in the case was a member of the very judiciary which was deciding whether he, the county commis sioner, or his opponent, the county judge, was the appropriate bar gaining agent! The court could only reply, lamely, that it would do its best to insure a fair hearing. Approaching a Critical Problem: Judicial Absolutism Judicial absolutism has long been a problem in this country. Cases such as the ones we have just reviewed indicate that the problem is approaching a critical state. At the moment, the result of th~ compulsory public-sector bar gaining laws prevailing in some of the states is that the ultimate pow er of government lies in the courts, the least representative branch of government. A number of consid erations suggest, however, that this condition is strictly tempo1975 COMPULSORY PUBLIC-SECTOR BARGAINING 507 rary: that before long the ultimate sovereignty will fall to the public sector union leaders vvho, besides being representatives of only their own interests, not of the electorate, are not in the slightest degree a legitimate branch of government.

The authors of the Federalist knew what they were talking about when they referred to the judici ary as the weakest branch of the government. The judgments and decisions of the judiciary are meaningful only to the extent that the gen~ral public respects them and the executive branch of the government enforces them. What can judges do about public-sector strikes? If we are to take experi ence as our guide, the answer has to be: nothing. To repeat, thousands of public sector strikes have been called over the last decade - all illegally. How ever, the illegality made no differ ence: the unions called the strikes anyway, and, over the years, mil lions of police officers, firefighters, school-teachers, garbage collectors, highway-maintenance men (during blizzards, yet!) went out, appar ently stirred only by contempt of the possible court actions against them. Indeed, when aNew York court enjoined a garbage-men's strike, their union leader, John DeLury, instead of obeying the in j unction, in the words of New York's highest ,court, "went to the other extreme, actually urged the men to make the strike 'effective 100%.' "

All competent scholars in the la bor law field are aware that anti strike injunctions are almost im possible to enforce, even in the pri vate sector, where, at least, the force-s of government are available to attempt to induce respect for the court orders. But what pros pect is there for enforcement of a court order against a public-sector union when all civil servants are unionized, as they will be if com pulsory collective bargaining laws prevail universally in this coun try? Who is going to enforce an injunction against a strike by a policeman? the National Guard? the Army? The situation is even grimmer than the foregoing analysis sug gests. In fact, public-sector strikes do such enormous harm in such a brief time that court actions aimed at enjoining them are usually an exercise in futility. Even before the legal papers are filed, the grea t er part of the damage done by a good many public-sector strikes is already done. The strikers have the community over a barrel. It has to give in. According to one study of events in the experimental labora tory of our subject, the City of New York, the vast preponderance of the public-sector strikes called there never reach the courts at all.

508 THE FREEMAN August The harm they do is so VICIOUS that the striking unions are in a position to extort, as part of the price for going back to work, an agreement from the city authori ties not to prosecute the strike, despite its illegality! The only conclusion possible from the foregoing discussion is that compulsory public-sector bar gaining is incompatible with both representative government and the kind of sovereign governmental power needed if we are to live in a free, peaceful, and decently or dered society. Under a universal regime of compulsory public-sec tor bargaining, the sovereign powers will belong to neither the people nor their duly elected and appointed representatives. They will be fragmented and dispersed among the most power-hungry leaders of the public-sector unions. Those persons, not our elected rep resentatives, will be our rulers. Not all of us will be willing to accept them as rulers; indeed, no one in his right mind would accept any of the present leaders of the public-sector unions as his sov ereign authority. This being true, the result will have to be, in order: chaos, the situation prevailing when sovereignty is divided among the public-sector union leaders; an archy, the condition resulting from the refusal by all sensible persons to accept the feudal lordship of the public-sector union leaders; and finally, tyranny, the state of affairs which generally succeeds anarchy because of mankind's insuppress ible and ineradicable need of order if life is to proceed at all satis factorily. ~ IDEAS ON LIBERTY The Rule of Law THE END of the law is, not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings ca pable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom. For lib erty is to be free from restraint and violence from others; which cannot be where there is no law; and is not, as we are told, a lib erty for every man to do what he lists. (For who could be free when every other man's humour might domineer over him?) But a lib erty to dispose, and order as he lists, his person, actions, posses sions, and his whole property, within the allowance of those laws under which he is, and therein not to be the subject of the arbi trary will of another, but freely follow his own.

JOHN LOCKE, Second Treatise A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK I MUST BEGIN with a confession. I put off reading Gitta Sereny's Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder (McGraw-Hill, $9.95) for weeks because, having once spent a morning in the Mu seum of the Holocaust outside Je rusalem, where the horrors of the Hitler gas chambers are made un bearably explicit, I didn't think I could stand repeating a shattering experience. It was chicken-hearted of me to behave in such a way. JOHN CHAMBERLAIN The Evil~ of NazislD Once I had conquered my queasi ness and decided to take the plunge all over again, I must say that I was relieved to find myself reading a document that is as far above being a routine listing of horrors as Dostoevsky's Crime and Punish ment is above a mere detective story. There are fashions in contem plating the evils of Nazism. At the time of Nuremberg it was enough to say that Hitler, Goebbels and Company were moral monsters who deserved what they got, which was assuredly true even though the 509 510 THE FREEMAN August "victors' justice" court which tried the top-ranking Nazis was in itself a dubious legal instrument. But the larger question of acquiescence in guilt was not settled at Nurem berg. There were Germans who knew all about the gas chambers and other crimes of the Nazi State who "went along." In the Burkean phrase, they were the "good men"