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BY F. A. HARPER
THE FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION
IRVINGTON-ON-HUDSON
,
NEW
YORK
Liberty
: A Path to Its Recovery
was originally published in 1949
by The Foundation for Economic Education.
Second edition, with a new preface, copyright
01993 by The
Foundation for Economic Education,
Irvington-on-Hudson
,
New York
10533
ISBN: 0-9106 14-95-4
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PREFACE
THE RECONCILIATION
OF LIBERTY with
authority is perhaps the central problem of political
philosophy. Throughout the ages it has occupied philosophers
seeking a balance between the claims of liberty and those of
authority.
Liberty
insists
in the freedom of the individual or group of individuals from
external restraint by other individuals, groups, government, or
society. Authority points at civic responsibilities and
restraints deemed necessary for community security and welfare.
Liberty
takes many forms: religious,
cultural, political, civil, social, and economic. Their relative
importance has varied with time and place. In many parts of the
world, the right to worship and organize churches and synagogues
is nonexistent even today. In the Christian world it was won
gradually and painfully in the bloody religious wars of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Personal liberty, which is
the physical freedom of all people to come and go as they please
without official restraint, was secured in the English-speaking
world only in the seventeenth century Prior to that time
individuals were seized and kept in prison indefinitely without
trial or hearing. The freedom to combine and associate in large
numbers was gained only during the nineteenth century. The right
to vote and hold public office was practically unknown before
the nineteenth century. The same was true of such civil liber.
ties as freedom of speech and the press. In the
United States
these rights were anchored in the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights. American racial and ethnic
minorities acquired their rights only much later.
For a few influential philosophers and economists
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries liberty was not just
a negative concept connoting the absence of restraint. They
urged governments to
intervene to protect the liberties of the weak and poor,
clamoring for compulsory education, unemployment compensation,
and old-age insurance, and calling for protection of the health
and safety of industrial workers, the prohibition of child
labor, and the fixing of minimum wages. They looked upon
protective action of the state as an important enlargement of
liberty.
To Floyd A. Harper such intervention meant the
very denial of liberty in his
Liberty
: A Path
to Its Recovery
he made economic liberty the very foundation of all other
liberties. The right to life is the right to sustain one's life
through labor, which is identical with the right to own the
fruits of one's labor. No part of production can rightfully be
claimed by a master or ruler by whatever title. The right of
ownership, according to Harper, is basic to all liberties. It
arises in every production process and remains with the producer
until he chooses to consume the product or exchange it for other
economic goods. Any bill of human rights which excludes the
right to private property is doomed to futility and failure.
Although first written in 1948 and 1949 when
President Truman was asking for new taxes and proposing a
universal military training program, the book is as timeless and
pertinent today in 1993, earning it a place of honor in modern
literature on liberty. It redounds to the honor not only of the
author but also to The Foundation for Economic Education which
provided the intellectual setting and backdrop and published his
findings. In the illustrious company of great thinkers such as
Leonard E. Read, the entrepreneurial director of FEE; Ludwig von
Mises, the dean of Austrian economics and academic adviser to
FEE; and Henry Hazlitt, the New York Times and
Newsweek editorial associate and Founding trustee of FEE.
Dr. Harper, the professor of marketing from
Cornell
University
, penned a
masterwork and lasting object of literature. It radiates the
very essence of the FEE philosophy: 'To recover liberty lost is
to acquire a better understanding of its workings and blessings,
For "correct action automatically follows understanding the only
route t o correct action. Nothing else will serve."
In making
available this new edition of Liberty: A Path to Its Recovery,
The Foundation for Economic Education seeks to continue
the dateless debate on the reconciliation of liberty and
authority. Professor Harper's contribution is as concise,
germane, and convincing today as it was when he first made it a
generation ago. It continues to point to the blessings of
liberty which must be earned before the can be enjoyed
HANS SENNHOLZ
Top of Page
ABOUT THIS EXPLORATION
MINDFUL OF THE
SCOPE and complexity of the problem of liberty, these
exploratory remarks on the subject are offered with humility as
a progress report. It is hoped that they may stimulate further
thought and study of this most important problem, among those
who will disagree as well as among those who will agree.
Present associates
and others deserve credit for the inspiration that has resulted
in the development of these concepts of liberty. Probably most
of the ideas have been contributed by them, though the origin of
any idea cannot he traced. The parts that meet with their
disapproval, however, are solely the responsibility of the
author; he has not been asked to bend a word or a phrase against
his own judgment, in deference to the differing opinions of any
other persons.
Though these are
the author's beliefs at the time of writing, he expects and
welcomes honest disagreement. His own opinion will undoubtedly
change on certain points as a result of evidence or reasoning
not now at his command.
The path to truth is always strewn with the
wreckage of ideas once held and later discarded, either by the
person who held them or by others. Differing opinions and
changes of opinion are the rights of persons under the subject
being discussed
Liberty
.
F.
A. HARPFR
May
1 9 4 9
PART 1
THE DESIGN OF
LIBERTY
The world has never had a good definition of the
word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in
want of one. We all declare for liberty, but in using the same
word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word
liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself,
and the product of his labor; while with others the same word
may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and
the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only
different but incompatible things, called by the same name
liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the
respective parties, called by two different and incompatible
names liberty and tyranny.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
CHAPTER ONE
THE NATURE OF
LIBERTY
OPINIONS
differ widely about liberty. They differ widely as to what
comprises liberty, as to how much of it we now enjoy, as to the
amount that has been lost in this country.
The extent of difference of opinion as to what
comprises liberty is indicated by the widely differing
ideologies whose advocates claim to be correct in their
particular concept of liberty. This includes the Republicans,
Democrats, Socialists and all the other political organizations.
It includes most civilian organizations of various sorts, such
as the churches. It includes the
United States
,
Britain
and
Russia
. All claim to be championing the
cause of liberty.
Many persons are
unconcerned about liberty, which is still another attitude
toward it. Many seem to consider liberty to be a thing of
geography or of heredity. These persons loll in unconcern
because they feel assured that liberty is safe in this country
to which their ancestors once fled from autocratic tyrannies
abroad. They seem to be unaware that the sons of free men may
become slaves even in a land where a high degree of liberty has
reigned.
Whatever the
reasons for these widely differing beliefs about liberty, it is
certain that harmony of action requires, as the first step,
agreement on what comprises liberty; otherwise it is impossible
to agree on its presence or absence, or on the conditions now
suppressing liberty.
The main purpose of this study is to offer a
concept of liberty that may serve as a guide to its recovery.
First I will give my
concept of the nature of liberty and of the function of
government in maintaining a liberal society.
The spirit of
liberty, denuded of philosophical terms, was expressed thus by a
child of eleven years:
I'm nobody but myself,
And myself is only me.
I'm
only myself in
doings and ways,
And my mind is mine only, you see.
This verse reflects on the fact that liberty is
an individual matter; that without liberty for the individual,
there is no liberty at all. To recognize the individual nature
of liberty is not to deny, as will be discussed later, that it
is possible for "government" or other agencies to serve in
defense of liberty. But first there is need to survey the
individual nature of liberty so that it will not be lost from
sight in a discussion of "group action
government, democracy,
organization.
Liberty
exists when a
person is free to do whatever he desires, according to his
wisdom and conscience.
This definition of liberty may well prove
shocking. There may be an immediate temptation to say: "Yes, but
. . . ,"
and to consider it no further. But such a reaction may merely
suggest how far we have strayed from an understanding of
liberty, and from the intelligent devotion that is necessary for
day-by-day decisions that would assure liberty. If that be our
plight, and if liberty is to prevail, there must be a
willingness to open one's mind to a discussion of the subject
that may run head-on into some previously accepted beliefs.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to discuss every aspect of this
complex problem first in order to relieve the shock; some choice
of sequence in treating parts of the problem is necessary.
A hermit is unconcerned
about liberty. To him it is not a
problem so long as he remains a hermit. His problem, as a free
person, is to live with himself and with his God. He is free to
do as he wishes within the confines of his wisdom and conscience
a limitation not considered to be a restriction of liberty, as
that term is used herein.
Liberty
becomes a matter
of concern only when there arises the danger of losing it, or
after it has been lost. Loss of liberty is possible only because
of the things persons do to each other. The problem of liberty
is, then, exclusively in the realm of relationships between
persons.
The hermit, who
lacks contact with all other persons, enjoys liberty to the
full; it is no problem to him. But should he join "society," and
come to have relationships with others, liberty would then
become a problem to him because its loss would then have become
a threat. Others might then infringe upon his liberty; as an
extreme, they might make him their slave.
As a problem of
our concern, liberty has to do with all those things that
comprise "society," and nothing else. This includes all
purchases and sales; it includes arrangements whereby some
persons work for others; it includes voting for President,
listening to the school teacher or to the preacher, and all
other similar events common to everyday life. These are the
areas where liberty is at stake. These are the realms in which
one person may rob another of his liberty, and thus prevent him
from doing whatever he wishes according to his wisdom and
conscience.
Liberty
is often termed an "inalienable right." It
is inalienable (incapable
of being surrendered or lost) only to a hermit while he remains
a hermit. For all who live in society, liberty is alienable and
may be lost. And that is precisely the reason for concern about
it.
Although liberty is under threat in all human
relationships, it need not be surrendered because of these
relationships.
Liberty
need not
be lost, as is frequently asserted, in proportion as these
relationships are increased. In fact, the preservation of
liberty is a requisite to continued social development and to an
advancing civilization.
A relationship between persons must be either
voluntary or involuntary.
Liberty
remains
inviolate in any voluntary relationship because, being
voluntary, the act is in accordance with the wishes of the
participants -which is liberty. Thus it is only the involuntary
relationships wherein liberty is violated.
The nature of voluntary relationships can be
illustrated by two men who agree to exchange labor in the
building of their houses. The exchange is arranged because of
the mutual advantage that is expected. One of them may be the
better carpenter and the other the better mason. They can build
their houses quicker and better by each working at his specialty
on both houses. This is the principle of "division of labor," by
which civilization has been able to advance and the level of
living to be raised. Each person concentrates on his specialty,
and trades any excess over his own wants for the excesses of
other things offered by other specialists all voluntarily
exchanged in free markets. It is the same principle that makes
possible a symphony
instead of solos.
If one makes another person his slave and compels
him to labor on his house, it is an involuntary act; the liberty
of the person enslaved has been violated.
All voluntary
relationships rest on the principle of cooperation, either
consciously or unconsciously. They rest on the spirit of
cooperation, that is, rather than on any special form of
"cooperation" as defined in some law. The cooperative feature is
evidenced by the fact that both sides of a deal enter into it
willingly, because each of them expects it to be to his
advantage. Each side, to be sure, enters the deal because of a
selfish interest; he enters it for his own personal gain. But
the same motive applies to the other side too. By viewing both
sides, the cooperative aspect of mutual advantage is revealed in
every instance of a voluntary human relationship. Lacking the
prospect of mutual advantage, the event would not have occurred
voluntarily.
It is not necessary, therefore, that liberty be
lost as society becomes more and more involved. Such an
assertion, by the devout hermit or by one bent on the
destruction of liberty, is in error. The development of society
does, however, involve a threat to liberty. And any developing
society which ignores the threat and fails to meet it, or which
falls victim to the fatalistic view that a loss of liberty is
inevitable under advancing civilization, will itself fail and
fall.
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CHAPTER TWO
FORMS OF
LIBERTY
IN SPEAKING OF
LIBERTY,
relationships between
persons are sometimes classified into types.
One such attempt was the listing of the "four
freedoms" freedom of speech, of worship, from want and from fear
-which seems deficient since all these freedoms are enjoyed by
an inmate of a
federal penitentiary. Anyone who considers these freedoms to be
complete in their coverage, and who is distressed because he
does not now enjoy full freedom, can easily acquire "freedom"
for the rest of his life by committing a crime leading to a life
sentence in a penitentiary.
There have been other attempts to
list the types of liberty. There could be any number of
listings, because any classification must of necessity be
arbitrary. It may be useful, however, to consider three distinct
areas of liberty:
1. Beliefs thoughts, ideas, faiths
2.
Physical
relationships
3.
Economic
affairs
The nature of the
first and second beliefs and actions includes such commonplace
items as one's belief about the shape of the earth or the
existence of a Deity, and the association of courtship or of a
fishing trip.
Economic affairs
are those of production, exchange and use of goods and services,
which are involved in human activity because they are both
desired and scarce enough not to be free potatoes, houses, opera
and all the others.
Confusion among
the three areas of liberty may result from their being joined,
as they commonly are in daily affairs. All three are involved,
for instance, when two workmen discuss religion while operating
at the ends of a crosscut saw, or when a man pays alimony for
having beaten his wife after she had expressed her opinion of
him.
The three aspects will be
discussed separately, or unscrambled, as an aid to understanding
the elements of the problem of liberty.
A BELIEF
is a purely personal matter,
always inalienable so far as liberty is concerned. It is not a
thing exposed in the same manner as a physical act or an
economic act. One person cannot hold a belief for another, as he
can hold the other's hand or his horse. Nor can a belief be
bought and sold like wheat.
Such a concept of
beliefs may be difficult to grasp, because beliefs are commonly
confused with the overt evidences of belief. The distinction is
important, however, in gaining a clear concept of the problem of
liberty as it relates to matters of beliefs, such as thoughts,
ideas and faiths.
A
belief is only in a person's mind. He may choose to reveal his
belief to others, by speaking it or writing it. When he does so,
the thing revealed is an overt expression of belief instead of
being the belief itself. One may, in fact, proclaim a belief
that is the direct opposite of the belief lie truly holds, if he
wishes to mislead his listener.
The difference between a belief and the
expression of a belief may be illustrated by events in the life
of
Columbus
. He
believed the earth to be round, but that belief was independent
of its being either expressed to anyone or indicated by any
action. He expressed the belief to Queen Isabella in the hope of
gaining financial help for his expedition to the
Indies
, and also by the
act of setting sail. He might have falsified his belief, to
avoid scorn or persecution, by declaring that he believed the
earth to be flat while continuing to believe it to be round.
Communism offers
another illustration. It is said to embrace falsehood as a
proper weapon for purposes of concealment and defense. Laws and
regulations aimed at it by its enemies must depend solely on
evidences of belief that fall within the area of possible
falsehood. How can a sincere denial of membership in the
communist party or of devotion to that cause, be distinguished
from a false one?
Expressions of belief arc worth no more than the
integrity of the person, and integrity is not to be judged by
mere expressions of one's belief or by any claims of integrity.
The best evidence of belief is the nature of one's action. When
Columbus
set sail,
he was offering worthy evidence of his actual beliefs. When a
person opposes measures which give vehicle to the points in the
Communist Manifesto, that is worthy evidence of his beliefs.
Liberty
is not in danger
so far as a person's belief is concerned, because in this
respect he is of necessity a hermit and unavoidably free. He is
at liberty to continue to believe as he will, in spite of all
the dictators in the world and in spite of all the power they
can grasp. The dictator may take a person's land, his cattle,
his family, his life; but he can never grab a person's belief,
because it lacks a handle for grabbing.
It is the
expressions of belief, not the beliefs themselves, that are
threatened with loss of liberty. The danger is in connection
with those devices by which one reveals his beliefs to others,
such as printing and distributing evidences of them through the
mails, using the radio, or meeting with others in a church for
purposes of overt expressions of religious belief. These are the
things attacked by those who would destroy liberty.
Tools for the
expression of beliefs are mainly economic matters. If they are
not directly economic matters, they at least employ economic
devices for carrying out the exchange of information or for the
demonstration of beliefs. The newspaper or the radio, or some
land and a building where a meeting is to be held, all involve
physical acts or economic considerations. The problem of liberty
arises only in these spheres.
"Thought control" is then an impossibility, in
any direct sense, because thought is a personal process with no
handle for direct control. Possibilities of control are
restricted to the devices for influencing thought, which are
usually economic matters. Devices for control include
prohibiting free exchange of ideas, or the mechanisms for
censoring factual information and the expression of ideas.
Hitler burned the books which seemed to him to interfere with
the expansion of his power. In
Russia
there has been censorship of the Mendelian ideas of inherited
traits. Unknown to most of the youth of
Europe
, due to censorship and neglect, are the concepts of a liberal
society; these ideas are to them unknown rather than rejected,
because one cannot reject an idea without knowing what it is. So
it is only the range of choice that may be
narrowed by the use of censorship.
"Freedom of the
press" relates to the several means of transmitting ideas, which
are mainly economic means. The issue of freedom of the press is
fought over the right of a person to own and operate a
newspaper, or to use newsprint, or in some other way to use
economic goods and services in the transmitting of ideas to
others.
"Freedom of
speech" relates to the expressing of ideas to others rather than
the having of ideas. As a problem of liberty, it is closely akin
to the right of assembly, where the censorship of speech takes
the form of trying to break up assemblages of persons who would
listen to a speaker. It is impossible to prevent these persons
from thinking and believing what they will, but it is possible
to control the use of places where the meetings might be held.
"Religious
liberty" is ever secure. Since one's religious beliefs are a
personal matter, the threat to liberty is restricted to the
overt manifestations of religion the church property where a
meeting is to be held, the right to print and distribute
literature, or the right to hire a specialist to teach matters
of religious belief.
"Political
liberty" is a problem only in connection with the expressing of
political beliefs, rather than the having of these beliefs. It
has to do with the usage of the political machine, and with the
selection of those who will operate it. This political machine,
however, operates mainly in matters of economics, and in that
sense has to do with economic liberty rather than with liberty
of beliefs. Votes buy things, and votes are bought.
Perhaps nowhere is the cause of
liberty so much maligned as over these issues having to do with
belief and ideas. One is prone to forget the personal nature of
beliefs, with the result that other liberties are marauded in
the futile effort to control something uncontrollable. We are
prone to attack the professed beliefs of others with the weapon
of power rather than reason. This complex problem of liberty as
it relates to differences of opinion is, however, something
aside from the main line of this discussion.
To WHATEVER EXTENT
a person prevents the freedom of
action of another, the liberty of that other person has suffered
encroachment. Two persons may desire to stand in the same place
at the same time. This is a physical impossibility, and so long
as both persist in their desires, the liberty of one or the
other must suffer a loss. How can such problems be solved? Is
there any way to preserve liberty in situations like that of two
persons who may desire to stand in the same place at the same
time, or who may bump into each other in other ways?
Physical
relationships take many forms, among them being the
outstandingly important one of "association." The hermit avoids
the problem by associating with no one. But all except the
hermit must face the problem of choice in association.
The only way to be
totally "non-discriminating" in association with persons would
be to share one's time and love equally among all persons on
earth. As far as the time element of this plan is concerned, an
average lifetime would allow a little less than one-half second
of one's time for each other person.
Probably nobody
wants to be a hermit. And total non-discrimination is a
technical impossibility, even if one should desire to try it. So
the problem of selection of associates is unavoidable; the
question then becomes one of who shall have the rights of
selection.
The selection of
associates can be either by the person himself or for him by
someone else. There is no other alternative.
Selection of associates by others can be
illustrated by many commonplace events. A
person in prison has his
associates selected for him, for the duration of his stay. One
who is forced to become a cog in a military machine, or who is
assigned to civil tasks by a government that controls the labor
force and employment, has lost his liberty in that realm of
association. Parental or political selection of a spouse
violates liberty in association, in a most important part of a
person's life. Sometimes, for purposes of personal prestige or
for other personal reasons, one may bring pressure to bear upon
his spouse to join a club or a parent may make little Susie go
to a party where the children in attendance are not to her
liking. All these are instances of trespass on liberty in the
matter of association.
Every voluntary
association is a two-way deal, willingly accepted by both
parties in the same manner as the free exchange of goods in the
market place. The insistence of one person that another
associate with him against the other's wishes is a violation of
the other's liberty, in the same manner as forcing one to sell
at a given price in the market place violates his liberty in
that realm. In some of its more intimate forms, violating
liberty of association is judged to be a criminal offense; but
in other realms one is forced by law to violate his preferences
as defined under liberty and freedom of choice he is legally
forced to "discriminate."
Under liberty, the
right to select associates is sacred. One person may prefer to
concentrate his association largely on one or a few other
persons; another may prefer to scatter his association widely.
There is no one "right" way to do it.
A person is not
able to tell exactly why he selects certain persons as
associates rather than others. If he cannot tell for himself, he
is certainly unqualified to pass judgments for others. No person
can have the insight into the preferences and wishes of another
sufficient to justify his trying to manage these affairs for
another. A parent probably knows his own child as well as one
person can know another, yet attempts to judge the child's
preferences in association usually end in utter failure.
Selection of
associates is, to be sure, "discrimination." But if that right
under liberty is to be judged improper or illegal, we shall have
to make some drastic changes in our concepts about the propriety
of monogamy, about the wisdom of several of the Commandments,
and about other important concepts of morals and justice in
human society.
It is often
falsely assumed that liberty in the choice of associates means
irresponsibility in those relationships. But legal and non-legal
contractual obligations, founded on free choice in the origin of
the arrangement, can be made binding under liberty; forms with
which we are familiar include marriage and employer employee
relationships. Contracts are not a violation of the tenets of
liberty, but liberty requires that there be freedom of choice by
the parties to the deal regarding the terms of the contract.
The only possible way to preserve liberty in
physical relationships is to have acceptance of rules of the
game such that situations of possible overlapping or conflicting
desires are resolved in advance. What is needed is to have
"rules for a ball game," such as those discussed in later
sections, accepted by the players in advance. Acceptance of
necessary and workable rules of the game prevents it from
developing into mayhem. There is no other way by which the game
of human relationships can be played without destroying the
liberty of someone.
Surrender, forced
upon one by the other, is not a solution consistent with
liberty. It may serve as a truce during conflict, but that is
all.
Forced arbitration, for the same reason, is not
to be confused with a voluntary solution that is in harmony with
liberty.
Top of Page
THE PROBLEM
of economic liberty touches every
exchange of goods and services, the ownership of property, and
every contractual arrangement involving these "economic"
affairs, because human relationships are involved in all of
them.
Economic liberty
is absent to whatever extent a person is prohibited from using
his talents and his property to produce and sell (or exchange)
anything he desires, at whatever price is agreeable to him and
to the buyer. If he is prohibited from doing this, by another
person or by any combination of persons who are not direct
parties to the deal, his liberty is thereby transgressed. And
further, it makes no difference, so far as liberty is concerned,
under what name the act of prohibition is paraded; or whether it
is by a corporation, a cooperative, a labor union, a trade
union, the government, or what not.
Economic goods and
services come into being as a result of the physical and mental
acts of persons. Property and income have been called, quite
appropriately, "the economic extensions of the person." What has
been said about liberty in physicaI relationships, therefore,
applies also to all economic affairs.
Economic affairs
absorb a large part of all human thought and action, either
directly or indirectly. If one considers carefully his every
thought and action for a day, he will see that economics touches
nearly every part. Although the most highly-prized things of
life may be those beyond the economic pale love, beauty,
religious faith the economic things of life tie in with most of
these or are used in their behalf. Love may be expressed by
gifts that are bought; intellectual enjoyment is aided by books;
the trip to a religious meeting may be by auto or by train, to a
meeting hall located on land owned by someone.
A high level of economic liberty is thus a
requisite to all other liberties. Historical evidence shows that
economic slaves enjoy none of these liberties, except as their
masters may choose to allow a temporary slackening of their
chains. The slave in old
Rome
, who is
reported to have said to Caesar that he never really knew
freedom until he became Caesar's slave, should have been the
court jester; he exhibited a rare ability to compound
foolishness!
A
dictator who has full economic
control over his subjects has in his hands the tools by which to
deny them all other forms of alienable liberty, leaving them no
recourse except rebellion. The dictator can use economic means
to deny any person a place to stand and speak his mind, and even
a place to sit and think, merely by having control of all the
land.
Thoreau, who attempted withdrawal from society in
his pursuit of liberty, was caught and jailed for refusing to
pay his taxes a small handle with great powers over liberty.
Jan Masaryk, the Czechoslovakian patriot, was
called a great defender of freedom. But he said:
". . .
Czechoslovakia must work out the synthesis between Russian
socialism and Western liberty
. . .
I'll go
all the way with Russia all the way up to one point. Socialistic
economics okay. But if anyone tries to take away our freedom
-freedom to think and say what you believe the right to your own
thoughts, your own soul.
. .
."
That was early in 1946. On
March 10,1948
, after
living for a time under the socialistic economics he had okayed,
Masaryk plunged to his death from his office window in
Prague
. We may
never know what induced him to suicide, but it may well have
been that he came to realize the emptiness of his hope the hope
that persons can live in liberty after they have given up
economic liberty.
It may be incorrect to say that
economic liberty is the only form of liberty, but it seems
correct to say that economic liberty pervades the entire of
liberty and is an absolute requisite to liberty in general.
CHAPTER THREE
THE FOUNDATION OF ECONOMIC
LIBERTY
THE RIGHT OF
A
PERSON to the
product of his own labor is the foundation of economic liberty.
The requirements of liberty in the economic realm can be met in
no other way.
The question at
issue is how to distinguish between what is mine and what is
thine. The hermit is not concerned about this matter, which
becomes a problem only when two or more persons have
relationships with one another.
There are three
ways to handle this problem:
1.
Each person may have whatever he can grab.
2.
Some person other than the one who
produces the goods and services may decide who shall have the
right of possession or use.
3.
Each person may be allowed to have
whatever he produces. These three methods cover all the
possibilities; there are no others.
The first of these
plans for distinguishing between mine and thine is the law of
the jungle. It rests on the concept that might makes right; that
the right of possession goes along with the strength and the
power to take something from another. This method makes
ownership hazardous and highly unstable. Under such a system,
the one who produces anything faces the immediate danger that it
will be taken from him against his will. It may then be stolen
from the thief, and stolen again from the second thief again and
again until it has been consumed. An economy conducted in this
manner will remain primitive, or will return to the primitive
state, living largely on the "natural products" of the forests
and the streams.
The law of the jungle discourages production and
encourages consumption of even the little that is available;
there is every urge to squander, and little or no incentive to
thrift. He who would be enterprising, and who would create and
use the tools of progress, is discouraged from doing so because
of the likelihood that they will be taken from him by robbers.
Wolves live in this manner; members of the pack subsist on what
they can grab from the carcass of a sheep that has been pillaged
from the farmer who reared it. An economy of this design will
never build a
Detroit
, or a
Radio
City
, or a great
institution of research and learning. And it violates the tenets
of liberty, for reasons which will be discussed later.
The second method of determining the rights of
possession is the one on which every form of authoritarian
society is founded, no matter what its name. According to this
concept, someone other than the producer is empowered to decree
who shall have whatever is produced. The means by which this
person has gained this power, and the claims of "justice" which
he attaches to his decrees, are not relevant at this point in
the discussion. Sufficient for present purposes is the
observation that he is empowered to confiscate that which others
have produced, against the wishes of the producers, and to do
with it as he chooses. It gives to the dictator, and to no one
else, the right of spoliation; so it must be rejected as the
design for a society wherein widespread liberty is to abound.
The only method consistent
with liberty is the one that distinguishes between mine and
thine according to the rule that the producer shall have the
right to the product of his own labor. This foundation of
economic liberty is important above all other considerations. By
this concept, the right of ownership arises simultaneously with
the production of anything; and ownership resides there until
the producer-owner chooses to consume the product or to transfer
its ownership to another person through exchange, gift or
inheritance. The right to produce a thing thereby becomes the
right to own it; and to deny one right is, in effect, to deny
both. This concept specifies that no part of production shall
properly belong to a thief, or to a slave master or to a ruler
by whatever title.
Each of the first two concepts for distinguishing
between mine and thine accepts the right of a non-producer to
take from the producer the product of his labor; to that extent
they are alike. The difference lies in whether the taking is to
be a private matter or a
"public" matter. Some claim that
one is for selfish purposes and that the other is for unselfish
purposes; that the thief takes things for his own consumption or
use, whereas the dictator takes them in order to help his
subjects. Capone is supposed to typify the first and Stalin the
second. But all these distinctions are none too clear, and none
too convincing as to any important difference. Robin Hood was
supposed to have helped poor people with the fruits of his
plunder; to which group should he belong? Some thieves are famed
for their contributions to "worthy causes"; to which group
should they belong? Many or most of the world's dictators and
leading politicians have thickly feathered their own private
nests with the proceeds of their public plunder; to which group
should they belong? The one clear conclusion is that, from the
viewpoint of the producer, his product has been taken from him
against his wishes in both instances alike.
Those who are devoted to the second, or
authoritarian, concept often confuse the first and third
methods. They claim that both follow the law of the jungle. They
fail to note the important distinction that the third method
gives the person the right to the product of his own labor only,
whereas the first gives him the right to grab that of his
neighbor. In failing to note this most important distinction,
and in rejecting both, these persons then advocate the only
remaining alternative the one which gives to a third party the
right to take the product from both the producer and the robber.
It is as though a widening of the range of take, so as to
include the producer as well as the thief, somehow turns a
vice into a virtue.
The method
consistent with liberty, which gives a person the right to the
product of his own labor that and no more gives everyone the
same right so that no person is granted a license to trespass on
the rights of others. It should be perfectly clear that if all
persons are to have the right to the product of their own labor,
they cannot in addition have claim to any of the product of
another's labor; otherwise the rights of everyone will have been
violated. There is no way to make the whole equal more than its
parts. Geographic property rights, similarly, are destroyed
whenever each person is allowed to move his legal boundary
wherever he may choose.
The three concepts by which to
distinguish between mine and thine have been defined in their
pure forms, as they would operate wherever they are followed
clearly, logically and without the confusion of dilution.
Despite the current popularity of the "mixed economy" as a
design for society, each person must accept as a principle of
justice one or another of these three designs. In advocating and
supporting another, either as part of a mixture or in pure form,
he thereby surrenders his principle and engages in what his
principles tell him will be economic self-destruction.
ANYTHING
PRODUCED
is property, and the
question of the right to own property is automatically a part of
the question of rights to whatever is produced.
The terms
"immediate consumption" and "saving" are commonly used in
contrast with one another. Their difference is one of time only,
not of type. That which is kept a little longer than the other
is said to have been "saved." The saving may be kept in kind, as
wheat stored for winter; it may be sold, and the cash saved in a
sock or in a bank or by putting it into some form of
"investment" such as a farm or some other business.
The right of
choice as to what is to be done with the product of one's labor
is the whole purpose of having the right to it in the first
place. If one should have the right to the product of his own
labor the foundation of economic liberty it follows that he
should have the right to do with it as he pleases; he may eat it
now or later; he may keep it as an aid to further production; he
may give it to others, to family, friends or organizations, now
or later. To say that he shall be denied this full range of
choice is to deny the essence of his basic right to the product
of his own labor.
Permitting each
person to take whatever he can grab is a complete denial of
rights to private property. What the robber is thereby entitled
to possess is the property of the one robbed.
The authoritarian concept likewise denies the
right to private property. Its violation of liberty is commonly
camouflaged by enticing labels. It is claimed under this plan
that "everything shall be owned by everyone," with "ownership in
common." In reality, the dictator alone holds the right of
ownership, because he alone can do with it as he wishes. The
corollary of the right of ownership is the right of
disownership. If a private citizen is prohibited from selling or
consuming his share of what is "owned in common," it is proof of
the fact that he did not really have the rights of ownership in
the first place.
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Little progress
could ever have occurred anywhere in the world without the right
of a person to own private property. And continued progress
requires full protection of this right.
Apparently
nine-tenths or more of the economic welfare in the more
prosperous nations of the world results from the use of the
accumulated tools of production rather than from human effort
unaided by these tools. The arts and other non-economic forms of
progress, in turn, depend on a degree of economic welfare that
will allow these products of leisure to be developed without
imposing starvation on one's self and his family.
The tools that are
necessary for economic prosperity and for "cultural progress"
will not be accumulated except as the person who saves them is
assured of continuing rights to their possession, as a
storehouse for his savings. Attempts of the past to "force"
persons to save under some plan by which rights of ownership
belong solely to the master or to the one that governs the
people have met an early failure. Saving ends, and past savings
are consumed in an attempt to prevent a decline in the level of
living.
Persons save for themselves and for those they
love and respect, not for others neither known nor respected as
worthy. They do not save for others unknown and for uses
unknown, beyond their control. When private property is in
constant danger of being taken from the one who has saved it, he
will "eat today's production today" rather than save. If
the marauding is prevalent
enough, he will not even find it feasible to save the seed for
next year's planting of food crops; and once the incentive to
save is that far gone, civilization will have reverted back to
the hunter society of primitive man.
It would seem,
then, that the claim of one renowned person who said: "Only
well-fed people can be free," could more accurately be stated in
reverse: "Only free people can be well-fed."
Economic
liberty prevails only if the individual person is permitted to
save in the form of private property, and to use it as he sees
fit. The famous philosopher Hume believed the right of private
ownership of property to be the basis of the modern concept of
justice in morals.
His belief deserves careful consideration.
Satisfying one's
wants with the least possible effort is the basic economic urge;
it is the economic equivalent of the geometric concept that a
straight line is the shortest distance between two points.
If this basic urge
is unrestrained by morals, and by the foresight of consequences
flowing from various methods of satisfying one's immediate
wants, the course of least effort is likely to seem to be that
of stealing the food and things from one's neighbor. Animals,
lacking these moral and intellectual restraints, act in that
manner and live by marauding. Man's higher order of intelligence
and foresight has codified into written and unwritten law a
restraint from short-sighted fulfillment of his wants by
marauding. He has established privateness of property, and
stabilization of the rights of its possession. Under the
intellectual and moral code of advanced forms of human society,
man acts differently from these "lower animals"; and he can
continue to live in an advancing society only so long as that
code of conduct is not undermined and allowed to fall.
Of all the essentials for the establishment of an
advancing human society, the right to private property, as a
moral concept, seems fundamental. Socialism means:
"A
state or a system in
which there is no private property." Yet advocates of socialism
claim for it the virtue of its being a system of society
advanced beyond that of liberalism and rights to private
property. How could socialism be an advanced form, when it
embraces a concept that would have precluded the advancement of
civilization?
The only
advancement to be claimed for socialism is its advancement in
the sense of time because, due to its inability to generate any
accumulation of the tools required for an advanced society, it
must subsist on the confiscation of what has already been
produced under some other plan; it has to parasitize something.
The confiscation of private property is civilization in retreat.
Is there any
aspect of what may properly be called human justice that does
not rest in one way or another, as Hume said, on the concept of
rights to private property? Rights to private property are human
rights; it is not a question of "human rights or property
rights" as is frequently asserted. In the analysis thus far it
has been concluded:
1.
That liberty is a human right, unlimited except as it is
necessary to restrain one person from trespassing on the liberty
of another (as will be discussed in later chapters).
2.
That economic liberty is the safeguard of other forms of
liberty, and apparently essential to their preservation.
3.
That the right to the product of
one's labor is the foundation of economic liberty.
4. That the right to private ownership of
property follows from the right to the product of one's labor,
because it
is
the inseparable "time aspect" of
that right.
Thus, by
successive steps, there is established a direct connection
between property rights and human rights. The connection is one
of harmony rather than of conflict. And one who would assert
them to be in opposition to one another, and who speaks of
"human rights or property rights," must identify the point in
this series of deductions where he would disagree.
Does he believe that liberty is inhuman rather
than human, as a matter of rights; that a demonstration of
"human rights" is to be found in the slave auctions of early
days, or in the slave camps of modern
Russia
?
If not, does he believe that an economic slave is
likely to be allowed
to enjoy the other forms of liberty, and that it is those other
forms that comprise the "human rights"?
If not, does he believe that economic liberty
means prohibiting a person from having the product of his own
labor?
If not, does he
believe that a person can have the right to the product of his
labor while being denied the right to keep any of it even for an
instant?
If he believes
none of these, he must believe that rights to private property
are inseparably entwined with human rights.
Dwight D.
Eisenhower, on the occasion of his
induction as President of Columbia University, listed the
private ownership of property as one of four "cherished rights"
of persons. He said further that these rights are mutually
dependent for their existence, without which human rights would
soon disappear.
Any Bill of Human Rights that
excludes the right to private property is doomed to futility and
failure.
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CHAPTER FOUR
LIBERTY
AND CHARITY
IT IS NEITHER POSSIBLE
nor feasible to discuss here all
the many accusations that may be directed at the author’s
definition of liberty, and at the foundation of economic liberty
as it has been identified. But one accusation above all others
seems to have wide appeal, and deserves some attention in even
this brief treatment of the subject of liberty; it is the charge
that liberty means selfishness and a lack of the spirit of
charity.
Is
liberty, as defined, in conflict with charity? Is it proper to
accuse one who asserts his right to the product of his own
labor, together with rights to private property, of being
uncharitable and totally self-seeking? Those who hold the
affirmative view, in answer to these questions, argue that
"liberty" should include the right of one person to take from
another the product of his labor for purposes of "charity."
The right to the
product of one's own labor, and the associated right to keep it
and to do with is as one may choose, is not in conflict with
compassion and charity. Leaving these matters to voluntary
action, rather than to apply compulsion, is in harmony rather
than in conflict with Christian ethics. The distinction between
the two ideas is this: assistance given voluntarily and
anonymously from the product of one's own labor, or from his
property that has been saved, is truly charity; that taken from
another by force, on the other hand, is not charity at all, in
spite of its use for avowed "charitable purposes." The virtue of
compassion and charity cannot be sired by the vice of thievery.
"Political
charity" violates the essentials of charity in more ways than
one. It is not anonymous; on the contrary, there is boasting
about the process by the politician both in the form of campaign
promises yet unfilled as well as by reminders during the term of
office; this is intended to insure that the receiver of these
fruits of "charity" is kept mindful of an enduring obligation to
the political agent. And the source of the giving is not from
the pocket of the political giver himself, who has already
violated the requirement of anonymity for purposes of personal
gain; the wherewithal is taken by force from the pockets of
others. And some of the amount collected is deducted for "costs
of administering" by the one who claims personal virtue in the
process. All told, the process of "political charity" is about
as complete a violation of the requisites of charity as can be
conceived.
Those who contend
that the rights of liberty are in conflict with charity falsely
assume that persons generally have a total disregard for the
welfare of others, and that widespread starvation would result
from liberty as thus defined. Evidence to the contrary is that
the infant and the helpless members of the family, and other
needy persons, do not ordinarily starve in a society where these
rights prevail. The right to have income and private property
means the right to control its disposition and use; it does not
mean that the person himself must consume it all himself.
A matter deserving of thought, but which will be
little more than posed as a question in this discussion, is that
of the effect on compassion when welfare by force is attempted
as a substitute
for charity; when aid is no
longer that of voluntary and anonymous donations from the
product of one's labor, for specific and known purposes.
Compassion is a purely
personal thing. The body politic cannot have compassion. One
cannot delegate compassion to a hired agent. Nor is compassion
so cheap a virtue as to be practiced by the mere distributing of
grants of aid taken from the pockets of others, rather than from
one's own pocket or from his own effort in production. A charity
worker may be a kindly and lovable soul, but as far as
compassion is concerned, he is only an employed person buying
groceries and things for certain persons by using other people's
money, in a manner like that of the housemaid who goes shopping
for her employer.
Under a scheme of affairs where a political body
takes full responsibility in the caring for the victims of
disaster, it is doubtful if compassion can long endure. When a
taxpayer is forced to contribute to "charity" in spite of his
judgment of need, he will increasingly shun the sense of
responsibility which is requisite to a spirit of compassion; he
will lose compassion as he more and more accepts the viewpoint:
"That is the government's business!" Once compassion is lost on
a wholesale basis in a nation, how is it ever to be regained?
And once it is gone, what will then happen to the attitude of
responsibility for supporting the churches and all other similar
agencies which depend on voluntary support?
Advocacy of these rights of
liberty is sometimes called "selfishness." "Self," if used in
this sense, means the entire circle of the person's family,
friends, relatives, organizations anything which this person
considers worthy of help from his income or savings.
If "selfishness" is to be
charged against the one who demands the right to that which he
has produced, selfishness of a far less virtuous order should
also be charged against any non-producer who takes the income
and wealth from another against his will.
If control of the disposition and use of income
and wealth is to be called "selfishness," then it is unavoidable
that someone act selfishly in the handling of everything
produced. The question then becomes: Who should have the right
to be selfish, the one who produced it
or some other person? Is it
selfishness to control the disposition of that which you have
produced, but unselfish to control the disposition of that which
you have taken from those who produced it?
For this argument
to be accepted, one would have to hold that non-producers are
better qualified than producers to judge the wise use of what is
produced. He would have to hold that non-producers are somehow
more virtuous than producers; that they have superior wisdom and
conscience. He would have to hold that the taking away from the
producer by force will not discourage him from production, since
it is not possible to he charitable with something not produced.
The late Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that someone must exercise
command of the disposition of goods and services that have been
produced, and that he knew of no way of finding the fit man so
good as the fact of winning it in the competition of the market.
If the members of the human race be so
self-centered that they are judged to be unqualified to handle
the use of what they have labored to produce, the advocates of
"charity" by force whether operated by a thief or by a dictator
must face an interesting question. How will it be possible to
administer the program? Who can be found to operate a program of
"wise charity," if that be true? If one could be found, by what
respectable means could he be expected to gain his throne of
power over all those supposedly self-centered dregs of humanity?
Anyone who would pursue this evasive hope should read Professor
F. A. Hayek's brilliant chapter, "Why the Worst Get on Top," in
his book The Road to Serfdom. They should also review Lord
Acton's famous dictum about the corrupting influence of power.
And finally, they should review carefully their starting
assumption that justice and charity and selflessness can best be
attained through giving legal or moral sanction to the taking by
one person of the product of another's labor by force. Whence
comes the alleged superiority in the morals and wisdom of the
taker is it the result of his having engaged in the taking, or
in gaining power over ofhers, or from where? More reasonable is
the assumption that proficiency in these respects is found in a
person lacking in morals and wisdom.
Liberty
is not in conflict with charity. More accurately,
charity is possible and can reach large proportions only under
liberty; and under liberty, "need" for it would probably be
greatly reduced.
CHAPTER FIVE
RULES O F CONDUCT IN A LIBERAL SOCIETY
LIBERTY
HAS BEEN DEF
