World in the Grip of an Idea; C. Carson

Collectivism is supposed to be a means of transcending the limits of the individual, of augmenting him In thl. serle., Dr. Carson examine. the connection between Ideology and the revolution. of our time and trace. the Impact on several major countrle. and the .pread of the Idea. and practice. around the world. 430 by joining him with others. The de vice by which this is to be ac complished is the organization. The notion which makes this appear to be possible is that the organiza tional whole is greater than the sum of its human parts. But, as has been noted, the organizational whole is only greater than the sum of its parts in its coercive and destructive potential. It is less than the sum of its parts in its constructive poten tial. This is so because rather than augmenting the constructive powers of the individual by organization they tend to be narrowed, confined, and delimited the more firmly con trol is asserted.

THE SUBJUGATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL 431 The collectivist reliance on or ganization, then, results in increas ing coercion, decreasing production, and individuals who are restrained and subdued. The illusion that the individual could be transcended by organization arose from the great increase in production made possi ble by the much more extensive use of capital in the last two centuries. Much has been made in this work of the religious character of the animus behind socialism. It might be more appropriate at this point, however, in discussing the devices of socialism, to emphasize the magical qualities attributed to them. The veneration of the organization, and especially the state, entailed in socialism, amounts to a belief that some sort of magic inheres in them. That man could be transformed by these instruments requires magical components within them. If they do have, it is black magic, for the use of force deforms rather than trans forms man.

The Use of Numbers But the reliance upon and use of numbers in our era provides a clearer demonstration of how deeply we are drawn into magical incanta tions and divinations by the idea that has us in its grip. The descrip tion of this will show, too, how the individual is being subdued and sub jugated by the use of numbers. The belief that there is magic in .numbers, or at least in certain num bers, is not new to our era, of course; it is at least as old as the earliest records of man's doings. The number ttthree" has often been singled out as a potent number. ((Seven" has long been a favorite number, and it is still highly honored in dice games. Understandably, perhaps, special properties may be attributed to ((ten," for it is the normal number of our fingers, as also of our toes. ttThirteen" is widely reckoned to be an unlucky number. Many people believe that they have a lucky num ber, and contemporary numerology rises to its superstitious peak in the daily selection of a number by those who play the ttnumbers" racket.

A number system does have strange 'and often wondrous aspects to it, and it may be that the ten dency to see something magical in numbers stems from these. In any case, the use of numbers in calcula tion, which is their primary legiti mate use, has enabled man to for mulate precisely much of his knowl edge of the universe and to extend his utilization and control over things about him. We comprehend the universe we inhabit mainly by way of numbers: the speed of light, the speed of sound, the distance of the earth from the sun, the length of time it takes the earth to rotate on its axis or to make one revolution round the sun, the law of gravity, and a great variety of other interest432 THE FREEMAN July ing and sometimes useful informa tion. Size, magnitude, quantity, and ratio, all now expressible with great precision in numbers, are critical for present day production and distribu tion of goods.

Interchangeable parts-possibly the single most critical technique in the vast expansion of man's power by tools-are made possible by adherence to careful and precise cal culations. Hundreds of thousands of nuts are made which will match the threads of a single bolt. Electricity, which cannot be seen, tasted, heard, nor smelled can be measured to the watt and sent surging through wires in force that will vary by only a very few volts. The size of engines-the measure of their potential output is now commonly expressed in cubic inches or centimeters. The ratio of gears determines the potential speed of vehicles. And so on. In short, man's mastery of things in the world about him is made possible or greatly enhanced by the most pre cise sorts of calculations. Numbers are the touchstone of contemporary man's control over things for his purposes. To Control People The thrust of socialism is to divert the effort from the use of numbers to control and utilize things to their use for controlling people, divest ing individuals ofthe control oftheir own affairs, and utilizing them for the power ends of government. The late Ludwig von Mises demon strated that in a pure socialist sys tem economic calculation would be impossible. 1 The reason would be that there would be no market determined prices whose fluctuation would provide the necessary data for calculation. His student, Murray Rothbard, carries this insight a step farther when he declares that government ownership of any undertaking ttinjects a point of chaos into the economy." This is so, he says, for ttNo government enterprise can ever determine prices or costs or allocate factors or funds in a ra tional ... manner."2 It follows, I take it, that any government intervention in the market will tend to produce a simi lar effect. The principle that emerges from this can be stated this way: The greater the extent of government intervention or own ership the less can numbers be used to control things and the more will the effect oftheir use be (when and if they are used) to control people. One of the hallmarks of socialism, as we shall see, is to use numbers to con trol people.

The most obvious use of numbers in gradualist countries is in the ef fort to control the economy of a na tion. The numbers that are believed to be relevant to this undertaking are statistics. Ours is the only era and time in all of history in which na1979 THE SUBJUGATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL 433 tional statistics have been exten sively collected, compiled, and used. There is a reason for this. Statistics are just about the most inherently uninteresting thing imaginable. They are formed by reducing per sons, places, or things, to numbers, which is the aspect of them that is positively the least interesting. In deed, a statistic acquires interest ordinarily as it conveys unusual magnitude or proportions. Insofar as it deals with the average, which is what statistics usually do, it is to that extent uninteresting. Figuratively Speaking Poets and historians sometimes used numbers in other ages. An his torian writing in the Middle Ages might refer to 10,000 archers stand ing upon a hill. It is most doubtful that he, or anyone else, had counted them. What he was saying was that a huge army of archers stood on the hill, and numbers struck him as the best way to convey that. Ancient literature contains many references to very precise numbers of people (usually rounded off to the hundreds or thousands),but they are not statistics, as we understand such things; they are poetic uses of num bers. It is not that people in other ages did not sometimes keep careful records and precise accounts; it is rather that to abstract them as statistics would not have seemed to them worth the effort.

Socialism vitalizes, animates, gives meaning and purpose to statis tics. It does this by attributing a magical quality to them. They are to be the means by which economies are to be planned, controlled, and all efforts are to be concerted. It would probably be possible to calculate with some precision the extent ofthe spread of socialism in a country, especially of gradualist socialism, by the degree to which statistics are kept and used. In short, the wide spread use of statistics is a phenomenon of socialism. Statistics are an abstraction of some aspect of history. They tell us the barest minimum about some thing or other that happened in the past-yesterday, ten days ago, a year ago, a hundred years ago, and so on backward. (They are, it might be said, history reduced to the idiot level, with all the juices wrung out, with everything that made history vital left out.) Statistics and Prediction The magical quality which socialists-which is to say, most of those who use them, whether they are aware of it or not-attribute to them is that they are a prediction of the future. One encounters evidence for such a belief all the time. For example, the newspapers report that an electric power company has gone before a state public utilities com rnission with a request for 434 THE FREEMAN July $289,000,926 annual increase in its annual revenues, say. Almost as ifit were incidental, they also report that the request was for a rate hike.

Now it is quite conceivable that the company might get the rate hike requested and actually experience a decline in revenues. Indeed, since the demand for electricity is elastic, it is predictable, other things being equal, that any substantial increase in rates will result in a decrease in consumption, either relatively or absolutely. In fact, statistics are not a prediction of the future; they are a desiccated record of some aspect of the past. The only way to predict the future with any accuracy is to control it, to remove from people as individuals the means by which they can man age their own affairs and change the course of things. That is, of course, what socialists intend and attempt to do. Marx claimed to have dis cerned the course of the future with scientific accuracy. It was a bogus claim. Twentieth century socialists are trying to use the power of government to make his predictions come true.

A Tool for Planners Statistics can be used in planning with some degree of success in a controlled situation. Barring some catastrophic occurrence, it is possi ble to predict how many classrooms will be needed in the United States for first graders next. year if we know how many five-year olds there are at present. What makes this statistic a useful basis for predic tion, however, is positive law and long established custom. Most states have compulsory attendance laws, and the usual, and, in many states, the required, school entering age is sometime during the sixth year of a child. It is possible to predict where the classrooms will be needed with reasonable accuracy if children are required to attend the school in their district and a recent survey has re vealed how many children there are. The fewer the variables-if there are no private schools, if the popu lation is immobile, if no parental discretion is permitted-the more accurate the outcome of the predic tion based on statistics.

In theory, perfect planning would be possible if the population was under the complete control of a sin gle power (and all acts of God would cease, which communists have tried to achieve by denying God and natu ralists by denying that He performs any acts). The thrust of socialism is toward that complete control over men by depriving them of choices by which they might thwart the plan ners. The effort to use statistics as a means to control the future pushes us toward reducing individual man to a statistic. Specifically, it man ifests itself as the tendency to reduce man to a number.

1979 THE SUBJUGATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL 435 Calculation Impossible Under pure socialism, Mises said, economic calculation would be im possible. But under pure socialism not only economic calculation but all calculation would be redundant, hence irrelevant and unnecessary. Calculation is useful only because things are independent of us and do not necessarily conform to our will. I count my sheep, or would if I had any, because one or more may have strayed or been stolen, or a new one might have been born during the night, or for whatever reason they are independent of my will. Under pure socialism, statistics would be a command that would be perfectly fulfilled, not a sum arrived at after the fact. Soviet communists have halfway pretended they could do this for decades now. Their statis tics are a compound of commands, wishful thinking, and the determi nation to deceive those who examine them. Expert Sovietologists have long found it necessary either to make their own calculations or to make drastic reductions in those re ported by Soviet authorities. Clever workers in the Soviet Union can sometimes fill or surpass their quotas-statistical commands-by having more than one worker count the same product as his own.

Pending the arrival of pure social ism-an event which is at worst several eons away, by my reck oning-socialists do find it useful to engage in calculation. Indeed, gradualists compile statistics with greater passion than saints stored up virtue in ages past. They calcu late gross national products, con sumer price indices, wholesale price indices, the number who are un employed, the number of empty hos pital beds, the size of the public debt, the amount of private indebtedness, the number of people who suffer from the common cold and how lnany days work are lost as well, and may, for aught I know, compute the average daily discomfiture oc casioned for victims of hangnails. With all these masses of statistics in hand, they sally forth to «fine tune" the economy and enact programs that their statistics tell them will assure that in the future just the right amount of whatever is needed v;ill be available.

The verdict is not yet in as to whether those who consulted chicken entrails to divine the future had greater success than users of statistics, but it would not surprise Ine to learn that the Department of Jlealth, Education and Welfare has commissioned a study on just that subject, a statistical study, no doubt. Assaulting the Individual Even though calculation is still going on, indeed more of it than there ever has been before, under the impetus of socialism numbers are increasingly being used for 436 THE FREEMAN July another purpose. As noted earlier, the primary function of numbers is for use in calculation. That may well be their only legitimate use, since all other uses tend to perversions, as in gaming, magic, and superstitious practices. The use of numbers to identify things is innocent enough so long as the maker or owner of the object assigns the number. But even the assignment of numbers to things is suspect when anyone other than the owner assigns the number, for it is a usurpation of the prerogatives of ownership.

But the as.signment of a number to an individual-which is the sig nificant change being fostered by socialism-is more than suspect; it is a subtle and symbolic assault on the person. It has an unsavory past and portends ill for the future. It is a device for bringing people under control of the number assigners. The movement toward reducing individ uals to numbers is grist for the mills of socialism. It arose in the wake of socialism, reduces the human to the level of a statistic, and instruments him for the kind of control entailed in command statistics. Individuality is an obstacle to col lectivism. Everything that distin guishes one individual from another, all differences in personal ity, any uniqueness, any peculiarity, any rough edges, all these hinder the meshing of the individual with the group, the organization, the class, the mass, the society, and fi nally the state. The concerting of all effort requires that individuality be sublimated, subordinated, or nul lified. Numbers are the right in strument for this.

What's in a Name? The sign and symbol of individ uality is a person's name. It has been said that the most pleasing sound in the world to a person is that of his own name. There is good rea son for this. It stands for his person ality, his individuality, his unique ness, all that he has done and be come. He who loves and respects himself must in some fashion love his name, even when he does not like it as a name when considered objectively. Religious ceremonies sometimes give public sanction to the sacramental character of the name. In Christianity, this is often done by linking naming with bap tism. An individual's status as a dis tinct being is conferred upon him socially by his name. Naming of persons and animals is a prerogative of parents, possessors, or trustees. In the case of minor children and animals a change in trustee or owner may result in a change of name. In the United States, at least, when a child be comes an adult he may by initiating the appropriate action change his name. The assigning of numbers to objects is historically the preroga1979 THE SUBJUGATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL 437 tive of the originator, maker, or owner. (Some objects are also given names sometimes, such as boats, homesteads, and, on occasion, au tomobiles. This is apt to be more playful· than not, but it is an asser tion of ownership in any case.) Naming is a means of assigning distinctness and individuality.

Numbering is a device for distin guishing objects that are very nearly alike from one another. He who names or numbers either explicitly or tacitly asserts his claim to that which is named or numbered. In short, individuality and own ership are deeply entangled in nam ing and numbering, spiritually, cul turally, and legally. It is within this context that we should view the increasing tendency to assign numbers to persons. There is yet another context within which it should be viewed, its grisly histor ical antecedents. (The end toward which an action tends is often im plicit in its beginnings.) In. earlier times, criminals were often branded. The brand was an identification and warning, a mark of degradation, and, in view of the custom of brand ing animals, an emblem of own ership by the state. The assigning of numbers to prisoners was a lineal descendant of branding, a change accompanying or following upon the shift from corporal punishment of criminals to imprisonment as a usual punishment.

Numbers for Prisoners The numbering of prisoners was the first ostentatious use of numbers lin connection with persons in the United States. The number was prominently displayed sometimes in public places on ttwanted" posters. This assigning of a number may have had some slight residual use for identification, but that is not its significance. It is the stamp of the state on the prisoner, the modern equivalent of branding. It is the .~mblem that he is no longer his own man but belongs to the state. A prisoner is stripped at the outset of much which sets him apart as an individual: his possessions, his clothing, his standing in the com munity, and many of his legal rights. The number is the seal of his new status. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, with his special insight and sensitivity, has suggested more of the import of as signing numbers to prisoners. He says that they did not get around to assigning numbers to political pris oners until late in the Stalinist era, long after it was generally done for all prisoners in some ucivilized"

<:ountries. Here is an abbreviation of his account: Then again, they quite blatantly bor rowed from the Nazis a practice which had proved valuable to them-the sub stitution of a number for the prisoner's name, his uI," his human individuality, so that the difference between one man 438 THE FREEMAN July and another was a digit more or less in an otherwise identical row of figures .... Warders were ordered to address pris oners by their numbers only, and ignore and forget their names. It would have been pretty unpleasant if they could have kept it up-but they couldn't .... In work rolls, too, it was the rule to write numberS Pefore names. Why before and not instead of names? They were afraid to give up names altogether! How ever you look at it, a name is a reliable handle, a man is pegged to his name forever, whereas a number is blown away at a puff. If only the numbers were branded or picked out on the man him self, that would be something! But they never got around to it.... 3 There came a time after the death of Stalin when the authorities no longer required the use of the num bers. Alexander Dolgun has de scribed with what alacrity the pris oners ripped off their numbers and flung them into the air. uThis seems like a small matter," he said, ~~but for all the prisoners of Dzhezhazgan the number was the prime symbol of our slavery, of our demotion from human being to object. Its disap pearance was like the beginning of a fresh new day."4 Those who have suffered greatly often see with remarkable clarity.

According to legend, Dolgun was one of only a very few who have survived the duration and degree of torture he underwent. We might suppose that he would have found the wearing of a number of such insignificance as to be unworthy of mention. Not so, his conclusion goes to the very heart of the matter; the number was a symbol uof our demo tion from human being to object," of the demotion of individual man from a value in and of himself to an object of use by others. The number is the Sign of the Beast of the idea that has the world in its grip. Military Numbering A goodly number of Americans were assigned numbers for the first time as members of the armed forces. Whatever value these serial numbers may have had for identify ing mangled bodies, they also served a highly important symbolic pur pose. The modern armed forces have brought organization to its peak of efficiency in doing that for which it is best suited, namely exerting force and destroying. To accomplish these ends, the military attempts to blend the individual into the organization in such a way that he becomes at one with it. Close order drill, for example, has for its object making the individual act in concert with the group. ~~The unit," in the argot of the armed forces, is the organization to which he belongs, not the indi vidual. Uniformity, obedience and conformity are prime military val ues. The individuality connoted by names is an obstacle; whereas, a number connotes none of that. There is the matter, too, that one's name is 1979 THE SUBJUGATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL 439 assigned by parents, and the num ber signalizes a new authority and control over him.

The generality of Americans were assigned numbers for the first time in the 1930's when to have a Social Security number became a require ment for employment in many occu pations. The significance of this numbering was partially concealed by the beneficent claims made for the undertaking, by the fact that it applied initially mainly to indus trial workers, by t1J.e fact that it was called ttinsurance," and by the casu alness with which numbers were is sued. Too, the number was to iden tify one's CCcontribution"to the So cial Security ttfund." Who could ob ject to that? After all, one's ttcontri bution" certainly should be iden tified in some way. It turned out, of course, that it was not a contribution at all; it is a tax, as the courts have decided. Nor is it insurance, in most ways that word is used. No policies have ever been issued. Monies paid into Social Se curity no longer belong to the indi vidual. He no longer has any claim on them; they are forfeit to the gov ernment. The only claim he has is to such benefits as Congress may de cide from time to time are to go to those who fall in the category to which his payments and financial condition entitle him. The only management, control, and posses sion he will ever have over any of this, as matters stand, is over such benefit payments as he may receive.

Even the Social Security cCfund" is a paper obligation resting on the credit of the United States. The Number Is Essential It may be objected at this point that I am making too much ofnum bers, that what is important is what is being done, not some incidental device by which it is done. On the contrary, I maintain that the oppo site is the case. The number is es sential; the particular thing that is done with it is only incidental. First of all, consider this fact, all that is left of all the money I have paid into Social Security is my number. If the money were essential and the num ber incidental, I should have the money and the number should have d.isappeared. But one should not rest a case on what may only be a clever twisting of words. Even so, I would like to go one step farther along this line. Suppose that. instead of having a Social Security number that my name only were used to identify my cCcontribution" to the ccfund." What could I say then? All that I have left of all that I have paid is my name?

Assuredly not, for I would have my name whether or not I had paid my Social Security tax (plus a prisoner's n u~ber if I had not paid it, no doubt). That reveals the use of the number-a device for asserting a 440 THE FREEMAN July distinct claim-, but not its ultimate purpose. The purpose of the number is gradually becoming clearer with the passage oftime , and new legislation. Not only is the percentage of the Social Security tax being increased, not very gradually of late, either, and the coverage extended over the years, but also the number is being used in new ways. The Social Secu rity number has now become a Tax payer Identification number. By this extension, the government has begun to use a number to assert its control and potential ownership of all our income and resources. A Case in Sweden The Internal Revenue Service considers only so much of an indi vidual's income as his as he can show does not belong to the govern ment. True, the government does not ordinarily take it all, but that is simply an incident of the legal establishment of class ratecatego ries and exemptions. What can hap pen was lately demonstrated in Sweden. Ingmar Bergman, the fa mous film maker, left the country after the government insisted that he pay taxes which he claimed amounted to 139 per cent of his income. His decision was reached after the following had occurred. He was called out of a rehearsal by govern ment investigators who hauled him away for questioning, confiscated his passport and accused him of evading $120,000 in income taxes. Bergman pro tested his innocence, but even after the criminal charges were dropped, Swedish officials continued to dun him for the back taxes they insisted he owed.

Bergman went to pieces; he stopped work, suffered a nervous breakdown and contemplated suicide. Then . . ., having snapped out of the depression, the 58 year old director announced he was leav ing his homeland for good. Not before declaring, however, ttl am leaving my fortune in Sweden at the disposal of the National Tax Board."5 The idea that has the world in its grip presses governments toward taking away the independence ofthe individuals, toward taking away the means by which they might manage their own affairs, toward concerting their efforts by fitting them into organizations. It is the assigning of a number that is essential, not Social Security. Social Security is inciden tal; it is only one of the possible means by which government takes from the individual the control over his affairs. There are many other ways it can be and is done. The number, however, is essential; it is that to which the individual must be reduced in order to be instrumented by government. His name belongs to the individual; but the number sig nalizes the government's claim on him.

The animus of collectivism is to 1979 THE SUBJUGATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL 441 reduce individual man to a number, then. It is to reduce him to the lowest common denominator, to a one which he shares with all other living human bodies. Only thus can he be melded with the masses of other men. This process of enmass ment is the opposite of what occurs in the refinement of metals. In this latter process. purification takes place; the best that is in the metals is separated from the dross and pre served. Enmassment The enmassing of man that occurs with collectivism may be likened to ((enslagment," or the formation of clinkers in a furnace when certain kinds of coal are burned. Clinkers result from a melding together of the impurities in the fuel. The best that is in man is his potentiality for originating, for reason, for spiritual ity, for building, for love and con cern. The enmassment of collec tivism suppresses these by giving the weight of numbers to the lowest and worst that is in man: his irra tional urges, his desire to dominate, his envy, his will to put down that which he cannot appreciate or un derstand, his opposition to what is different, and his bent to destruc tion. The clinkers produced by col lectivism smother the flame, just as clinkers in a furnace will a fire.

The weight ofnumbers is a fearful thing for individual man. Only very strong and sturdy men can stand for long against them in whatever way they are arrayed against him. Num bers have imperiled the individual in all ages. It has remained for our age to sanctify them. (Greece and Rome empowered the masses in the period of decline but fell short of sanc tifying them, I believe.) We sanctify this weight of numbers by calling it democracy and claiming that it would be desirable to infuse all of life with its methods. Labor unions are em powered by government to use the weight of their numbers against in dividuals who desire to work. But the weight of numbers intrudes into every realm today: suppressing, re straining, and limiting man. Counting the Votes The actual political process be comes a means of subjugating the individual under the impetus of col lectivism. Democratic socialism turns voting into a kind of self immolation by which the individual yields up his independence and con trol over his own affairs by casting a ballot. He reduces himself to an anonymous number and becomes a statistic. Man's potential weight in his own and in public affairs is largely reduced to a scratch on a bal lot or, more appropriately, the turn of a wheel in a machine.

In the framework of the idea that has the world in its grip the only issue that is supposed to arise is over 442 THE FREEMAN July what means shall be used to concert all efforts to promote the general wellbeing. Not only does the indi vidual reduce himself to a number by voting but also to a statistic in favor of one method of being con certed as opposed to another, if any issue at all can be discerned. The man who wishes to manage his own affairs is unlikely to find that among the available options. Actually, voting for candidates may be a reasonably satisfactory means of determining who shall govern, so long as the demonstrably corrupt and unlettered are excluded. It is hardly the way to decide what government shall do, however, and that is the question which grad ualism continually intrudes into the process. That is a constitu tional question requiring for its an swer not man reduced to a number but man in the full weight of his being as an individual.

Moreover, socialism turns voting into the quest for the holy grail. It turns the mundane business of selecting who shall govern into the choosing of religious leaders who are assumed to be competent to manage the transformation of man and soci ety. So long as a choice of candidates remains, voting is important, of course. It does restrain politicians to know that they will have to stand for election, nor can power ever be absolute so long as its exercise can be modified by decisions of the electorate. But for those who do not accept the religious vision of socialism, voting is a game of chance, with the odds arranged heavily against them. Rendered Meaningless The ultimate reduction of man is not to a number. Even when that number is only one, it still has a fixed quality about it which resists manipulation and control. The ulti mate reduction of man is to a mean ingless number. Communists have discovered a way to do this in their udemocratic process."

Elections in the Soviet Union, for example, are meaningless affairs, so far as the participants are con cerned. A Party slate has been nominated by the leaders, and it will be elected. It does not matter whether one hundred, one thousand, or one million vote: the result will be the same. Even so, a great effort is made to get out the vote. Pressure is brought to bear on selected individ uals to go from door to door urging others to vote. Why? For one thing, as earlier noted, there is the facade of democracy which has propaganda uses. But it serves a highly impor tant interior purpose as well. The individual is not only reduced to a number which can be rendered as a statistic but also to a meaningless number and statistic. The absolute and arbitrary power of the rulers over the populace is demonstrated.

1979 THE SUBJUGATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL 443 By coming forth to vote they appar ently acquiesce both in their own meaninglessness and the power of the rulers. The more who vote, the more complete the demonstration of power. The subjugation of the individual descends to degradation under communism. @ Next: 32. Restoration of the Indi vidual. What Price Socialism? -FOOTNOTESlSee Ludwig von Mises, Socialism (London: ,Jonathan Cape, 1951), pp. 135-37. 2Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State (Los Angeles: Nash Publishing, 1970), p. 828. 3The Gulag Archipelago, III (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), pp.58-60. 4Alexander Dolgun, An American in the Gulag (New York: Ballantine Books, 1975), p. :374. s«Utopia's Dark Side," Newsweek (May 3, 1976), p. 38. IDEAS ON UBERTY A society is socialized by extending, centralizing and accelerating the exercise of political power. Socialists may speak of controlled production as their method of operation, bu.t production cannot be controlled except by controlling people. If men as producers are to be controlled, it means that they will be told what jobs they are to work at, where they will work, and how long they will work. This sort of political tyranny is inherent in a socialized society. It is a denial of man's inherent right to be free.

No human society has been completely free; some men have always sought, and occasionally have obtained, a politically privileged position for themselves at the expense of other people. But until recently, all well disposed men sought to remedy social ills by working for a society in which every man has the right to plan his own life in any peaceful way his conscience allows. This human aspiration has been reversed in the thinking of socialists who talk in terms of a planned economy. In an economy planned politically there is no room for individuals to make their own plans; their lives are planned for them, which means that they are not free to run their own affairs. ADMIRAL BEN MOREELL A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK RUSSELLKIRK is dedicated to a prop osition that doesn't sit well in a democracy, that not everybody is ((college material." He has been our most trenchant critic of the big ((multiversity" that he satirizes as Behemoth D., where they give academic credits for fly-fishing, home economics, pop culture and other ((gut" courses and frivolities, and he has not spared the smaller establishment that he calls Brum magem D. or Dismal Swamp A. and M. He thinks we have been pouring billions into a system that encour ages four years of relative idleness for a majority, while the few serious students do the best they can to read an occasional book while the rock music pours forth its incessant cacophony.