The Capitalist Revolution; J. Chamberlain

Berger's method is relentlessly empirical. He claims that he has no a priori intention of dis paraging socialism or any of its "mixed economy" variations that are more socialistic than capitalistic. What he wants to do is to study the movements of men in making their livings. If the empirical evidence is that men do better for themselves in the aggregate under conditions of freedom, then so be it. The Berger method reminds me of my wife's exposition of Doris Humphrey's modern dance technique, which is to study the natural move ment of people ("walking, running, jumping") to overcome the forces of gravity. Humphrey spoke of the "arc between two deaths," meaning that life-and the dance-consists of avoiding total immobility at one extreme and a frenzy of unsustainable motion at the other. It was "fall and recovery" with Humphrey. To keep the human body in condition to live in Isaac Newton's gravity-bound world, man has to provide himself with food, clothing, and shelter. So what is more natural than to appro priate raw materials from nature to fill one's stomach and put a roof over one's head? The act of appropriation from nature creates private property. Freedom of exchange follows when one has appropriated more than is necessary for simple existence. This is Robinson Crusoe eco nomics. Though men have departed from it for periods of time in which human predators inter vene, insisting at spear point or gunpoint that indi viduals ask permission for access to the fruits of the earth, the natural tendency of human beings to revert to private ownership and free exchange reasserts itself.

Berger explains the simplicities of natural movement very well. He also does well with the complications that come with the develop ment of modern technology. These may have introduced a sharp increase in income and wealth distribution that favored a few people at the outset of the industrial revolution, but when the Napoleonic wars were over and world trade resumed (with Scandinavian lumber moving into Britain for houses) there was a sharp de cline in inequalities. It is at this point that Berger introduces the concept of "modernization." What the capi talist countries had developed could, with im port help, be imitated by socialist and Third World societies. It could also pay, in taxes and inflationary money issues, for an increasing amount of welfare at home. (The complication here is that welfare "transfers" dampen the willingness of the producing members of so ciety to work.) Berger does not deny that socialism "works" after a fashion. But it is dependent on importing the results of the "bourgeois" cul tural components of "activism, rational inno vativeness, and self-discipline."