Book Reviews

With its plea for voluntarist solu tions to our social problems, it should have had wide acceptance as a land mark work. But it was manifestly ahead of its time. I remember talk ing with Senator Vance Hartke of Indiana in his office about it, and telling the Senator about Cor nuelle's efforts to get Middle West ern bankers to establish a fund for boys and girls who needed funds for a college education. The next time I saw Hartke he said, "Tell your friend Cornuelle not to worry about the kids. We've taken care of it." Mean ing, of course, that the government was about to put up the money for indigent college students. The tide, in 1965, was still running heavily in Statist directions. No Achilles, Richard Cornuelle did not sulk in his tent, but his subsequent efforts to sell voluntarist projects to and through such organizations as the National Association of Manu facturers came to little.

Eighteen years later, in a differ ent economic climate, Cornuelle has returned to the wars with Healing America: What Can Be Done About the Continuing Economic Crisis (Putnam, 208 pp., $14.95). With al most two decades of socialist and semi-socialist failures on a world scale to provide him with horrible examples, Comuelle's new book, though it repeats the theme of the old, comes to us with a tremen dously augmented authority. This time it should be a landmark for the many, not the few. With a perception that has been sharpened by the years, Cornuelle 635 636 THE FREEMAN October can deal with Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt as two repre sentatives of an older America who were humbled in the same way. Hoover, asthe leading voluntarist of his time, had had tremendous suc cess in rallying the independent sec tor to surmount disaster, whether in war torn Belgium and Russia, or during the unemployment crisis of 1921, or in the Mississippi flood of 1927. He had no reason to suppose that the shocks of 1929 and 1931 could not have been met by volun tarists pooling their funds and con certing their actions. Puzzled when foreign banking and monetary di sasters combined with the Smoot Hawley tariff to snuff out promising upturns, he turned to such devices as the Reconstruction Finance Cor poration and the Farm Board, which were negations of his own basic phi losophy.

The New Deal Roosevelt did not disagree with Hoover. He accepted a "supply-side" Democratic platform in 1932, prom ising to keep the dollar sound and the destructive power of govern ment contained. But once in office he acted as Hoover had acted. "We didn't admit it at the time,"so Rex ford Tugwell said forty years later, "but practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover had started." Things broke better for Roosevelt individually than they had for Hoo ver, but it was not because the first New Deal really worked. Despite heavy outlays for welfare, despite putting young men to work in CCC camps, and despite the efforts to jockey price and wage levels and deal with farm surpluses, unemployment remained high. As late as 1940 there were 1,239,000 Americans on wel fare. The war bailed Roosevelt out, but if it hadn't been for the resourceful ness of the American industrialists, whose virtues had been nourished and flattered by Hoover in his long years as Secretary of Commerce, the war might have had a different end.

Ironically, the war seemed to sus tain the reputation of John May nard Keynes, who could point to government-financed war produc tion as a type of "pyramid-building" that could substitute for true inge nuity in opening up new lines of in dustrial endeavor. The war saved Roosevelt, but it obscured the nature of the problems raised by "Keynesianism." When the Keynesians freed the government from what Cornuelle calls "the dis cipline of cost consciousness," it tilted the balance between the public and independent sectors "in favor of cen tralization." It loosed inflation upon the world as the prime tool for sup porting pyramid-building. Keynes himself saw the fallacy involved; he admitted to Hayek that a new serf1983 HEALING AMERICA 637 dom might be down the road. But Americans, who still sang the praises of "pluralism," lost sight of the fact that we had become a society "with two important sectors and the ves tige of a third."

When Galbraith wrote The Afflu ent Society in 1958, he made no mention of a third sector-and "no one noticed the omission for years." With no independent nonprofit sec tor to serve as a cushion, there was nothing to prevent government from trying to push its taxing and infla tion powers to the limit. We had, as Macaulay had said in another con nection, become "all sail and no an chor." New Institutionalism In pushing for a return to "inde pendent action," Cornuelle finds that numerous efforts are being made to by-pass the State. He does not ad vocate that we go the route of Italy, where thousands consider taxation a form of theft. But he notes the growth of a "new institutionalism." Governments are slipshod when it comes to maintaining bridges, but there is no complaint about the pri vately owned and operated 7,490-foot span that connects Detroit with Canada; and in Pittsburgh the city officials are negotiating with U.S.

Steel to build a bridge and then rent it to the city. The Audubon Society leases natural-gas rights on its land in Louisiana to three oil companies with the assurance that the oil com panies will do nothing· to hurt wild life. This sort of thing could do won ders for protecting the whooping crane. Cornuelle's "anatomy of the inde pendent sector" is far-reaching, done in the Tocqueville manner. We all know about Blue Cross and Blue Shield medical insurance. And pri vate schools continue to flourish. But how many people know. about the twenty-week course in spelling, punctuation and grammar that the Continental Illinois NationalBank and Trust Company gives to all its new employees? Philanthropy is only a small part of the independent sector. Some 10 million Americans are now involved in 700,000 to 800,000 mutual-aid groups. There is the Portland Friends of Cast Iron Architecture, the Thea tre for Revolutionary Satire, the Guild of English Handbell Ringers.

There is even a Flat Earth Society. C. William Verity of Armco Steel headed· a task force for Reagan on Voluntary Activities. The task force set up a Data Bank. Cornuelle thinks this is all very well, but he bemoans the fact that the Verity bank is "at least the sixth such ... clearing house of independent projects." None of them "has led to any significant imitation of the listed programs." It won't stay that way for very long if Cornuelle remains in a writing mood. ® 638 THE FREEMAN October MR. JEFFERSON by AlbertJay Nock Introduction by Russell Kirk 202 pages. $8.95 paperback OUR ENEMY, THE STATE by Albert Jay Nock Introduction by Edmund A. Opitz 109 pages. $6.95 paperback (Both books published by Hallberg Publishing Corporation, Delavan, WI 53115) 1983 Reviewed by Edmund A. Opitz and Robert M. Thornton THE republication of these two clas sics occurs, auspiciously, forty years after the Memoirs of a Superfluous Man and twenty years after the founding of The Nockian Society. The books are attractively printed and each includes a long introductory essay written for the occasion, plus some notes on A.J.N. by the secre tary of The Society.

Western nations were well down the road to serfdom when Our En emy appeared in 1935. Nock had no expectation that his book would slow our Gadarene progress, but he be lieved that anyone who had uncov ered the plain truth of things in some area of life ought to hang up his findings in plain sight where quest ing minds might find them. That there are such minds among us is attested by the growing demand for this book. The tone of Our Enemy is set by the magisterial opening sentences: "If we look beneath the surface of our public affairs we can discern one fundamental fact, namely: a great redistribution of power between so ciety and State. This is the fact that interests the student of civilization ... an increase of State power and a corresponding decrease in social power." In order to grasp Nock's argument we must understand his major terms-society, government and the State. A society is a multi-genera tional group of kindred-men, women and children-occupying a given territory, sharing a common heritage and vision, acknowledging and mostly practicing the moral code-don't murder, assault, steal, or lie; keep your word, fulfill your contracts, love your neighbor and don't covet his goods. Every society is founded upon certain "rules of the game," precepts which must be ob served if the social order is to en dure. These rules are codified as the law.

Society is the context in which in dividuals choose and pursue their personal goals, ride their hobbies, play, loaf, or whatever-so long as it's peaceful. It includes the econ omy, where millions of men and women engage in the voluntary pro duction and amicable exchange of goods and services. Society is the vast and intricate network of people 1983 OTHER BOOKS 639 linked in voluntary associations seeking to advance their educa tional, religious, scientific, artistic, recreational or other purposes. So ciety is intrinsically peaceful; force is alien to the several kinds of activ ities which comprise the basic na ture of society. But every existing social order has to contend with peo ple who are antisocial; predatory and criminal elements who disturb the peace of the community by violating the life, liberty and property .of the citizens. Acts of violence must ulti mately be countered by lawful force government.

Society needs an agency autho rized to use defensive force insitua tions specified under the law· in or der to protect individual citizens against violations of life and liberty and property and the nation against external aggressors. This is, basi cally, the idea ofgovernment set forth in the Declaration of Independence. It is a political philosophy premised upon the conviction that people, by and large, are competent to run their own lives and direct their personal affairs; it contemplates a govern ment that lets people alone, inter vening only to check those who refuse to let others alone. The law is set in motion by a breach of the peace, and then it in tervenes negatively to punish those who initiate force against others; it counters violence by an exercise of lawful force. But all human institutions suffer corruptions, and the law is no exception; government is sub ject to capture by power hungry groups from within the private sec tor who twist the institution of jus tice into an instrument of plunder.

At which point the State comes into operation. The State, in Nock's terminology, is a double barrelled affair, part public and part private. It is a pincer movement, with office holders mis using their political power to oper ate a scam in cahoots with groups of private citizens, to gain economic and other advantages for both at the ex pense of the general public. The State is the law perverted into an instru ment of plunder. It is a cabal of pol iticians and pressure groups operat ing behind a screen of legality to the disadvantage of peaceful and pro ductive citizens. The State is a par asitic and predatory burden upon society. It is our enemy. Nock brought out his Jefferson on the hundredth anniversary of our third President's death. When the book was reprinted in 1960 it con tained a charming and perceptive Introduction by Jefferson scholar, Merrill D. Peterson, who called Nock's study "the most captivating volume in the Jefferson literature."

He praised Nock as "a finished scholar, a brilliant editor, and a con noisseur of taste and intellect." Jefferson was one of Nock's favor ite Americans, the most apolitical 640 THE FREEMAN politician our country has produced, a multi-faceted man and a model of civilized conduct. Nock sums up Jef ferson's character: "A dominant sense of form and order, a commanding in stinct for measure, harmony and balance, unfailingly maintained for fourscore years toward the primary facts of human life-towards disci pline and training, towards love, parenthood, domesticity, art, sci ence, religion, friendship, business, social and communal relations." Shortly after the original appear ance of his Jefferson, Nock ventured a prediction: "I think my Jefferson will work in the same way (as The Freeman), very quietly and for a long time, and with an effect entirely disHANDSOME BLUE LEATHERLEX proportionate to the amount of fuss made over it. I think this is the nat ural way for an influence to work."

Just so! "The high merits of Jef ferson's urbane and persuasive style," writes Russell Kirk, "have lost nothing since 1926." Indeed they have gained, and a new generation of readers has a rich experience in store. W II,.", The Nockian Society, .:~~~ ., 30 South Broadway, . J Irvington. N.Y. 10533, offers Freeman readers a discount price of $11.00 for both books. FREEMANBINDERS $5.00 Order from: THE FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION, INC. IRVINGTON-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK 10533 the Freeman VOL. 33, NO. 11 • NOVEMBER 1983 IN MEMORY OF LEONARD E. READ 1898-1983 Included in this issue of The Freeman are samplings from the pen of the founder and president of The Foundation for Economic Education-his pledge to the cause of freedom-his call to those who would continue to serve that cause. Memorial Resolution-Trustees of FEE ESSAYS BY LEONARD E. READ: The Essence of Americanism (1961) Those Things Called Money (1975) Looking Out for Yourself (1956) Flight from Integrity (1959) Every Person Should Be Free (1954) On That Day Began Lies (1949) The Magic of Believing (1959) I, Pencil (1958) On Improving the World (1960) Book Review: "Essays on Liberty"