Book Reviews

BOOKS America's 30 Years War by Balint Vazsonyi Regnery Publishing • 1998 • 285 pages. $24.95 Reviewed by Clarence B. Carson A s a child of eight, Balint Vazsonyi expe rienced National Socialism (Nazism) when the Germans took control of his native Hungary during World War II. In 1948, the Communist Party came to power, followed by Soviet occupation and the elimination of all opposition. Those events left a lasting impres sion on him, and he concluded that Nazism and communism were branches of the same socialist plant, differing only slightly in the details. Vazsonyi was able to escape to the United States in 1959. A virtuoso pianist with a strong interest in philosophy, he has been a keen observer of the American scene ever since. He concludes that for at least 30 years a struggle (he terms it a war) has gone on between those who would transform the Unit ed States into a socialist nation and those who would preserve-or perhaps we should say restore-the principles of the Constitution.

This book expresses his observations on the course of that war. The frame in which he encloses his argu ment is original, and his insights into how the United States is being transformed (which is to say that the war is not going well) are worth studying. Vazsonyi's early experiences with the twin evils of Nazism and communism make his book all the more compelling. He argues that the war is really between two different ways of looking at the relationship between man and government: what he calls the "Anglo-American" view that individual rights are prior to government and that gov ernment must be constitutionally restrained to protect those rights, and what he calls the "Franco-German" view that government needs to be absolutist and wield enormous power to bring about the best possible society. 53 These peoples are the only ones, in his view, who have produced political theories worth attending to.

This way of characterizing the opposing sides may well produce more heat than light. Neither the French nor the Germans are apt to be pleased at being credited with a series of disastrous, discredited ideas; nor have the Anglo-Americans been pure defenders of the ideas of individual liberty and limited govern ment. England has as good a claim to the title "birthplace of evolutionary socialism" as any. It is not at all clear to me that ideas have a native habitat and that there are national traits in political philosophy. We do ill, I think, to attribute the liking for or antipathy to various political arrangements to whole peoples. Vaz sonyi would have done better to avoid pinning a national label on the contending theories. That aside, Vazsonyi provides many clear insights into how socialist thought has mutat ed through hard experience to become more dangerous to America. He writes, for exam ple, "The appetite to manage all corporations, large and small, has given way to the realiza tion that a combination of threats, restrictions, and controls will provide access to the fruit, without ever having to plant the tree, buy the fertilizer, or perform any of the ongoing chores that go with production." This is the triumph of the fascist (Nazi) side of social ism, the realization that you encounter less resistance and get "better" results by insinuat ing the state into a position to take key decisionmaking power away from private owners, rather than trying to expropriate those owners directly.

Having lived under the control of the com missars, Vazsonyi is able to clearly see current trends in the United States. He can see how our own bureaucrats are increasingly resem bling those commissars in their control over our lives. Rightly, he understands that the environmental movement and its accompany ing hordes of bureaucrats are erecting a struc ture for a vast expansion of government authority. Since almost every use of land or activity could be said to have some impact on the environment, we are moving toward a future in which government officials will have enormous control over us.

54 THE FREEMAN/IDEASON LIBERTY • MAY 1999 Vazsonyi also correctly sees that piecemeal opposition to the modified socialist program is a losing game. If we argue over the "right" amount of government control, each time hoping to negotiate a somewhat better deal from the socialists than they initially propose, we are certain to see a continuing erosion of our freedom. He argues strongly in favor of an uncompromising return to our original consti tutional principles, and to that I shout "Bravo." D Clarence Carson, a contributing editor of The Free man, has written and taught extensively, specializing in American intellectual history. In Praise of Commercial Culture by Tyler Cowen Harvard University Press. 1998 • 278 pages • $27.95 Reviewed by Donald 1. Boudreaux F or most of this century, capitalism was regularly accused of not delivering the goods as efficiently as could socialism. Today, this accusation packs as much persuasive force as do claims that ouija boards foster communication between the living and the dead. Even capitalism's most strident critics today admit that capitalism can't be beat at satisfying people's material needs. "In fact,"

bark the critics, "that's the real problem with capitalism: it's too responsive to consumers!" Capitalism's unparalleled capacity for deliver ing new 'n' improved things to satisfy the vul gar needs of the masses supposedly results in a shallow culture, whose dumbed-down denizens recognize Ronald McDonald's mug more readily than they recognize Mozart's music. Unlike the productivity-based criticisms of capitalism, the cultural criticism of free mar kets comes not only from the left, but also from the right. When the likes of hyper feminist Catharine MacKinnon are joined in their crusade against free markets by influen tial conservatives such as· Pat Buchanan and William Kristol, the resulting coalition might well turn out to be fatal to capitalism. The menace of this left-right alliance against the alleged cultural inadequacies of capitalism is reason alone to applaud-loudly, while standing!-Tyler Cowen's In Praise of Commercial Culture. But this book's virtues go well beyond the assistance it delivers in the intellectual battle against those who would substitute the whims of a political elite for the wishes of individuals. Cowen's book is also a wellhead of information about art, music, and literature, brimming with economically inspired insights into the patterns of culture and people's responses to those patterns.

Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University, uses as a springboard in his book the continuing debate between "cultural pessimists" and "cultural optimists." He casts his lot squarely with the (outnumbered) opti mists. His case for cultural optimism is woven skillfully from sound economics and a careful study of cultural history. One element of Cowen's argument grows from his exploration of the sources of cultur al pessimism. Many pessimists are simply unimaginative old coots-as Cowen writes, they "identify great culture with what they know and have learned to love." If you spend, say, the first 40 years of your life listening only to the music of baroque composers, when you first hear the music of romantics such as Tchaikovsky, it sounds barbarous. In economic terms, you dislike post-baroque music because you haven't yet developed the human capital required to appreciate it.

Cowen also exposes the self-centeredness of many cultural pessimists. If the masses can enjoy a new work immediately, cultural pes simists haughtily pan it; but if the cultural pessimists themselves are baffled by the work, they dismiss it as illegitimate. Each pessimist regards his or her own unique accumulation of cultural human capital to be the only legit imate accumulation. Another source of cultural pessimism that Cowen identifies is fear of the future. Many people truly fear for society when they see its cultural basis changing. This fear, however, owes far more to lack of imagination than to any evidence that cultural change necessarily portends social dry rot or disintegration. The culture of 1990s America differs from that of 1950s America-but is it really worse (as many people believe)? Workers' greater productivity today means that they have more time to enjoy cultural amenities. Musical recordings of all types are more readily available than ever, as are broad cast performances and videotapes of dance, opera, and theater. The recent advent of book superstores brings to most Americans a selec tion of books that as recently as a decade ago was available only to residents of a few large cities. Far from destroying culture, the free market is bringing it within reach of more people than ever.

Mention of these bookstores points to a third source of cultural pessimism-interest group agitation. Among those who wail about the cultural Armageddon allegedly foretold by book superstores are smaller book retail ers. Those retailers naturally don't like the efficiencies that characterize Barnes & Noble and Borders. But it's uncouth to complain honestly about these new merchants ("I don't like 'em because they're better than I am at selling books!"). So smaller booksellers instead ominously prophesy cultural damna tion if the book superstores aren't stopped. Cowen's discussion, replete with examples, of how cultural pessimism has been used through the centuries to mask attempts at undermining consumer choice is fascinating. My only complaint is that Cowen is too easy on those who support government fund ing of the arts. Given the wealth of evidence assembled here on how markets promote a vibrant culture, he could easily have called for the abolition of the National Endowment for the Arts, but does not.

Reading Cowen's book is itself an act of cultural betterment; it is learned and sophisti cated without being pedantic. It complements nicely the economics of the late Julian Simon, as well as the work of Reason editor Virginia Postrel. The message of each of these authors is that we should welcome, not fear, the results of freedom. D Donald Boudreaux is president ofthe Foundation for Economic Education. BOOKS 55 CancerScam: Diversion of Federal Cancer Funds to Politics by James T. Bennett and Thomas J. DiLorenzo Transaction Publishers. 1998 • 189 pages • $32.95 Reviewed by John Hood P erhaps the most critical chapter of CancerScam, a slim but effective expose of the politicization of America's health-care charities, begins with this famous quotation from Thomas Jefferson: "To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propa gation of opinions which he disbelieves is sin ful and tyrannical." This statement has prop erly been used to criticize taxpayer funding of political campaigns, of obscene art, and of various advocacy groups and lobbies.

In CancerScam, economists James Bennett and Thomas DiLorenzo apply Jefferson's maxim to critique the phenomenon of major health charities, such as the American Cancer Society, using taxpayer money to lobby for laws or ballot initiatives restricting the free dom of tobacco smokers. A case in point was the 1988 passage of a California initiative raising cigarette taxes and using some of the proceeds to subsidize tobacco control, research, and "public education" (read: lobby ing) programs run by these very charities. The American Cancer Society, the Ameri can Lung Association, and the American Heart Association all spent time and money pushing for approval of the initiative. They were rewarded by receiving at least $8 million a year from the cigarette tax increase to pro mote anti-tobacco education programs. Bennett and DiLorenzo quote one journal ist sympathetic to the tobacco-control move ment, who wrote that the formerly '" starved for funds' movement ... found itself awash in California gold."

The money-grubbing aspect of the health charities' involvement was underscored by the legislative history of the initiative. A cigarette tax hike would likely have been passed by the California legislature in 1988, but because of a constitutional spending limit, much of the proceeds from the tax would have had to be 56 THE FREEMAN/IDEAS ON LIBERTY • MAY 1999 refunded to taxpayers. Instead of pushing for the tax hike legislatively-which would have accomplished the anti-smoking activists' pur ported goal of raising the price of cigarettes and thus discouraging smoking-the activists pushed for and got a tax hike written into the state constitution. This may have been a bizarre way to raise a tax, but it was the only way to route the new revenues to the charities themselves. This story is replicated several times as Bennett and DiLorenzo chronicle the growing involvement of anti-smoking health charities in the political process. The book, not surpris ingly, spends a fair amount of time rebutting claims made by these anti-smoking forces on such issues as the risks of secondhand smoke, the impact of smoking on government bud gets, and how smokers perceive the risks of their habit.

There's little new here to a reader already familiar with the debate, but it will help other readers put into perspective the pervasive sense of moral rectitude that the anti-smoking zealots exhibit when criticized about their taxpayer-funded lobbying efforts. Bennett and DiLorenzo don't focus only on the smoking issue. They argue that the cor ruption of charitable institutions-their seduction onto the government dole and into the political game-is a trend with far-reach ing negative consequences. A free society is based, in part, on drawing clear lines between various social institutions, be they businesses, governments, families, or charities. Govern ments have a unique role to play in our lives, as do the other institutions. Corruption sets in when businesses act like governments (for example, the Mafia), governments act like businesses (for example, providing rail trans portation), governments act like families (for example, giving food stamps and subsidized day care), and so on.

CancerScam tells a cautionary tale. To per vert government public health spending which in any event should be limited to com bating communicable diseases and other immediate threats to innocent bystanders into a means of supporting political causes is to erase the lines that protect individualliber ty and the market process. Jefferson understood this. He would see no justification for forcing anyone to, finance campaigns against the right of smokers to do what they want with their own lives and property, and neither do Jim Bennett and Tom DiLorenzo. D John Hood is president ofthe John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Humane Economy by Wilhelm Ropke Intercollegiate Studies Institute • 1998 • 350 pages • $24.95 Reviewed by George C. Leef T his volume is a beautifully prepared new edition of Wilhelm Ropke's 1957 classic defense of the market economy and noninter ventionist government. Ropke (1899-1966), a renowned German economist, lecturer, and writer, stood with Ludwig von Mises, EA.

Hayek, and a few other intellectuals in the middle decades of this century to warn against the perils of what he called "cen trism." By this term he meant not what it means to most Americans (political namby pambyism), but rather the tendency toward concentration of power in the hands of a few. Ropke feared the crushing effects of big government, big business, and big labor on the forgotten, statistically insignificant indi vidual. Reading this book of over 40 years ago reminds one of another great 1957 book, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Although poles apart on some questions (especially religion), Rand and Ropke both clearly identified the ominous social and political trends that were deforming the world, and both are worth revisiting. The subtitle of Ropke's book is The Social Framework of the Free Market. He seeks to show that the network of voluntary economic relationships we call the market requires a certain social framework. He writes, "Even if we conscientiously credit the market with cer tain educational influences, we are led back, therefore, to our main contention that the ulti mate moral support of the market economy lies outside the market. Market and competition are far from generating their moral pre requisites autonomously."

What the author has in mind, for example, are moral constraints on the means by which people go about trying to get what they want. Ropke writes, ''A spirit of ever alert and sus picious rivalry, not too particular in the choice of its means, must not be allowed to predom inate and to sway society in all its spheres, or it will poison men's souls, destroy civilization, and ultimately disintegrate the economy." He argued that what any society needs, if it is to protect the moral norms that make the market possible is a nobilitas naturalis, a natural "aristocracy of the public spirit"-that is to say, men and women whose integrity and moral authority would lead most others to fol low their example. I suspect that there is much truth in this breathtakingly politically incorrect idea. The support for the ethical basis of market deal ings needs to come from moral authority fig ures. Without that support, we will slowly sink into barbarism. Unfortunately, Ropke's thesis means that America is in grave danger.

The way most Americans are educated today makes them almost impervious to any sort of leadership except by the idols of sports and popular music. Moreover, where does one see respected men and women emphasizing the importance of, say, the freedom of individuals to enter or decline to enter into contracts? Ropke was a keen observer and elegant writer. Most of what he said is still true today, ifnot more so. Consider this attack on the ten dency to turn economics into a branch of mathematics: "[S]uch concepts as the 'elastic ity' of supply and demand, the 'multiplier' ... and so on ... simulate a scientific and mathe matical precision which does not really exist. They are not physical constraints like . . . gravity, but relations dependent upon the unpredictable behavior of men." Or this observation about left-wing moralists: "The moralist, with his lofty admonitions, becomes an intolerant hater and envier,.the theoretical pacifist an imperialist when it comes to the practical test, and the advocate of abstract social justice an ambitious place-hunter."

Sadly,the book also contains some sections that prove useful to enemies of freedom. BOOKS 57 Ropke was a population worrier. He emphati cally did not want to see government in the family-planning and resource-planning busi ness, but his alarmist statements are ammuni tion for those who do. And sometimes he sounds like an early Earth Firster: "We violate nature at every turn, even to the total disap pearance of the countryside. . . ." Ropke would not have taken kindly to the Environ mental Protection Agency with its blatant hostility to private property rights, but rhetoric like that almost inevitably promotes the "centrism" he deplored. It is easy to ignore foibles like that, how ever, in a book having such an abundance of clear thinking. Over and over again, A Humane Economy reminds us of what is at stake in the battle between those who con sistently defend freedom and those who won't: "Once the mania of uniformity and centralization spreads and the centrists begin to lay down the law of the land, then we are in the presence of one of the most serious danger signals warning us of the impending loss of freedom, humanity, and the health of society." D George Leef is book review editor of The Freeman.

All the Essential Half-Truths about Higher Education by George Dennis O'Brien University of Chicago Press • 1998 • 244 pages • $19.95 Reviewed by George Roche G eorge Dennis O'Brien, retired president of Bucknell University and the Universi ty of Rochester and author of What to Expect from ("'ollege,has addressed himself to a vital ly important subject-the many myths and misconceptions surrounding American higher education. Although he identifies serious problems and sometimes makes telling obser vations, the book ultimately proves to be mad dening because the author will not for the life of him make hard decisions. His proposals are always safe and temperate. O'Brien's book circles at 30,000 feet over the major issues 58 THE FREEMAN/IDEAS ON LIBERTY. MAY 1999 confronting universities and the reader exclaims, "Land somewhere! Take a position! Offer a solution! Act in some principled way even if it might create some enemies!"

At almost every turn, O'Brien takes the safe road, trying to keep establishment friends happy through equivocations and con ciliation. One example: "If faculty are to administer-as I believe they should. . . ." This is a "respectable" position, but one that I view as entirely mistaken. The faculty should no more administer the institution than the players should manage the team. Many schools started to go horribly wrong when they tried mixing teaching and administra tion. But the author declines to challenge this conventional idea. In another place O'Brien writes, "I think that multiculturalism is dead wrong." The reader earnestly hopes for a tough position and suggestions for curing this intellectual cancer (or at least halting its spread). But no, he does not want to offend his politically cor rect colleagues and thus adds, "However, if multiculturalism is bizarre in astronomy, it is not so in the area of the lost moral curriculum.

It starts in the right place." He thus criticizes without really criticizing at all. This reminds one of Yogi Berra's saying, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." O'Brien usually follows this advice and manages to take both paths. Near the end of the book, O'Brien writes, "The issue that faces higher education is whether current faculty expectations and edu cation will allow them to join in with admin istration or cause them to fight a generally los ing battle against the social and economic forces that have created the need for decisive institutional direction." Indeed, we might wonder how the largely overpaid and under worked faculty of the typical American uni versity will react when confronted with the need for "decisive direction," but exactly what this "decisive direction" must entail, the author will not hazard to guess. A book that is to deal sensibly with the many problems of higher education in the United States must inquire about the real causes of exorbitant college costs, high drop out rates, the dumbing-down of academic standards, the perversion of the curriculum, the short-changing of students in universities where teaching takes a back seat to "research"

(which often means abstruse writings that are never read and no one would voluntarily pay for), and of the spreading politicization of courses, to mention just the top of the list. It must then propose solutions. Unfortunately, All the Essential Half Truths about Higher Education comes up short. 0 'Brien says that his purpose "has been to raise issues." He does raise a number of them (nine "half-truths"), but misses others and, more important, semantically skirts the issues without offering any real solutions. And he unwittingly tells the reader why he adopts this inoffensive approach, when he writes, "The political cost of changing entrenched interests is staggering." That is unquestionably true, and anyone who proposes more than minor, cosmetic tin kering with higher education will certainly incur the wrath of the entrenched interests, comfortable as they are with the status quo. O'Brien, sad to say, is like so many in the edu cation establishment who readily sacrifice principle and correct action to popularity.

A reading of this book will give one who knows little about the terrible state of higher education some familiarity with the issues, but for deep analysis and tough solutions, it is a disappointment, reminiscent of Matthew Arnold's description of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley: "a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain." D George Roche is the president of Hillsdale College and author ofThe Fall of the Ivory Tower.

Commodity and Propriety: Competing Visions of Property in American Legal Thought, 1776-1970 by Gregory S. Alexander University of Chicago Press • 1997 • 486 pages • $39.95; $25.00 paperback Reviewed by Bradley A. Smith T o discuss the meaning of property is, in many ways, to discuss the meaning of lib erty. If property is an individual right, secure from encroachment by government, then gov ernment power is necessarily restricted by the existence of property. If, on the other hand, property is merely a private basis for creating a public good, then government has a right, and at times even a duty, to dictate or regulate its use. In Commodity and Propriety, Cornell Uni versity law professor Gregory Alexander chronicles the history of this debate in Amer ica. Alexander argues that in colonial Ameri ca, most lawyers, if not most citizens, believed that the role of property was to pro vide for the "public good." Property, especial ly land, filled this role by anchoring the citi zen to his "rightful" place in society, thereby promoting social stability.

What individuals gained from holding property was not independence from govern ment, but rather independence from the swings and roundabouts of the marketplace. With this independence, however, came a duty to use property to further alleged societal interests. If one failed to properly use his property, the state could compel him to act for the public good. This is the "proprietarian" view of property. During the American Revolution, views on the role of property shifted dramatically. A new conception of property, as an alienable market commodity,took root. In this "com modity" conception, property serves to define the "legal and political sphere in which indi viduals are free to pursue their own private agendas and satisfy their own preferences, free from government coercion or other forms of external interference." Alexander suggests that the last 200 years have been marked by an BOOKS 59 ongoing dialectic in which the proprietarian and commoditarian views are continually refined in response to concrete legal and social issues of the time.

To trace this history is an enormous task. Alexander reviews 200-plus years of thinking from David Hume, Adam Smith, and John Adams, through EA. Hayek, Michael Har rington, and Justice William Brennan. In doing so, he offers up some controversial propositions. For example, while classical lib erals have usually turned to Thomas Jefferson for political inspiration, Alexander portrays Jefferson's antagonist Alexander Hamilton as the true father of the individual rights oriented, commodity view of property in America. It was Hamilton, not Jefferson, who recognized and promoted property rights in intangible objects such as securities and even vested interests. It was Hamilton who envi sioned America not as a stable, agrarian soci ety of individuals tied to the land, but as "a society of great wealth and power whose life blood was the class of enterprising merchants [with] none· of the vestiges of feudal society to inhibit [their] entrepreneurial strivings."

On the other hand, modern liberals, who like to point to slavery as a great evil of lais sez-faire capitalism, will find Alexander cor rectly demonstrating how the philosophy of slavery reflected proprietarian views of prop erty. The abolition of slavery was a triumph for the classical liberal, commoditarian view. Despite such triumphs, the commoditarian view has never vanquished the proprietarian view. The common perception that property in America has always been considered a basic individual right, to be held free from the pow ers of government, is simply not true, says Alexander. Readers of this magazine may wish it were so, but a quick look at recent EPA regulations in the Federal Register demon strates his point. Still, the strength of the commodity vision has been such that in the late twentieth centu ry those who favor the activist state have sometimes abandoned proprietarian rhetoric and attempted to put their theories into com modity terms. This is seen in efforts to define a commoditarian type "right" to welfare, health care, or other government benefits.

60 THE FREEMAN/IDEAS ON LIBERTY • MAY 1999 What Alexander's book lacks is a sense of passion. Though describing a great clash of ideas, there is little sense of drama or energy in these pages. Alexander reports the theories as equals, with little seeming interest in which view ought to prevail, or even in evaluating the merits of the arguments he describes. It must fall to others to demonstrate why and how a classical liberal view-the commodity conception of property rights-promotes prosperity, peace, and liberty. D Bradley Smith is associate professor of law at Capi tal University Law School, Columbus, Ohio. Against Politics: On Government,Anarchy,and Order by Anthony de Jasay Routledge • 1998 • 256 pages • $75.00 Reviewed by Butler Shaffer W hile studying political philosophy in college, I often pondered: why should my preferences for liberty have to depend on philosophical principles rather than my per sonal will? Why should it not be sufficient simply to declare that I do not choose to be coerced by a political system? Such a propo sition did not seem to me to be so out of the ordinary-after all, the marketplace operates on such voluntaristic assumptions with obvi ous success.

That inquiry led me to other questions, such as, "Why isn't personal liberty the pre sumed condition in human society, with the burden of proof placed on those who would restrict it?" The "social contract" theorists' answer that we have agreed to the state's restrictions on our liberty rang hollow in the face of the tyrannical and butcherous regimes that had come to represent the modern world of nation-state politics. To those who share this love for liberty, and who have likewise been troubled by such questions, Anthony de Jasay's book will prove worthwhile. In a lucid and intellectually invigorating manner, he challenges the classic justifications that have been offered on behalf of state power: from social contract theory to the public goods and economies-of-scale rationales, he thoughtfully analyzes, and casts doubts on, the case for the authority of the state. De Jasay's explorations of the concept of "limited government" reveal an awareness of the difficulties inherent in all forms of collec tive behavior: namely, that "collective choice is never independent of what significant num bers of individuals wish it to be." In any kind of political system-including a democrati cally constituted one-it is impossible for political authority to remain "limited" except by imposing on it a higher sovereign authori ty, whose own actions must, in turn, be super vised by an even higher sovereign power, ad infinitum. The United Nations, for example, has been given some measure of authority to control the excesses of nation-states, but what will control the United Nations?

"Limited government with popular sover eignty," de Jasay tells us, "is precarious," dependent on widespread acceptance of cer tain philosophical propositions. The case for liberty, in other words, is never stronger than the insistence by each of us that it be pre served. Liberty must crumble when its philo sophical foundation does. De Jasay has no sympathy for such tradi tional fictions as "the common good" as a basis for state power. Noting that "[n]ine tenths of practical politics is the making of nonunanimous decisions by some, which hurt others," he proceeds to explain how an alleged "common good" need not, in fact, "be good for, nor desired by, any individual, past, pre sent, or future." The result is social engineer ing, which he defines as "a series of political decisions making people allocate their efforts and wealth otherwise than they would if allowed to do it as they saw fit." Even Hayek comes in for criticism for his treatment of "public goods." Hayek's vision of "social order," de Jasay explains, would make "the state's place in society . . . ad hoc, open ended, [and] indeterminate."

In a politicized society that no longer dis tinguishes between positive law that is imposed by the state and common law that arises out of human customs, practices, and expectations, de Jasay's resurrection of the distinction is not only refreshing, but essential to the case for nonpolitical.systems of social order. The cult of state power appears to be in retreat in the minds of increasing numbers of people, and de Jasay's analysis is most useful in sweeping aside the dust-laden assumptions and faithfully chanted doxologies on which such power has rested. Economic and systems analysis, "chaos" theory, and a growing spiritual revulsion at what state collectivism has wrought in this century alone have combined to fuel a resur gent interest in the processes of "spontaneous" order. Such order depends on a concept of "rights created by voluntary contracts," which, de Jasay tells us, are derived from property which, in turn, is not a "right . . . but a liberty to act upon owned objects."

BOOKS 61 Those who understand the distinction between "rights" and "liberties," and of how "property" and "liberty" are inextricably inter twined, will appreciate de Jasay's analysis. To those who wish to challenge the foundations of all systems of collective authority, his book will be of great value in confronting the argu ments that have been historically offered on behalf of such systems. The author's title is, in the end, perfectly descriptive, for the book indeed makes the case against politics and in favor of liberty as the means of establishing order in human society. 0 Butler Shaffer is professor of law at Southwestern University School of Law and author of Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival (1985) and The Redistribution of Authority: Privately Owned Property as a System of Social Order (forthcoming). Inspired? Shocked? Delighted? AlarIned? Let us l~now.

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