The Fight for Free Enterprise; K. McDonald

Kenneth McDonald The Fightfor Free Enterprise DECADES of governmental interven tion in, and regulation of, the mar ket economy have all but obscured a fundamental truth: that an economy which encourages competitive free enterprise is the most productive both of material wealth and of indi vidual freedom. The case for industrial capitalism rests not only upon material grounds but upon spiritual and ethi cal grounds as well. When people are free to apply their creative ener gies to better ways of doing things, when they are free to contract their labor to enterprises that take their fancy and to put something aside from the fruits of that relationship, they add to the country's material Adapted by the author from an article that appeared In "Report on Business," the Globe and Mall, To ronto. Kenneth McDonald is a Toronto freelance writer. 590 wealth and to the capital stock from which the means to create more wealth is drawn.

The independence that follows from these undertakings enables the people who engage in them to pur sue, at other times, whatever ac tivities appeal to their talents and inclinations. It needs only to observe the condi tion of people in countries where they are not free to do those things to be reminded of what is at stake. The multitudes that greeted the Pope during his remarkable and courageous progress through Poland bore witness to a yearning for the freedom which totalitarian com munism is at pains to suppress. One of the contradictions of indus .. trial capitalism in a liberal democ racy is that the freedom it sustains opens the field to freedom's oppoTHE FIGHT FOR FREE ENTERPRISE 591 nents. Mouthing slogans-social justice, equality, war on poverty that cloak their designs in a mantle of morality, they would use the state to limit the economic freedom upon which the other freedoms depend.

Yet the failure of state interven tion to achieve any of their professed aims-in fact its success in achiev ing precisely the opposite-is self evident. Moreover, the prophet under whose banner the collectivists march saw this himself. In The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek wrote: HIt is pathetic, yet at the same time encouraging, to find as prominent an old communist as Max Eastman rediscovering this truth: ~It seems obvious to me now-though I have been slow, I must say, in coming to the conclusion-that the institution of pri vate property is one of the main things that have given man that limited amount of free and equal ness that Marx hoped to render infi nite by abolishing this institution. Strangely enough Marx was the first to see this. He is the one who informed us, looking backwards, that the evolution of private capital ism with its free market had been a precondition for the evolution of all our democratic freedoms. It never occurred to him, looking forward, that if this was so, these other free doms might disappear with the abo lition of the free market.'"

In the West today the current of opinion is running against big gov ernment. Swimming with the cur rent, political leaders protest their devotion to thrift and good house keeping. Entrenched Bureaucracies However welcome this change of political direction may be, the task cannot be left to politicians alone. Both they and the businessmen whose affairs have suffered most from governmental intrusion are opposed by forces highly resistant to change. Regulatory boards and commis sions and agencies that have exer cised their mandates for years past will not relinquish power without a struggle. Nor do they lack allies. The products, in press, politics and academe, of decades of collectivist teaching will not be slow to defend its tenets. Attempts to dismantle the state's apparatus will be attacked from all sides. Is it not apparent that repulsing those attacks must fall in the main to the businessmen who are the targets for the state's intrusion? Not only is it in their interest to do so but also in the public interest.

Championing the system that en larges the freedom of individuals is a worthwhile endeavor by any mea surement. That it should coincide with the interests of private busi ness and of the private individuals who, working in and for private 592 THE FREEMAN business, make up the great ma jority of citizens would appear to be doubly fortunate. Despite that coincidence, who can doubt that the forces of intervention, the forces that oppose freedom, are' still winning? In numbers a small minority, they have access to a substantial armory: the inertia that protects all bu reaucracies, the publicity com manded by a sympathetic press and by academic opinion-makers, above all a fragmented opposition. Brought up in the tradition of democratic government, busi nessmen are accustomed to respect ing its agencies. It is against their instincts to question the actions, much less the authority, of the offi cials who staff them. They have been slow' to realize, in short, that the government they had looked upon as friend and protector has become their enemy and that they are in a fight.

Creativity and Achievement Arming themselves for it, is not their strongest weapon the knowl edge that their cause is just? Gov ernments and the bureaucracies they spawn claim to be dedicated to «the people's welfare." The claim is false. Government's power is coercive. By forcing people to act in certain ways, or by preventing them from acting as they would choose to act in others, government restricts freedom. When its social programs seduce people into a condition of dependency, government robs them of a precious gift-independence. By contrast, businessmen are con cerned not with «the people" in the abstract but with people as individ uals. Throughout the working day it is not governments, not bureau crats, that are involved with people, but businessmen. Providing employment and training that build up skills, they strengthen indepen dence. Recognizing that employees are their most valuable resource, they supply the foundations on which to build full and happy lives.

The contest is between the forces of reaction that suppress freedom and those of creativity and achieve ment that enlarge it. It is between reactionaries who would force their discredited ideas on others and the true progressives who prize the self reliance that brings new ideas for ward. In that contest, businessmen con stitute a prime source of leadership. Against the fanciful plans of their opponents they can set lifetimes of experience. @ THE PURPOSE of economic study is to predict. The reason so many tum to the economist for assistance does not relate to his ability to explain what has happened but to an assumption that he can foretell what will hap pen. In general, it is presumed that the individual who can best explain why things interacted as they did in the past will be best able to foresee how things will interact in the future. In consequence of market demand for a preview of coming events, most economists rely heavily on what is called the empirical method. That is to say they gather relevant data from what has transpired year by year. They take into consideration other factors which appear to bear upon the area in question. The data Mr. LeFevre founded and for years presided over the Freedom School in Colorado and has lectured and written extensively In behalf of freedom and the market.