Government: An Ideal Concept

Perhaps the most fundamental question any of us can ask has to do with the goal of man's earthly striving. Is it man's purpose here merely to lengthen his life span? Is it to accumu late wealth and extend possessions? Should man's aim be to achieve supremacy over his fellow men? Ought he to expend his life's energies in trying to remake others into his own likeness? No, most of us would say, man is made for other things than these. No doubt it is. impossible to arrive at any general . agreement on the deepest questions of life, precisely because the answers must be so intensely personal. Nor is this simply a difficult exercise in metaphysical speculation - each man must actually live his own answer to the challenges posed by his existence. It is reasonable to assume, however, that most sensitive and thoughtful persons would agree that man's earthly purpose is [ 13 more than extending his life span, accumulating material things, or gaining power over his fellow men. Such is my assumption, at any rate. The main body of this and subsequent lectures will deal with human relationships, with economics and the con ditions of material progress, and with the organizational prob lems peculiar to government. But I want to make my own position clear-an exclusive preoccupation with these problems is not the way to resolve them. The problems of man, society, and government are approached most constructively· from a stand point which transcends them-when they are viewed within a moral and spiritual frame of reference.

Man did not create himself. This is self-evident, for man knows almost nothing about himself. Man is the creature of God, or, if you prefer, of Infinite Principle or Consciousness or Intelligence. Man's life on this earth in the flesh is but a pre paratory phase of his emergence. ~lan's purpose is to emerge, to evolve in consciousness; it is to come as close as he can to the realization of those creative potentialities peculiar to his own person. Man's purpose is to search for eternal truth, to strive for righteousness, and to mold his own image in as near a like ness to his Creator as his energies, abilities, and perceptions permit. At least, this is my view. These convictions are my guide in determining right and wrong, whether I am judging my personal affairs or my rela tionships with others. Any behavior, personal or collective, which tends to retard man in his pursuit of the ideal life is, .in my judgment, ipso facto bad, evil or immoral. Any behavior, personal or collective, which tends to promote or complement this objective is, in my judgment, ipso facto good, virtuous or moral. You mayor may not accept the objectives for n1an on which my beliefs are based. But you will, at least, be able to judge whether my discourse is consistent with this objective.

It is not intended that I should dwell on the psychological aspect of freedom, this having to do with the efforts of man to free himself from his own personal imperfections. Rather, I have been 14 ] asked to discuss the sociological aspects of freedom, this having to do with the problems and strife arising out of man imposing himself on other men. Consider human energy and the diverse ways in which it is manifested. There are creative expressions of energy and there are destructive expressions. For instance, if I were to use my hand to paint a picture, write a book, build a home, or strew seed, my energy would be manifesting itself productively or creatively. But, were I to make a clenched fist of this same hand and strike you in the face, my energy would be manifesting itself destruc tively. Any person has a moral right to inhibit the destructive action of another or others. However, no person has a moral right to forcibly direct or to control what another shall invent, create, or discover; no right to dictate where he shall labor, how long he shall work, what his wage shall be, what and with whom he shall exchange, or what thoughts he shall entertain. No single person has any such moral right. No combination of persons has any such moral right. No agency, political or otherwise, has any such moral right.

The above is but another way of asserting that there are no moral sanctions for government to .intervene in any manner whatsoever with productive or creative actions. The moral sanc tion for establishing government springs from the right of the individual to inhibit or prohibit or restrain the destructive actions of others. Government, under moral sanction, is conceived to be an in strument of society for the accomplishing of certain limited and clearly defined functions. Most men have believed in some form of government, but few have ever understood how to keep it within bounds. All history testifies to the difficulty of keeping government within its proper competence; political power every where has been perverted. One reason for the historical failures has been a lack of understanding of what government is for. In my view, it is necessary to know why government should exist[ 15 what it is for - in order to gain an awareness of what it is not for.

We must know government and its purpose in order to know how to limit it to its purpose. An ideal theory of government and liberty is important. The lack of such a theory is disastrous. In the case of the United States, it is proving ruinous. As long as there were alive those who had learned from their old-world experiences about tyrannical government, we in the United States were successful in keeping government limited. ,Succeeding generations were more and more remote to that experience. There came a time, perhaps around the tum of this century, when all connection with the ex perience was lost. Lacking an ideal theory, we had nothing anchoring us to limitation. Experience was lost. No theory of limitation was generally understood. Today there is no more limitation on government than political expediency dictates. The advocates of nonlimited government are at work. We in the United States or in the Argentine have only two possible defenses against their advances. One is to let them suc ceed and for us, the people, to become experienced again. In time any intelligent people will revolt against tyranny. But gen erations, perhaps centuries, are involved. The other defense is to frame an ideal philosophy of limitation. There is no short cut ex cept the spelling-out and acceptance of a theory of government which is consistent with liberty. If it is right that society should evolve a formal organization to protect its members, and if it is right that the scope of this organization should be limited, there is, if we will but find it, a theory by which proper limitation can be imposed and maintained.

It is difficult to see how anything can reverse the present trend toward all-out statism except a properly prepared and presented theory of government and liberty. That this lecture presents the ideal theory adequately is not claimed. But perhaps these views as to the requirements of such a theory will stimulate others to try their hands; and, if so, this argument will have served its pur pose. Like it or not, we are now at the mercy of our own reasoning. 16 ] Examining the Basis for Government Government would not exist, nor would there be any reason for its existence, if men did not have problems with one another. Therefore, to determine why we should have government and to find out how much of it we should have, we must first form judg ments on (a) what aspects of man are social, (b) what aspects are individual, and then (c) by analyzing the nature of organized force (the distinctive feature of government) decide on the extent to which force should be employed in man~s relationship with man.

There can be no denying the assertion that man is a social as well as an individualistic being. Both the social and the individual aspects of our own lives are emphasized to us daily. These em phases are presented so numerously and in so many forms - in deed, so confusingly - that it is with difficulty we can tell one from the other. Some folks are so impressed with the social em phases that they see nothing individualistic about man, and others are so impressed with the individualistic emphases that they see nothing social about man. The former are likely to conclude as socialists; the latter, as anarchists - these being but different types of authoritarianism. Man cannot live alone. This is meant, not as a figurative, but as a lit~ral expression. Remove from anyone of us all the rest of mankind, past and present, and no one of us could exist. We are an interdependent breed.of creation. Your lecturer, for instance, does not know how to raise the food he eats, to build the home in which he lives, to make the car he drives, to create the opportuni ties that are constantly presented to him, to write most of the books he reads, to get from the earth the gas that keeps him warm.

Relative to the advantages that are his, he knows next to nothing. Alone, he is impotent to the point of nonexistence. The same thing can reasonably be said about others. The individual does not exist as an isolated person or, at the very least, as the person he is, except by virtue of his cultural and social heritage. Deprived of the cumulative knowledge and ex[ 17 perience of the race, man would be but another variety of curious animal-if indeed he would have being! This accumulation of knowledge, habit, custom, convention, tradition is man's inherited energy, his natural environment - it is thete for the individual to avail himself of it. Yet society is an abstraction. It is but a handy generalization. Only individuals count. Each individual is vastly different from all others. 1 No two think alike, have the same aptitudes and skills, see alike, hear alike, have the same tastes or the same energies.

It is these variations among us and the exchange of our vari able talents - be they manifested in goods, services, ideas, in sight, knowledge - which account for our being alive. If, for ex ample, everyone else were identical to any single person, all man kind would perish. No one could live, any more than that person could live alone. No one could have any more than he knows how to create. On that, neither he nor the rest of us could live. Some will argue that if others were not performing the services and making the goods this person requires to live, he would be doing these things for himself. True, each of us has some elasticity in this respect, and in some of us it is quite great; but, by and large, the 170,000,000 people in my country exist in their present relatively advanced state by reason of their variable talents and the unprecedented exchange thereof. The above claim - highly relevant to this thesis - needs some explanation. Observe, for example, the Mayan Indians at Todos Santos or at Chichicastanango, or aborigines elsewhere, and note the few, if any, who evolve toward those aptitudes peculiar to each. 2 By reason of inhibitory influences, they remain for a life time in primitive, similar activity. Rarely does one of them break from this tradition and become a musician, a painter, an engineer, lFor a remarkable and scientific dramatization of human variability, see Free and Unequal: The Biological Basis of Individual Liberty by Roger John Williams (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1953).

2For a factual account of Mayan Indian religious beliefs, without interpretations as to their inhibitive nature, see Two Crosses of Todos Santos by Maud Oakes (New York: Pantheon Books, Inc., 1951). 18 ] a surgeon, an architect, a builder. Or, reHect on the North Ameri can Indians who had another low form of cooperant society a foraging economy. The whole area that is now the United States never supported more than a million of them. 3 As has been since proved, the limit of the population and its standard of living were in no way due to any lack of natural resources. Nor were these conditions caused by the absence· of fertile soils and friendly climates, or by the Indians' inability to breed. Limits to popula tion and the standard of living were due to inhibitory influences which prevented the potential variability in each Indian from manifesting itself. And without any marked variation, there was no marked exchange. Without variation and exchange, there could be no substantial quantitative growth; nor could there be quali tative growth - material, spiritual, intellectual. Stability in the sense of fixedness follows the absence of variation and exchange.

Our Dependence on Interdependence Inhibitory inHuences, broadly speaking, are of two types. There are the sociological influences, the kind man imposes on other men. There are the psychological inHuences, the kind man imposes on himself or, more accurately, from which he fails to free himself. These latter are traditional pulls - man not shaking off his more primitive background - superstitions, fears, ration alization of laziness, taboos, imperfections, ignorance, and so on. For instance, the religion of many aborigines teaches that good or bad crops, ill or good health, hang on the caprice of so-called gods such as high mountain tops; that getting along in life is not a responsibility of self but rather depends on making supplica tions to the numerous idols. Consider what has happened in my homeland. If we were to collapse time into manageable proportions, reducing the life of this planet from its three to five billion years to one year, we would observe in the last two seconds 170,000,000 people living in aWe have only "guesstimates" on the Indian population. Most authorities would consider a million far too high. Perhaps 200,000 would be as good a guess.

r 19 relative luxury where less than 1,000,000 had lived before - if indeed we would, today, refer to it as living. To summarize this phase of the argument: There are at least 169,000,000 in my country who exist by reason of a phenomenon that has taken place in these last two seconds! The chances are at least 169 to 1 that anyone of us is in existence, is experiencing life, by reason of this phenomenon; that only lout of every 170 could endure the near self-containment of a foraging economy. This is another way of saying that more than 99 per cent of us are the offspring of a division-of-Iabor and exchange society, are dependent upon it, and have a vested interest as profound as life itself in its continuance and perfection. It is also another way of saying that most of us are a highly interdependent type of being and are dependent on the smooth working of the interdependence processes.

This condition of interdependence is something of which to be proud, rather than something to be deplored. It is a mark of prog ress. It is a forward step in the infinite evolutionary process, for man's purpose on earth is to come as near as possible in his life time to the attainment of those creative aptitudes peculiarly his own. Going in this direction, the principle which guides variability will cause each man to become progressively different from other men. More and more will each refine his own unique capacities. 4 And more and more will each of us need to rely on the products of the energies of other unique individuals. Progress in specializa tion requires one important warning. It is that we specialists not lose our perspective; that we not lose sight of the forest for the trees; that we not·become so immersed in our specialities that we become blind to the process on which our specialization depends.

4Specialization has been referred to as ~~analysis run riot." This dim view of an expanding division of labor would be warranted were there no possible sYnthesis of the human variabilities. But there is a synthesis, potentially a perfect one. It is simply free communication and exchange. Its numberless, daily ramifications can never be envisioned, let alone comprehended, by any man or set of men. This SYn thesis, however, has the virtue of requiring no more understanding than sufficient awareness to leave it alone except, of course, to protect it against crookedness, vio lence, and ~~management." 20 ] Education in the humanities must go hand in hand with our spe cialized education. Energy and the Exchange Problem The problem posed by an advanced division-of-Iabor society is one of energy exchanges. Human energy is one of the number less forms of radiant energy, seemingly electrical in origin. The late Robert A.. Millikan, renowned physicist and Nobel Prize win..

ner for his measurement of the electrical charge of the electron, had this to say: All light or other short-wave-Iength radiations are caused by changes in positions of electrons within atoms. All atoms are built up out of definite numbers of positive and negative electrons. All chemical forces are due to the attractions of positive for negative electrons. All elastic forces are due to the attractions and repulsions of electrons. In a word, matter itself is electrical in origin.5 The late Renee von Eulenburg-Wiener, biochemist, most help fully puts scientific theories about radiant energy into lay lan guage (italics supplied): Constant change is a characteristic of the living organism and all physiological phenomena are energy exchanges.6 Every substance is a system of molecules in motion and every molecule is a system of oscillating atoms and every atom is a system of positive and negative electricity. 7 Molecules are possessed of kinetic energy, that is, the energy of motion. 8 The atoms, the ultimate constituents of matter, are systems of positive and negative electricity. Electricity is a form of radiant energy and atoms may be described in terms of energy.9 Of all living creatures, man alone has learned to free energy by conscious efforts. Machines, explosives, the utilization of water 5Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1943. Vol. VIII, p. 340.

6Eulenburg-Wiener, Renee. Fearfully and Wonderfully Made. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1938. p. 114. 71bid., p. 118. 81bid., p. 47. 91bid.,p. 117. [ 21 and wind to create power, all these are examples of man's con scious utilization of potential energy. The food man ingests is derived from the stores of energy built by plant and animal. He utilizes this energy in the maintenance of his body, in work and in play and in the processes of intelligence and creative activity. It is by these latter processes that he may transform energy to a higher level, so to speak, and thereby may partake in creative evolution. 10 ... the individual organism is but a device for the building up of radiant energy into its higher forms as manifested in thought and consciousness. It is a product of the universal energy and yet a means for its further evolution. 11 Human Energy Is Diverse Human energy, obviously, has its earthly configuration only in individuals. Human energy manifests itself qualitatively and quantitatively, psychologically and physiologically, and in num berless forms: thought, consciousness, memory, cognition, ability, physical strength, moral courage, spiritual insight - or, in the workaday world, in the kind of energy it takes to run a typewriter, to bake bread, to drive a truck, to grow wheat, to be a catalytic agent in cooperative effort, ad infinitum. 12 The reader may get the idea that the above is a deviation from this thesis on government. Quite the contrary! It is but the preface to the idea that an ideal theory of government and liberty is to be derived from the necessity for the free, uninhibited flow of all creative human energy.

Required, however, is more reflection on the nature of energy. There is potential energy and kinetic energy. A dammed-up pool of 10Ibid.,p. 133. ulbid., p. 447. l2To think of energy only as the kind that can be manufactured from coal or other inorganic matter will miss the point in my use of the· term. A rereading of the quotes from the scientists Millikan and Eulenburg-Wiener will convey the meaning I give to <'energy" throughout this essay. If this wide scope given to "energy" is beyond the reader's comprehension-something to stand in awe of, something be yond human knowledge and beyond the power of human authority and dictation then I have established the kind of a definition I wish to make. 221 water is an example of potential energy. If the obstacle or in hibitory influence, the dam, is removed, the water will flow - the flowing water being an example of kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is energy in motion. It is potential energy gone to work. In the case of hydraulics, there is a natural law, the law of gravitation, which attends to potential energy's becoming kinetic energy once ob stacles are removed.

Each individual has numerous types of potential energy - for instance, it may be the type it takes to fashion sand into wearing apparel or the type it takes to hybridize corn. Assume only two Eskimos and only two goods, clothing and food. One can fabricate only clothing; the other can raise only food. If there are no inhibi tory influences standing in the way, the potential energy of each which manifested itself as kinetic energy in the making of clothes and in the raising of food will continue as kinetic, productive, creative energy. They will exchange. The natural law attending to this is the will to live. If they do not permit their energies to flow, to remain fluid, to continue as kinetic energy, both will die. One will starve. The other will freeze. Energy in Motion It is of the utmost importance to realize that production in its broader and really significant sense - productive activity - is energy in motion, that is, it is energy in constant movement and complex exchange. Thinking of productive activity as taking place only up to the point of an automobile coming off the assembly line is as· erroneous as thinking of exchange as taking place only when the automobile is sold for cash. The incontestable assertion that no man on earth knows how to make an automobile is proof in itself that the manufacturing phase is a series of human energy exchanges. Indeed, these exchanges during manufacture are so complex and numerous that they cannot be comprehended by the mind of man. To stop these energy exchanges at any point, be fore or after manufacture, is to stop productive activity. Imagine, if possible, the absolute cessation of all trading in the American [ 23 market. All prior exchanges, such as those involved in manufac turing, would also cease. Unless the moral, political, and business leaders among a people grasp the significance of energy exchanges Howing through space and time, it cannot be correctly claimed that the problenl of production is either understood or solved.

We are living in a world of 2,500,000,000 people. The poten tial energy of this population is of unimaginable proportions. Ap titudes and skills of people differ-some slightly at variance as in the case of aborigines, others vastly at variance as in the case of more advanced societies. The life and the progress of life - whether of the 170,000,000 in the United States or of the 2,500,000,000 in the world - depend on these static or potential energies becoming kinetic, useful, mov ing, Howing, dynamic energies. The total potential energies will tend toward becoming kinetic energies with the removal of in hibitory inHuences. Little e~e but the removal of inhibitory in fluences is required. The almost unanimous will to live, and cer tainly the more profound forces which we do not at all under stand, will attend to potential energies becoming kinetic. We need only to be observant to appreciate the wonders these natural forces produce and to see that their results are as incredible as the phenomena of our own bodies, governed not by conscious directions but by forces which transcend present consciousness our miraculous autonomic nervous systems, for instance. We need to learn, mostly, how not to injure or inhibit our endowed or natural or God-given creativity. Let this point be re-emphasized: These energy phenomena, whether of the body (heart pulsations, breathing, 1,000,000,000 new red blood cells per minute, and so on) or of society (interpersonal exchanges of goods, services, ideas, insights), cannot be bettered by any human dictatorial sys tem. Experience seems to teach that man's effort in this respect should be confined to increasing personal thought and conscious ness and to guarding against everything which would hamper energy exchanges; otherwise, leave these phenomenal, miraculous processes alone! Their creative detail cannot, at this state of man's 24 ] evolution, be understood by man; and by no means can this de tail he constructively managed hy man. Personally we can he have - and societally we can organize - in ways harmonious to these natural currents of creative human energy. Man cannot, without loss, take over or control them.

How, Human Energy Behaves Unless one is aware of our dependence - yes, our existence on Howing energy, this theory about ideal government and its relationship to liberty may not be grasped. Therefore, let's try to dramatize the point by several generalized examples in which human energy is assumed to, and unquestionably does, behave in ways not unlike electrical energy.13 First, imagine 170,000,000 dead persons arranged in a huge circle, their hands clasped to a conduit capable of transmitting every conceivable type of physical and human energy. No energy would he put into the conduit by the dead persons. None could, therefore, he withdrawn. 14 Second, imagine 170,000,000 live persons, similarly arranged, but with every one of them having a type of energy precisely like your own. Nothing but your type of energy could go into the conduit. Nothing but your type of energy could be withdrawn.

There would be no variation. All would perish, as you would perish were you alone in the world.15 Third, imagine 170,000,000 live persons, similarly arranged, but with the variation of their energies being no greater and no 18The following attempt at explanation has proved clarifying to some but not at all to others. At any rate, these are not written as far-fetched examples. In prin ciple, they are analogous to real life. 141 continue to use the population figures of the United States. These can readily be transposed to figures for the Argentine or any other· politically organized sector of the world. 15By "alone in the world" I mean absolutely alone-that is, completely without what has been bestowed on others, present or past. Human energy, if unobstructed, flows in time, all time. Most of what any of us, and all of what most of us, possess materially, intellectually, spiritually-is founded on cognition extending into the in finite past. Or, should we call it all "the eternal now"? See Living Time by Maurice Nicoll (London, England: Vincent Stuart Publishers, Ltd., 1952).

[ 25 more perfected than the energies of the North American Indians. Only the low energies incidental to a foraging economy would go into the conduit. Only the energies that went in could be withdrawn. All but one million of the total population would perish, for the same reason that the North American Indians numbered no more than 1,000,000. Fourth, imagine 170,000,000 live .persons, similarly arranged, having precisely the great variance of energies that the people of my country have today. Imagine all of their many energies freely Howing into the conduit and any citizen being able to' with draw any of the input energies according to his own choosing, based on an equitable and voluntary exchange of his own energy. In such an arrangement, for example, the highly specialized type of energy required to compute mathematical formulas for releasing the power of the atom could be exchanged for the types of energy required to build houses, provide food, write books, make autos, furnish heat, and so on. In short, were all energies permitted to How freely, any individual in this vast population would have readily available for exchange anyone or more of millions of types of energy.

Fifth, imagine 170,000,000 live persons, as above, but with an effective control to keep everyone's energy from going into the conduit. All would perish as if each were alone for, indeed,' each would be alone, absolutely alonel There could be no exchange, nothing but one's own energy. Sixth, imagine 170,000,000 live persons arranged in a huge circle, their hands clasped to a conduit capable of transmitting every conceivable type of physical and human energy, but with 40,000,000 of them organized for parasitical purposes, using ag gressive force or threats of aggressive force to draw off energy in the amount of their demands as distinguished from value-for value exchanges. 16 To the extent that they succeeded in drawing off more energy than could be obtained by willing exchange, to 16See my Two Ways To Stop Strikes (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1953. pp. 9-10).

26 ] that extent would the other 130,000,000 be compelled to accept less in exchange for their energies; that is, these others would have less livelihood by reason of the organized leeching. As a final example, let us imagine 170,000,000 persons arranged in a huge circle. There is no master conduit equally available to everyone. Instead, there is one person standing in the center with all the individual conduits from the whole multitude attached to this single person. All energies must be directed to this person. Only he can dispense that which he has received. Here we have the dictator arrangement, applied totally. There would be, so to speak, 169,999,999 volts that could find passage only through a conduit of one-volt capacity. All of the 170,000,000, including the person in the center, would perish. Parenthetically, there are no political instances of 100 per cent dictatorship. Even in Argen tina under Peron or in Russia the principle of authoritarianism is but little applied. There were here, and there are in Russia, vast leakages of free, human energy. Were there no free, human energy, all of you would have perished. 17 Life Demands Differences It can be deduced from the foregoing that no person, logi cally, should wish others to be like himself. Each individual has a vested interest in all others being different; in their variability; and in the excellence, the advancement, and the success of their creative specializations. Each person, like all others, is so spe cialized himself that his life depends on this variability, speciali zation, and exchange.

In energy types and in exchange requirements, we are all dis similar. However, we have one common similarity, and one com mon necessity if we are to live and progress. It is that prohibitions 17It is important to realize that authoritarianism - aggressive force, destructive energy - has an evil effect vastly out of proportion to its quantity. Imagine a church social of 100 people. Imagine the total energy expended by these folks in preparing the meal, walking, talking, gesticulating, and so on. Now imagine an infinitesimal part of this total energy, say l/lO,OOOth of it, turned into aggressive force - for instance, a deacon poking the minister in the nosel Contemplate the havoc wrought, and the point is clear. [ 27 against, or restrictions upon, the release and exchange of our creative energies be at the lowest minimum possible; that man not keep men from developing their variabilities and from ex changing the product thereof. Again, this removal of inhibitory influences - the kind imposed by man on men - serves to benefit all of us in common.1S Personal Inhibitions Inhibitory influences of the psychological kind - one's igno rance, fears, superstitions - are personal and not social, are one's own and not society's, are between oneself and one's God and not between oneself and other men. This is true even of those situa tions where one man yields to the persuasions of another and con sents to be the other's pliant tool. The man who submits, if he does so willingly, has created a problem located only where he can get at it - in his own will.

Other men may regret another's plight, may rue another's lack of attainment and culture. But each person is faced with the prob lem of his own creative emergence, progress, development. This is the individualistic side of the problem. The individual is the only one who can attend to the degree and the per fection of his own variability. Others cannot in a creative sense, do anything to him. If they would help, they must limit themselves to what they can do for him. For him, they can do 18The voluntary exchange of the varying products of men's energies is appropri ately called the market. If man were not inclined to better his circumstances - that is, to satisfy his needs and pursue his ends with what he regards as minimum effort - he would not be led into specialization. As specialization cannot occur without the market, it is a basic human institution. It is the foundation stone of society. If the presence of the market did not better, but worsened, man's circumstances, no feeling of comradeship (for which the socialists claim so much) would attend to exchange. There would be no market, no society, no man. Man·has a natural and a worthy urge to economize his efforts in producing the satisfactions of his desires.

It is this urge that leads to specialization and exchange, to the division of labor and the market. However, this is the same urge that, on occasion, causes some men to sabotage the market, to indulge in predatory practices. Stealing, in a sense, is the first and, certainly, the worst labor-saving device. Hence, a fundamental need - if specialization and the market are to exist - is protection against market marauders. 28 ] little beyond attending to their own emergence - materially, intellectually, spiritually.19 They can, by precept and example, set a standard to which he can repair. They can have goods and services to exchange, or knowledge and insight to offer. But whether or not he takes advantage of their offerings is a matter for his own election. No one else can decide. The creative side of man has to do with the individualistic aspect of man and must be so treated if damage by man to man is to be avoided.

Man, however, does not in every instance confine himself to his creative emergence, to getting ahead by his own competence and superiority. Failing in self-improvement and not satisfied with what he can obtain in willing exchange, he will, on numerous oc casions, resort to unwilling exchange. He will draw energy from the kinetic conduit without exchanging an equivalent of his own energy. He will tap the power line, so to speak. All unwilling ex changes are examples of this: the thief who "exchanges" your horse for his own low-grade satisfaction, or the voters who legally take other people's income to augment their own. Variability and its perfection......;that is, the creation of the in finite kinds of human energy - is exclusively individual. While each individual in his own upgrading draws on other persons, present and past, as well as on his own gift of insight, this process of individual upgrading classifies as voluntary and cooperative. It builds only upon free will and volition. It is the inspired experi ence of the inner self. While each of us has a personal stake in everybody else's upgrading, the upgrading is not, by virtue of this unanimity of concern, a social problem. It is not a social problem for two reasons. First, it cannot be dealt with through social instru ments. Second, the emergence of creative energy is a personal matter, inhering in individuals as they act personally and as they choose to act with other individuals.

19This) of course) does not rule out charity of a type which aids another person to help himself rather than to destroy his potentialities by making him dependent. But, before even charity can be extended). the giver must have provided himself with resources to give over and beyond his own needs and commitments. [ 29 Society's Proble". An attempt has been made in the above paragraph to establish the point that the potential energy of each variable individual is a personal and not a social problem. Earlier it was suggested that these infinite variations of potential human energy will translate into kinetic energy if uninhibited - that is, willing exchange will naturally take place if unobstructed, the will to live attending to this. It is now appropriate to discuss the obstructions or inhibitory influences, the actions of man which impair the source of creative energy and stifle its exchange, and also the actions which are parasitic on the flowing energy.

These last-mentioned actions present the social problem, the only social problem there is. All else is in the realm of the creative, the individualistic. Coping with the obstructions to the creation and flow of human energy and the siphoning off of the flowing energy without value for value is a social problem because: 1. These inhibitory actions inflict penalties on all human be ings, presenting an in-common defense problem. 2. They cannot properly be dealt with personally. 3. They can be dealt with, in justice, only by social control. All Are Related The first point requires little in the way of appreciation except an awareness that variable human energy, to be useful to man kind, has to be dynamic, kinetic, flowing - as indeed does any other kind of energy -·and an understanding that in a free market there is no person too remote to oneself to be unrelated. Recently, I observed a disheveled old lady hanging around a Central Ameri can wharf. "How possibly could she be related to me?" thought I.

Imagination supplied an answer: Perhaps she gathers the kelp that wraps the fish that feeds the hombre who loads the· bananas which provide the dessert for the woman who cares for the man who runs the nursery that supplies the spruce from which the pulp is made for the manufacture of the cleansing tissue that takes the place of less sanitary and more costly handkerchiefs we have been using. Who else wants to harvest kelp to wrap that banana30 ] loading hombre's fish? In the free market, every creative act, re gardless of how lowly, is related to the kinetic conduit - is ca pable of giving energy to it and of taking other types of energy from it. An obstruction of any creative energy exchange, regardless of how minute it may be, inflicts a penalty against the potential \vealth - material, intellectual, or spiritual-of all other persons. It is a penalty inflicted in common. The second point is that these inhibitory influences against energy exchanges cannot properly be dealt with by each individ ual for himself. Generally speaking, these inhibitory influences are fraud, violence, misrepresentation, and predatory practices.

All are immoral, be they done legally or illegally. The problem here is to remove inhibitory actions. This can. be accomplished by restraining aggressive force or by penalizing those persons who indulge in it. This is not an appropriate undertaking for each in dividual to do for himself, and for the following reasons: 1. It would be wholly impractical. No individual could pos sibly police the numberless instances of aggressive force among tens of millions of people - harmful to him and to others, actions he would have no way of knowing about and practiced by persons most of whom would be beyond his acquaintance. 2. If every person were to be a law unto him3elf, we would have no less than 170,000,000 governments in the United States - the «law" of each varying daily with individual caprice. 3. No individual has the moral right to use aggressive force against any other individual. He has the moral right to use only defensive or repellent force. This is a distinction too subtle for noncodification. 20 4. The offenders or marauders in society would soon be in com mand. They would be the government.

5. If the contention is correct that the removal of inhibitory in fluences is an in-common defense problem, then it follows 20By noncodification is meant the absence of socially or publicly formulated rules, the absence of law. [ 31 that anything less than in-common or societal control of the problem is a form of authoritarianism. Justice in Organization The third point is that these inhibitory influences can be dealt with, in justice, only by social organization. The right-to-life concept and its acceptance must serve as the premise for this point. If a person has a right to life, it follows that he has a right to protect and to sustain that life, the suste nance of life being nothing more nor less than the fruits of one's labor - one's honestly acquired property. The right to life with out the right to protect and to sustain life is meaningless. As sug gested earlier, it is impossible in a division-of-Iabor economy to sustain life on one's own specialty. Energy exchanges are as vital as one's own produce. Therefore, the rights to the fruits of one's own labor involves the restraint or the removal of obstacles to ex change - not merely the obstacles to one's own exchange, but also the obstacles to other people's exchange within any given society.

Justice compels one other admission. If one has a right to life and livelihood, every other person has R similar right. 21 One must assume that life and livelihood are just as dear to every other person as to oneself - regardless of race, creed, color, occupa tionallevel, or wealth status. The universality of the will to live and the requirement that life and livelihood be protected are con.. terminous with society. The responsibility for society-wide protec tion cannot, in sound organizational practice, be vested in any thing less than society. And where the responsibility rests, there also should rest the authority to discharge the responsibility. 22 21Recommended is The Source of Rights by Frank Chodorov (Irvington-on Hudson, N. Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1954). 22When individuals, admittedly having the right to defend their own lives, delegate their defensive responsibilities to society's agency, the agency is in full and exclusive charge of that function. In practice, the agency should redelegate the right to defend life as an individual act in certain instances. However, it is the agency that is in control of this function, specifying when and under what conditions individual defense is permissible. Society, however, at all times, should retain the power to reorganize its governmental agency.

32 ] It is quite likely that this argument will appear valid only to those who grasp the interrelationship of energy exchanges; who become aware of the extent to which we are interdependent, or more precisely, dependent on these exchanges; who see the mean ing of kinetic, Howing, dynamic human energy; and who acknowl edge that, in this respect, we are all in one vast energy circuit, a «grid system," which encompasses everybody. What is everybody's problem is nobody's problem - a good adage in this instance. The argument here is that keeping the energy circuits open is not the responsibility of anyone person nor of any division of any given society, but is everybody's or so ciety's problem. To Recapitulate Before going further, let's condense the central ideas of this thesis: 1. The source of all creative and variable human energy, in an earthly sense, rests in individuals. The emergence of the crea tive and variable capacities of each is itself a creative process that can only be attended to by the creative unit, the individual, in such voluntary and cooperative actions as he may freely choose to take. This is the province of the individual and not of society.

This is the vast, unlimited area of liberty, of self-reliance, and of self-discipline. 2. Creative, variable energies will tend naturally to exchange to the benefit and life-extension of all in the absence of man concocted obstacles. Obstacles to creative energy and its ex change - be they in the form of fraud, misrepresentation, vio lence, or predatory practices - adversely affect and subtract from life and from the potential life (emergence) of everyone and are, therefore, the problem of every human being equally within any given society. While the removal of social obstacles is the prob lem of everyone, it is not the responsibility of anyone person. It is the responsibility of all-that is, it is a social responsibility. As man is the product and has life by reason of division of labor and exchange, so does he inherit with birth this interdependent, [ 33 social aspect of self. This is as much his inheritance as is the responsibility for his own emergence. The restraint and the penaliz ing of the obstacles to creative energy and energy exchange not merely between oneself and another, but between all men must be dealt with by social prohibitions, by the law! This is the relatively small, limited province of what we have come to call "government." It is the appropriate area of disciplines exterior to personal disciplines.

If the purpose of man on earth is self-realization - coming as near as possible to the attainment of those creative aptitudes and potentialities peculiarly his - it follows that the law, the book of rules and prohibitions for social administration, can logically serve only the purpose of deterring man's destructive actions for the sake of giving full Hower to his creative actions. The law (social rules) can have no just object beyond removing social obstacles to the release of the human spirit. An organized arm of society, within its proper bounds, can be but the handmaiden of liberty; government, within its proper bounds, can be but the protective servant of all individuals· equally against antisocial marauders. According to the theories here set forth, individuals should delegate to society's agency the responsibility for protecting all members of society against such destructive actions as some of its members may bring against others of its membership.

Society, per se, cannot assume responsibility, for society is an abstraction. Society can be given entity only as it is organized, only as its members are organized. Purpose of Organization Organization is for the purpose of cooperation. There can be cooperation for· creative purposes and cooperation for repellent or defensive purposes. 23 28Just as kinetic energy can be destructive as well as productive or creative, just so can cooperation be for destructive purposes. For example, a gang of thieves can cooperate to rob a bank or a gang of voters can cooperate to take. the property of some to "aid" others. This kind of voter cooperation is based on perverting govern ment, inducing government to use aggressive force instead of confining itself to defensive force. In this stage of my lectures, I prefer to discuss government ideally. 34 ] Cooperation for creative purposes must be left to voluntary action. Men can cooperate to use force, but they cannot be forced to cooperate. Voluntary cooperative actions occur daily in num berless ways, most of them having almost imperceptible organiza tion but some of them having highly formalized" organization corporations, partnerships, educational institutions, and so on.

However, cooperation for creative purposes requires, as an auxiliary, cooperation to annul destructive purposes. Cooperation for creative purposes requires that inhibitory influences against creative action be neutralized. In good theory, it is as members of society - not as members of a family or of a corporation or of a labor union or of a chamber of commerce or of any group having special interests - that individuals organize themselves into a police force to cooperate in maximizing their liberty by restraining those who would impede creative effort and exchange. We must recognize the nature of society's political apparatus. It has, ideally, the single, distinguishing virtue of being able to inhibit, repel, restrain, penalize. All personnel of the apparatus can do everything else better outside the apparatus than in it. What should be inhibited, restrained, penalized? Those actions of man which are characterized by aggressive force, namely, those actions which themselves inhibit, restrain, destroy, or penalize creative effort. Defensive force may be used to neutralize aggres sive force, and such a use of forces serves a social end. This use of defensive force should be the guiding principle of the political agency.

It is society that should organize the political apparatus - the state, the government, the agency of common defense. It is not proper that anything less than society should organize to impose restrictions which relate to all members of society equally. By the same token, it is not proper to organize the whole society for creative eHort, for creative aptitudes have their locus only in in dividuals. For example, it is absurd to organize society into an agency of aggressive force, as has been done in Russia, to make automobiles, to produce penicillin, or to run a chick hatchery. [ 35 Interests and aptitudes for these creative specializations - gov erned by the principle of variability implicit in any and all pro gressive, evolving societies - are rarities and not generalizations. The rarities for creative effort find cooperation possible only by people voluntarily organizing themselves. 24 The benefits flowing from these voluntary organizations are available society-wide. But these benefits are available to all only because the organizations are voluntary. Energy flows in the absence of obstacles sufficient to stop it. That energies are often wasted and misdirected by persons in voluntary action is only to admit that man errs.

Russia Is No Exception It is often argued that the Russians can, for example, produce airplanes by their use of aggressive force and that the production of an airplane is a creative project. It isI Admittedly, this thesis contends that force can be used only to. inhibit, repel, restrain, penalize. Is there not a contradiction here? N01 The Russian air planes - creations - are actually the product of voluntary, co operative effort. And it is not the force that creates the airplanes. Force in Russia, as elsewhere, inhibits, repels, restrains, penalizes. Russians, in addition to defensive force, use vast amounts of aggressive force which destroys. In Russia the force is used to destroy a worker's opportunities to pursue the vocation of his own choice. The worker in the airplane factory is denied the oppor tunityof being ·an artist, a cook, a musician, or whatever. Left to him, shall we say, are only two alternatives - building airplanes or dying. If he prefers the former to the latter and acts in accord with his preference, he has made a choice to produce airplanes.

The fact that his alternatives are thus limited by the employment of force does not alter his act of voluntary choosing between the two. Nor does it alter the fact that all of his acts in producing air planes, whether in inventing or doing, are voluntary acts. A person UVoluntary organizations (creative energies in cooperation) form in accord with complex human affinities that defy diagnosis, accurate prediction, and single minded arrangement. 36 ] cannot be compelled to act creatively.25 But the areas where: he would choose to act creatively can be ruled out of existence by the use of force. When force is used, as in Russia, to limit opportunities, thus leaving open one or a few areas for creative effort, we observe many persons building airplanes when their best aptitudes are for painting, for cooking, for music, or something else. In a free market society, where force would have to be limited to restrain ing social obstacles to creative energy and its exchange, we would find mostly those with aptitudes for airplanes building airplanes.

Obviously, an individual is more creative in an activity agree able to his aptitudes than in an activity disagreeable to his apti tudes. A person knows his own aptitudes better than does a stranger - the dictator or any possible henchman. This is a pri mary fact of observation. It follows, then, that total energy will be higher among a people individually choosing their own work than among a people whose work is dictated for them by another individual. The same principle applies to exchange. We will fare better materially, intellectually, spiritually - if each of us chooses what he will communicate and exchange with others than if some other individual dictates what each shall communicate and exchange. It is these differences in the handling of creative energy and its exchange that account for the differences between my country men and Russians in production, invention, personal emergence, 250ne critic of this reasoning suggests that slaves were compelled to and did act creatively. Slaves merely adapted themselves to their environment, their confine ment, their limitation of choices. Within this framework, their creative acts were all voluntary acts. Many human beings have submitted to floggings or have gone to their deaths because they chose these punishments in preference to the limitation of choices imposed upon them. This insistence of mine is not hair-splitting. That every creative act is a voluntary act is a basic point in understanding the limitations of force. Perhaps this will help my critic: Put the two of us in a room barren of all else but a lively fly. I command my critic to catch the fly. But to give the theory here advanced an honest test, he is to make not a single move except as I direct it.

The fly will not be caught. The fly can be caught only if my critic acts in response to his own free will and volition. This acting in response to volition applies to the picking of cotton or to the building of airplanes as well as to catching a fly. [ 37 and so forth. The Russians apply aggressive force to creative ac tivities and claim it to be good. We in the United States are now, unfortunately, doing the same thing on a smaller but growing scale. Unanimity Requires Common Interest Cooperation is required .among members of society to perform the negative function of prohibiting obstacles to production, com munication, and exchange. The cooperation ought to be as nearly unanimous as possible. Cooperation can approach unanimity only if the activities of the defensive agency be limited to those actions which have a comInon benefit to creative effort. Ideally, the only dissenters would be those who want to live by predation.

If the agency of defense finds itself being used as an agency of plunder (aggressive force) - as in the case of both of our govern ments today - cooperation will not tend toward unanimity. For in this instance, some of the members of society cooperate to benefit themselves at the expense of the other members, employ ing the governmental agency to achieve their ends. The plundered members find it difficult to cooperate with the plundering members. Mere participation in the activities of society's agency, such as unwilling military service or the unwilling payment of income to support the agency in overextended activities, does not qualify as cooperation. Cooperation in its highest form is a willing re sponse, not the choice of the lesser of two evils. Willing response, approaching unanimity, is much to be desired. But it is impossible except as society's agency is itself an accurate response to man'$ single in-common social requirement: defense against those actions of man which inhibit creative energy and its exchange. Man is a member of society in common with all other men in this respect only. His social agency, to be useful and not harmful, must limit itself to this one small but extremely important function which all men have socially in common. Then reason and justice, at least, will supply the basis for unanimous cooperation.

38 ] Limitation of Government Prescribed by 'ts Justification Let the above ideas be emphasized in these terms: Any logical and just organization by society derives its existence from only one source: the common need for every man to protect himself against those who would limit his creative opportunities. Every human being is born with as much right to live his life creatively as any other man. Man, however, is incapable of protecting his life as a personal, individual project, and at the same time of realizing his human potential. That part of his inheritance which designates him as a product of society precludes this. By reason of this social circumstance, he is committed, in principle, to co operating with his fellow men in the protective project of "one for all and all for one"; in a project that should make no distinc tion whatever as to persons; in a project where all ought to be regarded as equal; in a project where special privilege should be unknown. 26 The principle which justifies society's organization of a de fensive ann - man's inheritance as an interdependent being also prescribes the limitations on what the organization should do.

In short, the law's limitation inheres in its justification. Force is a dangerous thing. Therefore, society's organized ann is a dangerous instrument. It is not, as some assert, a necessary evil. When limited to its proper defensive scope, it is a positive good. When exceeding its proper limitations and becoming aggres sion, it is not a "necessary" but a positive evil. Two Types of force Force of the kind here discussed is of two types. There is repellent or defensive force. There is aggressive force. The latter is always evil. There are no exceptions. No man has any moral right to use aggressive force against any other man. Nor have any number of men, in or out of societal organizations, any moral 26It cannot be too much emphasized that human beings are not equal. Yet, we should all be equal before the law in the sense that we think of ourselves as equal before God. [ 39 right to use it. One of the most distressing fallacies having to do with government and liberty is the assumption that the State, an agency presumably of the people, has rights beyond those pos sessed by the people. For example, the State uses aggressive force against an individual, compelling him to exchange some of his income for the alleged prosperity of people elsewhere. No rea sonable person would sanction such an aggressive action on the part of any single citizen. Therefore, no reasonable person can logically believe that any such control belongs to a multitude of citizens. From what source does this extracurricular "right" of the State to use aggressive force derive? It has no derivation. It is an arrogation. This arrogation is as untenable as the divine right of kings theory; indeed, it amounts to the same thing.

Any person has the natural and moral right to use repellent or defensive force against any other person who would aggress against him. No person on this earth has any moral right of con trol over any other person superior to the defense of his own life and livelihood. Two persons· banding together do not acquire moral rights of control over others superior to the rights held by each before their association. No increase in the number of in dividuals involved morally alters this in any way-even when the number reaches the 170,000,000 of my country. Rights not possessed by individuals cannot properly be delegated to an agency, political or otherwise. Society's agency, then, will find the proper limits of its scope in exercising for everyone, without favor to any, the natural and moral rights inherent in its members. 27 Tool of Liberty The above concludes what is little more than a bare outline a skeleton, so to speak - of the ideas that need to be considered in arriving at the principles and the theories of government and liberty. Government - which no doubt is what we will continue to call our organized agency of society, even though it be limited 27An excellent development of this idea is to be found in The Law by Frederic Bastiat (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1950).

40 ] to defensive functions - is, if properly employed, an essential tool of liberty. Government organized strictly in accord with right principle is an object more to be ardently hoped for than seriously expected. Yet, right principle must be deduced and have some measure of understanding if political expediency, controlled as it is by dema goguery and special interests, is not to rule and eventually over come us. Political expediency feeds on the destructiveness it breeds. Every evil it evokes sets in motion other "compensating" evils. Political expediency, by its very nature, inevitably leads to a dead end. Right principle is man's only compass. He often deviates from the course it suggests, but at least he can be aware of where he is by reference to it. Right principle is a beacon by which man can reverse himself after he has ventured into the evil ways which constantly beckon him.28 Right principle as relating to the limitation of government is deducible. Protecting the release of creative human energy and its exchange is suggested as the basis for sound deductions.

The Purpose of Liberty Every living human being, if he would correctly interpret his own welfare, has a vested interest in the creative emergence of every other human being; each person has a vested interest in the free, uninhibited Howing and exchange of the energies thus released; the true interests of all, therefore, are in harmony; and, finally, every individual has a vested interest in common with all other men in restraining all inhibitory influences to creative energy and creative energy exchanges. It is this latter common interest that constitutes the social aspect of man and warrants his organization of government within societies for defense. All else is individual, voluntary, and cooperative as individuals may 28What is right will, of course, always remain debatable as between persons. The nearest anyone can come to practicing right is accurately to follow that which his conscience dictates as right. "Right principle," therefore, as I use it is obviously and necessarily right principle as I see it.

[ 41 choose; for all else is creative. This is the vast, indeed, the infinite, area of emergence. Emergence - man's highest purpose - has two primary re quirenlents. The first is an awareness of an Infinite Consciousness that man's emergence may have conscious purpose and direction. The second is liberty in order that emergence may be uninhibited and possible. Liberty can be defined, psychologically, as man freeing himself from his own negations and, sociologically, as man not playing God, either individually or collectively, through gov ernment or otherwise. 42 ] ~iJtoti£al Approac/:JeJ to ';}.deal ~o"ernment ~ The word "freedom," in the sense of freedom from taxes, was first written, so far as I know, by the Sumerians some 43 centuries ago. It was etched on a clay cone with a reed stylus and was done in cuneiform script. The clay cone is now in the Louvre. This precious concept, now so frequently on our lips - but recklessly used and rarely understood - makes its appearance again during the brief reign of a Sumerian king, one Urukagina of Lagash, a city-state just north of the Persian Gulf. Urukagina is described in the ancient script as a social reformer, the first in recorded· history. He removed many bureaucrats from their offices and took other steps to wipe out governmental costs which were sapping the substance of the people.