Readers' Forum

Here is how it works: The voter turn-out for the primary election, i.e., the one in which candi dates get on the ballot, is always very small. How ever, those persons who are the beneficiaries of patronage can always be counted upon to vote. Their jobs depend on it. Thus, it is to every politi cian's benefit to dispense as much patronage as possible in order to assure himself a place on the ballot for the next election. In addition, in many localities, such as New York, there are stringent "election laws" for get ting on the ballot even for the primary. Among the requirements are a certain number of names on petitions. For a newcomer, getting the re quired number of names is an arduous task at best. For the incumbent, it's a lot easier, especial lyif he has dispensed a lot of patronage. So there you have it. A great deal of govern ment activity in the commercial sector has to do with the structure of the re-election process.

LAWRENCEM. PARKS New York Dr. DiLorenzoreplies: I agree completely with Dr. Parks' view that political patronage is a prime motivating force with any politician. I have coauthored two books (UndergroundGovernment, Cato Institute, 1983; and DestroyingDemocracy:How Government Funds PartisanPolitics,Cato, 1985) that explore some of the more deceitful tricks that politicians play in their quest for re-election through the pa tronage system. I disagree, however, that the importance of pa tronage conflicts with my contention that govern ments operate monopolistic, commercial enter prises in order to supplement agency budgets. After all, it takes money to finance patronage jobs. Driving private enterprises from the market is a way in which government enterprises at all levels-especially the local level-finance addi tional patronage opportunities. In addition to the patronage jobs provided by the monopolistic gov ernmental enterprises themselves, "profits" can be used to create even more patronage jobs else where in the bureaucracy. Thus, we are subjected to a vast system of what I call monopoly govern ment. To add insult to injury, the people who benefit at the expense of the taxpayers call them selves "public servants."

THOMAS J. DILoRENZO University of Tennessee Chattanooga 370 A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK Intellectuals by John Chamberlain T he title of Paul Johnson's new book, Intellectuals (New York: Harper and Row, 385 pp., $22.50),is a catch-all that promises a history of those who live by their brains. But what we get is highly selective. Though he ends his series of entertaining short biographies with a glance at Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell, Cyril Connolly, and others who don't fit his schematization, the book is about a specific breed of intellectuals who have taken Karl Marx's words about changing the world seriously. What is the common denominator that unites Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Percy Shelley, Karl Marx, Henrik Ibsen, Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway, Bertolt Brecht, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Edmund Wilson, Victor Gol lancz, and Lillian Hellman, each of whom gets a major chapter? The common factor is that they are all leftists. Johnson does not hold them to consistency. Bertrand Russell, for ex ample, blew hot and cold on the Soviet Union - at one time, when the U.S. had a monopoly on the atom bomb, he advocated wiping Moscow off the map; world government would naturally follow. Hemingway, a genius at story telling, followed a fashion in leftism that put him at odds with John Dos Passos on the Span ish Civil War in a way that Katy Dos Passos, a fervent supporter of the anti-Stalin anarchists, quite rightly labeled as opportunistic. Edmund Wilson, F. Scott Fitzgerald's friend at Prince ton, began as a man of letters, not a reformer.