Book Reviews

Two books are available to help revive the name of Burke. One, just published by Peter J. Stanlis, is titled Edmund Burke: The Enlightenment and Revolution (Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, N.J., 259 pages, $34.95cloth). The old er book, by Alice ~ Miller, is Edmund Burke and His World (published some years ago by the now defunct Devin-Adair Company, Greenwich, Conn., 232 pages, $12.95).Each book comes with a foreword by Russell Kirk, a one-man claque who gives more words to Stanlis than to Mrs. Miller. Burke, a graduate of Trinity College in Dublin, was the son of a Protestant father and a Catholic mother. He believed that politics was more of an art than a science. Prudence was a big word in his vocabulary. This meant that he could follow his friends of the so-called Enlightenment just so far. He believed that the "moral natural law" had been violated by the British in both America and Ire land, and by the East India Company in India. He was for rescinding the charter of the East India Company because it was a political entity in the "disguise of a merchant."

Very much a Jeffersonian, Burke approved of several rebellions-the English Revolution of 1688,the American Revolution, the efforts of the Poles to prevent partitioning, the rebellion of the Corsicans, and the many rebellions of the people of India against the rule of Warren Hastings. But, as a-Whig, he was for parliamentary change, not violence. Burke's colleagues of the Enlightenment erred in their lack of prudential willingness to respect tradition in pursuit of scientific truth. Gradualness was Burke's proposal for change. It was a key ele ment to the moral prudence that should guide eco nomic reforms. In his reflection on the French Revolution, Burke said that "thanks to our sullen resistance to innovation, thanks to the cold slug gishness of our national character, we still bear the stamp of our forefathers." We had been saved, he said, from the violence of the guillotine where the French were not.

Burke's view of the extremist nature of the French Revolution brought him into conflict with Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and other Whigs. He said that if Britain took rev olutionary France as a model, there would be anar chy in government and atheism in religion. Burke proved to be a good prophet, and in time the Whigs came around to his view. Burke went to a Quaker school in Ireland called Ballitore. The school, barely mentioned by Stanlis, instilled in Burke practically all the beliefs that guided him through his many years in Parliament. At Ballitore, Burke studied Latin and Greek, wrote poetry with the son of the school proprietor, and passed the entrance exams into Trinity. He debated and did extemporaneous speaking, calling mild attention to some of the defects of the class system, and went on to London to study law and become a writer. Next came marriage and the long period in which he championed the anti-tax cause of the American colonies. Mrs. Miller adds many homey touches to the running story of Burke's life.

His friends included Oliver Goldsmith and Sir Joshua Reynolds. He lost his own son, but found solace in bringing French children displaced by the Revolution to the "nursery" he established at his home in Beaconfield. Personally, I found the chapters in the Stanlis book very confusing.They are choked with names that are almost immediately forgotten. The Miller book, which establishes a chronological sequence and sticks to it, is much easier to follow. D AUSTRIANECONOMICS:PERSPECTIVES ON THE PAST AND PROSPECTS FOR THE FUTURE edited by Richard M. Ebeling Hillsdale College Press, Hillsdale, MI 49242 • 1991 541 pages. $9.95paper Reviewedby WilliamH. Peterson A s the 20th century winds down, two landmark books in the history of eco nomic thought in the past near-100 years seem to have moved Western opinion and policy in a significant way, both positively and negatively. The two books are in a sense juxta posed and get a big play,directly and indirectly, in this insightful volume 17-the 1990 lectures-of the "Champions of Freedom" Ludwig von Mises Lecture Series. Hillsdale College established this lecture series in 1973, and it has undeniably helped sustain the astounding growth of the Aus trian school of economics.

One book is Mises' Human Action (1949), a work offering the extraordinary idea of praxeolo gy, the science of human action involving the sovereignty of the individual, the daily, rational, purposeful behavior of men and women who freely advance social cooperation through open markets and private property rights. These princi ples make Human Action a profoundly ethical book, says contributor Hans-Hermann Hoppe of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas: "For is it not natural that every person should own his own body as well as all scarce goods which he puts to use with the help of this body before anyone else 165 does? Is it not obvious that every owner should have the right to employ these goods as he sees fit so long as in so doing he does not uninvitedly change the physical integrity of another's proper ty?" The other book is John Maynard Keynes' Gen eral Theory of Employment,Interestand Money (1936). In this "New Economics," Keynes sought to have central governments macro-manage "aggregate demand" to maintain their economies at "full employment."

In his contributions here editor Richard Ebel ing, holder of the Mises chair in economics at Hillsdale College, sees such reasoning as mori bund social engineering that disregards the pri macy of human action. This disregard allows government macro-managers to push individuals around as if they were but pieces on a chess board. Here Ebeling invokes Adam Smith's famous chessboard analogy and Hayek's stinging phrase, "the pretense of knowledge." Thus at the highest levels of government, inexorable igno rance of the dynamics of society and the econo my leads pretentious macro-managers to the grossest mismanagement of the economy, i.e., of the people. In his paper, Mark Skousen of Rollins College goes after Keynes for his anti-savingfocus. Keynes saw thrift reducing consumer spending, hence decreasing consumer goods output and possibly inducing a downward business spiral. This anti-saving focus still pops up in leading Keynesian textbooks. For example, William J.

Baumol and Alan S. Blinder write in Economics: "While savings may pave the road to riches for an individual, if the nation as a whole decides to save more, the results may be a recession and poverty for all." Such reasoning is shortsighted, indeed "per verse," saysSkousen, because it overlooks the role of time preference in the lengthening or "round aboutness" of the production process, leading in the long run to productivity gains,rising consumer spending, and higher living standards. He also contends that in the short run greater savingspush down interest rates, whichmakes investment more attractive, with resulting higher capital goods demand tending to offset lower consumer goods demand. If Keynes represents the quintessence of regu lation and interventionism in a nominally capi166 THE FREEMAN • APRIL 1992 talistic economy, contributor Jack High's paper on the theory, history, and doctrine of govern ment regulation offers insights galore from the viewpoint of Austrian economics. High, director of graduate studies in economics at George Mason University, notes, for example, that niche-seeking entrepreneurship, so central in praxeology and free markets, becomes bizarre and counterproductive in a climate of interven tionism.

Professor High points to pioneering work by Gabriel Kolko. Historian Kolko demonstrated in his The Triumphof Conservatism(1963)that quite a few businessmen in the Progressive Era actively sought government regulation in banking, rail roads, and many other industries as a way of sub verting competition. In other words, businessmen have been often the leaders, not the unwilling vic tims, of "regulatory reform." Mises. Keynes. Who willprevail in the 21st cen tury? Contributors and commentators in this full, rich, and provocative volume are betting on a Misesean revolution. I hope they are right. They deserve to be. D Dr. Peterson, Heritage Foundation and Mises Institute adjunct scholar, is the Lundy Professor ofBusiness Phi losophy at Campbell University, Buies Creek, North Carolina. FEMINISMWITHOUTILLUSIONS: A CRITIQUEOF INDIVIDUALISM by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese Universityof North CarolinaPress,:P.O. Box 2288, Chapel Hill,NC 27515-2288• 1991 •347 pages• $24.95cloth Reviewedby ElizabethLarson B y claiming that individualism is a docu mented failure and that modem feminism betrays itself by not acknowledging its dependence on that defunct philosophy, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's latest contribution to women's studies has raised eyebrows and tempers at many points along the political spectrum.

Although punctuated with criticism of today's mainstream feminists, this book amounts to a sweeping assault on individual liberty. Fox-Gen ovese blames individualism for all that is wrong with America today-from homelessness and the growing black underclass to pornography and the widening rift between men and women. Fox-Genovese's version of the "American myth of individualism" goes something like this: Ruthless and rampant, individualism took hold of America with the Industrial Revolution and has been strangling us ever since. Since the market place had little time for the traditionally female qualities of nurturing, caring, and community (and since men didn't want to live without those comforts), women were suppressed to keep that corner of society alive: "The American version of the myth of individualism that promised .success to those [men] who played by its rules assumed that unpaid female labor and devotion would but tress [male] individuals' efforts in the struggle to cope with the capitalist market." (brackets in orig inal) Out of that universal oppression, Fox-Gen ovese continues, arose a sense of sisterhood, which, while it couldn't reverse the injustices women suffered under capitalism, at least let women know they weren't alone in their misery.

Then came suffrage, property rights, and the rush to fill jobs left vacant by men leaving for World War II. Women advanced into the men's world, into their offices, their classrooms, and even their locker rooms. Some succeeded; some failed. But those who did succeed (and this Fox-Genovese considers an unfortunate consequence of the women's movement) tended to become more individualistic and to identify themselves in terms of their race or economic class rather than in terms of their sex. The theory of collectivist femi nism gave way to the practice of individualism. What came next, Fox-Genovese tells us, was even worse. The feminist movement of the '60s and '70s with its battle cry "Sisterhood is Powerful!" employed the language of female solidarity without con sidering the roots of that solidarity.Born as a reac tion to capitalism, sisterhood was inextricabfy tied to the capitalist system; it was the result of women's silent acceptance of the system of "rugged individualism." Feminists today, Fox Genovese maintains, should realize that implicit in the language of sisterhood is an acceptance of the status quo: the capitalist society.

With the empty language of female solidarity, today's feminists claim to speak for all women, and Fox-Genovese is most interesting when she dis cusses such problems within the women's move ment. In reality, she writes, the movement is made up mostly of white upper-middle-class women women who have the financial means and suffi cient leisure to over-analyze their successes and failings as, of course, the inevitable consequences of the American patriarchy-so how can they speak as the collective voice of women of all cul tures and colors? That is a legitimate criticism. The majority of Feminism Without Illusions, however, is confusing and contradictory; it seems as though Fox-Gen ovese loses her train of thought between para graphs. Perhaps she's taken to heart the words of her more radical feminist colleagues who insist that logic and argument cannot be divorced from the patriarchy (and therefore must go).

Fox-Genovese harshly criticizes moderate fem inists marching under the banner of "Sisterhood is Powerful!" Her ideas on ethical and legal issues bring to mind women on the fringes of feminist theory, such as Catharine MacKinnon, a law pro fessor at the University of Michigan. Like MacKinnon, Fox-Genovese argues that the tension between the individual (male) and the community (female) can be resolved only by replacing the patriarchy with a world order based on the virtues of the female community. Ideally, care, bonding, and· a system of gender-based jus tice would replace individual rights and the objec tive rule of law. Upon reaching that conclusion, Fox-Genovese immediately retreats, suddenly rhapsodizing about how great America is and lauding the Con stitution and the Declaration of Independence. Such contradiction only adds to the general confu sion of her prose. Asserting that a gender-based system of justice should replace our traditional rights-based system, while with her next breath lauding America's founding principles (she never explains what she thinks these principles are), indi cates both sloppy thinking and confusion about American political philosophy.

"The American version of the myth of individ ualism" has not brought happiness and material success to all women, Fox-Genovese complains. Well, that's life. American individualism never promised happiness for all; it promised that we would be free to pursue happiness. Fox-Genovese needs to sit down with a copy of the Declaration of Independence and study it well. Maybe then she'll understand that the Founders promised not a fair and happy life for all Americans but a society OTHER BOOKS 167 where individuals would find justice and the free dom to succeed-or to fail. D Elizabeth Larson is a writer for Reason magazine. THE BIRTHOF THE MODERN: WORLD SOCIETY1815·1830 by Paul Johnson HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022 -1991 - 1,095 pages - $35.00 cloth Reviewedby RaymondJ. Keating F ew historians have made their subject more compelling than Paul Johnson. In his Modern Times (recently updated), Johnson eloquently relayed the story of the 20th century-from the 1920s up to the 1990s-with new insights and a keen historical eye untarnished by the leftist ideology that afflicts many of today's historians. Now, in The Birth ofthe Modern, John son has brought his considerable talents to bear on the formative years of 1815-1830.

Johnson describes how, as the Napoleonic Wars came to an end, many of the ideas conceived in the 1770s and 1780s finally were given birth during 1815-1830, laying the foundations of modernity. The numerous and often quite diverse themes that emerged during the rise of the modern era encompassing economics, politics, science, philos ophy, and culture-are exhaustively explored. One recurrent theme is the great expansion of economic opportunity. The parts of the globe that adopted the free enterprise system-liberating trade, securing property rights, limiting govern ment intrusions in the marketplace, and reducing taxes-witnessed prosperity and stability.Accord ing to Johnson, when English entrepreneur Thomas Hulme visited Pittsburgh in 1817he found the city to be "already a major coal-iron and man ufacturing center, crowded with 'skillful and indus trious artisans and mechanics from all over the world,' who were paid wages at twice the British level with much lower taxes."

However, Great Britain also provided an amenable growth environment. Johnson points out that one of the reasons behind emigration from Europe wasthat it was "a painfully overtaxed continent." He continues by noting that the "British were spared internal customs, but they groaned under the income tax.... The radicals saw 168 THE FREEMAN • APRIL 1992 it not merely as a monstrous burden, but as an 'inquisitorial' intrusion into the privacy of a man's financial affairs.... [S]uccessin getting the Com mons to abolish the tax on 18 March 1816 by a majority of 238 to 201 dumbfounded the govern ment and was one of the most popular political vic tories of the decade." Johnson neatly summarizes the British economy: "[e]lever and enterprising men came to the British Isles because of the opportunities provided by its great wealth and, still more, by its free economic climate. The English universities might be comatose and the govern ment indifferent to industry, but the law left the entrepreneur and the self-advancingartisan free to pursue their genius. Moreover, it was the only country with an effective patent system."

Free enterprise and economic growth also were buttressed by the new private-sector movement in international banking led by the Rothschilds, the restoration of the gold standard in Great Britain, and by U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Mar shall's role in securing American property rights. Such developments contrast starkly with, for example, the "few markets and a general absence of economic incentive to improve and invest" in Russia, and with the corrupt and flawed systems that were thrust upon Latin America. Though, Johnson also notes some instances of Luddite and union appeasements in Great Britain, which "were portents of her long-term relative decline." The author weighs the positives and negatives of the Industrial Revolution, and draws a favor able conclusion: "The Industrial Revolution, which first developed its irresistible momentum in the 1780s... is often presented as a time of horror for working men. In fact it was the age, above all, in history of matchless opportunities for penniless men with powerful brains and imaginations, and it is astonishing how quickly they came to the fore."

In fact, in the early 19th century there was not yet a schism (real or imagined) between the industrial and the aesthetic. At the dawn of the modern, men "saw art and science, industry and nature as a con tinuum of creation and the quest for knowledge as a common activity,shared by chemists and poets, painters and engineers, inventors and philoso phers alike.... Men spoke of the 'art of machine making' and those who designed the great engines and structures were often artists, also, in the sense we understand the word today." The power and, in Schumpeterian terms, cre ative destruction of the Industrial Revolution mirrored an overarching aspect of the birth of modernity-its gigantism. Johnson declares, "The modern age was beckoning [man] into the wilder ness, to conquer it." And while the Industrial Rev olution unleashed creative energy, much darker forces also came to the fore. Johnson identifies the seeds of totalitarianism, instability, and terrorism, including the Napoleonic genesis of secret state police, as well as Hegel's "force of history" and his world-spirit nation with its commensurate "abso lute autonomy." As Johnson points out, "So the forces of progress spread rapidly in these years, sometimes like a manumission, sometimes like a plague."

Johnson examines many other aspects of the birth of the modern, including Andrew Jackson's Presidential campaign and its effect on the Amer ican political system (e.g., the introduction of the "kitchen cabinet," the use of the political machine, the increased role of the press, and a transfer of power from the elite to the nation's populace), the Treaty of Ghent as "one of the great acts of statesmanship in history," commer cialization of music, the role of the artist in soci ety, the beginning of interior decorating and developments in fashion, increased incidents of body snatching (a strange link between great surgeons and gangs of criminals), suicide at tempts among the prominent (including "poor Augur, the perpetual secretary of the Academie fran~aise, who killed himself in a fit of depression at the triumph of romantic over classical-style lit erature"), as well as political developments from all major points on the globe.

This is a stunning book in terms of its breadth and depth of knowledge. But it is important for its sober and balanced view of history; for its illustra tions that freedom is superior to totalitarianism on both material and moral grounds; and for its recog nition that the word "progress" has numerous def initions often quite different from each other. Few will be disappointed with this historical tour de force. D Mr. Keating is New York Director of Citizens for a Sound Economy.