Book Reviews

But many of them were in the form of comments at conferences, notes made for class lectures at the Uni versity of Virginia, speeches at gatherings of the Philadelphia Soci ety and the like, and essays pub lished in journals that were not readily accessible to .the general public. Nutter had not been given time to do his own gathering and synthesizing. So we are indeed in debted to the Liberty Press of Indi anapolis, and to his widow Jane Couch Nutter, for a first-rate win nowingjob that has resulted in a fine posthumous volume, Political Econ omy and Freedom: A Collection of Essays (314 pp., cloth $10.00, paper $5.50), which comes with a foreword by Paul Craig Roberts, one of Ron ald Reagan's early supply-side ad visers. 508 From the beginning Warren Nut ter insisted on the primacy of mi croeconomics. In a world in which choosing is done at the margin, Nut ter thought it self-defeating to de pend on Keynesian central plan ning. When transactions are made in the millions, there is no way of arbitrarily setting wages and prices, or determining quotas, without strangling human ingenuity and dampening incentives of all kinds.

Even so, Nutter knew that econo mies exist in political frames. The decisions of politicians often play hob with economic choice. So, unlike many of his fellow libertarians, Nutter kept a wary eye on nonmar ket forces. Neither the Soviets in Moscow, nor our own intervention ist politicos on Capitol Hill, ever took him by surprise. He spent four fruit ful years working as an economic and political adviser to the Pentagon, where much of this time was de1983 POLITICAL ECONOMY AND FREEDOM 509 voted to judging the intentions and capabilities of Soviet leaders who, though they could put their fingers on the most advanced nuclear weap ons, had to reckon with a back-up society that was more interested in vodka than in conquest. In Search of a Cause The key to Nutter's thinking is supplied in some remarks he made to the National Association of Man ufacturers in 1974. "The world," he said, "is bigger than the market place, and many valuables are sim ply not marketable. The concept of the economic man works to explain markets because most people be have that way most of the time. But some behave differently all the time, and all do some of the time. Other wise, why do we have wars, hot and cold? No theory of social behavior is complete unless it allows for the passion of the mob, the zeal of the martyr, the loyalty of the palace guard, the insatiability of the ego maniac . . . The principal problems of the day are at root not economic but social, ethical, and political. We are people in search ofa cause."

Nutter's own cause, as Paul Craig Roberts says, was to ground our eco nomic and foreign policies in "our heritage of freedom." He made a profound study of the structure and growth of Soviet industry. At the same time he conducted parallel studies of growth of government in John Chamberlain's book re views have been a regular fea ture of The Freeman since 1950. We are doubly grateful to John and to Henry Regnery for now making available John's autobi ography, A Life with the Printed Word. Copies of this remarkable accountof a man and his times our times-are available at $12.95 from The Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington on-Hudson, New York 10533. western societies. He was impressed by the progress of the Russians in their earlier planning periods, when they cleverly combined "knout and honey." But he noted, in a later es say, that "in the Soviet case, indus trialization has been pressed for ward at the neglect of virtually everything else." Swords had dis placed plowshares. "Housing, trans portation, agriculture, service trades, and light industry have been left to straggle along on scraps tossed to them from time to time."

A strong West, in Nutter's esti mation, would be quite capable of handling the Soviet menace. But, unfortunately, the "unhindered growth of government in societies that have considered themselves free" was sapping western develop ment at the same time the Russians were floundering at home.

510 THE FREEMAN August Government Spending Nutter picked out sixteen coun tries, all democracies, for special in vestigation. They were Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Den mark, France, West Germany, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Nether lands, Norway, Sweden, Switzer land, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In the early Nineteen Fifties the "median percentage of national income accounted for by government spending in these six teen countries was around 30 per cent. By the mid-1970s, that median had risen to over 50 percent. That is to say, for an average free country in 1950, government was spending about a third of national income. For an average country today, govern ment is spending more than half of the national income." Nutter was distressed because he saw few signs of a stopping point to the process. He was encouraged by the "possibility of a taxpayers' re volt." He did not live to see the suc cess of Proposition 13 in California.

Writing before Nutter, Colin Clark had laid it down as a dictum that when governments· begin to spend more than 25 percent of national in come decay was bound to set in. Nutter saw this decay all around him when he reflected on what was hap pending to property rights. The free society must disappear, he thought, when "the tax claims of government have become so large that a government claim against property begins to be considered a government right to property." It has not taken long, Nutter observed, "for the propo nents of big government to turn the principle of private property on its head, maintaining that government is the ultimate owner of property against which the private individ ual may have a claim, instead of the other way around." Working for the Pentagon sharp ened Nutter's perceptions of the troubles involved in living in a dis integrating world order. He found himself writing essays on the ebb and flow of American foreign policy.

Henry Kissinger's conception of de tente bothered him. Stripped of rhetoric, he said, Kissinger's de tente "amounts to giving the assets away without requiring any strate gic benefits in return." Though Kis singer called his policy "creative," Nutter described it as "romantic." Warren Nutter took an enthusias tic part in the annual meetings of the Mont Pelerin Society. I remem ber him particularly for his exuber ance on some of the Mont Pelerin mid-week field trips. Looking at a palace in the middle of an island in Lake Maggiore in Italy, Nutter pre tended he was making notes for the palace he said he would someday build in Virginia. He did not live to build that palace (would it have been a new Monticello?). But he had his fun. @ 1983 OTHER BOOKS 511 PINK AND BROWN PEOPLE AND OTHER CONTROVERSIAL ESSAYS by Thomas Sowell 158 pages. $8.95 paperback AMERICA: A MINORITY VIEWPOINT by Walter Williams 183 pages. $8.95 paperback (Both books published by the Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, 1982.) Reviewed by Tommy W Rogers DOCTORSSowell (Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution) and Williams (professor of economics at George Mason University) are seminal and incisive thinkers and essayists. Each of the above books consists of arti,.

cles which originally appeared as columns in major newspapers. These terse coherent articles, ranging in subject matter from race, economics, and politics to various social trends and issues, pack the wallop of a wet bag of cement. They provide a com pact, revealing, scholarly but read ily interpretable analysis of the fads, fallacies, and foibles of the self anointed elite whose commitment to coerced utopia through the compul sive reach of government threatens the very fabric of our Constitutional system, and of the cultural and eco nomic prosperity which has been possible under that system. The theory of how the world works underlying the thought of doctors Sowell and Williams is what they term a "vision of social processes." This viewpoint recognizes that per fection is precluded by the realities of the human condition, and that the most feasible adjustment to the hu man condition is through the fam ily, Constitution, market, and the traditions of freedom. This perspec tive contrasts with the "vision of the anointed" who perceive the world as a place wherein perfection can be achieved if mankind can be per suaded, tricked, or coerced into adopting their elitist version of vir tue and wisdom. The "anointed" feel that they have advanced beyond re actionary and conservative mythol ogies, and that their enlightenment and messianism is the route to sal vation. The institutions of freedom to which defenders of the "vision of social processes" pay homage are major obstacles to the implementa tion of the vision of the "anointed"

messiahs in academia, government, and media. Doctors Sowell and Williams feel that the American public has al lowed itself to be duped by the polit ical medicine men of quick fixes, fine tuning, collectivization, plus such will-o-the-wisps as perfect justice, affirmative redress, and "equal op portunity." The authors combine knowledge, understanding, re search, and valid insight with con summate literary skill, all derived 512 THE FREEMAN from a firm philosophical footing. The result is a merciless dissection of the pious hokum and cant which under lie much of the respectable-butillu sory and disastrous public policy no tions of our time. The moral appeal of the "vision of the anointed" is understandable and interpretable, but much of its suc cess is due to the public's willing ness to fulfill Barnum's jibe about suckers. Generally, the victim of con games has a streak of larceny him self and contributes to his own fleecing. Thus the elite and "the public"

feed on each other. Ideas, beliefs, and perspectives have consequences. History, to a large degree, is the outworking, the denouement in time and space, of the ideas by which men live. Doctors Sowell and Williams are premier spokesmen for the vision of freedom, and the prosperity which freedom makes possible. These two volumes of essays from their deft pens make for reading which is both incisive and instructi ve. Ii HANDSOME BLUE LEATHERLEX FREEMAN BINDERS $4.00 Order from: THE FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION, INC. IRVINGTON-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK 10533 the Freeman VOL. 33, NO.9. SEPTEMBER1983 The Dilemmas of Public Education Clarence B. Carson 515 The mounting problems await solution through free market policies. Until Shrimp Learn to Whistle David Smyth 526 Why private enterprise will always be superior to socialism. Freedom and Utopias John Hospers 530 A review of earlier attempts and of current proposals to remold society.