Book Reviews

The reader's reward for persist ence, however, is great. What one gets in these ,essays is a view of political economy that shows how we have gone wrong by departing from the old Adam Smith idea that government should limit itself to the defense of the realm (a mil itary force to guard borders, a police force to handle internal law breakers), a court system to pro vide justice, and the making of non-discriminatory rules under which private entrepreneurs can coordinate the economy. Add a con cern for public health (the indi vidual has a right to protection against disease spread by the un concern of others) and you just 377 378 THE FREEMAN June about have the case for a free so ciety dominated by consumer sov ereignty. As theedi tors of the,se essays point out, Hutt is skeptical of the idea that the government is a group of' people who can be en tirely disciplined by the ballot box.

People are selfish and shortsight ed, and they will vote themselves special discriminatory privileges if they can find a way to do it. So it is axiomatic that there must be constitutional checks on special in terest groups and their log-rolling political representatives. Hutt would outlaw any form of special interest legislation except for aid to the poor and disabled. But he would not extend the vote to any body who gets special aid from government. The poor and dis abled, if they have the right to legislate on their own behalf, can become a pressure group as fear some as any. On Being Realistic Such an uncompromising devo tion to pure classical liberalism is not considered "realistic" in this day and age. It was Hutt's lack of "realism" that caused him to be come persona non grata in the "apartheid" society of South Af rica. But when Hutt says that South Africa's problems cannot be surmounted peacefully by any thing other than a return to the classic liberalism of Locke, Hume, Tocqueville and Hayek, he is so ob ~iously right that the "realists"

should stand ashamed. Hutt realizes that history is a ragged process, and that State-pro tected miscarriages of justice can not be corrected overnight. Ana lyzing what went wrong in South Africa, Hutt says the perpetuation of race discrimination has been due to the use of State power and trade union collusion to preserve the status quo in the interests of an enfranchised white proletariat. The trade union leaders have in sisted on a double standard of wages, with the color bar being in voked to keep blacks, "Cape Col oureds" (Le., mestizos) and Indi ans from entering-dosed shop trade unions that have maintained their right to the better-paying occupations. Obviously, a big majority of the South African whites believe that if there were a greater equality of social and economic status in the "beloved country," it would lead to a demand for the political equality of "one man, one vote." The im mediate granting of universal suf frage would, so Hutt concedes, be a disaster. It would quickly degen erate to a condition of "one man, one vote, once." The black party, dominated by the strongest tribes, would quickly dispossess the whites, send the Indians packing to Asia 1976 INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM 379 or to England, and put the Cape Coloureds on a most uncomf ort able sort of probation.

A Weighted Franchise What Hutt suggests is that the repeal of economic and social apartheid should be coupled with the transitional requirement of a "weighted franchise" to reassure minorities that their property rights would be respected. There would be' "an equal right to .qual ify for the vote" by passing edu cational tests and by acquiring enough property to become respon sible taxpayers. An Upper House would be entrusted with the veto and power. The eventual member ship of the Upper House \vould be designed to bring about gradual equality of representation for each of the four South African racial groups as such. As an added reassurance, Hutt would have the President of his classically liberal Republic chosen from the judiciary, preferably by the judiciary. A Constitution would, in Jefferson's phrase, bind both the President and the legisla ture by the "chains" of its classi cal liberal provisions. The police force and the army would be re sponsible to the President.

The Case of Rhodesia In Rhodesia there has been an actual attempt to apply Hutt's ideas of the "weighted franchise" and orderly progress toward a non discriminatory society that would guarantee the continuing right of a rancher to his acres, and the right of mine owners to sell their chrome ore or whatever at unco erced market prices. But the sanc tions imposed on Rhodesia, says Hutt, have crushed the "pure non racial democracy there." On paper, the so-called Whitehead Constitu tion for Rhodesia "had created· the nearest example to a pure 'J. S. Mill democracy' that has existed anywhere since the 1870s." But with Cubans now acting as Marx ist Hessians along the borders of Rhodesia, the chances for a "weighted franchise" orderly trans ition in that country are extremely dubious. In all probability it will end in a "one man, one vote, once" Idi Amin type of horror, and then it will be South Africa's turn to face the Marxist wolves as people in the "civilized" nations of west ern Europe and America sancti moniously avert their gaze.

The more purely economic es says in this Hutt collection all stress the virtue of price flexibil ity affecting the various factors of production, including labor. Hutt concedes that it has been a polit ical impossibility to restore wage flexibility as long as Keynesian governments were dominated by trade union labor parties. The 380 THE FREEMAN June Webbs in England were privately convinced that the British trade union hierarchy was manipulated by "pigs," but they never dared say so in public. Well, "pigs" can't run things forever when an econ omy is drying up. Hutt, who has never had the influence he de serves, may be looking forward to a better tomorrow when the "pigs" wake up to the reality that the feed in the· trough is entirely de pendent on the willingness of en terprisers to renew it. Individual Freedom: Selected Works of William H. Hutt may be ordered at $15.95 from The Foundation for Economic Edu cation, Inc., Irvington-on-Hud son, New York 10533.

~ HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMAN LIBERTIES by Tibor R. Machan (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1975) 279 pp., $11.95. Reviewed by Anne Wortham ENTAILEDin man's very nature are his rights, argues Dr. Machan, and the nature of these rights requires liberty for their exercise. But al though he possesses rights and re quires freedom, man has not always known how to justify these rights and defend freedom. Machan points out that most people, even in the "free" world, do not know what freedom is. This is certainly true in the semi-free United States where we, "the Peo ple," have a long history of volun tarily voting for restrictions on our freedom. We have seen alleged defenders of huma'n liberty advo cateevery manner of political solu tion, from structuring society to effect the greater good for the greatest number, to manipulating the differences among people to effect "the good of the least for tunate."

With so many suggestions be fore us on how to organize the hu man community according to what is morally good for people, we need to know what our rights are and why they are so crucial to us as individuals and to the community we have established. However, it is not enough to know what we mean by human rights; we must put them into practice in the course of our daily lives. They must assume the utmost impor tance to us - personally. It is im portant not only to be a morally virtuous person but also to find political solutions that make moral life possible for everyone. Machan's basic maxim runs as follows: "Each and every person ought to have the maximum free dom of choice and action in the pursuit of his own aspirations, in the conduct of his life."

1976 OTHER BOOKS 381 But even after accepting the principle that everyone ought to live in maximum liberty, Machan tells us, "Weare far from being able to identify what this would amount to in concrete circum stances." His next level of defense is to show "that each person could be free to choose and act in the conduct of his own life without obviating the same freedom for others." At this stage of his argu ment Machan introduces a corol lary principle, which is that "each person ought to be free to acquire things in nature" - the right to property. Thence, he provides a moral defense of property and the free economic system, capitalism, while answering the critics in the process. Finally, .in support of property rights, he concludes with a state ment that is truly radical in these days of the ever-expanding welfare sta te and the spreading cancer of the anticapitalistic mentality: "Ac quiring valuables is good." This is a simple observation but few peo ple 'understand it, contemporary political theorists deny it, and many hard-working, taxpaying Americans continue to apologize for it.

While Dr. Machan criticizes the existing state of affairs, he does not demand - nor does his theory require - a basic change inhuman nature; a change in thinking is required to provide moral guidelines for our private affairs and com munity life. The fault of the hu man community is not the human condition - Le., human nature - it is a lack of understanding of what the human condition is, what the human community can be and ought to be. Machan's doctrine of rights is no utopian exercise. He addresses his inquiry and his criticism to "the potential excellence of indi vidual human beings" - as they exist, without omniscience, with fallibility, capable of virtues as well as vices. "A community of ful ly rational, absolutely just, honest, productive human beings - all of whom could not falter from con stant virtue - is not one for which our legal system should be design ed! That cannot even serve as a model, since the laws of such a sys tem could not adequately deal with the plain fact of evil."

Machan, _addressing this work to the "educated layman/' chose not to write it in the parlance of his profession. As a professor of philosophy, he continually delivers' technical papers on the most com plex philosophical questions before professional thinkers in the U.S. and abroad. Indeed, it is to his credit that he is able to expound the most crucial principles of man's existence in the simple and straightforward eloquence of un382 THE FREEMAN June ambiguous language laced with common sense and 0 hj ecti vity. Nevertheless, this material can not be casually absorbed; one must think about what he is reading. And in so doing, he will find Hu man Rights and Human Lib erties a challenging experience, some times difficult, but always reward ing. ~ THE CONDITIONS OF FREE DOM by Harry Jaffa. (Baltimore: Johns HopJdns University Press, 1975) 280 pp., $12.50. Reviewed by Haven Bradford Gow "What is equality?" is a question of enduring interest and impor tance. Professor Jaffa attempts to formulate an answer in his latest work, T'he Conditions of Freedom, a collection of probing essays.

Any inquiry into the meaning of equality must include an ex amination of the Declaration of Independence, Professor J affa be lieves. The Declaration begins with an appeal to "the laws of Nature and of Nature's God," and main tains that the proposition "All men are created equal" is a self-evident truth. Furthermore, all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them "Life, liberty, and the pur suit of Happiness." In seeking to understand and explain what the Declaration means by equality, Jaffa employs the method advocated by his men tor, the late Leo Strauss: no one should criticize a work until he has come to appreciate and under stand the author's intention and perspective, and exactly what he is trying to communicate. If one wants to understand what the Founders of our nation meant by equality, one must scrutinize the Declaration of Independence until its key concepts, terms and phrases stand clear.