World in the Grip of an Idea; C. Carson

The animus of the idea runs deeper than this. It is, as has been stated before, to root out the pen chant of the individual to pursue his self-interest. It is a religious, or quasi-religious, aim at bottom, an THE INDIVIDUAL: VICTIM OF THE IDEA 353 aim which entails the transforma-· tion of the individual. On the socialist view, man's original sin is the pursuit of self-interest. It is:1 they think, the source of all the ills in the world. A massive effort has been made to transform men along these lines. But all efforts to eradicate man's pursuit of self-interest have been to no avail. The greater the effort to erase it, the more determinedly do men pursue their self-interest as they conceive it. There is abundant evidence that even when the most drastic efforts have been made to remove the opportunity for the pur·· suit of self-interest, in slave labor or concentration camps, for example, men continue to do so, even to the detriment of their fellows. When man is bereft of all else-wealth, family, position, the comfort of reli gion, and the amenities of society-he pursues self-interest as long as any will remains in him.

There is reason for this. The de nial of the right to pursue one's self-interest is, in effect, the denial of the right to life. Our very survi val hinges regularly on a lively interest in self. From the most primitive savage to the most urbane civilized man this has .been true. Nor could it be otherwise. Each in dividual must attend to the means for sustaining himself and avoidin!~ the dangers that threaten him. He must either see to his bodily needs, or it must be done for him. He must be constantly wary of things about him that can do him harm: fire which can burn him, water in which he may drown, high places from which he may fall, objects that may fall upon or hit him, and a thousand and one other dangers. He must be on the lookout for ways to provision himself and be on guard lest his provisions be taken from him. The Foundations of Society The individual is not necessarily alone in his efforts to survive, though he may sometimes be. Ordi narily, though, he may have help from others and render assistance in return. Society is founded upon mutual exchange and aid, and the individual finds advantage to him self both in making exchanges and rendering aid. None of this alters the fact that the individual's pursuit of self-interest is as deeply embed ded in his nature as is the will to survive, and necessarily so. There is no need to suppose that it is man's only motive, or always his predomi nant one, but whether it is or not, it is ineradicably there. Socialists to the contrary notwithstanding, the opposite of the pursuit of self interest is not the pursuit of the common good; it is the abandonment of the self to destruction.

Socialism does not succeed, then, in eradicating the individual's in herent bent to pursue his self354 THE FREEMAN June interest. It can, at most, induce him to conceal it by making hypocritical claims about the motives behind his acts. Socialism does not do what it cannot do; it does instead what it can. It does not root out self-interest; instead, it reduces and attempts to remove the means for individual in dependence. The individual has an ingrained bent toward indepen dence, too, but the means have to be available or acquired, and they can be largely removed. Independence is essential to indi vidual freedom and responsibility. Freedom without the independence to choose and act is a contradiction in terms, a notion without content. In like manner, the individual can not logically be held responsible for acts not freely and independently done, nor can he assume respon sibilities without a measure of inde pendence. As a practical matter, freedom consists of the right of the individual to dispose of his own energies, employ his faculties, use his own resources-that is, manage his own affairs-for his own good and constructive purposes. Respon sibilityentails both attending to those obligations which arise from his situation and taking the conse quences of his acts. Socialism vic timizes the individual by its con tinuing assault upon his indepen dence. Tacitly, socialism promises freedom withrut responsibility; in fact, it takes away the meansindividual independence-for exer cising either.

Organization and Numbers Socialists use two devices mainly both to undermine and take away the independence of the individual and to instrument him as a cog in a wheel. They are organization and numbers. The discussion of numbers will be deferred for later treatment so that we can focus on organization here. The most basic and comprehen sive organization used by socialists is government, but all organizations are utilized to the extent that they can be. The secret police in Russia are referred to as ~~the organs" by people generally. This is a most ap propriate nomenclature for them. They are organization in its most completely diabolical form. They are a secret society, in effect, empowered by the rulers to use whatever means are necessary to bring the populace to heel. Communists use all organi zations to this end, some more direct ly than others, but all of them in some way. Gradualists tend to inter penetrate all organizations, control them, and make them instruments of government power.

To understand how organizations have been used and the impact they have on the individual-plus why socialism fails-it will help to look at the nature of organization, not just governmental organizations, 1979 THE INDIVIDUAL: VICTIM OF THE IDEA 355 not just organizations penetrated by government, but organization itself. It is a subject needing much deeper treatment than can be given to it here as well as much more thorough analysis. Much of the trouble in these times can be ascribed to our failure to limit organizations and assign responsibilities clearly within them. We have tended to venerate organizations and to sup·· pose that any ills arising from them can be attributed to abuses of them. Or again, we seek to counter organi·· zation with other organizations, and the effect is often enough that thE~ individual tends to get crushed by contending organizations. Hence, at least a sketchy understanding of or·· ganizations is to our purpose here.

One Man in Charge It is in the nature of the organiza tion that there should be one person at the head of it. Attempts to have several people with coequal author ity at the head do not work out well. Such an arrangement sets the stage for a struggle in which one person finally emerges as the recognizable head. The most dramatic illustra tion of this principle has been what has happened in the Soviet Polit bureau when the Premier, or what ever office the head might hold, died. There would be solemn decla rations that henceforth the Polit bureau would operate on the princi pie of collective responsibility. j.~ struggle has ensued each time, and at the end one man has emerged as the leader. This is generally the pat tern for every organization what ever its size, though the struggles may not be so dramatic or have such far reaching consequences. Every organization of any consid erable size is hierarchical. That is, there is some sort of chain of com mand, or whatever it may be called, through which the determinations made at the top are passed down through the ranks. The hierarchy may be rigid and clearly visible to everyone, as in a military table of organization, or it may be much more subtle and informal. Indeed, some heads of organizations are so determined to hold all power that they never allow any dispersions of it to become clearly settled any where else. This is one of the hallmarks of an arbitrary and des potic organization. Be that as it may, all sizeable organizations have some sort of hierarchy.

Whatever its purpose, any organi zation has one other characteristic that it is essential to grasp. The organization is a device for exercis ing control through or over those within it. This control has a confin ing impact on individuals. By direct ing and controlling individuals, or ganizations tend to restrict the in dependence of the individual and take away from him the manage ment of his affairs in those areas to 356 THE FREEMAN June which the organization extends. To put it another way, an organization tends to confine the acts of the indi vidual within limits set by those at the top, and what gets done tends to be limited to the vision of a single man. The Family and Government All societies have had some form of organization. Indeed, two organi zations are essential to human soci ety: the family and government, the family as a means at least ofnurtur ing the young and probably caring for the old, and government for keeping the peace and protecting from aggression. Family and gov ernment are probably the models for all other organizations. Complex societies have often had a consider able variety of organizations: ar mies, religious organizations, trade guilds, industrial enterprises, and so on. In looking back on them, we usually see readily how they lim ited, restrained, and confined the individuals within them. For exam ple, it is easy for us moderns to percei ve the confining character of the Medieval manor, the guild, the monastery, and other such organiza tions. Indeed, the authority of the Medieval Catholic Church seems to most of us to have entailed great restrictions on the liberty of the populace in general.

It is most unlikely, however, that the generality of men at that time viewed the matter in that light. Or dinarily, the organizations within which they lived and labored were a part of the parameters of life; one might as well complain of floods or droughts as of the manor, the guild, or the church. Undoubtedly, man complained of the hardness of par ticular overlords or the limitations of some particular restriction especially if it were new-, as they are ever given to doing; but the general framework was accepted as a thing established of God and its doings hardly distinguishable from acts of God. It is only when ar rangements have been unsettled as by some catastrophe, such as the Black Death which swept Europe in the fourteenth century, or the con frontation with other cultures, such as happened following the discovery of America, or the decay of some vital institution, such as that of the Catholic Church in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, that men are apt to resent and resist the confine ments generally.

Transforming Man A specter has been haunting Western Civilization since the time of the French Revolution. It is the specter of the transformation of man. The catastrophe entailed was forestalled following the French Revolution, but the residue left from that and other efforts has been gain ing ground since the late nineteenth 1979 THE INDIVIDUAL: VICTIM OF THE IDEA 357 century and has now spread to the whole world. It is here referred to as the idea that has the world in its grip. The idea gains control in part by taking over organizations and using them to ends implicit in the idea. The revolutionary ardor of those under the sway of the idea is usually expressed as an assault upon our received organizations generally. (For example, some nineteenth cen tury socialists were so anti government in their animus that they became. anarchists.) This con tinually misleads us, and perhaps them, as to what they are about.

Once those under the sway of the idea are in power we may learn, however, that their object was not to destroy organization, as such, but to use it to extend control over the individual, to sap his independence, and take from him the management of his affairs. True, revolutionaries sometimes crush particular organi zations, but that is only as prelude to replacing them with others more effective for their purposes. It is as apPendages of organiza tions that contemporary man is most vulnerable to the thrust of gradualist socialism. It is by way of his dependence on organization-for his job, for his education, for his pension, for his sustenance-that the individual is drawn into the maw of the state. Economic inde pendence underlies all independence. cCFor economic indepen dence," as C. S. Lewis said, Hallows an education not controlled by Gov ernment; and in adult life it is the man who needs, and asks, nothing of Government who can criticise its acts and snap his fingers at its ideol ogy. Read Montaigne; that's the voice of a man with his legs under his own table, eating the mutton and turnips raised on his own land.

Who will talk like that when the State is everyone's schoolmaster and employer?"2 Since the thrust of gradualist socialism may not be to ward the state's becoming everyone's employer, it might be better to modify it to say when the state controls everyone's employer. Communism, of course, makes everyone under its power into an appendage of its organizations. Platform for Collectivism What I am getting at is this: It is the prevalence of organizations in modern life that set the stage for the triumph of collectivism. It is the modern dependence upon and ven eration of organization that has paved the way for the fastening of the grip of the state upon us. It is the very control over the individual that is characteristic of organization that socialists use to build upon. This control is a disadvantage in all or ganization, even as it may be the means to strength of the organiza tion, and it is the primary reason for 358 THE FREEMAN June the economic fail ure of socialism.

Let us look at the impact of this control more closely. There is a usually unstated prem ise which undergirds the belief in organization. It has sometimes been phrased this way and, if memory serves, Marx so phrased it: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. (This is a variation on the mathematical axiom that the whole is equal to the sum of its parts.) There is a sense in which this is true when an organization or collective is considered as a whole and men are considered to be parts. An organization is much more ef fective in intimidating, coercing, re straining, and exerting force than are the same number of individuals in their separate capacities. A small army can conquer a large populace which has no organized military force. Indeed, a few bandits, under the control of a leader and prepared to use force, can intimidate and ter rorize a community. Massed pickets of a labor union can stop production in a whole industry. The principle which underlies the effectiveness of organization can be stated bluntly this way: An organizational whole is greater than the sum of its parts in its destructive potential.

The principle has a most impor tant corollary. It is this: An organi zational whole is less than the sum of its parts in its constructive poten tial. It is the belief to the contrary that undergirds collectivism. The idea that has the world in its grip holds that if all efforts could be con certed the results would be of a magnitude incomparably greater than would those of individuals act ing independently from one another. But the very attempt to concert all efforts by organization runs athwart the above principle. The Failure of Socialism The validity of the principle-that the organizational whole is less than the sum of its individual human parts in constructive potential-has been dramatically illustrated in the Soviet Union. Virtually all of the land in the Soviet Union is in the hands of the state and the work force is organized either in large state or collective farms. But the farming people have been allowed from time to time to have small plots from which they as individuals or families are permitted to keep and sell the produce. The difference be tween the produce from these tiny plots and the giant farms was sum marized this way by Eugene Lyons: According to the government's own figures ... , private plots with a mere 3 per cent of the nation's sown acreage accounted for 30 per cent of the gross harvest, other than grains; 40 per cent of all cattle-breeding, 60 per cent of the country's potato crops, 40 per cent of all vegetables and milk, 68 per cent of all meat products. Their fruit yields ... are 1979 THE INDIVIDUAL: VICTIM OF THE IDEA 359 double those of state orchards for equiva·· lent areas, its potato harvest per hectare two-thirds higher than on collective farms. Even in grain, which is a very minor element in the private sector, it produces one-third more per sown unit than an average socialized farm. 3 The reason for these dramatic dif·· ferences can be readily explained.

When an individual is working on his own plot, managing his own af·, fairs, and receiving the fruits of his labor, the effort can engage the full potential of the individual. It en·, gages his intelligence, his in genuity, his knowledge, his skills, and his watchful attention. (Watch· ful attention is often decisive in farming; tending and harvesting at the right time can make a great deal of difference.) Limiting Human Initiative We see from this example, too, the reason for the validity of the princi pIe. Organizations are unable to muster the full constructive effort of the individuals within them. Any organization tends to subject the in dividuals who are to do the construc tive work to the determination of those higher up in the hierarchy, and ultimately to a single man. By so doing, it tends to limit the extent to which the individual can and will put his whole attention to it and apply all his capabilities.

The principle, then, has the look of being universal, of applying to every sort of organization, govern mental and private, and I believe it is. That is, an organization will get less constructive results from a given number of individuals than those individuals could produce if they were managing their own af fairs and assuming full responsibil ity for them. We know from experi ence, of course, that such universals require for their validity the univer sal qualifier-all other things being equal-as well. That is, a given number of individuals acting on their own could produce more than the same number organized, if there are no supervening factors. The criti cal supervening factor in the mod ern world has been the widespread and ever more extensive use of capi tal, i.e., tools, equipment, technol ogy, and supporting materials. With capital, the principle is modified to read: A given number of individuals with capital in an organization can produce more than the same number without capital acting on their own.

The Will to Do The operative word, however, is can, not will. This qualification moves us back nearer the principle from which capital tends to pull us. The farm workers on a Soviet state farm often have a great deal of equipment-tractors, gangplows, harvesters, and so forth-for use on the state lands which is not avail able on their own small plots. The 360 THE FREEMAN June disparity in production has to be accounted for in other terms than those of capital. Whether organized workers with capital will produce more than those acting on their own without capital depends on the extent of the control over them and the incentives they have to produce. The tighter the control over them the less opportu nity there is for individuals to exer cise their constructive potential. The more remote the workman is from ownership of capital or receipt of the fruits of his labor the less incen tive he has to produce. The greater the force exerted the less are the constructive returns. To turn it around, well paid workers who have freely chosen their employ and have leeway in going about their work along with being held individually responsible for what they produce may come close .to realizing their constructive potential within an or ganization.

Even so, if the principle is correct, organization introduces a drag on the constructive potential of indi viduals. Large doses of capital may compensate for or hide it. Where complex operations are involved, many of the disadvantages of or ganization may be offset by combin ing the efforts of individuals with diverse skills and specialties in uniquely productive ways. This is a way of saying that capital and specialization can temporarily COttlpensate for the drag of organization. The organizational drag remains, however, and in a never ending ef fort to overcome it we are pressed toward ever greater capitalization and specialization. Bureaucratic Drag We castigate one of the aspects of organizational drag as bureaucracy. Unionization adds the drag of an organization to organizational drag. Governmental privileges, subsidies, preferences for capital, recognition and aid to organizations, and use of power to facilitate the operation of organizations tend to help over come organizational drag. Govern mental control and regulation tend to add to the organizational drag.

In a free market, there would no doubt be organizations. They would come into being where complexity of getting the job done tended to favor organization. But they would be open to continual challenges by in dividuals and partnerships who would have the natural advantage of engaging their whole beings in the effort. This would tend to press organizations always in the direc tion of giving more leeway to their employees in the performance of their work and placing more respon sibilities on them. Indeed, organiza tions would be pressed in the direc tion of renting out or selling their equipment and contracting the tasks on a piece work or project work 1979 THE INDIVIDUAL: VICTIM OF THE IDEA 361 basis. The market tends to reward constructive effort and penalize de structive effort; thus it presses al ways in the direction of individual ownership, control, and responsibil ity. What has all this to do with the idea that has the world in its grip? It lays the groundwork for under standing how the individual is held in the grip and subdued, what the impact of governmental control is, and points the way toward restoring the independence of the individual.

The most direct relevance is this. Business used organization to inte grate manufacturing and distribu tion of goods. By so doing, it pro vided the basic idea with which socialists have been enamored since the late nineteenth century, namely, of concerting all effort through organization and ulti mately by the use of the force of government. The factory system provided the model of economic or ganization for socialism. To see how this happened, it will be helpful to review a little the history of the rise and character of that system. The Factory System The factory system had forerun ners in mines and mills, but it took definite and distinct form in the tex tile industry in England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. From there, it spread to other countries. The crucial thing that happened was the concentra tion of production in central loca tions, in factories. Theretofore, most textile manufacturing had gone on in homes, and if it was done for sale, it was often handled in what was called the ~~putting out" system.

~~Factors" put out raw materials to workers in their homes, and the yarn or other products were then picked up and paid for from time to time. The workers were what we would call self-employed, providing their own simple equipment and housing (capital), doing the work themselves, and being paid by the quantity they produced. A critical change occurred when production .was moved into factories. Why production was moved into factories is not difficult to explain. There were several inventions-the spinning jenny, the ~(mule," and an assortment of other machines which made it possible for a given worker to produce much more in a given span of time. Much of this equipment not only required a greater outlay of capital than had earlier devices but also it could be much more effectively utilized with greater energy than humans could exert. Falling water provided the power for early textile factories, and it was the quest for this power that induced entrepreneurs to concen trate manufacturing (a word which originally meant hand-made) in fac tories.

362 THE FREEMAN June The factory system was a mixed blessing, if blessing it was. There is no question but that a great increase in production took place with this innovation. Goods poured forth from it in such quantity that people from every walk of life were able to have more and better clothes. Finan cially, too, the factory system was a great success; it was the foundation of increasing prosperity in England, and before long in other lands of the West. The Dark Side There was, however, a nether side to this development. It was in the character of work life in the textile factories. Much has been written about the harshness of conditions in these early factories, of small chil dren chained to machines working from dawn to dusk, of pallid and pinched faces rarely touched by the sun, of girls for whom the flower of youth was nipped in the bud by unremitting toil, of bodies warped and bent to the shapes required for tending the machines.

Whatever of exaggeration there may be in particular accounts, the picture that generally emerges must be substantially accurate. The making of yarn and cloth had tradi tionally been work mainly for women and children. The nimble fingers of children were right for the tasks, and the attendance to detail and patience most highly developed in women was an asset. The employment of children, and par ticularly girls, made the factory sys tem especially unpleasant for later generations to accept. What I would focus on in the con text of this work, however, was the loss of independence and the man agement of one's own work affairs in the factory system. Work in these factories entailed some of the worst features of organization. The factory owners or managers prescribed the time for workers to come to work, how long they would work, what tasks they were to perform, and how the work was to be done. In the early stages of the factory system, control was often not restricted to the work life; it was extended over the whole life of the workers. Villages were buil t around the factories, and workers might be required to live in and pay rent upon the houses so provided. These villages often had a company store in which the scrip in which they could be paid might be spent. Often enough there were company police, augmented by spies who kept the managers informed about the behavior of the workers.

A Counter-Movement In significant ways, the factory system ran counter to the great liberating movement which had been going on in England and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere. In agricul ture, great headway was being made 1979 THE INDIVIDUAL: VICTIM OF THE IDEA 363 in separating ownership of property from control over people. Serfdom, which tied the peasant to the soil and made service to the owner obligatory, had been abolished. Be fore long, indeed, serfdom and slav ery would be abolished in all lands where Western and Christian influ ence was strong. New arrangements had been devised for farming land which left the tenant increasingly on his own to manage his own work affairs; the only thing he owed the landlord was a portion of the pro duct. Even so, the factory system was in many ways the product of a particu lar historical setting. The initial in ventions for textile manufacturing were made at a time when falling water was the only considerable non-animal power system available.

Thus, places for housing the machines had to be built adjacent to the water supply and the machines had to be concentrated near the master wheel. Also, the principle of separating the ownership of prop erty from control over people was incompletely realized. Servants and farm workers were hired for wages. Indentured servitude was still com mon. It was a widespread practice for fathers to hire out their children or sell them into indentured ser vitude. Given the attitudes of the time about the subordination of women and children to men, it would have been odd if the factory masters had done other than assert control over them. Be that as it may, the great pro ductivity of the factory system should be attributed primarily to the use of machines and power from falling water or, in time, steam en gines (i.e., to capital). It is doubtful that the increase in productivity should be attributed either to the greater industriousness of workers or to an organization which reg imented and controlled the work ers. Any organizational drag, how ever, was much more than offset by the advantage of using large machines harnessed to a non-animal power source.

The Use of Machines The crucial role of capital can be demonstrated by a simple machine such as the early cotton gin. Eli Whitney's gin turned by one man could separate as much lint from the seed as could twenty-five men work ing with their hands. To put it another way, the most skilled and industrious person could get, say, three pounds of lint in a day. Whereas, an equally industrious person could get seventy-five pounds, say, by using a machine. The machine, in this case, would be the only difference. The principle remains basically the same for all constructive effort, though com plexities cause difficulties both in perceiving and applying it.

364 THE FREEMAN June The factory system provoked the concern and wrath of many men. Indeed, the history of the nineteenth century is laced with uprisings, re volts, strikes, movements, ideol ogies, and what not, aimed at doing something about it. The Lud dites went about it in the most direct way. They proposed to solve the whole problem by breaking up the machines, probably the most irra tional of a whole host of largely irrational reactions. Some of the early socialists, too, tended to blame the machines. Robert Dale Owen, himself a factory owner, wanted to dispense with all sorts of mechanical devices. But it was Karl Marx whose analyses and prophecies gave the turn to socialism that became cen tral to the idea that has the world in its grip. ' Marxian Misinterpretation By a grotesque distortion of clas sical economics, Marx arrived at the conclusion that the industrial worker was being cheated out of his rightful share-virtually all of it-of production. His labor theory of value tacitly attributed virtually the whole of productivity to indus trial workers. Capital, which was the primary source of increased pro duction in the factory system, was downgraded to the point that it was an insignificant factor in produc tion.

Marx did not attack organization, as such, fundamentally, and the matter of control over the worker was only secondary. This is not sur prising. He, along with other socialists, was no doubt precommit ted to seeing the problem as being private ownership and the solution as collective control. The factory system, as such, was not rejected; instead, Marx saw it as the means to a bright and glorious future. Once the workers had seized the factories and were running them, all the prob lems of the world would be solved. As a result of the seductiveness of his ideas and the faulty reasoning they incorporate, much of the world is now confined in a system that institutionalizes the worst features of the early factory system. The State as the Factory Communism is the nineteenth century factory system writ large. It is the factory taken over by the state and government bureaucrats substi tuted for owners and managers. It is the mill village confiscated by the state and housing become a preroga tive of those who serve and please the government. It is the company store become a state store and the state's scrip substituted for company scrip. It is the fence that once sur rounded the factory now expanded to surround the whole state to keep the inhabitants in. It is the organi zational control of the workers uni versalized with no alternative em1979 THE INDIVIDUAL: VICTIM OF THE IDEA 365 ployers or way out. It is the company spies and police now the instru~ ments of a totalitarian state with the force of government at their dis~ posa!. It is the carrying out to its ultimate conclusion of the notion tha t man's prosperity can be achieved by integrating him into the organization using him as a cog in a giant wheel.

All this was implicit in Marxism but concealed by his proclaimed op~ position to capitalism and his con cern for the worker. What he really opposed was individual ownership, and what he really proposed was using the force of the collective to control the worker. In the hands of Lenin and Stalin, collective control became government control. The Handles for Control Organizations provide the han dles which evolutionary socialist gov ernments use to control and vic timize the individual. They take away from him, by these, the inde pendence of the individual and con trol over his affairs. Earlier, gradualists had a great deal of animosity toward privately owned organizations, but that appears to have diminished as government control has proceeded. Gradualists do not create new organizations, as a rule, as communists do; they rather focus upon controlling those already in existence, and, through them, in dividuals. Organizations provide convenient handles, such as for col~ lecting taxes, for example, or for imposing rules.

The socialist bias in favor of or ganizations and against individual independence is often concealed by a rhetoric of opposition to business as well as by sporadic actual assaults on business organization, as in antitrust action. But a closer examination divulges the informa tion that the preponderance of or~ ganizations in our lives can be as cribed to government intervention. The government support of organi zation may be as simple as the Internal Revenue Service rule that only contributions to organizations may be deducted as gifts, never those to individuals; however worthy the cause. But the truly mas sive support of organizations vis-a vis individuals is found in govern ment intervention generally. Government Intervenes Organizational drag favors indi viduals and partnerships rather than organizations over any span of time. This drag can be offset or tem porarily overcome by new infusions of capital and by. specialization (ex pertise, techniques, and so forth).

New infusions of capital are pro vided, in considerable measure, by government fueled inflation. Specialists are trained and provided largely by government-supported educational institutions. There are a 366 THE FREEMAN host of other ways by which gov ernment intervenes to enable or ganizations to expand and grow, for otherwise they decline and die be cause of organizational drag. But perhaps enough has been said to suggest how government has acted to bring more and more people under the sway of organizations. In addition to what all this may sug gest, government empowers labor union organizations, and govern mental organizations themselves grow apace. The idea that has the world in its grip would concert all human action. The thrust to do this is experienced as loss of independence by the indi vidual in the management of his Organizational Demands affairs. Organization is one of the main means by which this is ac complished. The reduction of the in dividual to a number is the other, and we must now turn to that. @ Next: 31. The Subjugation of the Individual.

-FOOTNOTESIJohn Fowles, Daniel Martin (New York: New American Library, 1978), p. 336. This is spoken by a character in a novel and does not necessarily indicate the opinion of the author. 2C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock, Walter Hooper, ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich., William B. Eerdmans, 1970), p. 314. 3Eugene Lyons, Workers' Paradise Lost (New York: Twin Circle Publishing Co., 1967), p.217. IDEAS ON LIBERTY IN the field of politics, the dispossessed dream of a social order which shall be based on righteousness, a system in which men will not exploit their fellow men, in which each shall contribute according to his capacity and each shall receive according to his need. Upon this conception a political party is built. It gives battle, over the years, to the existing order of things. . . . In the course of time the party achieves power. By this time it is led no longer by starry-eyed idealists, but by extremely tough guys--who then proceed to use their newly acquired power to establish a stronger despotism than the one they overthrew, and to sew up all the holes in it that they themselves discovered in the old. What emerges is not freedom and social justice, but a more comprehensive and totalitarian control, used to maintain a new privileged class, which, because of the earlier experience of its members, is still more ruthless than the old.

W. J. BROWN, "Imprisoned Ideas"