Book Reviews

In America, Frank Chodorov didn't laugh. Frank, a devoted fol lower of Albert Jay Nock, used to drop into the office of the Freeman magazine back in 1950. When he wasn't talking about N ock's Our Enemy, the State, Frank's favorite topic was Fabian "gradualism," which he proposed to turn against the socialists. He regarded our Freeman as one beginning liber tarian gradualist rivulet. He had had his own little magazine, analy sis (spelled with a small "a"), but that wasn't enough. He proposed setting up an Intercollegiate So ciety of Individualists to battle the swarming collectivists for the con trol of the American campus. Looking about him for a presi dent for his fledgling lSI, Frank fastened upon a young Yale grad uate named William Buckley, who had been reading analysis and who had asked me, as a Freeman editor and fellow Yale alumnus, to write an introQ,uction to his remarkably precocious God and Man at Yale.

Meanwhile, as Frank looked about for more gradualist rivulets, Leon ard Read had already started The Foundation for Economic Educa441 442 THE FREEMAN July tion and some forty American and European scholars, led by Fried rich Hayek of The Road to Serf dom fame, had met in the Swiss Alps to form The Mont Pelerin Society. Chodorov, the fighting optimist, surveyed the whole scene with a satisfaction that few of us could feel at the time. Individualist gradualism, he was convinced, could take the play away from the modern "liberals," who then dom inated practically every newspa per, magazine, university and pub lishing company in America. Chodorov died a long time ago. Had he lived, even he might be astounded by the success of liber tarian and conservative gradual ism in America since he first be gan talking about using the Fa bian formula against the Fabians. The whole magnificent success story has been set down in vibrant detail by George H. Nash, a young Harvard Ph.D., in a teeming book, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (Basic Books, $20). Nash would have pleased Chodorov down to the ground, for he has Chodorov's own feeling that it is the movement of ideas, not the posturing of the poli ticians' that determines the out come of events in the real world.

With an incredible patience Nash has picked up virtually everyone of the rivulets that Chodorov used to talk about. In his careful con struction, which combines the chronological approach with a skillful use of flash-backs, Nash shows how the rivulets have com bined to form a rushing river that, at the moment of his book's pub lication, promises great changes at the polls. It will probably take a few more years for the anti Fabian gradualism extolled by Chodorov to beat back the social ists, but no reader of Nash's book can legitimately doubt that the anti-Fabian gradualists are going to win. For an Effective Coalition What did it take to make a really effective movement that could unite the von Mises Austrian school economists, the Chodorov anti-Statists, the Russell Kirk anti ideology Burkean. conservatives, the anti-Communists, the believers in a Christianized West, the de fenders of the "higher law," and the pragmatic "neo-conservatives"

such as Irving Kristol who have seen that collectivist panaceas just don't work? How, with such poten tially "fissionable" material, could there ever have been a fusion? Mr. Nash has two theories to explain a remarkable phenomenon. The first theory owes much to Ben jamin Franklin, who, in the days when Americans were defying King George III, said we must all 1976 THE CONSERVATivE INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT SINCE 1945 443 hang together or we'll all hang separately. The drive of the Com munists to take over the world, by a combination of internal subver sion and external power threats, creates a fear that acts as a strong cement for conservatives and lib ertarians of all shades of belief. But fusion would never have be come articulate if it hadn't been for the remarkable personality of Frank Meyer, an ex-Communist who died as a convert to the Cath olic faith. Nash has correctly perceived that Frank Meyer, from his "Prin ciples and Heresies" pulpit in Bill Buckley's National Review, worked miracles of persuasion on many a doubter that libertarians and Bur kean traditionalists, agnostics and Christian believers, classical econ omists and ex-Communists with little grounding in economics, could ever get together. Frank, with his belief that the end of gov ernment is the protection of indi vidual liberty, did not contest the idea that the end of man at liberty is the pursuit of virtue. He con vinced many of us that the choice between good and evil is meaning less if it is not the product of free will. So he brought libertarians and traditionalists to accept the idea that government must be lim ited, and the economic system must be set free, in order to provide a setting where men could freely promote their own ideas of virtue without being coerced into a mean ingless official morality by Big Brother.

Long Live the Differences Nash clearly perceives that to define conservatism in dogmatic terms would be to kill it. There is no definition that could put a blan ket cov.er over James Burnham, the anatomist of "liberal" suicide and student of geopolitical reality, and Murray Rothbard, who thinks· questions of foreign policy are to tally negligible. It is enough that conservatives and libertarians of all shades of thought agree in dis trusting the "social engineering" approach to changing the social or der. It is enough that the followers of Ludwig von Mises and Fried rich Hayek, some of whom prefer to .call themselves Whigs or old fashioned liberals, and the neo conservatives of the Kristol "pub lic interest" school, who are still Deweyan "instrumentalists" at heart, can share a preference for a free economy for their own dif ferent reasons. Nash goes fully into controver sies that had conservatives deeply· divided at times. There was the McCarthy controversy, for exam ple. There was the argument over the "natural rights" conception of freedom versus virtue and duty.

The names connected with the ar444 THE FREEMAN July guments are legion, but Nash man ages to do justice to practically ev eryone in the movement, from Walter Berns and Brent Bozell and Willmoore Kendall on the "virtue duty" side of the argument to' Mil ton Friedman, whose interests are largely secular and who would use what Henry Hazlitt thinks of as "tinkering" devices to make gov ernment interference in education and the marketplace more respon sible to pluralistic preferences. The personalities blend neatly into the flow of the narrative. Practically anybody who was connected in any way with the conservative revival will say, on finishing Nash's book, that "all of this I saw, and part of this I was." There are, however, a couple of omissions. Nash ignores Rose Wilder Lane, whose The Discovery of Freedom must have had as much effect in turning socialists into libertarians as Albert Jay Nock. Among the early antiCom munists he forgets Benjamin Stol berg and John Dos Passos, who were still very much on the scene in the Fifties. But it would be fly specking to hold a few omissions against George Nash. He has car ried off a Gargantuan enterprise with a flourish and aplomb that have never once disturbed his magnificently precise sense of order.

~ SIMPLE & DIRECT: A Rhetoric for Writers by Jacques Barzun (New York, Harper & Row, 1975) 205 pp., $10.00. Re'viewed by Edmund A. Opitz ANYONE can learn to write decent prose; good writers are made, not born. Some, obviously, have a greater natural aptitude than others, but even the immensely gifted Jacques Barzun has to re write. The elegant prose we admire in his books did not flow from his pen in that form, as he reveals here. A page of the first draft of this book is rep rod uced: words crossed out, new words inserted, a phrase deleted, a sentence added. Additional corrections, we are told, were made in two successive type scripts and in the galleys. Obvi ously, most of us are lazy, and so we can ourselves into believing that good writers are born with a silver pen in hand. The truth is that good writers work twice as hard as mediocre writers and more intelligently. It is helpful, I under stand, to be a genius!

You're no genius, let us say, but you are normally endowed and your LQ. is over a hundred. Will hard work make a writer of you? No, only hard work of the right kind, work appropriate to the end you have in mind. Your goal is to write prose which is "reasonably clear and straightforward," and this 1976 OTHER BOOKS 445 means that you must become "self conscious and analytical about words." The correct word should be used in a proper context (con sult the dictionary!); the meta phor should be apt; syntax, rhy thm, and diction should suit the occasion; the tone should be right. "I want to lay it down as an axiom," Barzun writes, "that the best tone is the tone called plain, unaffected, unadorned. It does not talk down or jazz up; it assumes the equality of all readers likely to approach the given subject; it informs or argues without apol ogizing forits task; it does not try to dazzle or cajole the indifferent; it takes no posture of coziness or sophistication. It is the most diffi cult of all tones, and also the most adaptable. When you can write plain you can trust yourself in special effects."

Simple & Direct is witty and amusing. Barzun has culled some gorgeous specimens of bad prose from his wide reading, and in some cases adds a comment. He quotes a writer who has not thought about his imagery: "The air was clear and cool but not cold and its fresh ness was like wine in the nostrils." To which Barzun rejoins: "It's bad enough to inhale smoke!" But Simple & Direct is also an exer cise book, and the reader who wants to get full benefit from it should go through it with pen and pad. In the major divisions of the book he'll learn about Diction, Linking, Tone and Tune, Meaning, Composition, and Revision; and he'll be sensitized to the major sins against the canons. Next, he'll work his way through the exer cises, emerging at the far end with a pretty fair notion of what it takes to be a writer. The book also contains half-a dozen brief essays as examples of good writing. To which I'd like to add some suggestions, beginning with the books of Jacques Barzun himself. Fifteen titles are in print, an armful of books which surely represents one of the major intel lectual and literary accomplish ments of our time - and a model of good writing as well.

And of course there's Albert Jay Nock, acknowledged as a master prose stylist even by those who re ject his opinions. Nock is so quot able that there's a temptation to shirk the chore of saying it in your own way. Resist this 'temptation, for Nock's manner of saying things is his own. But any reader who stays with him will have his own thinking whetted, and the in fluence of Nock's way with words will subtly invade the deep layers of his mind. This, of course, is the virtue of great works of literature. I once asked the nature writer, Henry Beston, how he came by his beautiful style. "I steeped myself 446 THE FREEMAN July in the King James Version of the Bible," he replied. The splendor of Elizabethan English came to full flower in this "noblest monument of English prose." Well, now, you've worked your way through Simple & Direct, giv ing yourself a two-semester course in WriUng and Composition. You know how to say it, and you begin to have an inkling of what you want to say. This latter now needs attention. Having something to say requires a well-nourished mind.

The mind must be continuously re stocked by observation, conversa tion, and reading which, taken to gether, constitute research. Re search is hard work, but there's a right way to go about it, and it's set forth in a book crammed with fascinating pieces of information, The Modern Researcher, by Bar zun and Graff. The upshot is that anyone who puts his mind to it can write, but there are easier things to do, like swimming the English Channel! .~ FREE MARKETS OR FAMINE (318 pp.) (revised edition) and POLITICS VERSUS PROSPER ITY (358 pp.) by Dr. V. Orval Watts, co-author and editor, and 21 other distinguished scholars. (Pendell Publishing Co., P.O. Box 1666, Midland, Michigan 48640), $9.00 each. Reviewed by Howard E. Kershner DR. WATTS is Burrows T. Lundy Professor of The Philosophy of Business, Campbell College, North Carolina, and Director of Eco nomic Education for Northwood Institute. He obtained his doctor ate in Economics and History at Harvard University and has a long and distinguished career as a teacher of economics at Wellesley, Carleton, Claremont, Pepperdine, and Northwood.

The first edition of Free Mar kets or Famine was tops, and the revised edition is even better. Nine chapters are by the master him self. Among the authors of one. or more of the other chapters are the renowned Austrian school econo mist Ludwig von Mises, Hans F. Sennholz, Edward P. Coleson, Syl vester Petro, Dean Russell and Murray N. Rothbard. The book proves the thesis that the only time an economy of abun dance has appeared in the world was after the coming of the free market economy. The authors do 1976 OTHER BOOKS 447 not specifically say it, but this re viewer maintains that the moral principles succinctly stated in the Ten Commandments were essential to the success of the market econ omy as taught by Adam Smith and others of the classical school. Smith wrote at a time when these principles were believed and largely practiced by Western soci ety. Without them, it is doubtful if the free market economy ever would have developed its marvel ous capacity to produce abun dantly.

Famine and hard times were common before the coming of the free market, and this reviewer, at least, believes that they will return if and when the free market and its Judeo-Christian religious input no longer determine the conduct and loyalty of a majority of the people. This book ought to be read by all who want to understand the science of economics. Likewise the companion volumeP'olitics vs. Prosperity. Dr. Watts writes three chapters for this book. Most of the co-authors of Free Markets or Famine, and a number of other distinguished scholars and writers, have also written one or more 'chapters for it. This book also has a strong moral emphasis. Certain imperfections and evils appear from time to time in a free society, but these are soon corrected by obsolescence, an increasingly rapid factor of change, the inability of sons to wield the accumulated power of their fathers, and the growth of moral perception and consciousness.

Those who propose to cure the defects of free enterprise by state intervention, up to and including the authoritarian state, do not reckon with the fact that when evil people are clothed with power they have a much greater capacity to injure their fellows. In a free economy; change is rapid. But, in a state-managed economy, it is al most impossible short of bloody revolution. Social ills stem from freedom denied, and the only remedy is an expansion of genuine liberty. ~ THE ECONOMIC POINT OF VIEW by Israel M. Kirzner (D. Van Nostrand, 1960; Sheed & Ward, 6700 Squibb Road, Mission, Kansas 66202, 1976) 216 pages plus index, $4.95 softcover. This book also is available from The Foundation for Economic Educa tion, Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y. 10533. Reviewed by Brian Summers AT A TIME when mathematical economists are frantically juggling reams of statistics, wondering why the 'Consumer Price Index and Un employment Index don't come out right, Israel Kirzner reminds us 448 THE FREEMAN July that economics is properly viewed as a science of human action, with statistics useful only as history.

Although Dr. Kirzner writes on an abstract level, his analysis has profound policy implications. Con sider, for example, the problem of inflation. The government in creases the quantity of money, and people react. Among the conse quences are redistributions of wealth, phantom profits, capital consumption, malinvestments, bus iness failures, unemployment, and almost incidentally, a rising Con sumer Price Index. Mathematical economists, un.fortunately, tend to ignore how people react to in creases in the quantity of money, and viewing the economy as a mechanism, concentrate on manip ulating the Consumer Price Index. In 1971-1974 the manipulations took the form of price controls. That price controls are people con trols, that people react to controls over their lives, and that these re actions have economic consequences (such as shortages), were largely ignored by the mathematical econ omists.

The Economic ,Point of View is not for beginners. It is a scholarly history of the development of eco nomic thought which will be best understood by those familiar with Austrian economics, particularly the economics of Professor Kirz ner's teacher, Ludwig von Mises. For those willing to accept the challenge of a profound analysis of the science of economics and the history of economic thought, this brilliant work has much to offer.I HANDSOME BLUE LEATHERLEX FREEMAN BINDERS $2.50 each ORDER FROM: THE FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION IRVINGTON-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK 10533 the Freeman VOL. 26, NO.8· AUGUST 1976 U.S. Defense and the Multinational Corporation William H. Peterson 451 The MNCis an importantforce for world developmentand for world peace. Rights Are Freedoms, Not Powers Oscar W. Cooley 464 Our rights are freedoms to seek and establish, if we can, the good ways of life. Where the Monetarists Go Wrong Henry Hazlitt 468 The problem is not to devisea political formulato regulatethe stock of money but to take such control out of the hands of politicians.