On Freedom and Free Enterprise Essays in Honor of Ludwig Von Mises

ON FREEDOM AND
FREE ENTERPRISE
ESSAYS IN HONOR OF LUDWIG VON MISES
PRESENTED ON THE OCCASION OF
THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS DOCTORATE
FEBRUARY 20, 1956
Ed-itor
MARY SENNHOLZ
CONTRIBUTORS
C. ANTONI, Italy L. M. LACHMANN, South Africa
FAUSTINO BALLVE, Mexico F. MACHLUP, U.S.A.
Loms BAUDIN, France WILLIAM H. PETERSON, U.S.A.
PERCY L. GREAVES, }R., U.S.A. W. E. RAPPARD, Switzerland
F. A. HARPER, U.S.A. LEONARD E. READ, U.S.A.
F. A. HAYEK, U.S.A. W. RoPKE, Switzerland
HENRY HAZLITT, U.S.A. MuRRAY N. RoTHBARD, U.S.A.
W. H. HuTT, South Africa J. RuEFF, France
BERTRAND DE JouvENEL, France HANS F. SENNHOLZ, U.S.A.
LOUIS M. SPADARO, U.S.A.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute
Auburn, Alabama
2008
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Table o/ Contents
PAGE
Dedication-Ludwig von Mises ix
Notes on the Contributors 1
PART ONE Grato Animo Beneficiique M emores 11
CHAPTER
I The Intransigence of Ludwig von Mises 13
by Jacques Rueff
II On Reading von Mises 17
by William E. Rappard
III Two of Ludwig von Mises Most Important Works 34
by Henry Hazlitt
PART Two On the Nature of Man and Government 39
IV Order vs. Organization 41
by Bertrand de J ouvenel
V On Democracy 52
by Hans F. Sennholz
VI The Road to Totalitarianism 81
by Henry Hazlitt
VII The Greatest Economic Charity 94
by F. A. Harper
PART THREE On Scientific Method 109
VIII The Place of Economics Among the Sciences 111
by Wilhelm Ropke
v
vi TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
IX On Methodology in Economics 128
by Faustino Ballve
X Some Considerations on Economic Laws 135
by Carlo Antoni
XI Averages and Aggregates in Economics 140
by Louis M. Spadaro
XII The Inferiority Complex of the Social Sciences 161
by Fritz Machlup
PART FoUR The EcDfWmics of Free Enterprise 173
XIII The Market Economy and the Distribution of Wealth 175
by L. M. Lachmann
XIV Unearned Riches 188
by Leonard E. Read
XV The Yield from Money Held 196
by W. H. Hutt
XVI The Accelerator and Say's Law 217
by William H. Peterson
XVII Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Eco-
nomics-by Murray N. Rothbard 224
PART FIVE The Hampered Market EcDfWmy 263
XVIII Progressive Taxation Reconsidered
by F. A. Hayek
265
XIX Is Further Intervention a Cure for Prior Intervention? 285
by Percy L. Greaves, Jr.
PART SIX On Socialism
XX French Socialism
by Louis Baudin
Index
309
311
321
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge with gratitude the generous devo-
tion of time and effort that each of the contributors has given to
this volume. Their response and cooperation have made this work
possible. I am grateful to my husband for his invaluable assistance
in the preparation of the manuscript. Thanks is also due to Miss
Vernelia Crawford for her contribution of the index.
Professor Ropke' s paper on "The Place of Economics Among the
Sciences" originally appeared in the July 1953 issue of Studium
Generale, Springer, Berlin, Gottingen, Heidelberg. Mr. Hazlitt's
review of Dr. von Mises' book on Socialism first appeared in The
New York Times on January 9, 1938, and his review of Human Ac-
tion in Newsweek on September 19, 1949. I would like to thank
their editors and publishers for the permission to reprint these pa-
pers.
M.S.
Ludwig von Mises
If Carl Menger may be called the father of the Austrian School
of economic thought, Ludwig von Mises is his most famous de-
scendant. Since the beginning of the first decade of this century, it
is he who has combined and greatly developed the economic teach-
ing of Menger, Bohm-Bawerk, and Wieser. But while his great
predecessors lived and wrote at a time in which the growing forces
of socialism and interventionism were just gathering to assault the
capitalist social and economic order, Ludwig von Mises witnessed
their offensives and triumphs. Surrounded by hostile forces and
often alone, he refused to surrender. With his great courage and
power of reasoning he counterattacked, always bearing the brunt
of the battle. For almost half a century he has been the rallying-
point for the forces of freedom and free enterprise, and for the cou-
rageous remnants of liberalism.
Ludwig von Mises was born on September 29, 1881, in Lemberg
in what was then Austria-Hungary. Together with his younger
brother Richard, who lived to become a great mathematician, he
received a thorough education. From 1892 to 1900 he attended the
.,Akademische Gymnasium" in Vienna to prepare himself for the
university. Upon graduation he studied law and economics at the
University of Vienna. On February 20, 1906, the University con-
ferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Law and Social Sciences,
or, as the traditional Latin title goes, of Both Laws, i.e., of Roman
and Canon Laws. In commemoration of this event in the life of
Ludwig von Mises some of his friends and disciples have prepared
this volume the title of which indicates his greatest concern: free-
dom and free enterprise.
After a short occupation with the administration of justice, his
increasing interest in social and economic matters induced him to
ix
X
LUDWIG VON MISES
accept the position of economic adviser of the Austrian Chamber of
Commerce. For almost thirty years he endeavored to stem the
tide of interventionism and socialism from this post, until Austria
became a part of the German Reich. And for more than two dec-
ades he taught the economics of free enterprise at the University of
Vienna until he !eft for Geneva, Switzerland, to become professor
of international economic relations at the Graduate Institute of In-
ternational Studies.
The political and economic world changed rapidly and materially
during this period. The forces of interventionism and economic
nationalism gnawed at the foundation of the Austro-Hungarian
monarchy which had united the smaller nations in Central Europe
and on the Balkan Peninsula in peaceful coexistence and coopera-
tion. Undermined and weakened by the ideology of interventionist
dissension and conflict, the Union finally collapsed on the occasion
of its military defeat in World War I. Ludwig von Mises witnessed
this grave hour of his nation as a captain of the Austrian artillery.
As early as 1912 Dr. von Mises had vigorously opposed those doc-
trines whose application was bound to destroy Austria-Hungary and
peace and prosperity in Europe. In his book on the Theorie des
Geldes und der Umlaufsmittel he had exploded the most impor-
tant economic element in the rising ideology of destruction: infla-
tionism. His inquiry into a field which his predecessors had largely
neglected drew upon it passionate attacks by the advocates of gov-
ernment spending and omnipotence. But the events during the
ensuing decades bore out the validity of his keen criticism. His
book is as revealing and significant for the student of present-day
political and economic phenomena as it was more than four decades
ago.
At the end of World War I collectivism triumphed in large parts
of Europe. Nationalism and socialism were the accepted ideologies,
and liberalism and capitalism were decried as the sources of all
vice and evil. To Ludwig von Mises these notions merely consti-
tuted "a revolt against reason" and a denial of two hundred years of
economic thought. In his two books, Nation, Staat und Wirtschaft,
which is a restatement of his liberal convictions and a devastating
analysis of collectivism, and in Die Gemeinwirtschaft, which is a
comprehensive critique of socialism, he uncompromisingly attacked
and rejected the prevailing ideologies and their disastrous applica-
tion by governments. In nearly every respect he ran counter to the
main stream of contemporary thought.
In Austria he was fighting a losing battle. In spite of his pro-
LUDWIG VON MISES xi
digious labor and relentless counterattacks, the cause of freedom
and free enterprise failed to hold its ground. In 1934 he left for
Geneva to occupy a chair at the Graduate Institute of International
Studies. In the Swiss atmosphere of peace and serenity he observed
the rise of nationalist-socialist Germany and the outbreak of World
War II. It is here that Professor von Mises wrote his magnum opus,
N ationalokonomie, Theorie des H andelns und W irtschaftens, which
is a comprehensive treatise on economics. Its revised American edi-
tion is known under the title Human Action. His disciples hail it as
"the most uncompromising and most rigorously reasoned statement
of the case for capitalism that has yet appeared." For a theoretical
treatise of its size it has attained a remarkable circulation.
In 1940 Ludwig von Mises immigrated to the United States where
he had spent some time twice before. In 1926 he was a visiting pro-
fessor sponsored by the Lama Spellman Rockefeller Foundation,
and in 1931 he attended the Congress of the International Chamber
of Commerce in Washington, D.C. Now he came to stay and make
America his country of choice. He continued to write and lecture.
His book, Omnipotent Government, is a most penetrating history
of the rise and fall of Germany during the last one hundred years.
It analyzes the collapse of German liberalism and its substitution
by the ideologies of nationalism and socialism. Since 1945 he has
been lecturing as a visiting professor of economics at the Graduate
School of Business Administration of New York University. It is
here that his young disciples gather for discussions and seek his in-
spiration and guidance which his seminars have been providing for
over forty years.
Ludwig von Mises' work and influence will be judged by the eco-
nomic historians of future generations. His contemporaries at first
were inclined to ignore or scoff at the writings of this "reactionary"
Viennese professor. There was no place, no recognition for him in
this era of "new economics." But he never hesitated to point out
that the collectivist road chosen by modern governments was bound
to lead to further economic distress and infringement upon man's
liberty. Again and again he correctly anticipated the ultimate out-
come of socialist and interventionist measures. While the large ma-
jority of people continued to clamor for more intervention to cure
prior intervention, an ever-widening circle of scholars and writers
began to recognize the cogency of his teaching. His influence on
contemporary social and economic thought has been growing con-
stantly. Today his writings are familiar to the liberal schools in
various countries. He has lectured at universities and other learned
xii
LUDWIG VON MISES
institutions in Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, France,
Italy, Mexico, and Peru. Indeed, he has been incessantly exerting
his great strength and ability that the truth be known. When the
nations once again prefer reason and freedom to instincts and bond-
age, every student cannot fail to recognize the invaluable service
Ludwig von Mises has been rendering to the social sciences.
In their New York City apartment, Dr. and Mrs. von Mises, who
has been his inseparable companion and indefatigable collaborator
since the days of Geneva, are the frequent hosts to libertarian
friends and scholars from many parts of the world. The authors of
this volume sincerely hope and wish that they will be with us and
further guide us through their wisdom and example for a long time
to come.
MARY SENNHOLZ
Professor von Mises' Most
Important Writings
Theorie des Geldes und der Umlaufsmittel, Duncker & Humboldt,
Miinchen, 1912; 1924. English edition: The Theory of Money
and Credit-translated by H. E. Batson, London, 1934; new Eng-
lish edition with essay on "Monetary Reconstruction," Yale Uni-
versity Press, New Haven, 1953. Spanish edition: Teoria del
Dinero y del Credito-translated by Antonio Riafio, M. Aguilar,
Madrid, 1936. Japanese edition by Yon co Azuma, 1949.
Nation, Staat und Wirtschaft, Manzsche Buchhandlung, Wien, 1919.
Die Gemeinwirtschaft; Untersuchungen uber den Sozialismus, Gus-
tav Fischer, Jena, 1922; 1932. English edition: Socialism; An
Economic and Sociological Analysis-translated by J. Kahane,
Jonathan Cape, London, 1936; new English edition with epi-
logue, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1951. French edition:
Le Socialisme; Etude economique et sociologique-translated by
P. Bastier, A. and F. Terrasse, Librairie de Medicis, Paris, 1938.
Liberalismiis, Gustav Fischer, Jena, 1927.
Geldwertstabilisierung und Konfunkturpolitik, Gustav Fischer, Jena,
1928. Italian edition: La stabilizzazione del potere if acquisto
della rrwneta e la politica della congiuntura-translated by Profes-
sor Jenny Griziotti Kretschmann, Torino, 1935.
Kritik des Interventionismus; Untersuchungen zur Wirtschaftpolitik
und Wirstchaftsideologie der Gegenwart, Gustav Fischer, Jena,
1929.
xiii
xiv
,
VON MISES MOST IMPORTANT WRITINGS
Die Ursachen der Wirtschaftskrise, J. C. B. Mohr, Tiibingen, 1931.
Dutch edition: De Oorzaken van de Economische Crisis, Met een
voorwoord van den vertaler Ir. A. J. Bergsma, Mouton & Co., Den
Haag, 1933.
Grundprobleme der Nationalokonomie, Gustav Fischer, Jena, 1933.
''The Disintegration of the International Division of Labor" in The
World Crisis by the Professors of the Graduate Institute of Inter-
national Studies, pages 245-274, Longmans, Green & Co., London
& New York, 1938. French edition: Les illusions du protection-
isme et de f autarcie-translated by R. Godet, Librairie de Medi-
cis, Paris, 1938.
Nationalokonomie; Theorie des Handelns und Wirtschaften, Edi-
tions Union, Geneva, 1940.
Omnipotent Government, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1944.
French edition: Le Gouvernement Omnipotent-translated by
M. de Hulster, Librairie de Medicis, Paris, 1947. Spanish edition:
Omnipotencia Guberrnzmental-translated by Pedro Elcoibar,
Editorial Hermes, Mexico.
Bureaucracy, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1944. French edi-
tion: La Bureaucratie-translated by R. Florin & P. Barbier, Li-
brairie de Medicis, Paris, 1946.
Human Action, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1949.
Planning for Freedom, Libertarian Press, South Holland, Illinois,
1952.
Notes on the Contributors
CARLO ANTONI
Born at Trieste in 1896. Disciple of Benedetto Croce. As com-
missioner for foreign cultural relations from 1944 to 1947, he
re-established cultural exchange with the United States, France, and
England. Member of the National Council and secretary of the
council for foreign affairs from 1946 to 1947. Professor at the
University of Padua and since 1946 at the University of Rome
where he teaches philosophy of history. At present professor of
history of modern philosophy and director of the Institute of Philos-
ophy. Associate founder of the Mont-Pelerin Society, member of
the Accademia N azionale dei Lincei, Einaudi Prize for philosophy,
vice-president of the Italian Association for the Liberty of Culture,
member of the Superior Council of Public Instruction.
Works: Dalla staricisnw alla sacialagia, 1940; La latta contra la
ragione, 1942; Considerazioni su Hegel e Marx, 1946; Com-
menta a Croce, 1955.
FAUSTINO BALLvE
Born in Barcelona, Spain, in 1887. He studied juridical and
economic science at the universities of Barcelona, Madrid, Berlin,
and London. From 1915 to 1936 Dr. Ballve practiced international
and corporation law in Barcelona. Member of Parliament of the
Spanish Republic. In 1939 he immigrated to France and in 1942
from there to Mexico City, where he is an attorney at law and
professor of economics at the Technological Institute. Dr. Ballve
is the foremost representative of liberalism and adherent of the
Austrian School of thought in Mexico. He is chairman of Atenea
1
2 ON FREEDOM AND FREE ENTERPRISE
Libertad and member of the board of Instituto de Investigaciones
Sociales y Econ6micas.
Among his numerous writings are: La teoria ;uridica del delito
segun Beling, Madrid, 1912; El socialismo y la guerra, Editorial
Estudio, Barcelona, 1915; Spanien als Betiitigungsfeld fiir
Fremdenhandel und -industrie, Baedeker, Berlin, 1924; "Span-
ishes Recht" in Europabuch der Rechtsanwiilte und N otare,
Salaban, Berlin, 1926; Funci6n de la tipicidad en la dogmatica
del delito, Mexico, 1951; Metodologia ]uridica, Ediciones Botas,
Mexico, 1955; Economia en diez lecci6nes, Instituto de In-
vestigaciones Soc. y Econ6micas, Mexico, 1955; La Crisis de la
Libertad, Mexico, 1956.
Loms BAUDIN
Born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1887. Doctor of Juridical Science.
Professor at the Faculte de Droit and Ecole des Hautes Etudes
Commerciales in Paris. Member of Conseil superieur de !'Educa-
tion Nationale; president of Association franc;aise de science eco-
nomique; member of Institut de France.
Officer of the French Legion of Honour. Doctor ''honoris causa"
of several foreign universities.
Among his numerous writings are: Manuel d'economie politique
in two volumes, presently in 7th edition; Precis d'histoire des
doctrines economiques, in 4th edition; Le Systeme non
reglemente des relations economiques internationales, also
translated into English; Le corporatisme, 2nd edition; L' aube
aun nouveau liberalisme; Le credit-La monnaie et la formation
des prix, 2nd edition; La monnaie, 4th edition, also translated
into Spanish and Portuguese; Le mecanisme des prix, also trans-
lated into Spanish; L'empire socialiste des Incas, 3rd edition,
translated into Spanish; La vie de FranQois Pizarre; Les Incas
du Perou, 3rd edition, translated into German; La vie quoti-
dienne au temps des derniers Incas.
PERCY L. GREAVES, JR.
Born in Brooklyn, N. Y., in 1906. Mr. Greaves received a B.S.
degree in Business Administration from Syracuse University in 1929.
He did graduate work in economics at Columbia University and
New York University. Mr. Greaves' business experience has been
largely in the advertising and public relations research field in the
NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS
United States and abroad. From 1943 to 1945 he served as associate
research director with the Republican National Committee and
from 1945 to 1946 as assistant to minority members of the Joint
Congressional Committee Investigation of the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor. In 1947 Mr. Greaves was committee expert for the
preparation and passage of the Taft-Hartley Law. Since 1948 he has
been free-lance research economist, writer, and lecturer. In 1950 he
became economic adviser to the Christian Freedom Foundation and
columnist for Christian Economics, in which capacities he is still
serving. He is a member of Phi Kappa Phi, Beta Gamma Sigma,
American Historical Association and the American Economic As-
sociation.
Works: Operation Immigration, 1947; Co-author of Perpetual War
for Perpetual Peace, 1952. Author of many articles on econom-
ics, politics, and public affairs.
F. A. HARPER
Born in Middleville, Michigan, in 1905. He received his B.S.
from Michigan State College in 1926, and his Ph.D. from Cornell
University in 1932. From 1928 until 1946 Dr. Harper taught eco-
nomics and marketing at Cornell University. From 1930 to 1931 he
served as research field agent for the Federal Farm Board, and in
1934 as business analyst for the Farm Credit Administration. He
was acting head of the Department of Agricultural Economics at
the University of Puerto Rico in 1937. Since 1946 Dr. Harper has
been associated with the Foundation for Economic Education as
economist.
Among his numerous writings are: Crisis of the Free Market,
1945; Liberty: A Path to its Recovery, 1949; Inflation, 1951;
Morals and the Welfare State, 1951; Sequoyah: Symbol of Free
Men, 1952; Gaining the Free Market, 1952. Contributor of
articles to professional journals.
F. A. VON HAYEK
Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1899. He acquired doctorates in law
and economics at the University of Vienna. After four years in the
Austrian civil service interrupted by a year of graduate study in
New York, he became, in 1926, director of the new Austrian In-
stitute of Economic Research. He also taught economics at the
University of Vienna. In 1931 he was appointed Tooke professor
of economic science and statistics at the University of London,
where he remained until1950, in which year he accepted the invita-
tion to become a professor of social and moral science at the Univer-
sity of Chicago-a position he still holds. Professor Hayek is a
British citizen and Fellow of the British Academy.
Books published: Prices and Production, 1931; Monetary Theory
and the Trade Cycle, 1933 (from the German edition of 1929);
Monetary Nationalism and International Stability, 1937; Profits,
Interest, and Investment, 1939; The Pure Theory of Capital,
1941; The Road to Serfdom, 1944; Individualism and Economic
Order, 1948; John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor, 1951; The
Counter-Revolution of Science, 1952; The Semory Order, 1952.
HENRY HAZLI'IT
Born in Philadelphia in 1894. Mr. Hazlitt started his editorial
career in 1913 as a member of the staff of the Wall Street Journal.
He became successively a financial editor, a literary editor and
editorial staff writer with the New York Evening Post, the New
York Evening Mail, the New York Herald, The Sun, The Nation,
the American Mercury, The New York Times and The Freeman.
Since 1946 Mr. Hazlitt has been associate editor of Newsweek and
the author of the column, "Business Tides."
Works: Thinking as a Science, 1916; Instead of Dictatorship,
1933; The Anatomy of Criticism, 1933; A New Constitution
Now, 1942; Economics in One Lesson, 1946; Will Dollars Save
the World? 1947; The Great Idea, 1951.
W.H.Hurr
Born in London in 1899. He attended the London School of
Economics and after graduation took employment in business. In
1928 he was appointed professor of commerce at the University of
Capetown, South Africa, where he is now dean of the Faculty of
Commerce. W. H. Hutt is an eminent defender of individual liberty
and the market economy in South Mrica. He ardently opposes the
interventionist ~ d segregational policies of his government.
Works: The Theory of Collective Bargaining, 1930; Economists
and the Public, 1936; The Theory of Idle Resources, 1939; Plan
for Reconstruction, 1943.
NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS
5
BERTRAND DE JouvENEL
Born in Paris, France, in 1903. Mr. de J ouvenel is the descendant
of a famous family which gave France noted statesmen and writers.
He studied mathematics and law. After graduation he entered
French politics, but he soon discovered that his heart lay with
journalism. In the following years he became an active reporter on
international affairs. In the latter part of World War II he took
refuge in Switzerland where he completed his great work Du
Pouvoir which is a keen analysis of present-day totalitarianism. In
1947 he was called to the University of Manchester where he
lectured on society and sov,ereignty. He is known for his reports on
the current scene to English, American, and French periodicals and
as a regular columnist for La Gazette de Lausanne. He is now
president of a bureau of economic research in Paris.
Among his many writings are: The Crisis of American Capitalism,
1933; Problems of Socialist England, 1946; Du Pouvoir, 1945,
published in English, On Power, in 1948; Ethics of Redistribu-
tion, 1951; The Political Good, 1955.
L. M. LACHMANN
Born in Berlin in 1906. Dr. Lachmann studied at the University
of Berlin where he graduated in 1930. He emigrated to the United
Kingdom in 1933 and completed a degree of M.Sc. Econ., Univer-
sity of London in 1935. From 1938-1940, he held the Leon Research
Fellowship of the University of London and was appointed as-
sistant lecturer on the staff of the University College, London, in
1941. From 1943-1948 Professor Lachmann was acting head of the
Department of Economics and Commerce of the University Col-
lege, Hull. He was appointed as professor of economics and head
of the Department of Economics and Economic History at the
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, in
1948, where he is presently teaching.
His principal works are: "Commodity Stocks and Equilibrium," in
Review of Economic Studies, June, 1936; "Uncertainty and
Liquidity Preference," Economica, August, 1937; "Investment
and Costs of Production," American Economic Review, Octo-
ber, 1937; "On the Measurement of Capital," Economica,
November, 1941; "The Role of Expectations in Economics as
a Social Science," Economica, February, 1943; "Finance Capi-
talism?" Economica, May, 1944; "Complementarity and Sub-
stitution in the Theory of Capital," Economica, May, 1947;
"Investment Repercussions," Quarterly Journal of Economics,
November, 1948; "Economics as a Social Science," (Inaugural
Lecture), 1950; "The Science of Human Action," Economica,
November, 1951.
FRITZ MACill..UP
Born in Wiener Neustadt, Austria, in 1902. In 1923 he received
a Ph.D. degree from the University of Vienna. Dr. Machlup
lectured at the Volkshochschule in Vienna from 1929 to 1933 and
then came to the United States as a research fellow sponsored by
the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1935 he became a visiting lecturer
at Harvard University and later accepted the Frank H. Goodyear
chair in economics at the University of Buffalo, where he stayed
until 1947. In the same year he was appointed Abram G. Hutzler
professor of political economy at Johns Hopkins University where
he is still teaching. He is a member of the American Economic
Association (board of editors, 1938-41, acting managing editor,
1944-45), the Royal Economic Society, the Econometric Society, the
American Association of University Professors, Phi Beta Kappa
(hon. ).
Among his many writings are: The Stock Market, Credit and
Capital Formation, 1940; International Trade and the National
Income Multiplier, 1943; The Basing Point System, 1949; The
Political Economy of Monopoly, 1952; The Economics af
Sellers' Competition, 1952.
WILLIAM H. PETERSON
Born in New York in 1921. Dr. Peterson studied at New York Uni-
versity where he received his B.S. and Ph.D., and at Columbia
University where he received his M.S. He lectured at Rutgers
University, 1948-1952, at Columbia University, 1949-1950, and at
Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, 1949-1953. He is presently as-
sociate professor of economics and administrative assistant at New
York University. Dr. Peterson was formerly associated with Inter-
national Business Machines Corporation and Friden Calculator
Company. He is a member of the American Economic Association
and the Industrial Relations Research Association.
Works: The Farm Problem, 1953. Contributor to The Cammer-
NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS 7
cial and Financial Chronicle, New York, and The Freeman,
Irvington, N. Y.
WILLIAM E. RAPP ARD
Born in New York in 1883. Citizen of Geneva, Switzerland.
Professor Rappard studied law at the university at Geneva where
he received a degree of Doctor of Juridical Science. He taught
economic history, political economy and finance at the universities of
Geneva and Harvard; he repeatedly was president of the University
of Geneva and of the Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes
Internationales in Geneva. Professor Rappard held leading posi-
tions with the International Bureau of Labor and organizations of
the League of Nations. He headed Swiss diplomatic missions in
Washington, Paris, and London and at international conferences
for labor. He is now president of the Institut Universitaire de
Hautes Etudes Internationales. Professor Rappard received honor-
ary doctor degrees from the universities of Harvard, Pennsylvania,
Algiers, Lyon, Princeton, and California.
Among his numerous writings are: The Government of Switzer-
land, D. Van Nostrand, N. Y., 1936; Le nationalisme economi-
que et la Societe des Nations, Academie de Droit International,
Recueil des Cours, 1937; The Crisis of Democracy, University
of Chicago Press, 1938; The Quest for Peace since the World
War, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1940; Cinq
siecles de securite collective ( 1291-1798), George, Geneve,
1945; Collective Security in Swiss Experience ( 1291-1948 ),
Allen & Unwin, London, 1948; V ues retrospectives sur la Societe
des Nations, Academie de Droit International, Recueil des
Cours, Paris, Sirey, 1948; La Suisse et f organisation de l'Europe,
La Neucha.tel, 1950; A quoi tient la superiorite eco-
nomique des Etats-Unis?, Ed. de Medicis, Paris, 1954.
LEONARD E. READ
Born in Hubbardston, Michigan, in 1898. Mr. Read reveals a
rare combination of entrepreneurial and scholarly abilities. In 1920
he embarked upon a business career with the Ann Arbor Produce
Company. But after five years he decided to enter chamber of
commerce work. He made his way from secretary of the Burlin-
game Chamber in 1927 to general manager of a number of cham-
bers. He managed the large Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce
8
ON FREEDOM AND FREE ENTERPRISE
from 1939 to 1945. Here he became vitally interested in the cause
of freedom and free enterprise and launched a program of liber-
tarian education among the citizens of Southern California. In 1945
he accepted the position of executive vice president with the Na-
tional Industrial Conference Board, where he stayed until 1946. He
then became founder and president of the Foundation for Economic
Education, Irvington, New York. Since 1954 he also heads the
Irvington Press which publishes The Freeman.
Works: Romance of Reality, 1937; Pattern for Revolt, 1945;
Students of Liberty, 1950; Outlook for Freedom, 1951; Govern-
ment-An Ideal Concept, 1954. Contributor to trade and com-
mercial periodicals.
WILHELM RoPKE
Born near Hamburg, Germany, in 1899. Professor Ropke taught
at the universities of Jena and Marburg in Germany, Graz in Austria,
and Istanbul in Turkey. From 1926 to 1927 he visited the United
States as a professor sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation.
In 1933 Dr. Ropke was one of the first German professors dismissed
by Hitler for his liberal convictions. In 1937 he accepted the chair
for international economics at the Graduate Institute of Interna-
tional Studies at Geneva, which he still occupies. Professor Ropke
served as economic adviser to the Bruning Government of Germany
from 1930 to 1932 and has been serving the Adenauer Administra-
tion in the same capacity since 1949. In 1954 Columbia University
conferred on him the degree Doctor in litteris humanioribus honoris
causa.
Among his many writings are: German Commercial Policy, 1934;
Crises and Cycles, 1936; Explication ecorwmique du monde
moderne, 1940; International Economic Disintegration, 1942;
The Solution of the German Problem, 1947; Civitas humana,
1948; The Social Crisis of our Time, 1950.
MURRAY N. RoTHBARD
Born in New York in 1926. Mr. Rothbard studied at Columbia
University where he received a Bachelor's degree in mathematics
and economics in 1945 and a Master's degree in 1946. He passed
the oral examination for his Ph.D. in 1948. He taught economic
principles and money and banking at the College of the City of
New York from 1948 to 1949. He is presently completing his doc-
NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS 9
toral dissertation and writing a comprehensive treatise on econom-
ics. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the American Economic
Association, the Royal Economic Society, and the American Political
Science Association.
Works: "Mises' Human Action: Comment," American Economic
Review (March, 1951); and "Praxeology: Reply to Mr. Schul-
ler," ibid. (December, 1951).
JACQUES RuEFF
Born in Paris, France, in 1896. Mr. Rueff studied at the Ecole
Polytechnique in Paris. In 1927 he joined the League of Nations
Secretariat as a member of the economic and financial section. In
the following years he served as financial attache to the French
Embassy in London, as professor of economics at the Ecole libre
des Sciences politiques, as assistant director in the Ministry of
Finance, and finally, in 1936, as head of the French Treasury. From
1939 to 1940 he was vice-governor of the Bank of France. During
and after World War II he successively occupied positions as presi-
dent of the economic and financial delegation to the Military Mis-
sion for German and Austrian Affairs, economic advisor to
Commander-in-Chief in Germany, French delegate to Reparations
Commission in Moscow, president of Paris Conference on Repara-
tions, president of Inter-allied Reparations Agency in Brussells,
delegate to Peace Conference in Paris and to the first assembly of
the United Nations, and member of U.N. Economic and Employ-
ment Commission. Today he is judge at the Court of Justice of the
European Coal and Steel Community. Occasionally he lectures as
professor of economics at the Institut des Sciences politiques in
Paris.
Works: Des Sciences physiques aux Sciences morales, 1922;
Theorie des Phenomenes monetaires, 1927; L'Assurance-
chomage, 1931; L'Ordre social, 1945; Epitre aux dirigistes,
1949; Une cause du desordre mondial: l' etat actuel du systeme
des paiements internationaux.
HANS F. SENNHOLZ
Born near Dortmund, Germany, in 1922. He studied law and
political science at the universities of Marburg and Cologne from
1946 to 1949. In the same year he immigrated to the United States
and studied economics at New York University. M.A., Marburg,
1948; Dr. rer. pol, Cologne, 1949; Ph.D., New York, 1955. From
1951 to 1953 he was with a brokerage house in Wall Street, and
from 1954 to 1955 with lana College, New Rochelle, N. Y., as as-
sistant professor of economics.
Works: How Can Europe Survive?, D. Van Nostrand Co., Inc.,
N. Y., 1955; Co-translator of E. v. Bohm-Bawerk's Capital and
Interest, Libertarian Press, South Holland, Ill., 1955. Numerous
contributions to Rundschau, Cologne; Deutsche Zeitung und
Wirtschaftszeitung, Stuttgart; Staatszeitung, New York; The
Freeman, Irvington, New York.
Loms M. SPADARO
Born in Manhattan, N.Y. in 1913. Dr. Spadaro has concentrated
his academic career in the major schools of his native New York.
After attending the public schools, he took his undergraduate work
at the College of the City of New York and pursued graduate
studies at both Columbia and New York universities. He taught
for some years in the New York public high schools and, in 1938,
joined the faculty of the School of Business of Fordham University,
where he is now associate professor of economics and assistant dean.
PART ONE
Grato Animo Bene/iciique
Memo res
The Intransigence o/
Ludwig von Mises
1
by JACQUES RuEFF
{from the French by George D. Huneke)
I
LunwiG voN MisEs is a rara avis
in this twentieth century of ours, for he considers reason a valid and
efficacious instrument even in the study of questions that concern
economics. According to him, "any given social order was thought
out and designed before it could be realized .. any existing state
of social affairs is the product of ideologies previously thought out
... action is always directed by ideas."
2
The very title of his great book, Human Action, is in and of itself
both an affirmation and a denial. It indicates what, for its author,
constitutes the real economic problem, which is raised by the be-
havior of men with respect to the things they desire-the things
called wealth. And it shows that the real economic problem is
completely encompassed within the study of such behavior; that it
does not consist only in an analysis "of objective processes taking
place quite independently of human will."
3
Mises considers social organization to be dependent upon and in
conformity with the very ideas that inspire it. It is merely a system
of ways and means for attaining certain ends. He is convinced that
the vast majority of people concur on the ends. Hence the economic
1 Le refus de Ludwig von Mises.
2
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1949,
p. 188.
3 Stalin, Les problemes economiques du socialisme en U.S.S.R., Ed. Sociale, p. 4.
13
problem is only that of choosing the means by which men can
achieve, effectively and at the lowest cost, the results desired.
This problem constitutes an object of science and is open to only
two kinds of solution-those which are effective, and those which
are not. Reason-and only reason-enables us to choose between
them. "Man has only one tool to fight error: reason."
4
It is the
task of the economist to tell the politician which system he must
set up in order to give men what they want, and not the very
opposite.
Such an attitude on the part of Mises sets him apart from other
economists. Most of his colleagues take the social structure as a
fact that cannot be changed in any respect by the will of men. The
Marxists explain it as a revelation of history. The non-Marxists
look upon it as the inevitable product of a technical evolution which
has given rise to a capitalism of large units, and to monopolies, car-
tels, and trusts. Marxists and non-Marxists alike ascribe to our
modern economies a rigidity which makes them almost completely
immune to the price mechanism.
For both groups any doctrine basing the establishment and main-
tenance of economic equilibria on price movements is false, fruit-
less, and outdated. According to them, it is the task of the economist
to discover the proper processes that guarantee economic order
without resorting to spontaneous regulation. The sum total of these
processes constitutes the new science of economics, which is re-
quired by the actual state of the world in which we live.
It is true-nor does Mises deny it-that our contemporary econ-
omy is more rigid than that which existed before employers'
associations and labor unions had regimented a large part of the
forces of production.
The essential thing, however, is that the present inelasticity of
our societies is far more the result of their institutional character
than it is of the nature of the techniques applied.
It is institutions established by men and wanted by them that
immobilize prices, salaries, and rates of interest. It is the same insti-
tutions that lend their protection, without which the oligopolies or
monopolies in their quasi-totality could never exist.
If, then, such institutions are wanted by men, it is because the
economists have failed to convince them that these institutions are
leading and must lead to results diametrically opposed to the ones
desired and expected to be attained. In actual fact, the character-
4 Ludwig von Mises, Ibid., p. 187.
GRATO ANIMO BENEFICIIQUE MEMORES 15
istic rigidity of most contemporary economies, and particularly of
several economies, has been made possible only by the silence of
the economists. Had they but shed a revealing light on the social
consequences that such rigidity could not fail to bring about, and on
the privations and sufferings which it was bound to engender, the
rigidity could have been neither established nor maintained.
French legislation on rents, for example, has been inspired by
laudable social considerations. And yet, it has been a tremendous
source of unhappiness and disorder. Anybody of good faith and
with the slightest knowledge of the price mechanism could have
foreseen these tragic social effects. But no! The few warnings that
did foretell the ill-fated consequences have always been denied by
the chorus of complacent men anxious above all not to oppose the
solutions wanted by public opinion and accepted by governments.
It would be cruel to insist on learning the reasons for the prac-
tically universal renunciation of thinking. Leibnitz already indi-
cated that, "If geometry conflicted with our passions and interests
as much as morality does, we would no less question and violate its
laws. And this despite all the proofs offered by Euclid and Archi-
medes, which we would then treat as flights of fancy and believe to
be full of fallacies. And in that case Joseph Scaliger, Hobbes, and
others who attacked Euclid and Archimedes, would not be so bereft
of supporters as they now are."
5
What this philosopher said of morality applies with even more
validity to political economy.
But though there may be but few minds in the field of economics
who have remained loyal to Euclid and Archimedes, Ludwig von
Mises undoubtedly is the most pronounced, the most efficient, and
the most determined. With an indefatigable enthusiasm, and with
courage and faith undaunted, he has never ceased to denounce
the fallacious reasons and untruths offered to justify most of our
new institutions. He has demonstrated-in the most literal sense of
the word-that those institutions, while claiming to contribute to
man's well-being, were the immediate sources of hardship and suf-
fering and, ultimately, the causes of conflicts, war, and enslavement.
No consideration whatever can divert him in the least from the
straight steep path where his cold reason guides him. In the irra-
tionalism of our era he has remained a person of pure reason.
Those who have heard him have often been astonished at being
led by the cogency of his reasoning to places whither they, in their
li Leibnitz, Nouveaux Essais, I.II.l2.
all too human timorousness, had never dared to go. His person and
ideas have always brought to my mind the story of Mr. Teste in
which Paul Valery personifies intelligence devoid of all weakness,
and reason subject only to its absolute logic and the certainty of its
own conclusions.
In the following words, one of Mr. Teste's listeners reports the
sensations experienced while listening to him. "He shatters my
mind with a word, and I feel like a defective vase that the potter
has discarded. He is as hard, sir, as an angel. He is unaware of his
own strength; he finds unexpected words that are all too true, that
overwhelm people, that awaken them in the midst of great folly
confronting them, all ensnared in being what they are, in the meshes
of living, in foolishness. We live in comfort, each in his own absurd-
ity, like fish in water, and we never become aware, except by
chance, of how much stupidity is contained in the life of a reason-
able person."
6
And the same listener goes on to say, "There is in
him some appalling purity, detachment, undeniable strength and
light. Never have I observed such complete absence of confusion
and of doubt in an intelligence that is so deeply industrious. He
is awfully quiet! There can be ascribed to him no uneasiness of
soul, no shadow in his heart."
7
If we compare the guile of economic irrationality with the imper-
turbable intransigence of his lucid thinking, Ludwig von Mises has
safeguarded the foundations of a rational economic science, the
value and effectiveness of which have been demonstrated by his
works. By his teachings he has sown the seeds of a regeneration
which will bear fruit as soon as men once more begin to prefer
theories that are true to theories that are pleasing. When that day
comes, all economists will recognize that Ludwig von Mises merits
their admiration and gratitude. For it is he who, amidst the confu-
sion of a science which tends to belie the reasons for its own exist-
ence, has indefatigably affirmed the rights of reason, its supremacy
over matter, and its effectiveness in human action.
6 Paul Valery, Monsieur Teste. NR.F., p. 86.
7 Ibid., p. 104.
II
On Reading von Mises
by WILLIAM E. RAPPARD
WHEN I was invited to contrib-
ute an essay to a volume in honor of Ludwig von Mises, I was sur-
prised and still more delighted. My astonishment was due to the
fact that the contributors were to be chosen from the ranks of some
of the most distinguished living economists, among which I have
no reason to count myself. It was, on the other hand, a happy pros-
pect to be allowed publicly to state my esteem and my affection for
a very dear friend, and to be urged to spend at least some weeks in
his intellectual intimacy.
That, I confess, was the main motive of my acceptance. During
the all too brief years, from 1934 to 1940, during which Dr. von
Mises had consented to be associated with the Institute at Geneva
which I was directing with my friend Paul Mantoux, I very often
and, I am afraid, very enjoyed his company. All those
who have ever had a like privilege realize that he is not only one
of the keenest analytical minds among contemporary economists,
but that he also has at his disposal a store of historical culture, the
treasures of which are animated and illuminated by a form of hu-
manity and Austrian wit rarely to be found today on the surface of
this globe. In fact, I sometimes wonder, not without fear, whether
our generation is not the last to be blessed with what seems to have
been a monopoly of pre-war Vienna.
In reflecting upon our numerous and, to me, always very enlight-
ening conversations, two points on which the fundamental opinion
of L. von Mises never varied are most prominent.
On the one hand, he was ever insistent on the purely scientific
17
character and functions of economics. As with all other sciences,
the role of economics was solely to analyze and to explain reality,
not to assess nor to improve it. It was completely wertfrei. Values
could be assumed, posited, believed in or disbelieved, claimed or
denied. They could not be known nor demonstrated. Therefore,
economists who invoked the authority of their intellectual discipline
to urge upon society measures calculated to reform it were im-
posters. Reforms could only be means to an end. Economics dealt,
and could legitimately deal, only with means. The means adopted
or rejected, of course, depended essentially on the ends chosen. But
the choice of ends was quite beyond the discretion of our own, or of
any other, science. Therefore, while economists might well advise
statesmen as to the probable results of the means suggested to
achieve their ends, they could not, as men of science, express any
valid judgment as to the excellence of these ends. This they would
leave to seers, to prophets, to metaphysicians, or to the man in the
street. The visions of the latter might be admirable, but their asser-
tions could but be the expression of their faith and never be postu-
lates of their sole reason.
On the other hand, von Mises missed no opportunity, in private
as well as in public, to proclaim his abhorrence of all forms of state
intervention in the processes of economic life. Our age knows no
more consistent and but very few as passionate advocates of policies
of complete laissez-faire in an unhampered market economy.
A single personal recollection-it could be readily multiplied-
may serve to illustrate my point. This recollection is drawn from a
meeting of the Mont-Pelerin Society. As is well known, this very
loose association of liberal intellectuals was formed some years ago
by economists, historians, and philosophers of a score of countries.
What brought them together were a common love of liberty and a
common apprehension that statist policies, ever more generally
preached and practised the world over, would bring about an eclipse
of freedom, and consequently also of prosperity. Von Mises was
naturally a charter member of this organization which, from the
start, was presided over by our colleague, von Hayek. It might well
have been expected that the periodical gatherings of this Society
could not fail to generate an atmosphere exceptionally congenial to
the revered dean of twentieth-century liberals.
Well, what I am about to narrate shows that even the Mont-
Pelerin Society seemed to him dangerously infected by the virus of
statism. This episode took place at a meeting held in Seelisberg, a
Swiss mountain resort situated just above the Griitli, the traditional
birthplace of Helvetic freedom. The topic discussed was the social
policies of liberalism. What interventions of public authorities to
combat unemployment and industrial destitution were to be favored,
or at least tolerated? Social insurance, minimum wages guaranteed
by the state, such and similar devices were rather timidly urged
by some of the liberals present. None of their proposals found the
slightest mercy at the hands of von Mises. "But what would you
do," it was asked of him, "if you were in the position of our French
colleague, Jacques Rueff," who was present at the meeting and
who happened at that time to be shouldering the responsibilities of
the administration of the Principality of Monaco. "Suppose that
for some reason which could easily be imagined, there was in that
Principality widespread unemployment and therefore famine and
revolutionary discontent. Would you, could you advise the govern-
ment to limit its activities to police action for the maidltenance of
order and the protection of private property?"
Our friend von Mises was entirely unmoved. He replied: "If the
policies of non-intervention which I advocate prevailed-universal
free trade, freely :fluctuating nominal wages, no form of social insur-
ance, etc.-there would be no acute unemployment. Private charity
would suffice to prevent the absolute destitution of the very re-
stricted hard core of unemployables."
It might be tempting to recall many other instances in which,
in the course of private conversation or collective debate, von Mises
absolutely rejected as ill-considered any form of state meddling in
the operations of the free market. Tempting, but quite superfluous.
No one who is apt to glance over these pages can ignore the un-
compromising stand which our friend has ever taken in these mat-
ters. In fact, in spite of his many original and learned writings,
which have long made of him one of the most renowned living
economists, I would venture to assert that he is most widely known
the world over as the staunchest, most undaunted, and most uncom-
promising friend of economic and social liberty of mid-twentieth
century.
Now, a question has often arisen in my mind: how his stand on
this major matter of policy was to be squared with his equally un-
compromising banning of absolute values from the orbit of eco-
nomic science, and therefore also of economic policy. Of course,
there is no logically necessary inconsistency between these two
mental attitudes. Psychologically, however, they are not often
adopted by the same mind. Theoretical agnostics in the matter of
ultimate value are apt to be somewhat reserved and cautious as
advocates of policy. And enthusiastic crusaders and intolerant
critics in the field of action are usually to be found in the ranks of
those who feel least hesitation about proclaiming as absolutely good
or evil the policies they champion or combat.
In order fully to comprehend the thought of my esteemed friend
on these two fundamental issues, the invitation to take part in this
intellectual symposium suggested the idea of discovering it by a
careful perusal of his most recent important work, Human Action,
published in English in 1949. I therefore resolved to forego all
other avoidable work until I had given myself the full benefit of the
spiritual and mental intimacy with him I anticipated from carefully
reading from cover to cover this major exposition of his mature
social philosophy.

The experience proved well worth the effort. Besides the profit
and delight I derived from the many weeks devoted to this most
exhilarating task, a question insistently arose in my mind: how
many, before me, had found it tempting to undertake and possible
to carry out the long, intellectual journey through the 880-odd pages
from which I have just returned?
No one will ever be in a position to answer this question. The
numbers of the copies of the book absorbed by the market offer no
adequate clue. Every self-respecting periodical has doubtless re-
viewed the volume and no self-respecting public library has failed
to purchase it. But reading a book is a very different matter from
purchasing or even from reviewing it.
It is not my purpose to carry this incidental query any further.
But it does concern what is to my mind one of the fundamental
problems of our contemporary civilization. A learned treatise is not
a dictionary one keeps for reference purposes on one's shelves. Even
when it is admirably composed and adequately indexed, as in the
present case, it cannot really and fairly be judged by one who is
content to dip into its chapters here and there. The author has the
right to expect a less cursory treatment on the part of the reader.
But how can he hope to receive it in the present day when at least
a thousand volumes are published for every one that appeared in
the age of Adam Smith? True, among this torrential output one is
not likely to find a Wealth of Nations. If contemporary economists
find it possible to read carefully only one extensive book a year,
GRATO ANIMO BENEFICIIQUE ME MORES 21
they would not be ill-advised to select, if they have not already
done so, the Human Action of Ludwig von Mises .

To revert to the main purpose of this disquisition. In his latest
great work our author has very clearly confirmed what I thought
I knew of his intellectual positions on the two points stated above.
He makes it abundantly clear that economics, no more than any
other science, can establish the absolute validity of any ultimate
aims of human conduct. Furthermore I have never, in all my
previous recollections of him, found him more passionately addicted
to the defense of the free market economy nor more intolerant of
all forms of what he likes to call "statolatry."
A few quotations will prove these two assertions. Mter present-
ing them I shall conclude by showing how they are reconciled in his
social philosophy.

In the opening pages of Human Action we find a statement on the
first point so clear that it renders any repetition almost superfluous.
It is as follows:
... economics is a theoretical science and as such abstains from any judgment
of value. It is not its task to tell people what ends they should aim at. It is a
science of the means to be applied for the attainment of ends chosen, not, to
be sure, a science of the choosing of ends. Ultimate decisions, the valuations
and the choosing of ends, are beyond the scope of any science. Science
never tells a man how he should act; it merely shows how a man must act if
he wants to attain definite ends.l
To this opinion the author remains unswervingly faithful through-
out his lengthy book Its constant repetition is as a Leitmotiv which
in various forms recurs in almost every chapter.
2
The importance he attaches to it is shown by the following state-
ment quoted from one of his very last pages:
While many people blame economics for its neutrality with regard to value
judgments, other people blame it for its alleged indulgence in them. Some
contend that economics must necessarily express judgments of value and is
therefore not really scientific, as the criterion of science is its valuational in-
difference. Others maintain that good economics should be and could be
impartial, and that only bad economists sin against this postulate.
3
1 Human Action, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1949, p. 10.
2 Ibid., pp. 10, 21, 29, 46, 87, 89, 92, 96, 148, 157, 172, 173, 179, 180, 243,
264, 292, 295-6, 617, 713, 715, 716, 717, 719, 749, 879.
a Ibid., p. 879.
We shall revert in our conclusion to what is here indicted as "the
semantic confusion" responsible for this ambiguity. Before doing
so, let us turn from the consistent and insistent apologist of Wert-
freiheit in the realm of economics to the equally consistent and
insistent advocate of pure liberalism as the proper and, in fact, the
only proper economic policy. We shall now see how this intransi-
gent champion of intellectual neutrality in the field of science be-
comes a most bellicose gladiator when he descends into the arena
of economic policy.
It cannot be the purpose of this study to analyze minutely the
opinions expressed by von Mises in Human Action on all the contro-
versial issues which oppose his unadulterated liberalism to the vari-
ous forms of state interventionism, practiced by all contemporary
governments and recommended or at least condoned by the vast
majority of writers on economic topics in the middle of our century.
A few quotations must suffice to show that he fully deserves his
reputation as the most outspoken and least compromising advocate
of a complete policy of pure laissez-faire in the world today.
Ludwig von Mises is an individualist but not an anarchist. Thus
he writes:
The anarchists overlook the undeniable fact that some people are either too
narrow-minded or too weak to adjust themselves spontaneously to the condi-
tions of social life .... We may agree that he who acts antisocially should be
considered mentally sick and in need of care. But as long as not all are cured,
and as long as there are infants and the senile, some provision must be taken
lest they jeopardize society. An anarchistic society would be exposed to the
mercy of every individual. Society cannot exist if the majority is not ready to
hinder, by the application or threat of violent action, minorities from destroy-
ing the social order. This power is vested in the state or government.
State or government is the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion. It
has the monopoly of violent action. No individual is free to use violence or the
threat of violence if the government has not accorded this right to him. The
state is essentially an institution for the preservation of peaceful interhuman
relations. However, for the preservation of peace it must be prepared to crush
the onslaughts of peace-breakers.
4
But, he adds, "the principle of majority rule or government by the
people as recommended by liberalism"
5
has nothing in common
with the statolatry as widely advocated today. This can be defined
as the conception which "assumes that there exists above and beyond
4 Ibid., p. 149.
5 Ibid., p. 150.
the individual's actions an imperishable entity a1mmg at its own
ends, different from those of mortal men, ... the concept of a super-
human being."
6
Under this assumption,
... one cannot evade the question whose ends take precedence whenever an
antagonism arises, those of the state or society or those of the individual. The
answer to this question is already implied in the very concept of state or society
as conceived by collectivism and universalism. If one postulates the existence
of an entity which ex definitione is higher, nobler, and better than the in-
dividuals, then there cannot be any doubt that the aims of this eminent being
must tower above those of the wretched individuals.
7
It is the prevalence of statolatry which is responsible for interna-
tional tension and war.
The alternatives to the liberal and democratic principle of majority rule
are the militarist principles of armed conflict and dictatorial oppression.
8
Writing at the close of two world wars, he, of course, could not
avoid considering the impact of international conflicts, present and
future, on the responsibilities and functions of the state. This topic,
as well it might be, is clearly distasteful to him. War, which is
mainly the product of antiliberal ideas and institutions, is as brutal
in its operations as it is futile in its consequences. He writes:
. . . in the long run war and the preservation of the market economy are
incompatible. Capitalism is essentially a scheme for peaceful nations.
9
Modern civilization is a product of the philosophy of laissez faire. It cannot
be preserved under the ideology of government omnipotence. Statolatry owes
much to the doctrines of Hegel. However, one may pass over many of Hegel's
inexcusable faults, for Hegel also coined the phrase "the futility of victory"
(die Ohnmacht des Sieges). To defeat the aggressors is not enough to make
peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war.
10
However, in spite of the obvious logical and historical links be-
tween economic liberalism and international peace on the one
hand, and statolatry and war on the other, the necessities of na-
tional defense are no valid excuse for the extent and forms of state
intervention practiced by all belligerent nations in the most recent
armed conflicts. This is how our author deals with this topic, ob-
viously one of the most embarrassing for all advocates of eco-
nomic liberalism:
6 Ibid., p. 151.
7 Ibid., p. 151.
s Ibid., p. 152.
9 Ibid., p. 824.
to Ibid., p. 828.
The market economy, say the socialists and the interventionists, is at best
a system that may be tolerated in peacetime. But when war comes, such
indulgence is impermissible. It would jeopardize the vital interests of the
nation for the sole benefit of the selfish concerns of capitalists and entrepre-
neurs. War, and in any case modern total war, peremptorily requires govern-
ment control of business.
Hardly anybody has been bold enough to challenge this dogma. It served
in both World Wars as a convenient pretext for innumerable measures of
government interference with business which in many countries step by step
led to full "war socialism." When the hostilities ceased, a new slogan was
launched. The period of transition from war to peace and of "reconversion,"
people contended, requires even more government control than the period of
war. Besides, why should one ever turn to a social system which can work, if
at all, only in the interval between two wars? The most appropriate thing
would be to cling permanently to government control in order to be duly
prepared for any possible emergency.
An examination of the problems which the United States had to face in
the second World War will clearly show how fallacious this reasoning is.
What America needed in order to win the war was a radical conversion ot
all its production activities. All not absolutely indispensable civilian consump-
tion was to be eliminated. The plants and farms were henceforth to turn out
only a minimum of goods for nonmilitary use. For the rest, they were to
devote themselves completely to the task of supplying the armed forces.
The realization of this program did not require the establishment of controls
and priorities. If the government had raised all the funds needed for the
conduct of war by taxing the citizens and by borrowing from them, everybody
would have been forced to cut down his consumption drastically. The entrepre-
neurs and farmers would have turned toward production for the government
because the sale of goods to private citizens would have dropped. The govern-
ment, now by virtue of the inflow of taxes and borrowed money the biggest
buyer on the market, would have been in a position to obtain all it wanted.
Even the fact that the government chose to finance a considerable part of the
war expenditure by increasing the quantity of money in circulation and by
borrowing from the commercial banks would not have altered this state of
affairs. The inflation must, of course, bring about a marked tendency toward
a rise in the prices of all goods and services. The government would have had
to pay higher nominal prices. But it would still have been the most solvent
buyer on the market. It would have been possible for it to outbid the citizens
who on the one hand had not the right of manufacturing the money they
needed and on the other hand would have been squeezed by enormous taxes.
But the government deliberately adopted a policy which was bound to make
it impossible for it to rely upon the operation of the unhampered market. It
resorted to price control and made it illegal to raise commodity prices. Further-
more it was very slow in taxing the incomes swollen by the inflation. It sur-
rendered to the claim of the unions that the workers' real take-home wages
should be kept at a height which would enable them to preserve in the war
their prewar standard of living. In fact, the most numerous class of the na-
tion, the class which in peacetime consumed the greatest part of the total
amount of goods consumed, had so much more money in their pockets that
their power to buy and to consume was greater than in peacetime. The wage
earners-and to some extent also the farmers and the owners of plants produc-
ing for the government-would have frustrated the government's endeavors to
direct industries toward the production of war materials. They would have
induced business to produce more, not less, of those goods which in wartime
are considered superfluous luxuries. It was this circumstance that forced the
Administration to resort to the systems of priorities and of rationing. The
shortcomings of the methods adopted for financing war expenditure made
government control of business necessary. If no inflation had been made and
if taxation had cut down the income (after taxes) of all citizens, not only of
those enjoying higher incomes, to a fraction of their peacetime revenues, these
controls would have been supererogatory. The endorsement of the doctrine
that the wage earners' real income must in wartime be even higher than in
peacetime made them unavoidable,ll
As this most remarkable passage clearly shows, even the excep-
tional exigencies of total war, that is, of war in which all private
interests are necessarily subordinated to, and even enguHed in the
interests of the belligerent state, were not sufficient to divorce von
Mises from his all-beloved economic liberalism. What is more sig-
nificant, however, is his defense of laissez-faire in times and under
conditions of peace. In spite of the present state of international
relations, septuagenarians such as he and I may be excused from
looking upon such times and such conditions as more normal and
more durable than those referred to in my last quotation.
There is not, in Human Action, any precise delimitation of the
state's legitimate activities. Von Mises expressly rejects the possi-
bility of regulating this matter in accordance with any norms of
right or wrong, just or unjust. Two points, however, stand out very
clearly in his exposition.
12
On the one hand, besides the recognized
necessity of national defense, the state must protect the individual
against the consequences of social disorder and violence. "The only
purpose of the laws and the social apparatus of coercion and com-
pulsion is to safeguard the smooth functioning of social coopera-
tion."
13
However, even this admitted duty of the state is looked upon
with more suspicion than favor, as is obvious from the following
statement:
. . . government interference always means either violent action or the
threat of such action. Government is in the last resort the employment of
armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen.
The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beat-
11 Ibid., pp. 821-822.
12 Ibid., pp. 715 et seq.
13 Ibid., p. 718.
ing, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government
interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.
14
On the other hand, all government interference, even when it is
imposed by circumstances, is restrictive and not productive. Thus
we read:
On the unhampered market there prevails an irresistible tendency to employ
every factor of production for the best possible satisfaction of the most urgent
needs of the consumers. If the government interferes with this process, it can
only impair satisfaction; it can never improve it.
. . . While government has no power to make people more prosperous by
interference with business, it certainly does have the power to make them less
satisfied by restriction of production.
1
5
This general view, expounded throughout Human Action, of
course makes its author a determined opponent of tariff protection,
labor legislation, high taxation, socialization of the means of produc-
tion, and of all other forms of state intervention in the market econ-
omy such as are universally practiced by contemporary states.
I must resist the temptation of reproducing here many pungent
statements on these various matters which I have noted in the
preparation of these pages. Just one exception to characterize the
severity of his judgment:
The outcome of the municipalization and nationalization policies of the last
decades was almost without exception financial failure, poor service, and
political corruption. Blinded by their anticapitalistic prejudices people condone
poor service and corruption and for a long time did not bother about the
financial failure. However, this failure is one of the factors which contributed
to the emergence of the present-day crisis of interventionism.
1
6
Some points of his attack on labor legislation may also be quoted.
This would seem justified both because these statements display
their author in one of his most isolated intellectual attitudes, and
by reason of their bearing on one of the most widely discussed issues
of the day, that of so-called underdeveloped countries. In his re-
marks on the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century in
Great Britain he writes:
The history of capitalism in Great Britain as well as in all other capitalist
countries is a record of an unceasing tendency toward the improvement in
the wage earners' standard of living. This evolution coincided with the develop-
ment of prolabor legislation and the spread of labor unionism on the one hand
and with the increase in the marginal productivity of labor on the other hand.
14 Ibid., p. 715.
15 Ibid., pp. 736-737.
16 Ibid., p. 373.
The economists assert that the improvement in the workers' material condi-
tions is due to the increase in the per capita quota of capital invested and the
technological achievements which the employment of this additional capital
brought about. As far as labor legislation and union pressure did not exceed
the limits of what the workers would have got without them as a necessary
consequence of the acceleration of capital accumulation as compared with
population, they were superfluous. As far as they exceeded these limits, they
were harmful to the interests of the masses. They delayed the accumulation
of capital thus slowing down the tendency toward a rise in the marginal pro-
ductivity of labor and in wage rates,l7
This conception of the futility of labor legislation in the country
of its birth leads him to the following remarks on the subject of
economically backward countries:
Vast areas-Eastern Asia, the East Indies, Southern and Southeastern Eu-
rope, Latin America-are only superficially affected by modern capitalism.
Conditions in these countries by and large do not differ from those of England
on the eve of the "Industrial Revolution." There are millions and millions of
people for whom there is no secure place left in the traditional economic
setting. The fate of these wretched masses can be improved only by indus-
trialization. What they need most is entrepreneurs and capitalists. As their
own foolish policies have deprived these nations of the further enjoyment of
the assistance imported foreign capital hitherto gave them, they must em-
bark upon domestic capital accumulation. They must go through all the stages
through which the evolution of Western industrialism had to pass. They must
start with comparatively low wage rates and long hours of work. But, deluded
by the doctrines prevailing in present-day Western Europe and North Amer-
ica, their statesmen think that they can proceed in a different way. They
encourage labor-union pressure and alleged prolabor legislation. Their inter-
ventionist radicalism nips in the bud all attempts to create domestic industries.
These men do not comprehend that industrialization cannot begin with the
adoption of the precepts of the International Labor Office and the principles
of the American Congress of Industrial Organizations. Their stubborn dogma-
tism spells the doom of the Indian and Chinese coolies, the Mexican peons,
and millions of other peoples, desperately struggling on the verge of starva-
tion.18
Another phase of von Mises' advocacy of laissez-faire in economic
affairs is displayed in his views on banking and money. I quote
some of his relevant statements to show to what extremes of severity
he is led by his abhorrence of state intervention in this field. Thus
he writes:
The attitudes of the European governments and their satellites with regard
to banking were from the beginning insincere and mendacious. The pretended
solicitude for the nation's welfare, for the public in general, and for the poor
ignorant masses in particular was a mere blind. The governments wanted in-
flation and credit expansion, they wanted booms and easy money.
17 Ibid., p. 617.
18 Ibid., pp. 618-619.
.. It is a fable that governments interfered with banking in order to
restrict the issue of fiduciary media and to prevent credit expansion. The idea
that guided governments was, on the contrary, the lust for inflation and credit
expansion .
. . . . Many governments never looked upon the issuance of fiduciary media
from a point of view other than that of fiscal concerns. In their eyes the fore-
most task of the banks was to lend money to the treasury. The money-substi-
tutes were pacemakers for government-issued paper money. The convertible
banknote was merely a first step on the way to the nonredeemable banknote.
With the progress of statolatry and the policy of interventionism these ideas
have become general and are no longer questioned by anybody. No govern-
ment is willing today to give any thought to the program of free banking
because no government wants to renounce what it considers a handy source of
revenue. What is called today financial war preparedness is merely the ability
to procure by means of privileged and government-controlled banks all the
money a warring nation may nee((. Radical inflationism, although not admitted
explicitly, is an essential feature of the economic ideology of our age.
But even at the time liberalism enjoyed its h i ~ h s t prestige and govern-
ments were more eager to preserve peace and well-being t h ~ n to foment war,
death, destruction, and misery, people were biased in dealing with the prob-
lems of banking.19
Much as I would like to pursue this recital of the anti-state views
of L. von Mises, notably in the field of public instruction,
20
where
his radical individualism leads him into a position of almost com-
plete isolation amongst our contemporaries, it is time to conclude.
0 0 0
In the first part of this study we have shown him as an uncom-
promising foe of all pseudo-scientific judgments of value in eco-
nomic affairs. In the second, we have just caught some glimpses of
him on the warpath, denouncing often with extreme vigor of
thought and language the aberration of all contemporary govern-
ments and the folly of almost all contemporary economists who
practice and preach interventionist policies.
How are these intellectual attitudes to be reconciled? My pur-
pose in undertaking this study was to discover the solution of this
problem, which, I admit, had often perplexed me in the score of
years I had the privilege of knowing our friend von Mises. My
satisfaction in bringing it to a close is that this problem perplexes
me no longer. Any careful and fair-minded reader of Human Ac-
tion must recognize that it contains a clear and unequivocal answer
to the question posed. Not that the reader will necessarily follow
19 Ibid., pp. 438 and 439.
20 Ibid., pp. 872 et seq.
our author in his denunciations of all the economic policies he at-
tacks. But the accusation, or at least the suspicion, of logical incon-
sistency will have been invalidated.
Why and how?
Throughout his work von Mises maintains that there is and can
be no justification for the scientific assertion of ends as the only
desirable aims of policy. But he claims that most, if not absolutely
all, governments, parties, and economists today have chosen and
pretend to be pursuing the same aims. Under this assumption, what
separates men is much less a variety of ends, about which science
is impotent and must therefore remain mute, than means, which it
is the right and duty of all economists to examine as to their ade-
quacy.
That the ultimate aims pursued by all in matters economic are
substantially the same, is a claim clearly made and constantly re-
peated in Human Action. The following quotations may suffice to
show it:
It is true that the appetite for food and warmth is common to men and
other mammals and that as a rule a man who lacks food and shelter concen-
trates his efforts upon the satisfaction of these urgent needs and does not
care much for other things. The impulse to live, to preserve one's own life,
and to take advantage of every opportunity of strengthening one's vital forces
is a primal feature of life, present in every living being.
21
Notwithstanding all declarations to the contrary, the immense majority of
men aim first of all at an improvement of the material conditions of well-being.
They want more and better food, better homes and clothes, and a thousand
other amenities. They strive after abundance and health.
22
While praxeology, and therefore economics too, uses the terms happiness
and removal of uneasiness in a purely formal sense, liberalism attaches to
them a concrete meaning. It presupposes that people prefer life to death,
health to sickness, nourishment to starvation, abundance to poverty. It teaches
man how to act in accordance with these valuations.
23
It is a fact that civilization, when judged from this point of view, is to be
considered a benefit and not an evil. It has enabled man to hold his own in
the struggle against all other living beings, both the big beasts of prey and
the even more pernicious microbes; it has multiplied man's means of suste-
nance; it has made the average man taller, more agile, and more versatile and
it has stretched his average length of life; it has given man the uncontested
mastery of the earth; it has multiplied population figures and raised the stand-
ard of living to a level never dreamed of by the crude cave dwellers of pre-
historic ages.
24
Asceticism teaches that the only means open to man for removing pain and
21 Ibid., p. 19.
22 Ibid., p. 96.
23 Ibid., p. 154.
24 Ibid., p. 170.
for attaining complete quietude, contentment, and happiness is to turn away
from earthly concerns and to live without bothering about worldly things.
There is no salvation other than to renounce striving after material well-being,
to endure submissively the adversities of the earthly pilgrimage and to dedicate
oneself exclusively to the preparation for eternal bliss. However, the number
of those who consistently and unswervingly comply with the principles of
asceticism is so small that it is not easy to instance more than a few names.
It seems that the complete passivity advocated by asceticism is contrary to
nature. The enticement of life triumphs.21i
All present-day political parties strive after the earthly well-being and
prosperity of their supporters. They promise that they will render economic
conditions more satisfactory to their followers. With regard to this issue there
is no difference between the Roman Catholic Church and the various Protes-
tant denominations as far as they intervene in political and social questions,
between Christianity and the non-Christian religions, between the advocates of
economic freedom and the various brands of Marxian materialism, between
nationalists and internationalists, between racists and the friends of interracial
peace ....
The pompous statements which people make about things unknowable and
beyond the power of the human mind, their cosmologies, world views, religions,
mysticisms, metaphysics, and conceptual phantasies differ widely from one an-
other. But the practical essence of their ideologies, i.e., their teachings dealing
with the ends to be aimed at in earthly life and with the means for the attain-
ment of these ends, show much uniformity.26
In the field of society's economic organization there are the liberals advocat-
ing private ownership of the means of production, the socialists advocating
public ownership of the means of production, and the interventionists advo-
cating a third system which, they contend, is as far from socialism as it is from
capitalism. In the clash of these parties there is again much talk about basic
philosophical issues. People speak of true liberty, equality, social justice, the
rights of the individual, community, solidarity, and humanitarianism. But each
party is intent upon proving by ratiocination and by referring to historical
experience that only the system it recommends will make the citizens pros-
perous and satisfied. They tell the people that realization of their program
will raise the standard of living to a higher level than realization of any other
party's program. They insist upon the expediency of their plans and upon
their utility. It is obvious that they do not differ from one another with regard
to ends but only as to means. They all pretend to aim at the highest material
welfare for the majority of citizens.
2
7
No religion in its exoteric activities ever ventured to tell people frankly:
The realization of our plans for social organization will make you poor and
impair your earthly well-being. Those consistently committed to a life of
poverty withdrew from the political scene and fled into anchoritic seclusion.
But churches and religious communities which have aimed at making converts
and at influencing political and social activities of their followers have espoused
the principles of secular conduct. In dealing with questions of man's earthly
pilgrimage they hardly differ from any other political party. In canvassing,
25 Ibid., pp. 178-179.
26 Ibid., pp. 180-181.
27 Ibid., p. 183.
they emphasize the material advantages which they have in store for their
brothers in faith more than bliss in the beyond.
28
The immense majority strives after a greater and better supply of food,
clothes, homes, and other material amenities. In calling a rise in the masses'
standard of living progress and improvement, economists do not espouse a
mean materialism. They simply establish the fact that people are motivated by
the urge to improve the material conditions of their existence. They judge
policies from the point of view of the aims men want to attain. He who dis-
dains the fall in infant mortality and the gradual disappearance of famines
and plagues may cast the first stone upon the materialism of the economists.
29
We call a progressing economy an economy in which the per capita quota
of capital invested is increasing. In using this term we do not imply value
judgments. We adopt neither the "materialistic" view that such a progression
is good nor the "idealistic" view that it is bad or at least irrelevant from a
''higher point of view." Of course, it is a well-known fact that the immense
majority of people consider the consequences of progress in this sense as the
most desirable state of affairs and yearn for conditions which can be realized
only in a progressing economy.3
All varieties of the producers' policy are advocated on the ground of their
alleged ability to raise the party members' standard of living. Protectionism
and economic self-sufficiency, labor union pressure and compulsion, labor legis-
lation, minimum wage rates, public spending, credit expansion, subsidies, and
other makeshifts are always recommended by their advocates as the most
suitable or the only means to increase the real income of the people for whose
votes they canvass. Every contemporary statesman or politician invariably
tells his voters: My program will make you as affluent as conditions may
permit, while my adversaries' program will bring you want and misery.
It is true that some secluded intellectuals in their esoteric circles talk
differently. They proclaim the priority of what they call eternal absolute
values and feign in their declamations-not in their personal conduct-a dis-
dain of things secular and transitory. But the public ignores such utterances.
The main goal of present-day political action is to secure for the respective
pressure group memberships the highest material well-being. The only way
for a leader to succeed is to instill in people the conviction that his program
best serves the attainment of this goal.
What is wrong with the producers' policies is their faulty economics.31
These many quotations all go to show that in the mind of von
Mises the statement is justified that, in economic matters, men
differ much less in the ultimate aims they pursue than in the
means they recommend or adopt as best calculated to attain these
ends. This view, he holds, is valid not as an abstract truth but as
an assumption based on general observation. It is the contrary
opinion which, in his estimation, is responsible for the "semantic
2s Ibid., p. 184.
29 Ibid., pp. 193-194.
30 Ibid., p. 292.
31 Ibid., p. 315.
32
confusion" above referred to. His final statement on this matter may
be taken as a satisfactory conclusion. He writes:
The semantic confusion in the discussion of the problems concerned is due
to an inaccurate use of terms on the part of many economists. An economist
investigates whether a measure a can bring about the result p for the attain-
ment of which it is recommended, and finds that a does not result in p but in
g, an effect which even the supporters of the measure a consider undesirable.
If this economist states the outcome of his investigation by saying that a is a
bad measure, he does not pronounce a judgment of value. He merely says
that from the point of view of those aiming at the goal p, the measure a is
inappropriate. In this sense the free trade economists attacked protection.
They demonstrated that protection does not, as its champions believe, increase
but, on the contrary, decreases the total amount of products, and is therefore
bad from the point of view of those who prefer an ampler supply of products
to a smaller. It is in this sense that economists criticize policies from the point
of view of the ends aimed at. If an economist calls minimum wage rates a bad
policy, what he means is that its effects are contrary to the purpose of those
who recommend their application.32
This paper has fulfilled its purpose if it has shown the reader, as
it has convinced the author, that there is no logical inconsistency
between Ludwig von Mises the rational agnostic and Ludwig von
Mises the persistent and intolerant advocate of liberalism as a policy
based on economic science.
0 0 0
It does not follow, of course, that all economists who share his
rational agnosticism must of necessity also favor his laissez-faire
policies in their absolute intransigence. The escape from the di-
lemma is not far afield. It is to be found much less in disagreement
with his remarkable scientific dialectics than in doubts as to the
universal validity of his fundamental assumption. As he declares
himself, in the final pages of Human Action:
Economics does not assume or postulate that men aim only or first of all at
what is called material well-being. . . . It is neither more nor less rational to
aim at riches like Croesus than to aim at poverty like a Buddhist monk. . . .
It is a question of fact whether or not . . . men in general and our con-
temporaries especially are driven more by the wish to realize myths and dreams
than by the wish to improve their material well-being.aa
This question of fact strikes me as being susceptible of various
answers, according to one's conception of myths and dreams. Does
the British voter, for instance, favor confiscatory taxation of large
32 Ibid., p. 879.
aa Ibid., p. 880.
incomes primarily in the hope that it will redound to his material
advantage, or in the certainty that it tends to reduce unwelcome
and irritating social inequalities? In general, is the urge towards
equality in our modern democracies not often stronger than the
desire to improve one's material lot?
Let me conclude with a statement for which I truly believe I can
vouch and which flatly contradicts that made by the author of
Human Action when he declares:
. . . in the predominantly industrial countries of Europe the protectionists
were first eager to declare that the tariff on agricultural products hurts exclu-
sively the interests of the farmers of the predominantly agricultural countries
and of the grain dealers.
3
4
Now, Switzerland is undoubtedly one of those countries. It is
furthermore a completely democratic state in which the voter not
only chooses his legislators but in which issues such as that of
agrarian portectionism are often settled directly at the polls by
means of the popular referendum after prolonged and very out-
spoken political campaigns. My country, in which farmers repre-
sent less than 20 per cent of the population, has in the course of the
last generations repeatedly favored this small and dwindling minor-
ity by protectionist measures on corn, dairy products, and wine.
The urban industrial and commercial majority have done so, neither
in what would obviously be an absurd belief that they were thereby
increasing their real income, nor out of what would be a no less
absurd desire to hurt foreign producers. Quite deliberately and
expressly, political parties have sacrificed the immediate material
welfare of their members in order to prevent, or at least somewhat
to retard, the complete industrialization of the country. A more
agricultural Switzerland, though poorer, such is the dominant wish
of the Swiss people today. It may be dismissed as a myth or a
dream. In fact it is a somewhat costly, but a sincerely professed
national ideal of a real democracy.
Such cases are not as exceptional as they may seem in the world
of today. What, for instance, of the anti-colonialism professed in
Bandoeng today? Does it not show that many, if not most, people
in the world today prefer national freedom to individual wealth?
To recall all these cases is not to deny the overwhelming validity of
the doctrines expounded in Human Action, nor to belittle the truly
magnificent intellectual achievement of its highly esteemed and
dearly beloved author.
S4 Ibid., p. 313.
Two o/ Ludwig von Mises'
Most Important Works
by HENRY HAZLriT
III
In symposiums written "in honor of" some dintinguished
writer, the individual contributors too often go off on tangents
of their own, and develop points of view that may be irrelevant
or even alien to the writer they are supposed to honor. In order
to pay homage to the great contribution of Ludwig von Mises
in a more direct way than in my following essay, therefore, I
herewith take the liberty of reprinting reviews that I wrote of
two of his most important books.
The first is my review of his Socialism, which appeared in
The New York Times of January 9, 1938:
LUDWIG voN MisEs is professor of
Economics in the University of Vienna. His volume Die Gemein-
wirtschaft, published in 1922, was a thorough analysis of socialism
and socialistic ideas. A new edition appeared in 1932. This, with
some additions contributed by the author, has now been trans-
lated under the title of Socialism, and becomes available for the first
time to English readers.
In the years since its original publication the volume has at-
tracted increasing attention as the course of events has made its
contentions increasingly pertinent. Though considerably more than
200,000 words long, it is never prolix. On the contrary, it is written
34
GRATO ANIMO BENEFICIIQUE MEMORES
35
with remarkable concision. Its length is due solely to its thorough
and comprehensive character. It examines socialism from almost
every possible aspect-its doctrine of violence as well as that of the
collective ownership of the means of production; its ideal of equal-
ity; its relation to problems of sex and the family; its proposed solu-
tion for the problem of production as well as of distribution; its
probable operation under both static and dynamic conditions; its
national and international consequences. It considers particular
forms of socialism and of pseudo-socialism; the doctrine of the class
war and the materialist conception of history; various Socialist criti-
cisms of capitalistic tendencies or alleged tendencies; socialistic
ethics; and finally various forms of "gradual socialism" and "de-
structionism."
No open-minded reader can fail to be impressed by the closeness
of the author's reasoning, the rigor of his logic, the power and
unity of his thought. This is by far the ablest and most damaging
answer to the Socialist philosophy since Boehm-Bawerk, another
Austrian economist, also from the University of Vienna, published
his memorable Karl Marx and the Close of His System in 1898. It
is more than that. Boehm-Bawerk confined himself mainly to an
examination of Marx's technical economics. Mises, apparently on
the assumption that Boehm-Bawerk disposed so thoroughly of
Marx's strictly economic analysis of capitalism that the work does
not have to be done again, does not go over this ground, except by
incidental reference. But he recognizes that socialism does not
stand or fall with Marx's economic analysis; and therefore he de-
votes himself to the much wider task of examining all the arguments
against capitalism or in favor of socialism from whatever source.
He does this with such power, brilliance and completeness that
this book must rank as the most devastating analysis of socialism yet
penned. Doubtless even some anti-Socialist readers will feel that
he occasionally overstates his case. On the other hand, even con-
firmed Socialists will not be able to withhold admiration from the
masterly fashion in which he conducts his argument. He has writ-
ten an economic classic in our time.
Mises analyzes his problem from so many sides that it is diffi-
cult even to outline his argument in a brief review. The contention
most closely associated with his name is that socialism is certain to
fail because it is incapable by its very nature of solving the prob-
lem of economic calculation. Unable to solve this, a Socialist society
would not know how to distribute its labor, capital, land and other
factors of production to the best advantage. It would not know
which commodities it was producing at a social profit and which at
a social loss. It would not know what any worker, or what any
other factor, was actually contributing to the production of eco-
nomic values. Unable to determine any worker's productive contri-
bution, the Socialist society would be unable to fix his reward
proportionately or know how to maximize his incentives.
The greatest difficulty to the realization of socialism in Mises'
view, in short, is intellectual. It is not a mere matter of goodwill,
or of willingness to cooperate energetically without personal reward.
"Even angels, if they were endowed only with human reason, could
not form a socialistic community." Capitalism solves this problem
of economic calculation through money prices of both consumers'
and producers' goods which are fixed in the competition of the open
market. State and municipal and even Soviet socialism, in other
words, are parasitic on their capitalist environment in a double
sense. State or municipal socialism pays its open or hidden deficits
by taxing private business. Both it and Russian socialism, in addi-
tion, are able to make calculations only with the aid of prices estab-
lished by private enterprise. Pure or complete socialism, as Mises
shows, could not make these calculations. Unfortunately, it is im-
possible here to outline the argument by which he reaches this
conclusion, or even to indicate the nature of his other arguments.
Mises is a traditional liberal. He defends the private ownership
of the means of production purely on utilitarian grounds: such
ownership is most desirable from the standpoint of social happiness,
peace, freedom and productivity. "Liberalism upholds private prop-
erty not in the interests of the owners but in the general interest."
It is Marxian ideology and not an opposition of real interests, he
holds, which has made the modem world "class conscious."
He is not hopeful regarding the future:
Several generations of economic policy which was nearly liberal [he writes]
have enormously increased the wealth of the world. Capitalism has raised the
standard of life among the masses to a level which our ancestors could not have
imagined. Interventionism and efforts to introduce socialism have been working
now for some decades to shatter the foundations of the world economic system.
We stand on the brink of a precipice which threatens to engulf our civilization.
Opposition in principle to socialism there is none. Today no influential
party would dare openly to advocate private property in the means of produc-
tion. The word "capitalism" expresses, for our age, the sum of all evil. Even
the opponents of socialism are dominated by Socialist ideas.
And yet he maintains that these ideas are wholly false. But he
does not despair altogether: "It is true that the masses do not think.
But just for this reason they follow those who do think." So he still
holds forth a faint hope that sober, dispassionate reasoning may
turn the world Socialist tide in time .

The following review of Human Action appeared in my col-
umn in Newsweek magazine of September 19, 1949:
There has just been published by the Yale University Press a
book that is destined to become a landmark in the progress of eco-
nomics. Its title is Human Action, and its author is Ludwig von
Mises. It is the consumation of half a century of experience, study,
and rigorous thought.
No living writer has a more thorough knowledge of the history
and literature of economics than Mises, and yet no living writer
has been to more pains to take no solution of any problem on faith,
but to think out each solution, step by verified step, for himself.
The result is a work of great originality written in a great tradition.
Although it builds on what was sound in the classical economists
and on the revolutionary revision of Menger, Bohm-Bawerk, Jevons,
Clark, and Wicksteed, it extends beyond any previous work the
logical unity and precision of modern economic analysis.
I know of no other work, in fact, which conveys to the reader so
clear an insight into the intimate interconnectedness of all economic
phenomena. It makes us recognize why it is impossible to study or
understand "collective bargaining" or "labor problems" in isolation;
or to understand wages apart from prices or from interest rates or
from profits and losses, or to understand any of these apart from all
the rest, or the price of any one thing apart from the prices of
other things.
It makes us see why those who specialize merely in "monetary
economics" or "a[ cultural economics" or "labor economics" or
"business forecasting" so often go astray.
So far is Mises' approach from that of the specialist that he
treats economics itself as merely part (though the hitherto best-
elaborated part) of a more universal science, "praxeology," or "the
science of every kind of human action." This is the key to his title
and to his 889 comprehensive pages.
Mises is so concerned to lay the foundations of his work with un-
assailable solidity that he devotes the first 142 pages to a discussion
of "epistemological" problems alone. This is apt to discourage all but
the most serious students of the subject. Yet there is nothing pre-
38
tentious or pedantic in Mises' writing. His sentences and vocabu-
lary are as simple and clear as his profundity and closely woven
logic will permit. Once his more abstract theoretical foundations
have been laid his chapters are models of lucidity and vigor.
Outstanding among his many original contributions are his "cir-
culation credit" theory of business cycles, which emphasizes the
harm of cheap-money policies, and his demonstration that partial
socialism is parasitic on capitalism and that a complete socialism
would not even know how to solve the problem of economic calcu-
lation.
This book is in fact, as the publishers declare, the counterweight
of Marx's Das Kapital, of Lord Keynes's General Theory, and of
countless other books recommending socialization, collectivist plan-
ning, credit expansion, and similar panaceas. Mises recognizes infla-
tionism under its most sophisticated disguises. He demonstrates
repeatedly how statist interventions in the market economy bring
about consequences which, even from the standpoint of those who
originally advocated the interventions, are worse than the state of
affairs they were designed to improve.
Human Action is, in short, at once the most uncompromising and
the most rigorously reasoned statement of the case for capitalism
that has yet appeared. If any single book can turn the ideological
tide that has been running in recent years so heavily toward statism,
socialism, and totalitarianism, Human Action is that book. It should
become the leading text of everyone who believes in freedom, in
individualism, and in the ability of a free-market economy not only
to outdistance any government-planned system in the production of
goods and services for the masses, but to promote and safeguard,
as no collectivist tyranny can ever do, those intellectual, cultural,
and moral values upon which all civilization ultimately rests.
PART TWO
On the Nature of Man
and Government
IV
Order vs. Organization
by BERTRAND DE JoUVENEL
Tms paper deals with man's taste
in configurations and consequences arising therefrom. "The Prob-
lem of the Orchard" may introduce the subject better than any
abstract statement.
The Problem of the Orchard
Let there be an apple orchard and two distinct groups of school
children. The first group is assembled in class and is asked the
following question: "In a given orchard, 100,000 apples are to be
picked and collected in heaps. How should the heaps be formed?"
No child will regard the problem as indeterminate; most will answer
that the apples should be collected in a hundred heaps of a thou-
sand apples each. Possibly some few may give different answers,
but always in round numbers of heaps with equal numbers of apples
to the heap. In the meantime let us send out the second group of
children actually to heap up the 100,000 apples. When their task is
completed we will find a varied collection of uneven mounds.
Thus the same problem has been given contrasting solutions: A in
the classroom, B in the field; A by a process of thought, B by a
process of action. This affords us our first general statement: given
a set of factors, there is no necessary coincidence between their ar-
rangement by a process of thought (type A) and their arrangement
by a process of action (type B).
After the apples are gathered an observer strolls into the orchard.
He beholds the B arrangement, and its irregularity faintly dis-
pleases him, while his eye would be gladdened by a more regular
distribution of the A type. Indeed the unseemliness of the B ar-
41
rangement may affect him sufficiently to evoke action-he may
apply his own labor or that of others to a rearrangement. This af-
fords us our second and third general statements loosely worded:
Man delights in perceived order; he is willing to expend labor on
its achievement.
The Feeling of Orderliness
We are enamored of order; this passion runs through all of man-
kind, from the housewife to Einstein. True enough, but what is
"Order"? So Platonic an approach is to be shunned. It is a more
sensible and modest course to note that some arrangements evoke
an immediate pleasure and approval, while others do not. We shall
call the first "seemly" and the second "unseemly," hoping that we
thereby emphasize that we start from subjective appreciations. We
do not then have to answer the question, "what is Order?" Our
concern is merely to detect when the feeling of seemliness is ex-
perienced.
Tests of seemliness can easily be devised. On your desk, next to
the visitor's chair, place twelve pencils, six blue and six red ones,
arranged in two heaps, six red and one blue in one heap and then
five blue ones in the other. A visitor will itch to transfer the "mis-
laid" blue pencil to the blue lot, while he will remain quiescent if
two heaps of six each contain three blue and three red pencils. Or
again, if the pencils are arranged by size with one discrepancy, the
visitor will experience something like relief if you restore the con-
tinuity of the series. As one goes on to less naive experiments, it
becomes apparent that the feeling of seemliness is experienced when
we grasp the law of structure according to which the factors are
arrayed. If five beads are presented, three large ones in succession
and then two small ones, the individual will want to place each
small one between two large beads, but if the pattern of three
large ones and then two small ones is frequently repeated, its
periodicity will make it acceptable.
An office has a stock of envelopes of various sizes. Their arrange-
ment pleases if they are stacked by sizes in a progression. Let there
be two collections on two different shelves, each containing the
whole range of sizes. A new secretary undoubtedly will set out
to assemble all same-sized envelopes, substituting one series for two.
She will, however, refrain from this rearrangement when she finds
that the envelopes on the first shelf carry an engraved address on
their back while those on the second shelf do not. The principle of
ON THE NATURE OF MAN AND GOVERNMENT 43
classification has become clear to her and she now regards as orderly
an arrangement which did not seem so at the outset.
We want factors to "obey" some understandable principle by
reference to which each has and falls into "its place." The under-
standing can be either artistic or intellectual. Every eye enjoys the
shapes of shells, but few minds could formulate that the shapes
are generated from an equi-angular spiral. The eye may thus jump
to a conclusion while the mind may recognize an organizing prin-
ciple which does not jump to the eye as in the foregoing example
of the envelopes. Thus there are two modes of understanding,
appreciation of seemliness involves one or the other form of recog-
nition of an organizing principle.
Our desire to find things "obedient" to some principle is the main-
spring of intellectual inquiry. We seek "hidden" principles of
organization whose discovery reveals the orderliness of phenomena
that seem disorderly to us.
Our achievements in so marshalling phenomena have been con-
nected with and are dependent upon the progress of mathematics.
Mathematics mainly consist in the thinking out of more complex
configurations. When an additonal "function" or "series" is studied,
one more "shape" is thereby added to our intellectual store of
"orderly configurations." Let us take a grossly simplified example.
Let us assume that we have been unable to form any idea of
a closed curve other than the circle. We are then told that the
earth "circles" around the sun. But by some means we find that
the earth does not in fact describe a circle around the sun.
1
Its
movement therefore does not conform to any model of orderliness
held in our mind, ergo we adjudge it disorderly. This is meant to
stress that the probability of our experiencing orderliness is a func-
tion of the store of configurations worked out in our minds. A
lognormal distribution
2
may seem orderly to a mathematician but
to no one else.
3
1
Though in fact we would presumably have no means of establishing this if our
geometric knowledge were so restricted.
2
See the notable paper on lognormal distributions by Prof. J. H. Gaddum (Nature,
Oct. 20, 1954) to which our attention was drawn by Prof. Allais.
3 A collection of phenomena becomes orderly for me if and when I can tersely
formulate the law of structure whereby each item is assigned the position which it
holds.
Fitting and Tidying-up
A scientist may be thought of as having access to a great store
of patterns into which he delves to find one that will fit the facts
he seeks to integrate into a theory. Such a pattern may not be
available to him, in which case he must acknowledge failure. For
to him the facts are supreme; the theory must fit them. Success
may come later in this field because some mathematician, possibly
quite ignorant of his concern, has worked out a pattern
4
which will
now suit the phenomena.
The inverse relation holds true in the case of those many diverse
human activities which we may blanket under the term "tidying-
up." Take the simple example of the housewife who holds in her
mind a given pattern of arrangement to which the objects of "tidy-
ing-up" are made to conform.
In terms of our orchard example, the progress of science depends
upon the ability of the mind to move away from the simplest type A
arrangements to the conception of more intricate shapes. One of
these shapes will bear a great likeness to the B arrangement which
actually occurs. This is an achievement of science. On the other
hand, tidying-up activities consist in moving objects from B con-
figurations, which just occur, towards type A arrangements which
are recognized as orderly and therefore desirable.
We can there reformulate our second and third general state-
ments: Men have a tidiness-preference for arrangements of which
they grasp the structural law, and they have a tidiness-propensity
to recast arrangements in accordance with models held in their
minds.
Contrasted Meanings of Rationality
The root of the word "rationality" is ratio, i.e., proportion. Con-
sidering a given arrangement of factors, we may call it "rational,"
because the proportions obtaining between parts are such as to
spring immediately to the eye, or to be immediately (or readily)
understood by the mind.
5
Our pleasure is then bound up with the
4 Consider the number of processes which come to be recognized as orderly when
related either to the Verhulst-Pearllogistic curve, or even better to Gaston Backman's
more elastic model. For an inspired eulogy of these patterns cf. D'Arcy Thompson:
On Growth and Form, new ed. Cambridge, 1942.
5 Let us recall that the eye of an ignorant man may appreciate the harmony of
proportions of an arrangement the structural law of which he could not formulate;
conversely, a mathematician may formulate a law of arrangement which cannot
be transcribed in a visible form.
assent we grant to existing proportions. But an arrangement may
be "rational" in quite another sense: if the proportions between
factors are suitable to produce the result at which the arrangement
is aimed. We thus find two distinct meanings of "rationality": sub-
jective enjoyment of proportions, and objective adequacy of propor-
tions to the purpose of the arrangement. To be more precise, in the
first case the arrangement is judged as "a sight"; in the second case,
as "an organization for results."
6
In everyday language, people tend to call arrangements "ra-
tional," "reasonable" and "orderly" if their principle is simple enough
to be immediately grasped; conversely, they tend to call them "irra-
tional," "unreasonable" and "disorderly," if the principle is not clear
to them. Thus order and reason tend to be identified to seemliness
rather than to operativeness.
The Case of the Library
In the course of his life an author has collected a private library
attuned to his needs. The volumes he uses least have been relegated
to the highest and least accessible tiers, while the works of reference
are ready at hand. Regardless of authorship and formal subject-
matter, those works that hold for him some affinity of significance
and that are apt to be used simultaneously are placed together.
The owner could not easily account for the distribution of his tools
(which indeed shifts over time), but it serves his purpose.
7
While
he is on a holiday, a well-meaning daughter decides to tidy up and
aligns the volumes according to format and alphabetical order. Hav-
ing wrought, she feels that "it looks better now"; and so it does,
but a working arrangement has been destroyed in the name of
seemliness. No doubt, the previous arrangement was imperfect and
could have been reformed to serve the author's purpose even better.
But such an improvement would have been based on a considered
judgment of the operator thinking out his process, or by someone
else capable of seeing the problem from the operative angle-an
"operator-judgment." The reform effected by the daughter was not
"operator-based," if I may so express it.
6 A third meaning of rationality need not concern us here; any configuration what-
ever is, of course, the outcome of its causes and therefore may be called "rational."
In this sense, everything that is real is rational, but then the term becomes so all-
embracing as to be useless.
7 For a striking treatment of the general problem of arrangement of tools around
an artisan, see Gerald K. Zipf, Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort,
Addison-Wesley Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1949.
Thinking in general terms, let us consider an arrangement of
factors that serves some purpose and is instrumental to some process.
Let us call it an operational arrangement. A mind concerned with
this purpose, well aware of the process, dwells upon the operational
arrangement and finds that it might be made more effective by
certain alterations. We shall call a judgment passed from this
angle an 0-judgment to denote that the arrangement is appreciated
from the operational standpoint. 0-judgments are the principle of
all technical progress made by mankind. Quite different in kind is
the judgment passed upon the same arrangement of factors by a
mind that regards it without any intensive interest in or awareness
of the process. Such a judgment is then passed as it were from an
external, extra-processive standpoint. We shall call it an S-judgment
( S for sightseer).
The Genesis of Absurdity
Whenever I recognize that an arrangement of factors is instru-
mental to an operation, I cannot call this arrangement irrational
(this would be saying in the same breath that it is related and un-
related to the same operation). But being concerned ex hypothesi
with this operation 1 may well call the arrangement more or less
rational. In this case I am really comparing a current method or
path which I have explored with another method or path which
I have discovered. This is an 0-judgment.
Addressing myself to the same arrangement, I may fail to identify
it as processive and instrumental to an operation, or I may fail to
interest myself in this operation, or again I may fail to sufficiently
scrutinize the process and arrangement to recognize their complex
connection. If I nonetheless pass a judgment upon what I perceive
of the configuration, this must be an S-judgment whose principle is
a spontaneous and undeliberate comparison of the shape perceived
to simple models of seemliness. If this is my attitude, the more com-
plex the process is to which I have denied my attention, and the
more complex the attending configuration, the more unseemly I
shall find the latter, and the more unfavorable must be my S-judg-
ment. I shall then call the arrangement disorderly and irrational.
An 0-judgment is costly in terms of attention and time. It cannot
be formed immediately or without effort; therefore, the number of
such judgments which I may form is limited. But while I must focus
my attention intensively on the process and arrangement in ques-
tion, a great number of other shapes float into the field of my atten-
tion, and my glimpses at them immediately call forth uncostly
S-judgments. The more extensive the field over which I may thus
roam effortlessly, the greater the number of my S-judgments. There-
fore, my store of judgments will tend to be made up of a small
minority of 0-judgments and a great majority of S-judgments. But
while my 0-judgments tend to improve arrangements whose proces-
siveness I have grasped and which I endeavor to make more
rational (i.e., effective), my S-judgments tend to impeach arrange-
ments of which I considered only the seemliness and which I
therefore pronounce irrational. Therefore the larger the number
of arrangements upon which I venture to pass judgments, the higher
the proportion of the arrangements examined which I shall pro-
nounce unseemly, and the more the world will seem to me to be
made up of "bad" and "wrong" arrangements.
But 0-judgments are also in a small minority within every other
mind. Moreover, diverse minds do not form 0-judgments on the
same subject matters. It follows that a summation of individual
judgments arrived at independently within a society would show
that there is of necessity a huge majority of S-judgments over 0-
judgments. And second, there must be a majority of S-judgments
over 0-judgments on every arrangement. S-judgments generally
entail a verdict of unseemliness, disorder, and irrationality; there-
fore, a summation of all judgments must result in a general verdict
of unseemliness, disorder, and irrationality. It must result in a con-
demnation of "the absurdity of the universe," and more specifically
of all social arrrangements.
We actually find that such a philosophy has arisen in our times
possibly because we have overextended the field of individual judg-
ment.
The Case of the Judge
Of course, it runs contrary to the principle of division of labor
that I should pass judgment on a great number of arrangements.
Take a simple simile. As a judge I have to rule on a number of cases
per year. It has never been suggested that every litigation in the
country should be submitted to every judge. If this would be the
case a great number of minds would be conscripted for each case,
but no attention at all could be paid to each. Such a procedure
would seem inane, and yet consider how many "cases" the daily
paper brings to our private court and tempts us to adjudge.
It takes no great psychological acumen to observe that we enjoy
passing judgments on matters of which we know very little. This
is bound up with our taste in configurations. Problems to which we
have devoted scrupulous scrutiny and arrangements which we have
delved into deeply offer no scope for application of the simple
models that we inherently prefer. It is a relief to tum to problems
of which we are ignorant and to which we therefore may apply
our models. Be it noted that the greatest scientists who have mas-
tered prodigious complexities are apt to come out with the most
naive views on social problems, for example. Their minds are taking
a holiday, reverting to the effortless and invalid judgment of seem-
liness. We could assume that those who are best aware of the
difficulties of grasping a process in their own fields, should be most
chary of passing S-judgments on other matters; but this is con-
trary to reality. Our affection for simple patterns is so basic to our
nature that the more we must bow to the actual complexities of
organizations we understand, the more we want to find simplicity
in other organizations.
The Attraction of Simple Figures
All that is known of man's past is testimony to the fact that he
has ever associated the idea of perfection with simple figures, which
he therefore used to denote Divinity. Basic to every ritual is the
circle in which the eye finds no lack and which thus represents (or
indeed suggests) the concept of Wholeness. The circular crown
seems to have been invented independently by all human societies;
the operations of magic have involved everywhere the tracing of
figures within a circle.
8
We are told that primitive places of worship
and assemblies of worshippers were circular.
9
Movement forming
simple geometric patterns was a form of homage to Divinity. Mili-
tary parades have also been derived from this, as well as our word
"theory," which in barrack language still meant quite recently
"training in geometric marching."
The setting of effective values upon the simplest geometric fig-
ures is strikingly exemplified in the history of warfare. The Mace-
donians were so enamored with the squareness of their phalanx that
they thoughtlessly adhered to their order of battle even when cir-
cumstances made it most inadvisable. Frederick the Great and
Napoleon's victories owed much to the aesthetic sense of their oppo-
s Cf. for instance Robert Ambelin, La Kahhale Pratique, Paris, 1951.
9 Cf. among many other sources Louis Hautecoeur, Mystique et Architecture;
Symholisme du Cercle et de la Coupole, Paris, 1954.
nents who arrayed their troops with an eye for symmetry. Frederick
and Napoleon gave themselves the advantage of an operative
arrangement over a seemly one.
Complex Structures are Characteristic of Life
"Proteins may well be considered the most important of all the
substances present in plants and animals."
10
This induces me to
ask for a description of proteins. In answer the chemist must first
remind me that he regards as elementary factors the atoms of pure
substance, though they themselves display a complex inner archi-
tecture. Starting from them as simple, the chemist must draw my
attention to amino-acids, a family of different compounds con-
structed by different arrangements of a different kind of atoms.
Taking pity upon my ignorance, he may invite me to regard these
amino-acids as a varied collection of queerly designed jewels, built
by different arrangements of different kinds of precious stones.
Then he must tell me about polypeptide chains, the stringing to-
gether in and from a line of many such "jewels," with a twisting of
the chain and in many cases an inter-twisting of several chains.
"Considering their structure, we see that the existence of a great
number of different proteins (perhaps 50,000 different proteins in
the human body) is not surprising. Protein molecules may differ
from one another not only in the number of residues of different
amino-acids, but also in the order of the residues in the polypeptide
chains, and the way in which the chains are folded."
11
In order to account for the operative properties of proteins, scien-
tists have found themselves compelled to successively work out this
extremely complicated picture, which stands in sharp contrast to
the simple configurations that haunt our mind.
It is a trite remark that our dead body, regarded as a mine of
inorganic chemicals, would not yield more than ten dollars worth
of chemicals. And while this makes a pretty poor joke, it can be
used to emphasize the value of intricate operative organization. Is
it not therefore disquieting that our minds should spontaneously
favor the tidiness of crystals over the intricacy of active arrange-
ments?
Nothing is more orderly than a crystal of pure copper; therein we
find regularity and symmetry at their best. Nothing is more opera-
10 Taken from that admirable introduction to chemistry, General Chemi8try by
Linus Pauling, 2nd ed., San Francisco, 1953, pp. 592-600.
llJbid.
tive than a gene, of which the intricacy baffies our science. A child
can grasp and reproduce the structure of the copper crystal, but no
human agency can forge this fantastically complicated signature
which the gene repeats all over the body of one specific person.
Surely so glaring an opposition should teach us not to confuse order
with organization!
The Threat of Orderliness
This train of thought leads us to regard the simplicity-preference
and tidiness-propensity of the human mind as potentially destruc-
tive. Such tendencies run counter to the diversity and intricacy
of operative structures. If I could recast the molecule proteins of
my body to give them a simpler and identical structure, I would be
committing suicide. Practically all men enjoy the orderliness of a
military parade, but they are dangerously prone to mistake this
enjoyment for the recognition of a supreme form of organization.
In fact, the men assembled on the field achieve no operation what-
ever beyond offering a sight. The idea of over-all organization is
frequently aligned to an image of perceivable regularity in human
movements as can be found in a parade. But this is the very oppo-
site of organization.
A parade is costly; equally costly is the parade spirit with which
we approach the operations of men in general. We tend to believe
that society is at its best when its functioning offers to our minds a
clear, distinct, and simple pattern. But the only thing then maxi-
mized is our intellectual enjoyment. We are prone to mistake our
endeavors to maximize our intellectual enjoyment for the spirit of
reform. But we have no warrant for the belief that a simplification
of pattern that would please our minds would constitute an im-
provement of society, unless we define improvement as increasing
coincidence of arrangements with the figures held in our mind-an
extreme of intellectual pride.
Let us now picture a group of operators, each engaged in a
process and therefore prone to arrange factors at hand in a manner
suitable to his process. Imagine that they meet at regular intervals
to devise a general structure. Now if they all individually and re-
sponsibly perform the same operations, we can assume that their
general decisions as to the over-all structure will take into account
operational needs that are experienced by all participants. This
cannot be so, however, if the participants are engaged in very dif-
ferent processes and if only a minority of them are in fact respon-
sible for the performing of operations. Then the common ground
for the participants will be provided by those general shapes and
figures that inhabit our minds and of which the simplest are the
most common to all of us. Agreement shall then most easily be
reached on orderly arrangements adverse to operational arrange-
ments in proportion to the intricacy of the latter. The rule of order
and the operational urge shall thenceforth be in conflict. This is,
of course, in itself a pattern of deceitful simplicity. But it may
serve to explain some tensions of contemporary societyP
12
Much more could be said on the subject. It might, for instance, be useful to
dwell upon our natural tendency, when sight-judging a mechanism or process, to
reform or improve it by breaking down whatever feedback it is provided with. But
what use, if any, can be made of the views advanced here must be left to better
judgments.
v
On Democracy
by HAN-s F. SENNHOLZ
THE major conflict of our time is
the struggle between the "People's Democracies" and the "Western
Democracies." Both sides claim to represent the "'true" democracy
and the truly democratic way of life. Each side claims to represent
a system of society that is diametrically opposed to that of the
other, based on contradicting beliefs and values and on distinct
systems of economic organization.
The subject of this study is the nature of both "democracies," and
the nature and limit of the power which both kinds of society exer-
cise over the individual. For it is the organization of society and the
individual's position in his society that constitute the nucleus of the
controversies. Stated in its broadest terms, the problem of the forms
of social organization has occupied thinkers since the beginning of
civilization. The problem of true or false democracy, however, is
the specific problem of our age. "Democracy" is the ambiguous
catchword with a multiplicity of connotations harboring conflicting
political and economic ideas and practices.
On the Nature of People's Democracies
A thorough analysis of the nature of the communist social order
and political constitution would have to include a discussion of the
nature of society, the division of labor, private and collective prop-
erty, the doctrines of class interests, the economics of a communist
community, and many other important problems. Indeed volumi-
nous volumes are and still could be written on the nature of the
communist social order. In this essay we merely would like to
52
examine the communist form of government in relation to democ-
racy, i.e., the system of political organization in which the supreme
power is retained by the people and exercised directly or indirectly
through a system of representation.
The most eminent architects of present-day communism, Marx,
Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, have repeatedly and distinctly stated
their views on the nature of "capitalist" and "communist" democra-
cies. Karl Marx dealt with this subject on the occasion of the Paris
uprising by the communist proletariat which took possession of the
city from March 18 to May 28, 1871. According to Marx, the insur-
rectionary government called Commune was the "positive form" of
a republic. Not only legislation and administration were laid into
the hands of the Commune but also the judicatory. Thus the three
branches of government power were united by the Commune Dele-
gation whose members were to be at any time "revocable and bound
by the mandat imperatif' of their constituents.
1
To Marx the capitalist state is the organ of class domination, the
organ of subjugation of one class by another. The function of West-
ern democracy is "to perpetuate the rule of capital, the slavery of
labor."
2
Its objective is the creation of a political and economic
order that "legalizes and perpetuates the oppression of the work-
ers." In connection with a discussion of his doctrine of the inevit-
able collapse of the capitalist democracies and the inevitability of
socialism and communism, Marx foresaw a stage of political transi-
tion in which the suppressed and impoverished proletariat would
seize dictatorial power through revolution. In his own words, "Be-
tween capitalist and communist society, there lies a period of
revolutionary transition from the former to the latter. A stage of
political transition corresponds to this period, and the State during
the period can be no other than the revolutionary dictatorship of
the proletariat."
3
Similar ideas on state and society were expressed by Marx's friend
and collaborator, Friedrich Engels. In a letter to the German so-
cialist party leader, Bebel, F. Engels vividly described the commu-
nist state as a "transitional institution which we are obliged to use
in the revolutionary struggle in order forcibly to crush our oppo-
nents. . . . During the period when the proletariat still needs the
1 Karl Marx, The Paris Commune, 1871, edition New York Labor News Co., 1920,
p. 74 et seq.
2 Karl Marx, Class Struggles in France, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1942, p. 60.
3 Letter of Marx to Bracke, May 15, 1875; see also Marx, Zur Kritik des sozial-
demokratischen Parteiprogramms von Gotha, Berlin, 1912, p. 23 et seq.
State, it does not require it in the interests of freedom, but in the
interest of crushing its antagonists."
4
Once it has taken control of
the state and has crushed its opponents, the proletariat, according
to Engels, "converts the means of production into State property.
But by this very act it destroys itself, as a proletariat, destroying at
the same time all class differences and class antagonisms, and with
this, also, the State. Past and present Society, which moved amidst
class antagonisms, had to have the State, this is, an organization of
the exploiting class for the support of its external conditions of
production. . . . When, ultimately, the State really becomes the
representative of the whole of Society, it will make itself superflu-
ous .. From the time when, together with class domination and the
struggle for individual existence, resulting from the personal anar-
chy in production, those conflicts and excesses which arise from this
struggle will all disappear-from that time there will be nobody to
be oppressed; there will, therefore, be no need for any special force
of oppression-no need for the State. The first act of the State, in
which it really acts as the representative of the whole of Society,
namely, the assumption of control over the means of production on
behalf of Society, is also its last independent act as a State."
5
Under
those conditions, Engels continues, "the State will not be 'abolished';
it will wither away." Of course, this does not mean that the capitalist
state will wither away; it must be destroyed by the proletariat
through revolution and war. Only the proletarian state withers
away after the revolution.
6
During his exile from czarist Russia, W. I. Lenin made similar
remarks on the nature of capitalist and proletarian democracies. In
his The State and Revolution/ which he wrote in 1917 while in
Zurich, Switzerland, he reiterated the teachings of Marx and Engels
and expounded his theory of proletarian revolution. To him the
Western democracies were organizations with the express purpose
of proletarian exploitation. "In capitalist society," said Lenin, "under
the conditions most favourable to its development, we have a more
or less complete democracy in the form of a democratic republic.
But this democracy is always bound by the narrow framework of
capitalistic exploitation, and, consequently, always remains, in
reality, a democracy only for the minority, only for the possessing
4 Letter of 18th-28th March, 1875, published in August Bebel, Aus meinem
Leben, Stuttgart 1911, Vol. II, p. 322.
II Ibid. See also F. Engels, Herm Eugen Diihrings Umwiilzung der Wissenschaft,
7th ed., Stuttgart, 1910, pp. 302, 303.
6 Ibid.
7 George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London, 1920.
classes, only for the rich."
8
Or at another place, .. To decide once
every few years which member of the ruling class is to repress
and oppress the people through parliament-this is the real essence
of middle class parliamentarianism, not only in parliamentary and
constitutional Monarchies, but also in the most democratic Repub-
lics."
9
Regarding the American, Swiss, French, and English democ-
racies he remarked that "Parliament itself is giving up to talk for
the special purpose of fooling the 'common people.'"
10
To sum up,
"we have a democracy that is curtailed, wretched, false; a democ-
racy only for the rich, for the minority.''
11
In his discussion of the alleged evolution of capitalism to im-
perialism Lenin applied his theory of proletarian revolution and
temporary dictatorship also in the field of international relations.
"It must be added," says Lenin, "that imperialism leads to an in-
crease of national oppression and subsequently to the growing of
resistance not only in new territories just opened up, but also to
territorial annexions among the old countries.''
12
Modern capitalism
means "striving for power instead of freedom, exploitation of an
increasing number of small and weak nations by very few and
wealthy nations." To avoid subjugation by capitalist nations and to
repulse any capitalist attempt at exploitation of the proletariat, that
is, truly democratic societies, the proletarian state is still needed.
Only when the resistance of the capitalists in all countries has finally
been broken, when all capitalists have disappeared, only then will
all states wither away.
In a speech before the Supreme Soviet in a special session in
November 1936, Joseph Stalin compared capitalist constitutions
with the new Russian constitution about to be adopted by the
Supreme Soviet. "The characteristics of the new Constitution,"
according to Stalin, "is its consequent and fully realized democrati-
zation. From the point of view of democracy two groups of bour-
geois constitutions can be distinguished: one group directly denies
the equality of citizens and democratic freedoms or renders their
realization unfeasible. The other group indeed accepts the demo-
cratic principles and even emphasizes them, but then embarks upon
conditions and limitations that completely mutilate the democratic
rights and freedoms. They speak of equal rights to vote for all
s Ibid., p. 89.
9 Ibid., p. 48.
1o Ibid., pp. 48, 49.
11 Ibid., p. 92.
12 W. I. Lenin, Der Imperialismus als hOchstes Stadium des Kapitalismus, Moscow,
1946, p. 151.
citizens, but then make them contingent on domiciliation, on edu-
cation and even wealth. They speak of equal rights, but immedi-
ately provide for limitations completely or partially voiding the
rights of women, etc., etc."
13
According to J. Stalin, the Soviet Constitution "does not merely
announce the democratic freedoms, but also assures them through
certain material means. It is evident that the democratization of the
new Constitution is no 'ordinary,' but a socialist democratization."
14
Comparing the Capitalist Democracies with the People's Democra-
cies Stalin arrived at the following conclusions: "Democracy in the
capitalist countries divided into antagonistic classes, in nal analysis,
is a democracy for the strong, a democracy for the possessing minor-
ities. The democracy in the Soviet Union, on the contrary, is a
democracy of workers, of everybody .... I therefore believe that
the Constitution of the U.S.S.R. is the only one in the world that
is democratic throughout."
15
All power in the U.S.S.R. lies with the
workers acting through the Soviets of deputies who are the political
foundation of the U.S.S.R. and of the dictatorship of the proletar-
iat.16 Capitalism is abolished; unearned riches and exploitation
profits are socialized and labor has become "the duty and honour
of every able-bodied citizen according to the principle: Who does
not labor, shall not eat."
17
These, in short, are the opinions of the most eminent founders of
the "People's Democracies." Their understanding and conception of
the nature of capitalist democracies is based on the belief in the
existence of antagonistic class interests under capitalism and in
exploitation of the workers by the owners of the means of produc-
tion. Their contentions obviously would lack any foundation if they
failed to prove the existence of class conflicts and capitalist exploita-
tion. We shall endeavor to show in the following that Marx,
Engels, Lenin, and Stalin never succeeded in offering cogent proof
of class conflict and exploitation under capitalism, nor could they
ever succeed because both phenomena are incompatible with the
nature of capitalism. Where there is capitalism there can be no
class conflict, no exploitation. And where there are class conflicts
and exploitation, there can be no capitalism.
In an unhampered market economy the determination of wages is
13 J. Stalin, Uber den Entwurf der Verfassung der USSR, Moscow, 1945, pp. 23, 24.
14 Ibid., p. 26.
15 Ibid., p. 37.
16 Article 2 of the Soviet Constitution, Ibid., p. 61.
17 Article 12 of the Soviet Constitution, Ibid., p. 63.
the outcome of the valuations and decisions of consumers. Through
buying or abstaining from buying they determine what is produced,
at what price, in what quantity, quality, etc. With the valuation of
the ultimate consumption goods the consumers also determine the
value of labor services and achievements necessary for the produc-
tion of the final product. Labor services are valued like the services
of any other factor of production. Their prices, i.e., wage rates, tend
to coincide with the marginal productivity of labor. That is to say,
the supply of labor and of other factors of production and the antic-
ipated future prices of the ultimate product determine the height
of wage rates. It is obvious that businessmen cannot pay more for
services than they obtain for the ultimate product in the market. To
pay more would mean to suffer losses and to risk bankruptcy. On
the other hand, a businessman cannot pay less than the market
value of each service because he would lose his workers to com-
peting entrepreneurs. Under free enterprise I cannot hold a worker
by paying him less than he can obtain from my competitors. To
assume that employers could keep wages down is absurd, for new
entrepreneurs would immediately enter the labor market and bid
up the labor price. Already operating entrepreneurs would expand
their employment and thus bid up wages until the market height
had been reached. As long as an opportunity to earn a profit from
low wages existed, employers would continue to bid for additional
labor and thus cause wage rates to rise until this source of profit
were eliminated.
Of course, in an interventionist society actual wage rates may
differ from the potential rate which would exist in an unhampered
market. If we erect institutional barriers that impede competition
and hinder entrance into certain industries and occupations, we
falsify the actual demand and supply situation and bring about dis-
parities of labor prices. But in every instance our interference with
competition has inevitable effects. That is to say, we create unem-
ployment, or shortages, depending on the nature of the discrepancy
between the interventionist price from that of the unhampered
market. Thus it is conceivable that under absence of capitalism
wage rates may be lower than the height determined by labor's
marginal productivity. Exploitation is a common phenomenon in
all non-capitalist countries, i.e., in interventionist, socialist, and
above all, in communist societies where wage rates are determined
by central decrees.
Equally indefensible is the contention of the antagonistic class
interests under capitalism. The notion of the irreconcilable conflict
58
between the interests of "capital" and "labor" is Marxian, though
it enjoys popularity also among non-Marxian socialists and inter-
ventionists. In a free market society it is in the vital interests of all
its members that the social division of labor be fully developed and
each member be most productive. The higher productivity of the
division of labor removes all conceivable sources of conflict. It is
true, in a society without division of labor additional wealth cannot
be produced and each man's share curtails the shares of all others.
But in a market economy the preservation and further development
of the division of labor and its greater productivity become the
uniting common interest. The greater the productivity of my fellow
men, the more will I obtain in exchange for my labor. Thus every-
body benefits from the smooth operation of the market economy.
Consumers also determine everybody's share in the process of
production. Their choices and preferences determine who shall be
in possession of capital. Whoever serves them best in the satisfac-
tion of their wants is allotted control. Whoever fails to satisfy their
most urgent wants suffers losses of capital through the operation
of the market. Under capitalism ownership in the means of produc-
tion has a social function: it serves the satisfaction of the consumer's
wants.
Under communism labor and the material means of production
are directed by government. Central planners and officials deter-
mine what shall be produced and who shall produce it. It is no
longer the consumer whose choices and preferences direct the econ-
omy, but government officials who determine the production process
and allocate the material factors. Property is divested of its social
function and becomes a privilege for officials whose power of man-
agement is absolute. To encroach upon their rights and decisions
becomes a crime subject to severe punishment. According to Article
131 of the Soviet Constitution, "Persons who transgress against
public socialist property are enemies of the people." That is to say,
whoever transgresses against the means of production in the hands
of the planners is an enemy of the state.
To maintain that capitalist democracies are democracies "only
for the minority, only for the possessing classes, only for the rich,"
or that the capitalist state is a state of "class domination" in which
"elections decide once every few years which member of the ruling
class is to repress and oppress the people through parliament,"
either reflects an extraordinary insensibility toward reality or is out-
rightly malicious. In the United States more than seven million
people own the stock of American corporations and more than five
million own farms; that is to say, more than twelve million Ameri-
cans are capitalists in the Marxian sense. But about a hundred mil-
lion Americans are eligible to vote in all elections. If the Marxian
contention were correct, only the twelve million capitalists could
vote, make laws, and determine who should "repress and oppress
the people through parliament." The emptiness of the Marxian
contention is apparent.
Let us look at this case from another viewpoint. If it were the
American capitalists who make and execute the laws, the taxes paid
by the capitalists indeed would be insignificant. Also state controls
would not be laid on the business transactions of the capitalists, but
rather on all matters concerning the workers. American reality
looks different. It is a matter of fact that the highest taxes are paid
by the capitalists and especially by the bankers and brokers in Wall
Street. As owners of corporations they often pay up to 82% of
corporate income and up to 88% of the remaining income in the
form of federal income taxes. In addition, state and city govern-
ments help themselves to revenues by taxing Wall Street transac-
tions. Numerous government controls are imposed upon the credit
and money market. Can anybody honestly maintain that these taxes
and controls are imposed upon the capitalists by themselves? Or
is it the vast majority of American voters who, ignorant of the fact
that their very livelihood and existence depends on capital accu-
mulation and investments, elect representatives who are bent on
dissipating and enjoying past capital accumulations for the benefit
of the moment? The answer is obvious.
According to Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, the capitalist de-
mocracies must be destroyed by the workers in violent revolutions
and be replaced by the "dictatorship of the proletariat." For "com-
munism alone is capable of giving a really complete democracy, and
the fuller it is the more quickly will it become unnecessary and
wither away."
Capitalism and exploitation are two incompatible concepts exclud-
ing each other. But let us disregard this conclusion for a moment in
order to discuss the alleged necessity of proletarian revolutions in
the Western democracies. If it were correct that the workers under
capitalism are subjugated and exploited, why do they not vote the
few ruling capitalists out of office? As we have seen, the workers
are in the vast majority in all elections. Why should they favor
violent revolutions if they can most easily form a proletarian dicta-
torship through their votes at the polls? In 1933, for example, the
majority of Germans did not rise in revolution in order to make
Hitler the dictator of Germany. They simply voted him into office,
observing all provisions of the law. In a democracy where the
workers comprise the majority of the constituency, there is no log-
ical justification for the majority to overthrow the government.
The majority of a nation only rises in revolution if and when it
cannot remove an undesired government through free elections. A
dictatorship that is not backed by the majority of the people faces
the constant danger of revolution and overthrow.
The predilection of Marx and his followers for violent revolutions
merely reveals their palliate intent to seize governmental power
with the fanatical support of small minorities. Such an uprising
may be successful provided the majority sympathizes with the
minority and sooner or later approves the fait accompli. In Russia
the majority of the people finally acquiesced in the communist sei-
zure of power after a long and bloody civil war. But as soon as
Russian public opinion should begin to disapprove of the dictator-
ship of the few in power, their overthrow through revolution is
imminent. This is the most serious danger to the communist regime
in Moscow.
The phrase of the "withering dictatorship of the proletariat" is a
catchword coined to lure the bewildered masses. Devoid of any
intelligent meaning it even presupposes realization of a series of
conditions. First, all means of production must be in the possession
of the state and the resistance of the capital owners must be broken.
Second, the formula "from each according to his ability, to each
according to his needs" must be fully realized. Third, and this is
Lenin's contribution, capitalism must be destroyed in all countries
and communism must prevail all over the world. Provided all these
conditions are given, the communist states are said to wither away.
The first condition raises the problem of whether a society, in
which all means of production are in the hands of an economic
planner, can afford to be without a social apparatus of compulsion
and coercion. Is central planning and directing of millions of pro-
duction processes conceivable without coercion? Is the directing
of a labor force of many millions of individuals possible without a
disciplinary power? We deny this vehemently. Even if we assume
that all material means of production are in the hands of a single
planner whose position and decisions are uncontested by all his
fellow men, we deny that they, without coercion, would work
where he wants them to work and in accordance with his instruc-
tions. Of course, he may attempt to direct the labor force through
education and persuasion. But if his attempt should fail only in
exceptional cases, the central director would have to impose control
over the engagement of labor. That is to say, he would resort to
coercion through the apparatus of coercion: the state. All socialist
governments, in order to control and direct the production process,
sooner or later applied to a certain extent the use of powers of labor
direction. Central planning always means central management of
the factors of production, including labor. This holds true in all
human societies.
The second condition, that the formula "from each according to
his ability, to each according to his needs" must first be realized
before the withering process can commence, is an empty political
slogan which is to hypnotize the people. Every student of econom-
ics knows that the concept of "need," for example, permits a number
of interpretations. And Marx and his followers are said to have
been economists. They must have known that human need may
pertain to anything requisite, desired, or useful for individual well-
being, that it may be physical, intellectual, spiritual, that it refers
to individual ends or to imperative demands for the realization of
ultimate ends, that it implies indeterminable degrees of urgency.
What do they mean? To fail to discuss these concepts of a future
society they are striving to attain either reflects an astonishing shal-
lowness of political and economic thought or bad faith. Could they
have referred to the need of subsistence, to the provisions for the
maintenance of human life? This, indeed, would be surprisingly
modest as it implies a considerable reduction in the standards of
living of the American and European nations. Or could they have
promised the satisfaction of every conceivable want of every indi-
vidual on this earth? Could they have meant a paradise on earth?
This is most likely and equally fantastic. It seems quite unnecessary
to expound on the limitations of our material resources and human
energies. There are limits to what man can produce, limits of time
and strength, of nature's cooperation, and above all, of the instru-
ments of production. It is true the latter can be increased and
improved through irksome saving and investing, but always in time-
consuming narrow limits.
Or let us take the Marxian concept "from each according to his
ability." It immediately reveals a similar ambiguity. Let us assume
that ability refers to the physical, intellectual, and moral capacity to
perform valuable labor services. But who is to determine a man's
ability to add value to the social product? Is each individual him-
self to determine his position in the division of labor? Millions of
people undoubtedly are convinced of their skill and competence to
conduct central planning, to direct the production process, to super-
vise the labor of others. And who would openly admit that his
faculties and talents merely suffice for the perfom1ance of primitive
labor services? In such a society each individual indeed would
endeavor to shift the disutility of hard and base labor to others, and
the division of labor would disintegrate. Or should each man's
ability be judged by his fellow men through the operation of the
market? In a market society it is the consumers who determine the
value of a man's contribution and, above all, his position in the pro-
duction process. No, this is not what the communist fathers could
have meant, for this is capitalism. Or is a central director to deter-
mine a man's ability and position in the production process? Is the
economic dictator to determine everybody's ability and contribution
to the total product? This indeed is conceivable; but this is enslave-
ment and no proletarian paradise.
Finally, the third condition for the promised realization of the
withering process is the destruction of capitalism all over the world.
The communist state is said to wither away, provided the means
of production are nationalized, the formula "from each according to
his ability, to each according to his needs" is fully realized, and
communism reigns all over the world. These are the communist
conditions. In reality communism cannot be realized on a national
basis, not to mention on a world-wide basis. It is a system of
thought without a trace of logical coherence. Its realization is inac-
cessible to the human mind. But the unrealizability of the condi-
tions serves the rulers in Russia as a welcome justification for their
dictatorial position.
But let us assume for a moment that this nebulous system of
social organization is actually realized. Let us assume that all the
world is communistic. A glance at the hazy contour of such a
world immediately reveals numerous sources of antagonistic conflict
which would tum the world into an arena of war and chaos. At
first, the problem of economic leadership could not be solved. We
would continue to have as many planning agencies and economic
directors as we now have states. Diverging policies of national
economic planning would be conducted causing confusion, conflict,
and chaos. If a world planning board is to direct the production of
the whole world's population, who is to be the supreme economic
leader? Even if he should be found, his central planning in the
"interest of the world" would create more problems because the
absence of the market economy would render the calculation of
capital and costs of production impossible. A communist world
planner would be deprived of a method of ascertaining whether or
not a certain production or method of production were economically
worth while. Furthermore, certain parts of the world would be
favored to the detriment of others. The richer nations would prob-
ably take the view that the capital invested in their areas is their
property which they would be reluctant to share with the poorer
nations. It is true the American worker is eager to share in the
profits of American capitalists and businessmen. But he would be
very reluctant to share his wealth and income with the Chinese
coolie. He undoubtedly would oppose a reduction of his annual
income from, let us say $3,000 to the world average of $200-$300.
On the other hand, the poorer nations would insist upon sharing
the benefits from the capital and favorable production conditions
enjoyed by the richer nations. They would undoubtedly insist
upon the right to migrate in vast numbers to the areas with more
favorable production conditions. How would a world board for
economic planning solve all these problems? They are insoluble
under communism.
The communist democracy before its actual realization through
the withering process is said to be a "dictatorship of the proletariat."
This phrase is as ambiguous and misleading as all other Marxian
concepts. Taken literally it means that all workers are to be dicta-
tors. Such a state of society obviously would be identical with
anarchism in which millions of workers would wield terroristic
power over all others. Or could Marx have meant that the prole-
tariat is to invest their leader with dictatorial power through a
system of representation? Let us deliberate on this idea of leader-
ship for a moment.
By far the larger part of the world's population clings to the per-
nicious belief that political and economic power concentrated in
the hands of virtuous and capable leaders ensures a just and benefi-
cial administration of political and economic matters. They believe
that good laws are enacted and bad ones are repealed, that justice
is fairly administered and that all branches of administration indus-
triously and intelligently conduct their affairs in the best interest
of the public. The virtuous, capable, and trustworthy leaders are
said to operate the nation's facilities of economic production unself-
ishly and more efficiently than millions of businessmen under cap-
italist competition. Justice, order, and prosperity are said to prevail
where nations have found great leaders in whom they have laid
their trust.
This notion fully adopted by the communist world and embraced
in large parts of the rest of the world permeates contemporary polit-
ical thinking. The assumption of the virtuous and capable leader
who establishes and enforces the law and plans economic life is
without reason or force, for it contradicts the very nature of collec-
tivism. In a collectivist society in which the individual serves the
ends established by its illustrious leaders and where the "selfish"
interests of the individual are forcibly superseded by collective
duties imposed, only the unscrupulous and uninhibited get to the
top. It cannot be otherwise. If there is only one end, that of so-
ciety, and one leader under whose direction the individuals serve
toward that end, the problem of dissent arises. How is the leader
to deal with the dissenter who disputes the established end or
merely the method by which it is to be attained? Is the citizen to
be free to pursue diverging ends and unauthorized methods? Is
the leader to exert tolerance and indulgence? If he does, the col-
lective ends may not be realized or their realization may be im
peded. The question inevitably arises whether the collectivist
society should forego the desired ends or whether dissent should
be suppressed. There is no other alternative. If superiority and
priority are ascribed to the collective end, dissent must be elimi-
nated lest its realization be a failure. Once we have arrived at this
conclusion, we clearly perceive the problem of suppressing dissent.
The leader who exerts the greatest degree of tolerance towards dis-
senters is least efficient in their suppression. A leader who is most
ruthless and unscrupulous is most successful. As society tends to
entrust the realization of its collective ends to those who are most
likely to be successful, the most ruthless become its rulers. The
notion that the leader of a collectivist society can be virtuous is not
borne out by logic or reason. It is senseless and dangerous.
If the leader should abstain from exercising his power and be
tolerant and indulgent in the pursuit of the collective end, he must
be prepared to face a public opinion that no longer echoes his own.
If he should grant his subjects freedom of discussion and the press,
a public opinion will form and dissenters will express their doubts
and objections. The dissenters now having regular organs will ex-
press opinions adverse to the policies of the leader. It is true that
the leader may endeavor to "educate" the people in order to coun-
teract adverse opinion and unmask it as a manifestation of selfish
private interests. But what is he to do when the unfavorable opin-
ions are embraced by the majority of his subjects? Is he to abdicate
or to counteract with power and suppression? This would be the
ultimate alternative of the indulgent dictator.
18
But even if we were to concede that the dictator can be virtuous,
capable, and indulgent, we must deny that it is humanly possible
for him to give attention and superintendence to all parts of his
legislature, administration, and judiciary. He must select a great
number of collaborators of integrity and talent whom he can en-
trust with the power of supervision and control. And finally, he
must depend on millions of honest and able men to inform him
correctly at all times, so that he may guide them towards the execu-
tion of the collective program. He must direct them, for their pas-
sivity is implied in the very idea of his leadership.
It is inevitable that a nation that has transferred its political and
economic matters to its illustrious leaders will suffer severely in
intellectual and moral capacities. The development of human facul-
ties depends among other things upon their practical application
or the prospect of such application. Passivity does not call forth
the development of intellectual or active faculties. Who puts him-
self to the trouble of thought and training if he lacks the prospect
of some practical use of his efforts? Moral capacities must suffer
where the ultimate decision of human welfare is released from the
responsibility of the individual and transferred to government. Mo-
rality depends on voluntary good deeds and offices. If the field of
personal morality is reduced and that of government responsibility
enlarged, it follows that the domain of personal virtue is narrowed
by the increasing area of collective coercion.
The very principle that the collective end is the sole end includes
the principle that the collective end justifies all means. For the
"good of the whole" the individual must be prepared to sacrifice
his own ends and apply every means necessary for the attainment
of the common end. There is literally nothing that he must not be
prepared to do. The collective end as understood by the leader is
the sole criterion of what ought to be done. It is obvious that this
system of collectivist morals violently contrasts with the morals of
our civilization. According to Judeo-Christian moral doctrines the
influence of every single action on human good will and gratifica-
18 See also John Stuart Mill, "Representative Government" in Utilitarianism,
Liberty, and Representative Government, E. P. Dutton and Co., N.Y., 1951, p. 271
et seq.; Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, Yale University Press, 1949, pp. 42, 43,
145-153, 772; Clarence Manion, "Legalized Immorality" in Essays on Liberty, The
Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y., 1952, p. 23
et seq.: Hans Kelsen, Vom Wesen und Wert der Demokratie, Tiibingen, 1929, p. 53
et seq.
66
tion is the predominant consideration. The tendencies and effects of
all our actions upon every individual and, indeed, upon the whole
sentient creation form the yardstick of our morality. To exclude
the consequences of our actions and means applied from our moral
consideration and to limit our conscience to the consequences of
the collective end is in fact to deny all morals.
We readily admit that an authoritarian society will not be wholly
destitute of intellectual power. A select class of scholars may em-
bark upon speculations that do not approach politics, the collective
ends, and their realization. There may be skill in the common busi-
ness of life or training in the proper execution of central orders and
directives. Finally there may be an attempt on the part of the
leader to direct the best mental power in the country in a direction
where it will enhance his position and grandeur. This may be the
political party, police, or armed forces. The vast majority of the
people, however, will tend to lack knowledge of and interest in
the more important matters of political and economic life.
It is true there is a bureaucratic variety of competition. The col-
lectivist state in which the market and its competition is eliminated
is necessarily organized according to bureaucratic principles. As the
sphere of government is expanded to almost all spheres of human
activity, the system of bureaucratic management is all-embracing.
It cannot be otherwise. If the central leader would abstain from
issuing directives and instructions to his subordinates, it would be
tantamount to renouncing his own power. Therefore he issues
codes, decrees, and statutes that limit and restrict the power of his
subordinates. Only through numerous rules and regulations does
the leader inform his subjects of the collective will and the methods
of its realization. And only through scrupulously abiding by these
detailed directives can it be realized. The individual in a collectivist
society merely carries out orders; he is not free to act according to
his own judgment and conviction.
Competition in an all-embracing bureaucracy pertains to the zeal
with which the central directives are executed. To be docile, sub-
missive, and obedient to the superior is to be most virtuous and
most likely to gain his favor. There is no room for initiative, for
there are regulations which a subordinate cannot change. He is not
free to make decisions or to manage his own life and rely on his own
strength. There is no hope but in obeying. To follow regulations
and directives even if they are harmful or conflict with his con-
science is the only way toward promotion. Under these conditions
intelligence, initiative, and other personal talents are of little avail.
A young man who enters one of the innumerable bureaus has his
life predetermined by established rules and practices. He is buried
for life. It is true he enjoys security, similar to that enjoyed by the
inmates of penitentiaries. But he will never be free to run his own
life and be master of his own fate. He belongs to what Ludwig von
Mises calls a "lost generation."
19
The bureaucratic regimentation in a collectivist society breeds a
passive type of character, which learns to endure and bend to all
circumstances. No longer does the individual struggle against evil
or strive for achievement through his own exertion, but he becomes
acquiescent and submissive to his superiors and the conditions of his
surroundings. Active and energetic characters are eyed with sus-
picion. Passivity and contentment are held in high esteem. But the
advancement of society is solely the work of the uncontented and
struggling. Without them civilization must fall into stagnation or
even decline.
The moral consequences of all-round bureaucratic regimentation
are far-reaching. Where people have desires which they cannot hope
to realize through application of their own efforts and energies, they
are apt to look with envy and hatred on those enjoying the op-
portunity of their realization. Only those who believe in the oppor-
tunity of success through exertion of individual efforts and energies
tend to be free of malice towards those who in the past have suc-
ceeded. People who desire what others possess but are too inert
to expend the necessary effort, and people whose system of social
organization hinders them from ever realizing their hopes, are apt
to be grumbling characters with envy and ill will towards all others.
It is no coincidence that the nations of the Orient and of the Com-
munist hemisphere embrace a great degree of envy and malice to-
wards the Western nations because they would like to enjoy the
advantages of the citizens of the West. They are envious of the
standard of living which they cannot attain and are hindered from
attaining through application of their own energies. It is a matter
of fact that the hostility of numerous nations in the underdeveloped
parts of the world flows from this very envy and malice which is
the moral consequence of their own system of individual limitation.
Russian soldiers in the occupation forces in Europe have learned to
envy Europeans for their better living conditions and are thereby
stirred to the desire for further conquest and occupation. These
19 For an excellent comparison between the bureaucratic system of management
and management under the system of free enterprise, see L. von Mises, Bureaucracy,
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1946.
68
ON FREEDOM AND FREE ENTERPIDSE
moral faults are the inevitable consequence of a system of social
organization that rejects individual freedom and initiative. It is no
coincidence that Americans in the past felt little ill will towards
wealthier fellow men because it was the country of opportunity and
reward for individual efforts and exertion. Of course, this too has
begun to change with the growth of government regimentation and
its attendant decline of individual opportunity, accompanied by the
ideology of class struggle, collective bargaining, and strikes as the
only remedy for individual enhancement.
Summing up, we may state that the "People's Democracies" are
tyrannies of the states over the individual. They are organizations
of destruction of human society, the division of labor, and the values
that created human civilization. "People's Democracy" merely is
a catchword with a multiplicity of connotations harboring conflict-
ing political and economic ideas and brutal practices. The Marxian
illusion of the stateless society cannot be realized. But any attempt
of its realization necessarily must lead to suppression, conflict, and
chaos.
On the Nature of Western Democracies
If we compare the political systems of the "People's Democracies"
with those of the West we cannot fail to recognize instantly that the
political power in the Western democracies ultimately lies with
the people and is exercised indirectly through a system of repre-
sentation. Government power flows from the consent of the people
and is divided among many. Government is an organization set up
by individuals for their protection from violent actions of domestic
and foreign peace-breakers and has the monopoly of the use of
coercion in order effectively to meet transgressions and preserve
peaceful interhuman relations. By means of elections the majority
of the constituency is free to replace an unpopular government with
other representatives who promise to conduct more agreeable poli-
cies. It is a social organization that aims to prevent conflict, revolu-
tions, and civil wars.
An historical sketch of Western democracies in theory and prac-
tice would have to include the political teachings of Aristotle and
his followers, of Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, and other
modern theorists of democracy. It would have to include compara-
tive studies of the legislatures, executives, and judiciaries in the
most important Western countries, and finally a discussion of the
historical significance of political events in Great Britain, France,
the United States, and Germany. In this study, however, we may
refrain from entering into a detailed discussion of all these problems
and restrict our deliberation to the differences and similarities be-
tween the "People's Democracies" and those of the West.
Our political institutions are the work of men. They are the out-
come of past and present political thought and application of hu-
man will. In every stage of development the political apparatus
was devised and operated by men. Like all things made by man
it is either well or ill made and is either capable of attaining desired
objectives or not. Our criticism of present-day Western democracies
will hinge upon this criterion.
One of the fundamental differences between the "People's De-
mocracies" and those of the West lies in the political apparatus
that guarantees accord between the will of the government and the
will of the majority of the people. It is fundamental to the Western
democracies and foreign to the "communist democracies." The
significance of the democratic form of government lies in this de-
pendence of legislation and administration on the will of the popular
majority. They are dependent on the people's will through the in-
stitution of free elections which can peaceably change the govern-
ment according to the people's liking. Under such a legal system
conflicts between the rulers and the people are avoided and the
smooth operation of the division of labor is safeguarded. Democ-
racy thus performs a function that is of grave social importance and
that civilized nations cannot do without.
It is obvious that the Marxian concept of democracy, the dictator-
ship of the proletariat through violent overthrow of nonproletarian
governments, is diametrically opposed to the democratic concept of
the West. In the communist states persons and systems in the
government can be changed by violence only; in the West they are
constantly changed through the institution of free election. There-
fore, the will of the Western public continuously redetermines the
will of the organs of government, whereas the popular will in the
communist states may or may not concur with that of the state. If
it actually does, the communist system does not suffer from the
absence of the institution of free elections and the legal apparatus
of government readjustment. However, if the popular will in the
communist states should begin to diverge from the will of the state,
the lack of the democratic form of government becomes fatal, and
violence and revolution are unavoidable. All revolutions in human
history resulted from this absence of the democratic institution of
readjustment of government to the will of the public. And sooner
or later the communist empires will be plunged into internal strife
and civil war because of this shortcoming. For change is intrinsic
to human nature.
Human coexistence and cooperation are safeguarded through a
form of government that prevents conflict and strife. A democratic
government whose single responsibility is this protection of society
can discharge its function in an ideal manner. It does not matter
whether every stratum of society is represented in accordance with
its numerical importance in the making and administration of laws.
As long as government is dependent on the will of the politically
conscious and active members of society, peace and order are safe-
guarded. But democratic government suffers in its operation and
becomes the source of insoluble conflicts as soon as the scope of its
functions is enhanced. The proof of this point shall be attempted
in the following.
In an interventionist system of society, government is given the
additional task of directing the operation of the market economy
into channels of "greater general welfare" as it is conceived by the
welfare planners. The government apparatus of coercion is em-
ployed not only for the protection of social cooperation, but also
to influence the utilization of the means of production. The sphere
of government coercion is enlarged and that of individual freedom
reduced. The individual's right to choose and to act is suppressed
and government power is substituted for the discretion of the citi-
zen. It is inevitable that the interests of the citizen who is forced
to yield to an official's decision are impeded. His loss of freedom
gives rise to conflict between him and the state. But government
interventionism not only means bereavement of someone's freedom
but also deterioration of someone' s well-being. Government is an
apparatus of coercion, and not an economic organization of produc-
tion. Whatever benefits it may apportion to some of its citizens are
taken from others whose material well-being is thus diminished.
This deterioration of someone's well-being gives rise to conflict be-
tween individuals or groups of individuals and the state.
It is true this conflict created by the intervention of a democratic
government for the sake of "greater general welfare" does not im-
mediately endanger the peace and bring about domestic disorder.
But human coexistence and cooperation suffer from every govern-
ment act that creates and injects social conflict. It is obvious that
such a policy constitutes a rejection of capitalism and is incompat-
ible with the elementary function of democracy.
To restrain effectively governmental action that is likely to hinder
the pacifying operation of government, the liberal philosophers and
lawyers of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
insisted upon and finally succeeded in making their governments
constitutional, i.e., they established and maintained effective re-
straint upon governmental action. In its functional sense, a liberal
constitution merely is an effective, regularized restraint of govern-
ment to prevent it from becoming the source of insoluble con:Bicts.
And man's "natural rights" as protected by the "bills of rights"
merely constitute a pattern of such restraint upon governmental
action. For limitation of the power of government over individuals
does not lose its importance simply because government officials
are freely removable by the majority of electors. Self-government
does not mean government of each by himself, but of each individ-
ual by the majority of the rest. The will of the people does not
mean the aggregate will of all individuals, but the will of the
majority of the voters. This conception of government consequently
demands precautions against any abuse of power and oppression by
the government of the majority over the rest. It leads us to include
the tyranny of the majority through acts of its governing authorities
among the evils against which a democratic society must be on
guard.
20
Where democratic government is diverted from its true purpose-
the protection of the smooth operation of the system of social organ-
ization-everyone will want to participate or at least be represented
in the governing bodies. Participation in political matters becomes
of greatest importance, for the interventionist coercion of govern-
ment may be turned either against oneself or against others. We
may observe furious bickering among the victims and beneficiaries
of "progressive" policies in all parliaments rejecting unhampered
capitalism. Various groups of beneficiaries struggle for the spoils of
government intervention. And with every new act for the sake of
"greater general welfare," new con:Bict and discord are created-
until democracy itself is destroyed. The presence of capitalism does
not call for destruction of the state, as Marx contends, but its very
absence destroys democracy.
Take the example of the American income and inheritance taxa-
tion. It is the main instrument of progressive democracy. In order
to raise the funds for popular spending programs or to equalize the
material position of all members of society, the interventionists
advocate systems of discriminatory taxation that confiscates "exces-
20 See also John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty," in Utilitarianism, Liberty, and Repre-
sentative Government, E. P. Dutton and Co., N.Y., 1951, pp. 88, 89.
sive" income and wealth. Our government employees and politi-
cians enjoy spending billions of dollars of tax funds which are their
very source of livelihood. To improve their own living conditions
they must succeed in reducing the income of others. Numerous
recipients of public revenues are eager to increase taxes in order to
increase their income. Thus conflict of interest is created between
two distinct classes of citizens: the bureaucrats and other benefici-
aries of public revenues on the one hand, and those citizens from
whom the funds are taken. Since taxes on "excess" income and
inheritance are paid by the successful capitalist and entrepreneur,
the conflict mainly arises between the bureaucrats and the most
able and beneficient members of society-those who serve the
wishes of the consumers in the cheapest and most efficient way.
But this is not the only conflict created. Under capitalism millions
of consumers ultimately determine, through their buying or absten-
tion from buying, each individual's income and wealth. Confisca-
tory taxation, in fact, means removal of the consumers from this
position. They no longer can determine who shall be in possession
of the means of production, nor can they issue the ultimate instruc-
tions regarding the production process. Their material well-being,
finally, is diminished by the consumption of the tax funds taken out
of the sphere of production. Again, conflict is created between
progressive government and certain groups of the people.
We readily admit that this policy of confiscation and redistribu-
tion by fiscal means is lauded and authorized by the majority of
modem progressive governments. But it cannot be denied that it
impedes human coexistence and cooperation. Conflict arises wher-
ever nations abandon the system of unhampered capitalism for that
of interventionism, socialism, and communism. The Western na-
tions in fact have abandoned this road of true democracy that led
them to the unprecedented achievements. Under the influence of
the enemies of capitalism they have embarked upon the road of
interventionism and socialism that leads to the ultimate destruction
of Western democracies. Karl Marx and his followers, German
holistic philosophers, Western reformers and planners, and other
destructionists are leading the way-a way on which the legislator
feels free of all limitations, a way of limitless rule of the majority
which proclaims itseH above the natural conditions of social and
economic life.
But this is not all. There is the possibility and actual existence
of conflicts between the interests of the parliamentary majority and
those of the vast majority of the people. That is to say, the interests
of the majority of legislators as expressed in parliamentary acts and
resolutions no longer coincide with the interests of the majority of
the people. Although it is the uncontested feature of constitutional
government that coincidence of interests and will of constituents
and representatives is most essential in all the various forms of
representation, in modern "progressive democracy," however, the
interests of representatives often differ from and prevail over those
of their constituents. It is true, a member of the representative
body is not a delegate but a representative; and his duty is to use
his own judgment on any question that comes before him. But he
ought not to sacrifice the interests of his constituents to diverging
interests of his own.
The way in which modem progressive government necessarily is
managed too often results in the public being unaware of the true
nature of progressive legislation. Hundreds of bills and resolutions
have to be dealt with in each parliamentary session. The great num-
ber of laws which socialist and interventionist governments ask the
representative to pass makes adequate consideration by the public,
and often even by the very members of the legislative body, impos-
sible. Furthermore, "time-tables" for the various stages of bills be-
fore parliament often are introduced to shorten the time for public
discussion of complicated government measures which are unintel-
ligible to most constituents. Under these conditions the formation
of a public opinion on each single bill is prevented, providing the
leeway for representatives to further their own special interests or
those of special favor groups.
In an increasing number of cases the representative is either a
"professional politician" entirely dependent on his parliamentary
salary with no expectation of earning a comparable livelihood out-
side his public employ, or he is the representative of economic inter-
est groups, a lawyer for trade associations, or an official of a labor
union. In these cases the representative tends to speak and vote in
accordance with the recommendations of the local and national
organizations of his party, a labor union or any organization whose
endorsement and support he deems important for his re-election.
Since organized pressure groups or lobbies can offer powerful sup-
port, such as monetary contributions to campaign funds, or can
threaten organized opposition to his re-election, the representative
tends to act in harmony with the wishes of the lobbyist. Thus the
ignorance of the vast majority of the public on the one hand, and
the opportunity to promote his own interests on the other hand,
tend to make the representative sacrifice the interests of his con-
stituency.
Under socialism, and progressively so under interventionism,
where the means of production are either owned or controlled by
the state, the material well-being of each citizen, including that of
representatives, depends on the decisions of the rulers of the state.
The representative cannot afford to flout their instructions, for the
socialist state is his sole employer whose wrath may spell economic
ruin after his expulsion from party and legislature at the next elec-
tion. A man who may be threatened with a "return to the mine"
tends automatically to record approval of decisions by the men in
power. Under capitalism the material independence of a represent-
ative is mostly secured by independent means or by income not
derived from public employment. He can always be sure of earning
his livelihood in private enterprise. But under socialism and inter-
ventionism, where personal incomes derived from rent, interest, and
profit are abolished or severely curtailed through progressive taxa-
tion, the representative lacks the material independence which is
the basis for independent judgment. Thus through his cooperation
with the leaders in power the representative may further his own
interests even if he must sacrifice the interests of his constituency.
But democracy perishes where the representative has no independ-
ence of decision and where the state is constituted merely accord-
ing to the will of the men in power.
21
It lies in the nature of interventionism and socialism that the
intellectual and moral qualifications of men in parliamentary life
deplorably decline. Dexterity, energy, and independence of judg-
ment no longer are the criteria of election. The special-interest
groups, such as agriculture and labor, prefer and promote the pas-
sive and subservient character, the one who faithfully represents
their special interests. To struggle for spoils and privileges is re-
pugnant to the generous spirit anxious for the advancement of
mankind. He does not choose to run for a political office or stands
no chance of being elected where success in such a struggle is the
only criterion.
Let us look at an example offered by present-day American
politics where the lawmakers no longer act to represent the inter-
ests of the vast majority of the people. Because there is a tiny pres-
21 For an excellent discussion of parliamentary democracy in socialist Great Britain
see Ivor Thomas, The Socialist Tragedy, The MacMillan Company, New York, 1951,
p. 139 et seq. See also Carl J. Friedrich, Constitutional Government and Democracy,
Ginn and Company, New York, 1946, pp. 255-267, and 414-442.
sure group well organized and financed-the lobby of the American
peanut growers-Congress repeatedly passed legislation requesting
the Administration to raise the price for peanuts through govern-
ment purchases with tax money. There cannot be any doubt that
the majority of the American population favors lower peanut prices
which mean lower costs of living. And yet the majority of law-
makers enacts legislation that increases peanut prices at the expense
of the vast majority of the constituency. Protected by the indiffer-
ence of the people, the legislator readily yields to the pressure by
special-interest groups and sacrifices the interests of his constituents.
In an increasing number of cases the American Congress passes
legislation that favors tiny minorities who can command support
and offer benefits to legislators. Indeed most representatives have
become the spokesmen and delegates of minorities in their struggle
for spoils and privileges at the expense of the public. There are
delegates of peanut growers, producers of cotton, sugar, potatoes,
butter and cheese-each group comprising a tiny minority of the
people. The fundamental function of government is flagrantly dis-
regarded at the risk of creating discontent and strife among nu-
merous groups of society. This serious defect of progressive democ-
racy tends to lead to its functional inactivation and to political
catastrophe.
In defense of minority legislation the advocates for the special
favor and privilege groups advance the following argument: the
group we represent is an essential part of the whole economic body.
If we suffer from economic distress and unemployment of capital
and labor, all other members of the body inevitably will be con-
taminated by the plight that has overcome us. But if we should
prosper, the whole economic body will prosper with us. Therefore,
it is in the interest of the whole to assist its parts in distress.
In the first place, the concept of "economic distress" is very
ambiguous. Who is to determine the plight in which an industry
claims to have fallen? Are we to take each industry's own conten-
tions? All other industries may claim and actually may prove simi-
lar states of distress which merely is another term for productive
maladjustment. Unprofitable enterprises exist in every industry.
Furthermore, the term implies a factor of temporariness and the
possibility of recuperation and recovery. But if we look at the in-
dustries that, in the past, have received economic aid and privilege,
we find that the beneficiaries have been enjoying their position for
many decades. The American sugar industry, for example, which
is constantly clamoring for public aid and protection, has been re-
ceiving public favors for more than a hundred years. The American
silver industry, another special favor industry, tried to get its hands
into the public treasury for almost a hundred years and repeatedly
succeeded. Certain farm groups have been drawing funds from the
treasury for more than three decades; and the present Administra-
tion is still spending two to three billion dollars anually to raise
the prices of their products. Are these industries still suffering from
temporary distress and unemployment? Or are they rather perma-
nent guests loitering at the doors of our public treasuries?
Let us also inquire into the economic reasons for an industry's
maladjustment and plight. Why does an industry suffer from low
income? In a market economy it is the consumer who ultimately
determines prices and thereby the income of every producer. If the
price of certain commodities and services are lower than the pro-
ducers would like them to be, it is because the consumers estab-
lished lower prices. To accept the contentions of producers means
to reject the sovereignty of consumers and to abolish the free
market economy. Government intervention hampers economic re-
adjustment to the wishes and decisions of consumers.
The contention that the whole economic body must prosper if a
certain industry prospers is not only misleading but downright in-
correct. How can the public prosper if some industries continuously
extract heavy doles and contributions? The means of production
and subsistence are scarce. If the government gives to someone,
it must first take from someone else. If, some fifty or sixty years ago,
the American government had heeded the same contention ad-
vanced by the once prosperous industries of horse breeding and
buggy manufacturing, it would have encouraged them not to read-
just to new economic conditions and would thus have prolonged
their adjustment plight. It would have retarded the growth of the
automobile industry or made it impossible altogether. If govern-
ment were to guarantee everybody's income, changes and progress
would be rendered impossible. Economic conditions would be ar-
rested forever. Indeed, an enemy of the United States could have
no greater wish than that such policies would have been conducted
since the beginning of this nation's history, at a time when 95%
of the American population was earning its livelihood in agriculture.
If a New Deal government in 1800 had arrested this ratio of 95%
to agriculture and 5% to trade and industry, the consequences
would indeed be indescribable.
A conceivable remedy against special privilege legislation would
be the development and extended application of the legislative
referendum, i.e., the process of submitting a bill to a direct vote
of the citizens for approval or rejection. The advantages of this
legislative procedure are twofold. First, being faced with definite
political problems and issues, a larger part of the constituency
would endeavor to form an opinion on the proposed government
measure and its effects. The sovereignty of the people would no
longer be limited to the exercise of election, but would be ex-
tended to the direct act of legislation. That is to say, the will of
the people would be formed and made known in each case subject
to the referendum. Second, the referendum would eliminate the
opportunity for representatives to rush through hundreds of acts
that further their own interests or those of special favor groups
through individual action and assistance of another. The power of
lobbies and pressure groups would be instantly reduced to its
proper size, i.e., that of tiny minorities. Thus the danger of discon-
tent and strife through minority legislation would be eliminated in
each case of referendum.
In the case of the American peanut legislation a referendum
would ascertain whether the American public wants the government
to raise prices through purchases of peanuts with tax funds or
whether it favors market prices as determined by the actions of
consumers. There cannot be any doubt that the vast majority of
Americans would prefer market prices which mean lower prices and
a higher standard of living. The American public undoubtedly
would rebuke the majority of its representatives for its special favor
legislation.
It is significant that the American government frequently uses a
limited referendum when this serves its own political purpose or
defends minority legislation. Government officials, for instance,
arbitrarily select certain members of a pressure group and ask them
to endorse the government policy of price supports, subsidies,
acreage controls, etc. If the majority of this lobby group approves
of the handouts to itself, government embarks upon legislation that
benefits this minority at the expense of the vast majority of the
public. The fact that 87 per cent of the voting wheat farmers com-
prising less than SO per cent of all American wheat farmers and less
than 1 per cent of the public endorsed government support of prices
through acreage controls and enforced restraint of production,
served to justify the policy of favoring a small minority of wheat
farmers at the expense of the taxpayers. It is obvious that such a
referendum fails to express the will of the majority of the people;
it rather ascertains the will of the majority of a tiny pressure group.
Thus the referendum as employed by present-day government is
apt further to separate the will of the public from that of its officials,
and to create conflict rather than to alleviate it.
The ever-increasing scope of functions of progressive democracy
not only creates classes of beneficiaries and victims of special-
interest legislation, but also separates nations joined in division of
labor. Most welfare measures by national governments produce
inescapable effects on foreign relations and the international ex-
change of goods. Most welfare measures are identical with
economic nationalism and are the causes of international conflicts.
International conflicts among the Western nations, however, en-
danger the existence of the Western democracies and the continu-
ance of the democratic form of government. The principle of
progressive planning, for instance, requires government to maintain
wage rates by limiting the labor supply through rigid immigration
laws and other institutional barriers. Welfare planning requires
government to raise costs of production to assist and favor certain
industries and especially labor groups. These measures depend for
their effectiveness upon complementary trade barriers, on tariffs,
foreign exchange control, import restrictions, etc. All these meas-
ures constitute causes of international conflict.
22
The cooperation of the various departments in each national
government even suffers from this international conflict. On the one
hand, the agricultural department, which is the public agency for
the special interests of the farmers, is eager to dump on the inter-
national market "surplus commodities,. purchased with public funds
for the purpose of raising domestic agricultural prices and farm
income. The State Department, on the other hand, is under pres-
sure from foreign countries who compete in world markets, for
international dumping harms foreign producers and constitutes
international conflict. It is eager to avoid international conflict and
therefore opposes the policies of the Department of Agriculture.
All these effects are the consequences of modern progressive
policies. They are inevitable when capitalism is abandoned.
The examples of sinister interests gnawing at the foundations of
modern democracy can be easily extended. The ideological back-
ground for the social conflicts between the two classes of citizens
created by interventionism, the beneficiaries and the tributaries, is
provided by the prevailing ideology of the welfare state. It is ex-
22 For a discussion of the problems of international relations under socialism and
interventionism see this author's H()ft) Can Europe Survive?, D. Van Nostrand, New
York, 1955.
pounded by a score of contemporary writers on political science
demanding the realization of "social objectives" of the democratic
state. They speak of the "general welfare" as the ultimate end of de-
mocracy, or of "morality," "economic order" and "world order," or
the realization of "equality," etc. Governments willingly adopt their
recommendations and continuously enhance the scope of functions
of democratic government. But any expansion inevitably makes
government a desirable instrument for the advancement of sinister
interests and consequently the source of numerous social conflicts.
The common feeling of disappointment over the ill effects of inter-
ventionist policies, finally, turns the people to a demand for further
intervention and greater coercive power of government. The
people ultimately become an agglomeration of organizations strug-
gling for the favors of the state as the source from which all earthly
blessings :Bow.
The deepening interventionist conflict generates social tension
and causes government to embark upon a rapid succession of
remedial policies to solve the problems, only to have these policies
actually lead to more dissatisfaction. With the increased scope of
governmental functions the power of governmental agencies is en-
hanced. All share in the expansion of authority-the federal, state,
and municipal authorities, and the executive, legislative, and judi-
ciary branches. This growth of political and economic authority
and its need of coordination finally create a tendency for power to
concentrate and fuse in the hands of those who apply that power:
the executive.
The founders of Western democracy provided for functional and
territorial division of powers in order to protect the people from
abuses by government and to restrain effectively governmental
action. To them it was a measure of caution against tyranny in
government through undue concentration of power. It was to save
the people from autocracy, for division of power makes it difficult
for any one man or group to seize all the power and exercise it for
the subjugation of the rest. Under modern interventionism and
socialism, however, the traditional separation of powers gradually
vanishes and the ultimate right to make and enforce laws is vested
with fewer but more powerful men.
Contemplating the course of Western democracy during the last
four decades leads to a despair for its future. Critics have raised
their voices and condemned democracy as the rule of the common
man. "It is the rule of demagoguery and deceit," they say, "a rule
of the low and mean clamoring for policies of follies. Democracy
in a triumph of platitude will ultimately vest the power of decision
with the most incapable. It lies in the nature of democracy to
destroy itself." These critics fail to understand the true nature of
democracy. They fail to see that it constitutes the only form of
government that is capable of avoiding conflict between the govern-
ing minority and the politically conscious part of the people.
Democracy makes the governing body dependent on the will of the
people for the sake of peaceful social coexistence and cooperation.
No other form of government can conceivably discharge this most
essential social function. Lasting coexistence and cooperation re-
quire democracy. There is no other alternative.
It is true, democracy is in grave danger because the large majority
of Western nations step by step are abandoning the only economic
system in the soil of which democracy can grow. People are not
infallible; they can be led astray. If they prefer unsound principles
to sounder principles, the policies conducted will reflect their choice
with all its consequences. To defend democracy, we must defend
capitalism. For it is in the soil of capitalism that democracy has
grown and without which it must vanish. To defend capitalism we
must demonstrate the advantages of freedom and free enterprise
to the people. We must oppose the demagogues and agitators and
convince the people of the beneficial effects of capitalism. This is
the task of our philosophers and economists. But if they themselves
embrace ideologies that are destructive, democracy must perish. If
they themselves embrace holistic concepts of social life, society
must suffer from turmoil of mental confusion, social conflict, and
political and economic chaos.
Democracy, this pride of Western man, is a political concomitant
of capitalism. If capitalism should perish, democracy must also
perish. And with every step towards the destruction of capitalism,
democracy is hastening towards its own end.
VI
The Road to Totalitarianism
by HENRY HAZLITT
IN SPITE of the obvious ultimate
objective of the masters of Russia to communize and conquer the
world, and in spite of the frightful power which such weapons as
guided missiles and atomic and hydrogen bombs may put in their
hands, the greatest threat to American liberty today comes from
within. It is the threat of a growing and spreading totalitarian
idealogy.
Totalitarianism in its final form is the doctrine that the govern-
ment, the State, must exercise total control over the individual. The
American College Dictionary, closely following Webster's Collegi-
ate, defines totalitarianism as "pertaining to a centralized form of
government in which those in control grant neither recognition nor
tolerance to parties of different opinion."
Now I should describe this failure to grant tolerance to other par-
ties not as the essence of totalitarianism, but rather as one of its
consequences or corollaries. The essence of totalitarianism is that
the group in power must exercise total control. Its original purpose
(as in communism) may be merely to exercise total control over
"the economy." But "the State" (the imposing name for the clique
in power) can exercise total control over the economy only if it
exercises complete control over imports and exports, over prices and
interest rates and wages, over production and consumption, over
buying and selling, over the earning and spending of income, over
jobs, over occupations, over workers-over what they do and what
they get and where they go-and finally, over what they say and
even what they think.
81
If total control over the economy must in the end mean total con-
trol over what people do, say, and think, then it is only spelling out
details or pointing out corollaries to say that totalitarianism sup-
presses freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of assem-
bly, freedom of immigration and emigration, freedom to form or to
keep any political party in opposition, and freedom to vote against
the government. These suppressions are merely the end-products of
totalitarianism.
All that the totalitarians want is total control. This does not nec-
essarily mean that they want total suppression. They suppress
merely the ideas which they don't agree with, or of which they are
suspicious, or of which they have never heard before; and they
suppress only the actions that they don't like, or of which they
cannot see the necessity. They leave the individual prefectly free
to agree with them, and perfectly free to act in any way that serves
their purposes-or to which they may happen at the moment to be
indifferent. Of course, they sometimes also compel actions, such as
positive denunciations of people who are against the government
(or who the government says are against the government), or
groveling adulation of the leader of the moment. That no indi-
vidual in Russia today gets the constant groveling adulation that
Stalin demanded chiefly means that no successor has yet succeeded
in securing Stalin's unchallenged power.
Once we understand "total" totalitarianism, we are in a better
position to understand degrees of totalitarianism. Or rather-since
totalitarianism is by definition total-it would probably be more
accurate to say that we are in a better position to understand the
steps on the road to totalitarianism.
We can either move, from where we are, toward totalitarianism
on the one hand or toward freedom on the other. How do we ascer-
tain just where we now are? How do we tell in what direction we
have been moving? In this ideological sphere, what does our map
look like? What is our compass? What are the landmarks or con-
stellations to guide us?
It is a little difficult, as nebulous and conflicting usage shows, to
agree on precisely what liberty means. But it isn't too difficult to
agree on precisely what slavery means. And it isn't too difficult
to recognize the totalitarian mind when we meet one. Its outstand-
ing mark is a contempt for liberty. That is, its outstanding mark is
a contempt for the liberty of others. As de Tocqueville remarked in
the preface to his "France Before the Revolution of 1789":
"Despots themselves do not deny the excellence of freedom, but
they wish to keep it all to themselves, and maintain that all other
men are utterly unworthy of it. Thus it is not on the opinion which
may be entertained of freedom that this difference subsists, but on
the greater or the less esteem that we have for mankind; and it may
be said with strict accuracy, that the taste a man may show for
absolute government bears an exact ratio to the contempt he may
profess for his countrymen." The denial of freedom rests, in other
words, on the assumption that the individual is incapable of man-
aging his own affairs.
Three main tendencies or tenets mark the drift toward totali-
tarianism. The first and most important, because the other two
derive from it, is the pressure for a constant increase in govern-
mental powers, for a constant widening of the governmental sphere
of intervention. It is the tendency toward more and more regula-
tion of every sphere of economic life, toward more and more re-
striction of the liberties of the individual. The tendency toward
more and more governmental spending is a part of this trend. It
means in effect that the individual is able to spend less and less
of the income he earns on the things he himself wants, while the
government takes more and more of his income from him to spend
it in the ways that it thinks wise. One of the basic assumptions of
totalitarianism, in brief (and of such steps toward it as socialism,
state paternalism, and Keynesianism), is that the citizen cannot be
trusted to spend his own money. As government control becomes
wider and wider, individual discretion, the individual's control of
his own affairs in all directions, necessarily becomes narrower and
narrower. In sum, liberty is constantly diminished.
One of the great contributions of Ludwig von Mises has been to
show through rigorous reasoning, and a hundred examples, how
government intervention in the market economy always finally re-
sults in a worse situation than would otherwise have existed, even
as judged by the original objectives of the advocates of the inter-
vention.
I assume that other contributors to this symposium will explore
this phase of interventionism and statism rather fully; and therefore
I should like to devote particular attention here to the political
consequences and accompaniments of government intervention in
the economic sphere.
I have called these political accompaniments consequences, and
to a large extent they are; but they are also, in turn, causes. Once
the power of the State has been increased by some economic inter-
vention, this increase in State power permits and encourages further
interventions, which further increase State power, and so on.
The most powerful brief statement of this interaction with which
I am acquainted occurs in a lecture delivered by the eminent
Swedish economist, the late Gustav Cassel. This was published in
a pamphlet with the descriptive but rather cumbersome title: From
Protectionism Through Planned Economy to Dictatorship.
1
I take
the liberty of quoting an extensive passage from it:
The leadership of the State in economic affairs which advocates of Planned
Economy want to establish is, as we have seen, necessarily connected with a
bewildering mass of governmental interferences of a steadily cumulative na-
ture. The arbitrariness, the mistakes and the inevitable contradictions of such
policy will, as daily experience shows, only strengthen the demand for a more
rational coordination of the different measures and, therefore, for unified
leadership. For this reason Planned Economy will always tend to develop into
Dictatorship ....
The existence of some sort of parliament is no guarantee against planned
economy being developed into dictatorship. On the contrary, experience has
shown that representative bodies are unable to fulfill all the multitudinous func-
tions connected with economic leadership without becoming more and more
involved in the struggle between competing interests, with the consequence
of a moral decay ending in party-if not individual-corruption. Examples of
such a degrading development are indeed in many countries accumulating at
such a speed as must fill every honorable citizen with the gravest apprehensions
as to the future of the representative system. But apart from that, this system
cannot possibly be preserved, if parliaments are constantly over-worked by
having to consider an infinite mass of the most intricate questions relating to
private economy. The parliamentary system can be saved only by wise and
deliberate restriction of the functions of parliaments ....
Economic dictatorship is much more dangerous than people believe. Once
authoritative control has been established it will not always be possible to
limit it to the economic domain. If we allow economic freedom and self-reli-
ance to be destroyed, the powers standing for Liberty will have lost so much
in strength that they will not be able to offer any effective resistance against
a progressive extension of such destruction to constitutional and public life
generally. And if this resistance is gradually given up-perhaps without people
ever realizing what is actually going on-such fundamental values as personal
liberty, freedom of thought and speech and independence of science are
exposed to imminent danger. What stands to be lost is nothing less than the
whole of that civilization that we have inherited from generations which once
fought hard to lay its foundations and even gave their life for it.
Cassel has here pointed out very clearly some of the reasons why
economic interventionism and government economic planning lead
toward dictatorship. Let us now, however, looking at another
aspect of the problem, see whether or not we can identify, in an
1 Cobden-Sanderson, London, 1934.
unmistakable way, some of the main landmarks or guideposts that
can tell us whether we are moving away from or nearer to totali-
tarianism.
I said a while back that three main tendencies mark the drift
toward totalitarianism, and that the first and most important, be-
cause the other two derive from it, is the pressure for a constant
increase in governmental intervention, in governmental spending,
and in governmental power. Let us now consider the other two
tendencies.
The second main tendency that marks the drift toward totali-
tarianism is that toward greater and greater concentration of power
in the central government. This tendency is most easily recogniza-
ble here in the United States, because we have ostensibly a Federal
form of government and can readily see the growth of power in
Washington at the expense of the states.
The concentration of power and the centralization of power, I
may point out here, are merely two names for the same thing. This
second tendency is a necessary consequence of the first. If the cen-
tral government is to control more and more of our economic life,
it cannot permit this to be done by the individual states. The pres-
sure for uniformity, and the pressure for centralization of power,
are two aspects of the same pressure.
It is not difficult to see why this is so. Obviously, if government
is to intervene in business, there cannot be forty-eight different
kinds of conflicting interventions. Obviously, if government is to
impose an over-all "economic plan," it cannot impose forty-eight dif-
ferent and conflicting plans. Planning from the center is possible
only with centralization of governmental power. And so deep is the
belief in the benevolence and necessity of uniform regulation and
central planning that the Federal government assumes more and
more of the powers previously exercised by the states, or powers
never exercised by any state; and the Supreme Court keeps steadily
stretching the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution to
authorize powers and Federal interventions never dreamed of by
the Founding Fathers. At the same time recent Supreme Court
decisions treat the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution practi-
cally as if it did not exist.
2
A notable example of this tendency exists with regard to labor
legislation. Supreme Court decisions regarding the Wagner Act and
2 The Tenth Amendment reads: "The powers not delegated to the United States
by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people."
86
its successor the Taft-Hartley Act (legally, and essentially, a mere
amendment of the Wagner Act) have not only steadily widened the
sphere of Federal regulation to cover activities and labor relations
that are primarily, if not almost wholly, intra-state, but have ruled
that the states themselves have no power over these primarily in-
ternal activities and relations if Congress has chosen to "pre-empt"
the field.
The third tendency that marks the drift toward totalitarianism is
the increasing centralization and concentration of power in the
hands of the President at the expense of the two co-ordinate
branches of the government, Congress and the courts. In the
United States this tendency is very marked today. To listen to our
pro-totalitarians, the main duty of Congress is to follow the Presi-
dent's "leadership" in all things; to be a set of yes-men; to act as a
mere rubber-stamp.
The dangers of one-man rule have been so emphasized and
dramatized in recent years-we have seen so many appalling exam-
ples, from Hitler and Stalin to their many pocket-sized editions,
the Mossadeghs and Per6ns-that any warning of this danger to
Americans may seem needless. Yet most Americans, like the citizens
of the countries already victimized by their native Mussolinis, may
prove incapable of recognizing this evil until it has grown beyond
the point of control. One invariable accompaniment of the growth
of Caesarism is the growing contempt expressed for legislative
bodies, and impatience with their "dilatoriness" in enacting the
"Leader's" program, or their actual "obstructionist tactics" or "crip-
pling amendments." Yet in recent years derision of Congress has
become in America almost a national pastime. And a substantial
part of the press never tires of reviling Congress for "doing nothing"
-that is, for not piling more mountains of legislation on the existing
mountains of legislation; or for failing to enact in full "the Presi-
dent's program."
3
If we ask how it comes about that Congress and other legislative
bodies throughout the contemporary world have tended to fall into
public disrepute, we again find that the answer lies in the appar-
ently unshakeable contemporary faith in the necessity and be-
nevolence of a continually expanding government intervention.
II It is instructive to recall in this connection that the 80th Congress, which Presi-
dent Truman condemned as a "do-nothing" Congress, actually passed 457 private bills
and 906 new public laws-a total of 1363. This record was typical of our modern
legislative mills. The 79th Congress passed 892 private bills and 734 new public
laws. And so on.
Congress and the planners can never agree among themselves on
precisely what the government should do to remedy some supposed
evil. They cannot agree on an unambiguous general law, whose
application in specific cases could be safely left to the courts. All
that they can agree upon is that "something should be done." In
other words, all they can agree upon is that the government must
intervene, that the special area of economic activity under discussion
must be "controlled." So they frame a law setting forth a number
of vague but high-sounding goals and create an agency or com-
mission whose function it is to achieve these goals through its own
omniscience and discretion. The National Labor Relations Law
(the Wagner-Taft-Hartley Act) is a typical example. It sets up a
National Labor Relations Board, which thereupon proceeds to be-
come a prosecutor, court, and legislative body all rolled into one,
and starts laying down a series of rulings and handing down a series
of decisions, many of which surprise no one more than the Con-
gressional members who created the agency in the first place.
From then on, Congress in that particular sphere is treated
mainly as a nuisance. The administrative bodies that it has set up
resent its "interference" and "meddling" with their activities. These
administrative bodies devote themselves in large part to extolling
"administrative discretion" at the expense of the Rule of Law-that
is, of any body of clear rules to be applied by the courts. Any sub-
sequent effort of Congress to reduce the range of administrative
discretion, arbitrariness, and caprice is denounced as "crippling" to
administrative bodies, and as interfering with that "flexibility" of
action so dear to the administrative heart.
Along with this growth of administrative agencies and adminis-
trative power, less and less controlled either by Congress or the
courts, there has been a constantly widening interpretation of the
President's constitutional powers. This has occurred both in the for-
eign and in the domestic field.
It is especially marked in the sphere of foreign relations. The
Constitution, contrary to the repeated assumptions of the champions
of Presidential omnipotence, nowhere specifically gives the President
power to conduct foreign relations. Specifically, he has merely the
formal power to "receive ambassadors and other public ministers."
Perhaps this implies power over the routine conduct of foreign
affairs, which could hardly be carried on by Congress; but it cer-
tainly does not apply to any crucial decision. For the Founding
Fathers gave Congress alone the power to declare war. And they
specifically provided that no treaty could be made by the President
without "the advice and consent of the Senate." In practice, ever
since George Washington, presidents have generally ignored the
instruction to seek the advice of the Senate in treaty-making. And
in recent years they have repeatedly tried to evade the requirement
even for Senatorial consent. They have done this by three extra-
constitutional devices.
One of these is to frame and sign a complicated multilateral
treaty and then argue that the Senate must ratify it without sug-
gesting amendments because any attempt to introduce amendments
would make the whole treaty impossible.
A second device, coming more and more into practice, has been
to frame a treaty setting up an international agency which is au-
thorized from then on to take its own actions or makes its own
rulings by discretion. This applies to the United Nations, with its
innumerable sub-agencies, to the International Monetary Fund,
and to the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Once the Senate has approved such an arrangement it loses any real
say regarding the decisions of the agency it has set up, though the
President can still have some partial control through his executive
appointments to such a body.
The third extra-constitutional device is, of course, that of resort-
ing to an "executive agreement" instead of a "treaty," claiming that
this is just as binding on Congress and the country as a treaty would
have been, and thereby evading the Constitutional requirement for
Senate ratification. When the Senate tried to pass a clarifying
amendment (and missed only by a single vote the necessary two-
thirds majority for doing so) to assure the supremacy of the Consti-
tution over treaties, and to prevent back-door amendment of the
Constitution through the treaty-making device, President Eisen-
hower and his advisers opposed it. In this debate, the pro-Presiden-
tial press, in its news columns, constantly referred to this proposed
amendment as an attempt to curb "the President's treaty-making
powers." They used this phrase repeatedly in face of the fact
that there are no exclusively Presidential treaty-making powers
in the Constitution. The President has no treaty-making powers
whatever that do not require the advice and consent of the Senate,
and the concurrence of two-thirds of the Senators present. The claim
that there is a Presidential power of making "executive agreements"
with foreign nations binding on this country, which the Senate has
no right to control, is completely without foundation.
In the domestic sphere, the President's powers have grown chiefly
through the steady multiplication of Federal agencies. Many of
these, through their rule-making and rule-enforcing powers, and
their wide discretionary latitude, have become combined legislative
and policing agencies to a large extent outside the control of the
Congress.
The major wars in which the United States has engaged in the
last forty years have also led to an enormous growth in the Presi-
dent's so-called "war powers." Now there is no specific mention of
"war powers," or any listing of them, in the Constitution. This
growth of war powers derives mainly from the precedents created
by the unchallenged assumption or usurpation of such powers by
presidents in the past. Hence their steadily cumulative nature.
Finally, the mere habit of huge Presidential power has led to the
assertion of still more power. An outstanding example of this was
President Truman's action in seizing the nation's steel plants in
1952, in order to force the steel companies to accept the wage deci-
sion of the Wage Stabilization Board that he appointed. Attorneys
for the Government blandly argued, and Mr. Truman himself con-
tended, that the President could do this under his "reserve powers"
or "inherent powers" in the Constitution. This was again an asser-
tion of powers that the Constitution itself nowhere mentions. And
though this claim was finally rejected by the Supreme Court, it was
only by a vote of six to three. Minority members argued that the
President could seize anything he wished under these so-called in-
herent or reserve powers. Had this become the majority decision,
no private property anywhere in the country would be safe from
seizure. Presidential power would be unchecked and practically
unlimited.
It should hardly be necessary to point out that this constant ex-
pansion of the claims for Presidential powers has almost necessarily
been accompanied by a constant reduction of the powers and pre-
rogatives of Congress. Today we find increasing resentment even
of the Congressional power of investigation of the executive branch.
This is surely a minimal power, without which Congress could not
intelligently exercise its other functions. But Congressional investi-
gations have in late years been constantly denounced either on the
ground that they prevent the executive agencies "from getting any
work done," or under the pretense that they undermine the morale
of Federal officials and are almost invariably unfair. It is ironic that
Congress, whose ability to check Presidential power has been stead-
ily shrinking in the last forty years, should today be more often than
ever before accused in the press of "usurping" the functions, powers,
~ prerogatives of the President.
One of the remarkable developments of the last decade, in fact,
has been the frequency with which the President, on one excuse
or another, has "forbidden" members of the executive branch to
testify on certain executive activities before Congressional com-
mittees. More and more of the activities of the Federal government
tend to become "top secret," even in peacetime. Congress is said to
be prying into something that is none of its business. People pre-
suming to speak for the President have frequently come close to
asserting what we may call the principle of executive irresponsibility
or non-accountability-that is, the principle that the President does
not have to account to the elected representatives of the people for
his official actions.
One would think that the horrible examples of Mussolini, Hitler,
Stalin, Mossadegh, Peron, etc., would give pause to our own advo-
cates of more and more executive power in the United States. Why
haven't they done so? Partly, no doubt, from the deep-rooted habit
of putting one's own country in a category by itself, as if what went
on abroad could have no relation to anything going on at home. It
is the old illusion that "It can't happen here."
Another reason why these dictatorial trends abroad are not re-
lated to our own domestic trends is that we are in the habit of using
different vocabularies to describe similar developments, depending
on whether they occur abroad or at home. We may call a foreign
tendency a trend toward dictatorship, but argue for the same tend-
ency at home on the ground that we need a "strong" executive.
Now there is, true enough, a possible danger of having an execu-
tive so weak, so incapable of maintaining law, order, and firmness
and dependability of policy, that the executive weakness itself
breeds a threat of revolutionary uprfsing followed by dictatorship.
But this happens only under rare and special conditions, not a sign
of which exists in present-day America. At the moment of writing,
the nearest prominent example we have of a "weak" executive in the
Western world is in France. But when we examine even that case
closely we find that the real defect in the French system is less that
the Premier lacks sufficient legal powers as long as he remains in
office, as that he lacks security of tenure. The French Assembly can
irresponsibly vote him out of power at any time. He has no corre-
sponding power of dissolution to force the French Parliament to
exercise its removal powers responsibly. Having no security of
tenure, he is too often paralyzed in action. Yet the French, instead
of giving him the unequivocal power of dissolution possessed, for
example, by the Prime Minister of Great Britain, have tried to solve
the problem in the wrong way by often giving the Premier in office
"decree law powers" that he ought not to have. In other words, the
French, instead of forcing the Assembly to exercise its powers of
approval or disapproval responsibly, periodically give the Premier
powers that should be properly exercised only by a legislature.
Regardless of whether or not this analysis of the present French
situation is accepted as correct, it is certainly clear that outside of
France no major nation today suffers because of "too weak" an
executive. Most of the so-called "free" nations, including ourselves,
already suffer from dangerously excessive powers in the hands of
the executive, and above all from a government that has acquired
dangerously excessive powers.
In a Federal government restricted to its proper sphere, the Presi-
dent might properly be given more powers than he has at present in
some directions, and fewer powers in others. But any general argu-
ment for a "stronger" executive can seem plausible only as long as it
remains ambiguous and vague in its specifications. If we must
speak in broad general terms, then we are entitled to say in such
general terms that the powers and the responsibilities of the Presi-
dent have grown far beyond those that either can or should be exer-
cised by any one man.
We have now outlined what I have called the three main ten-
dencies that mark a drift toward totalitarianism. They are ( 1) the
tendency of the government to attempt more and more to intervene,
and to control economic life; ( 2) the tendency toward greater and
greater concentration of power in the central government at the
expense of local governments; and ( 3) the tendency toward more
and more concentration of power in the hands of the executive at
the expense of the legislative and judiciary.
To these I am tempted to add a fourth tendency-the pressure
for a world state.
The addition of this will doubtless come as a shock to many seH-
styled liberals and well-intentioned idealists who would regard the
establishment of a world state as the crowning achievement of liber-
alism and internationalism. A little examination, however, will show
us that the present pressure for a world state represents a false in-
ternationalism and a retreat from freedom. It is, on the contrary,
merely the equivalent on a world scale of the pressure for central-
ized government on a national scale. It aims to set up the coercive
machinery of a world state before the world is remotely prepared
in sentiments or in ideology to accept a world state. The zealots
for such machinery are too impatient to study the necessary pre-
liminaries to a world state (even assuming that a world state, which
would concentrate all world political powers in a few hands, is even
ultimately desirable). Such zealots for a centralized world govern-
ment with coercive powers fail to recognize that if international
good-will and intellectual clearsightedness existed on the part of
national statesmen, practically all the reasonable objectives of a so-
called world state could be achieved without setting up such a
world state. And until this good-will and clearsightedness are
achieved within individual nations, the creation of a compulsive
world state would be either futile or catastrophic.
The pressure for a world state, in fact, represents not true inter-
nationalism, but inter-governmentalism, inter-statism. It would lead
to the setting up of machinery for a universal and procrustean coer-
cion. We seem to be moving, in the present era, toward more and
more restriction of the liberties of individuals by governmental
agencies. This is the tendency that has produced the pressure for
international price-fixing; for the creation of "buffer stocks" of inter-
national commodities; the institution of international subsidies and
handouts; the paternalistic governmental establishment of industries
in "underdeveloped" nations without regard to their appropriate-
ness, efficiency, or need; and finally the growth of an international
inflationism, as represented by such institutions as the International
Monetary Fund.
This whole tendency makes a travesty of international freedom
for the individual, which is the essence of true internationalism. For
true internationalism does not consist in compelling the taxpayers
or citizens of one nation or the inhabitants of one part of the globe
to subsidize, or give alms to, or even to do "business" with, the citi-
zens of any other nation or the inhabitants of any other part of the
globe. True internationalism, on the contrary, consists in permitting
the individual citizen or firm in any nation to buy from, or sell to, or
trade with, the individual citizen or firm of any other nation. It
consists, in brief, in the freedom of trade advocated so eloquently
by Adam Smith in the eighteenth century and practically achieved
in the nineteenth-a freedom of trade that (notwithstanding scores
of international agencies and multilateral treaties) has now been de-
stroyed.
We are losing our freedoms today, in brief, through a false ideol-
ogy-or, to use an older expression, because of intellectual confusion.
Nothing is more typical of this contemporary intellectual confusion
than the enunciation by the late President Roosevelt of the so-called
Four Freedoms. As George Santayana points out in a footnote in
his Dominations and Powers:
Of the "Four Freedoms" demanded by President Roosevelt in the name of
mankind, two are negative, being freedoms from, not freedoms to. Had he
chosen the word "liberty," he would have stumbled on reaching these desired
exemptions, because the phrase "freedom from" is idiomatic, but the phrase
"liberty from" would have been impossible. "Liberty" thus seems to imply vital
liberty, the exercise of powers and virtues native to oneself and to one's country.
But freedom from want or from fear is only a condition for the steady exercise
of true liberty. On the other hand it is more than a demand for liberty; for it
demands insurance and protection by provident institutions, which imply the
dominance of a paternal government, with artificial privileges secured by law.
This would be freedom from the dangers of a free life. It shows us liberty
contracting its field and bargaining for safety first.
The contemporary world has gone astray, in sum, because it has
sought freedom from the dangers and risks of liberty.
VII
The Greatest Economic Charity
by F. A. HARPER
WHEN asked to contribute an
essay to Professor Mises' Festschrift, I was at first inclined to dip
my pen in the well of humility and then lay it aside unused. On
what economic theme has Professor Mises himself failed to write
with a superiority to anything I could offer? Yet honor is due him.
So I trust that friends of this great and patient teacher will tolerate
an essay's imperfections for the sake of the spirit of an offering.
Professor Mises' main renown is as an economist. Yet to me he is
a charitable person even more than an economist. His charity is
not of the fashionable kind that ladles out economic pleasantries
from a caldron filled with socialist loot obtained by theft. His is not
even primarily of the material sort at all but is, instead, in the form
of his inspiring mind and spirit. In my opinion there can be no
greater charity than this, for it endures beyond any material form
of benevolence.
In this essay I shall be dealing, however, with one aspect of eco-
nomic charity-a form inferior to charity of the mind and the spirit.
People spend vast sums trying to do good with economic alms in
forms which, to me, seem open to serious question. In their haste
to do good and to bask in the glow of immediate glory as purvey-
ors of alms, they are being exceedingly wasteful of the means of
benevolence. The methods they use would come to appear unbe-
nevolent, I believe, if they would view them by the test of alterna-
tives in the longer perspective of economic science. That is the
thought I should like to explore here, in honor of Professor Mises .

94
A certain Talmudical philosopher once offered us this apothegm:
The noblest charity is to prevent a man from accepting charity, and the best
alms are to show and enable a man to dispense with alms.
1
A profound observation! It deserves to be kept in mind con-
stantly as we fumble along in attempts to do good to others.
The greatest charity of all, in the light of this apothegm, would
be to assist a person toward becoming wholly self-reliant within na-
ture's limitations, and therefore totally free. The non-material, non-
economic things of the mind and spirit are supreme to this end and
therefore comprise the greatest charity. Bread and raiment and
abode are trivial indeed as compared with these, in the furtherance
of human progress.
The greatest aids to self-reliance are educational, broadly speak-
ing-the tools for pursuing the eternal embryo of truth. The root
of progress is a sincere love of truth per se. Devotion to truth in the
abstract must surpass love for any specific belief one holds at the
moment, if the pursuit is to continue rather than to bog down in
stagnant dogma. Exploratory shoots can then sprout from these
roots in the form of specific "truths" -more accurately, mere beliefs
-however dimly and even erroneously they may be seen at any
moment. Among these sprouting shoots will be some sound ones
capable of bearing the economic fruits and other passing joys of our
daily living.
With things of the mind and spirit duly recognized as the greatest
charity of all, this essay will explore one aspect of economic charity.
When the word "charity" is used hereinafter, I shall be referring
to charity in its economic form according to one definition given in
the Oxford Dictionary-material benevolence, sometimes called
alms or munificence or philanthropy.
2
The social fashion of our age is the attempt to do good to others
in a confused profusion of economic transfusions. Other times have
been less affiicted in this respect for the simple reason that they
1 Paraphrased by Mary Baker Eddy from Moses Maimonides in his Code af
Jewish Law, Chapter X, paragraph 7.
2 Some will resist my use of the word "charity" in connection with the object of
my acclaim. They will point to the earlier meaning of the word, which refers to a
mental attitude of brotherly love and compassion. Yet standard works on the mean-
ings of words reveal no substitute that seems lacking in the same sort of difficulty.
All have multiple meanings, and are generally given as synonyms for one another.
In fact, the word "charity" has come to refer increasingly to some form of alms-
giving rather than to its earlier meaning. So I decided to hazard its use for want
of anything better, in the hope that most of those who will be reading this essay
will be charitable enough to try to glean my meaning and intent.
could not afford as much waste as we can. For them, sheer survival
of self and family absorbed nearly all their effort.
The charitable endeavors characteristic of our time are, in my
opinion, often futile for their intended purpose. In fact, they may
even be harmful to the recipient by making him less self-reliant than
before. According to the Talmudical definition of the noblest char-
ity, whatever reduces self-reliance is negative charity.
I believe there is another use for this vast amount of time and
energy that would support a positive charity, fruitful beyond the
fondest dreams of most persons. The prevailing notion is that such
a use is wholly selfish. But its charitable aspect can be seen by
testing it step by step against certain requisites of true charity.
The Nature of Charity
True economic charity has three characteristics:
1. Charity requires the transfer of ownership from one person to
another of something having economic worth. The receiver
must get a clear title to it, or it cannot be charity. The giver
must have had clear title to it, or the giving is like a gift of
stolen property-which is not an act of charity. Private owner-
ship at both ends of the transfer, never public ownership, is
therefore required.
2. The transfer must be voluntary with both parties. If forced
upon the receiver against his will, it is not charity. If taken
from the source against the prior owner's will, it is theft rather
than an act of charity.
3. True charity requires anonymity. This is difficult to attain, to
be sure. But if the conditions of the transfer result in a per-
sonal obligation in any form or degree, it is a grant of credit
and not an act of charity. Devices other than anonymity usu-
ally fail to prevent the creation of a personal obligation.
It is a temptation to list as a fourth requirement that the gift shall,
in the long run, be beneficial to the recipient. This aspect is im-
portant, but it tests the wisdom of the giving and not its charity.
The third requirement of charity-anonymity-is in harmony with
the Biblical admonition that one who gives alms should not sound
his trumpet before him as do the hypocrites.
3
If the act is motivated
by vainglory, it is not charity; it is then merely salve for the ego of
the giver. If the giver expects repayment in any form or degree,
8 Matthew 6:2.
other than in unselfish personal satisfaction, it is something other
than charity.
These are strict requirements for true charity and most "chari-
table" activities would fail to qualify.
Enslavement Through "Charity"
Unfortunately a common purpose of acts of "charity" is to entice
somebody to become obligated to the giver. The way it works is
this: Under guise of a gift or personal favor, an unspecified quid pro
quo is assumed. "Some day you can do something for me." Perhaps
it is some business favor in that wide arena where an unfree market
allows special privileges to be traded. Such acts obligate the re-
ceiver for an amount not agreed upon in advance. There is no
specific quid pro quo as with a loan or an outright trade. So the act
of "charity" really becomes a debt that can never be repaid with
precision because the amount of repayment is not known by both
parties by prior agreement.
An attempt to repay such an obligation almost never satisfies both
parties. A residual obligation, one way or the other, becomes sus-
pended in uncertainty forever. That is why anonymity is required if
this pernicious feature is to be avoided. Credit should be cor-
rectly labeled as credit and trade should be called trade.
The process just described is really a means by which one person
permanently obligates himself to another. It is really a moderated
form of enslavement.
Plutarch must have had this in mind when he said: "The real
destroyer of the Liberties of any people is he who spreads among
them bounties, donations, and largesses." Plutarch's other com-
ments make it amply clear that he was not opposed to real charity.
But he was opposed to the sham of charity that feeds the vainglory
of the giver and enslaves the recipient.
Aesop's Fables-presumably written by a wise slave who had
astutely observed these processes-repeatedly pointed out the dan-
gers of enslavement under guise of charity.
False charity destroys security. Having once allowed one's self
to become permanently obligated to another by debts that can
never be repaid, the recipient loses his self-reliance and becomes
insecure. As St. Thomas Aquinas expressed it: "There is no secu-
rity for us so long as we depend on the will of another man."
4
4 Acton, Essays on Freedom and Power, p. 64.
Just as one person can allow himself to become enslaved to an-
other by a debt that cannot be repaid, so can persons within a group
allow themselves to become enslaved to the group. National social-
ism is a common form, where the state becomes the dispenser of
loot collected by force. The recipients lose their self-reliance in
the process and come to feel indebted forever to the collective for
their very lives. They have by then become enslaved.
There is not space here to trace in full the ideological ancestry
of mass enslavement in this way, but the influence of Rousseau and
Marx should be mentioned in passing.
5
Rousseau, though he pleaded
for "back to nature" in the education of Emile, was untrusting of
natural self-reliance in economic and social affairs. So in his Social
Contract he revived Plato's cult of reliance upon the state and
became, according to Janet, the uncontested founder of modern
communism.
6
Then Marx later built further upon the same concept
when he said that man is merely a complex of social relations, and
that he is responsible to society for his real existence. For if one
really owes his existence to society because his life depends upon
society, he then owes servitude to the state or to some other collec-
tivity of society. That is how men like Rousseau and Marx, with
their mass programs of social dependency and socialized "charity,"
have helped socialize masses of humanity into dependency, insecu-
rity, and slavery.
Enslavement on either a personal or mass basis could not happen
if charity were to be kept in pure form, supplementing free ex-
change and voluntary credit arrangements between persons.
Common Forms of Charitable Activity
Of the various forms of economic charity in which we commonly
indulge, the simplest would seem to be something such as buying a
vagrant a cup of coffee or giving him a dime for the purpose.
Most of the colossal amount of activity which today goes by the
name of charity is of this type, where the intent of the giver is to
provide something for direct consumption or relief of a destitute
recipient. But little giving is direct from the giver to the object of
need-often the sufferer from some physical ailment or the victim
of devastation from "acts of God." Most is given to some organiza-
tion which acts as an intermediary.
5 Thomas Davidson, Rousseau and Education According to Nature ( 1898); also,
Leopold Schwarzschild, The Red Prf.ISsian, the Life and Legend of Karl Marx ( 1947).
6 P. Janet, Les Origines du Socialisme Contemporain, ( 1883 ), p. 119.
ON THE NATURE OF MAN AND GOVERNMENT
99
If one will tabulate requests of all types during a year, it will
become evident how numerous are the forms of request for char-
itable assistance. A few solicitors still stand on street comers with
their tin cups. But most solicitation stems from intricately organized
endeavors to wrest funds from would-be givers, frequently with the
aid of the fund-raising profession. Often goodly neighbors are en-
listed as unpaid solicitors to knock at one's door, and the giving in
many instances is really little more than the cost of peacefully evict-
ing a well-intentioned trespasser.
In doubting that much of this sort of thing is charity at all-at
least not the wisest form of charity-! am not questioning the right
of anybody to support anything voluntarily with his own means. I
am merely questioning his wisdom and suggesting a better alterna-
tive. His glow of self-satisfaction over having given in the usual
way is no more assurance of its wisdom than any other misguided
but well-intentioned act. One can grow in wisdom only as he is
willing to review acts he previously judged to be wise.
Tools As a Form of Charity
Both fact and logic seem to me to support the view that savings
invested in privately owned economic tools of production amount to
an act of charity. And further, I believe it to be-as a type-the
greatest economic charity of all.
By economic tools of production I mean, of course, things with
exchange value-trucks, factories, railroads, stores-which assist hu-
man effort in the production of other items of economic worth.
Does saving and investment in these tools qualify as charity?
Does it meet the three tests of an act of charity?
The first test is whether there has been a transfer of privately
owned things having economic worth. It is true that when one
saves and invests in a tool which he uses in production, although he
retains title to the tool, most of the extra production which the tool
makes possible passes on to others, as we shall see. For that reason
the first requisite of an act of charity seems to be met as a certain
consequence of saving and investment in tools. It is this feature of
the creation of privately owned capital which is its charitable aspect.
The second test of charity is that the transfer of economic bene
fits shall be voluntary. Did anybody steal anything? Was anybody
coerced? So long as the tools are privately owned and their use
functions in a free market, the process has to be voluntary for every-
body involved. But state ownership or control of tools, as is com-
mon in Russia, violates this requirement.
The third test of charity is anonymity. The charitable feature of
savings and tools arises from the extra production that flows from
it as a consequence and which goes in large degree to others than
the one who saved and invested in the tool-to others than the
owner of the tool. It is anonymous because the beneficiaries do not
know its source. Most of them do not even know how they are bene-
fitting from it at all. They do not know this because they have been
victimized by a thorough saturation with the surplus value theory.
They even think of themselves as being victimized by these capital-
ists who own the tools they are using.
One can easily test from his own experience the anonymity of the
charity that flows from savings and investment in tools. If one will
list all the economic items he consumes or enjoys in a day, the test
is to try in each instance to name specifically all the persons whose
savings and investment made the item possible. Most of us, I dare
say, could not name even one person responsible for an item we
use and enjoy. This illustrates the anonymity of the millions of un-
known persons responsible for the things we enjoy.
So savings and the tools of production meet all three tests of
charity, and thus qualify as charity. How many of the things we
commonly call "charities" can equally qualify by these three tests?
The Productive Power of Tools
A large part of the high level of economic living we now enjoy
in the United States arises from the use of tools.
The average person in the United States has available for con-
sumption upwards of ten times that of persons in the less prosperous
half of the world. The reason for their poverty is a lack of savings
invested in tools of production. In all their history over the ages
they have accumulated little beyond the most primitive and simple
tools, such as crude plows and hoes.
Harder work by us is not the reason why we can enjoy ten times
as much economic welfare as they do. Persons in the United States
work no harder, if as hard, as do the poorer half of the world's pop-
ulation. Even including mental work along with sheer muscular
effort, both of which contribute to output, I doubt if we work any
harder-over-all.
Nor does innate intelligence seem to explain the difference. We
probably have no more geniuses per thousand population than they
do.
Lacking any of our accumulation of tools, our output per worker
probably would be even lower than that of the poorer half of the
world at the present time; even their production is aided consider-
ably by their simple tools. Comparison of their output with ours
suggests that without any tools whatsoever our output would be
reduced to perhaps one-twentieth of what it now is. To say it an-
other way, perhaps 95 per cent of our present output in the United
States is made possible by the presence of our tools. These tools are
available because in the past some wise people saved and invested
in tools.
Who Gets the Output Due to Tools?
The next question is: Who gets this great increase in production?
Evidence shows that a large part of it goes to others than those who
did the saving and who hold the titles of ownership to the tools.
It goes mostly to those who use the tools.
It has been estimated that only about 15 per cent of the national
income in the United States goes to the owners of capital as current
income.
7
This is the amount of dividends, interest, rents, and royal-
ties together with their equivalents in owner-operated businesses.
The other 85 per cent of the national income is paid currently for
work, as distinguished from pay to owners for savings they have
invested in tools. This figure for current work includes both wages
paid to employees and its equivalent to those self-employed.
The question at once arises as to why so small a proportion of the
product goes for capital, when capital is so highly productive? If
we were to assume that those who save and invest in tools are en-
titled to the full increase in output that comes from the use of these
tools as an aid to manual labor, it would appear from the evidence
already given that justice would decree a division about like this: 95
per cent for the owners and 5 per cent for the users.
And so we may summarize:
To the To the
Tool Owners Tool Users Total
If full production increase
were to go to the owners . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Actual division in the United
States at present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Division according to Marx's
surplus value theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0
5
85
100
100
100
100
Presuming these figures to be accurate, one must conclude that
the saver-investor is receiving less than one-sixth of the return
7 F. A. Harper, The Crisis of the Free Market, 1945, p. 66.
which his saving and investing has made possible-15 received from
the 95 produced. The other five-sixths of the increase goes to the
users of the tools, enhancing their pay seventeen times-85 received
and 5 produced.
A person is lucky if by chance he happens to have been born in
the United States where he can share directly in the bounty tools
create. By having been born here he is enabled to work with tools
that are now available because others have saved in the past. His
income from current effort will, by these figures, be enhanced seven-
teen times ( 85 versus 5) because of these tools. Had he been born
where no tools had been accumulated whatsoever but would have
to work as hard or even harder than in the United States, he would
be getting only one-seventeenth as much for his labors.
This bounty to the users of tools is what I call the greatest eco-
nomic charity.
Surplus Value Theory Reviewed
These facts are significant in appraising Marx's surplus value
theory. Marx said, in effect, that the 15 per cent which goes to the
owners of the tools is surplus value because the user of the tool:_
according to Marx-deserves the full100 per cent.
It is from the productive power of tools as aids to the manual
efforts of man that something which might be called a surplus value
arises. This surplus, as has been indicated, has raised United States
production from a level of 5 to a level of 100. So a counter claim to
that of Marx would be that the full increase of 95 ( 100 minus 5)-
the amount of surplus value created by the tools-should go to
the one whose savings created the tools. But who really gets this
surplus value of 95? The owner gets 15 and the user gets 80. Not a
bad deal for the user!
Surplus value of a different sort arises in every instance of volun-
tary exchange in a free market. If one farmer trades a bushel of
wheat to a merchant for a shirt, it is because the farmer prefers the
shirt to the wheat and the merchant prefers the wheat to the shirt.
The trade creates a surplus value for each of the participants, but
the amounts of surplus value thus created are not subject to meas-
urement by any device we now know or can contemplate. They are
compensating in direction but not necessarily in amount, because
the amount is entirely a matter of subjective appraisal. Being un-
known in amount by both parties and probably not even thought
of in these terms at all, no sense of residual obligation is created.
This makes the process closely akin to anonymity. The center of in-
terest of this discussion, however, is surplus value of the type
created by tools as an act of economic charity. Therefore the
phenomenon of surplus value created by exchange will not be dealt
with further here.
In a free economy the process of deciding the division of the
surplus value created by the use of tools occurs in the free market.
We must accept the decree of private ownership and free exchange
as having fairly decided the division, whatever the answer. Yet the
answer given in the free market reveals that private capitalists-the
"selfish owners," as those who save and invest are so often called-
are really the greatest charity-givers of all.
It is also interesting to note the magnitude of charity arising from
private capital in relation to "religious and welfare activities" con-
tributions. About two billion dollars are given to religious and wel-
fare activities in the United States each year. This is less than 1
per cent of the amount of charity which the users of tools receive
in their pay envelopes, according to this concept, in the same length
of time.
Bread vs. Seed Grain
I would certainly not scorn the giving of bread to a starving per-
son in need. Nor would I scorn any other endeavors of a charitable
nature by agencies which conduct recurrent campaigns for funds
and materials for needy persons, so long as the offering is voluntary
with one's own means. But I would emphasize strongly that the
urgency of the plight of the needy can blind one to the possibilities
of this greatest charity of all.
Those who benefit from the charity that flows from the creation
of tools are the persons engaged in productive labor. This makes an
excellent claim to worthiness, for as Samuel Johnson once said:
"You are much surer that you are doing good when you pay money
to those who work, as the recompense of their labor, than when you
give money merely in charity."
8
If we will but pause long enough to view with wider perspective
the consequences of some of our customary acts of presumed char-
ity, we can see their short-sightedness. Perhaps we should view
with some question even the giving of grain to a starving person,
if the same grain could better serve as seed for a harvest that would
8 James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, Charles E. Lauriat Company, Boston,
1925-Vol. II, p. 636.
keep twenty persons from starving later. Savings, when used wisely
by private enterprise to produce capital tools of venture, serve as
economic seed in a like manner. The use of it as seed becomes an
act of charity with a high leverage. But its creation requires enough
patience and restraint from demands for immediate consumption
so that the tools will be created. One must have foresight and eco-
nomic insight enough to see beyond the exceedingly conspicuous
and tempting need for present consumption.
When a neighbor krocks at one's door for a contribution to some
charity, it may seem selfish to wonder if perhaps greater good
could not be done by buying a share of new investment stock
instead. But such an alternative is worth pondering, even with the
perspective of charity in mind.
Many foundations have been established to engage in charity
with the accumulated profits from the use of tools created in an
earlier day. It may be a novel idea to suggest that greater charity
might have been the consequence if these funds had been rein-
vested in new tools rather than to be used for direct-consumption
charity, wherever that has been the policy. Use of foundation funds
for the purpose of research and discovery is, of course, another
matter because it is the creation of a form of tool and therefore
highly charitable in its effects.
The one point I wish to make above all others is that, whereas a
crust of bread may save a man from starving for a short while, the
creation and use of tools are the only effective means by which
people can be pulled completely out of the mire of poverty and
placed on the solid base of sustained plenty. One cannot heal all
the sick, relieve all the poor, comfort all in distress, nor father all
the fatherless. And so it is important that in one's efforts to do good
he lend his limited support where it will bear the most fruit on a
long-time basis-after he is gone and after his own direct efforts
have ceased.
The Incentive Factor
There must be some incentive if there is to be saving and invest-
ment in tools. This is best done by private ownership. The nature
of man being what it is, the prospect of some rewards under private
ownership surpasses all other incentives. A carrot will entice the
donkey better than a whip will drive him.
The label of charity on anything having as a motive any personal
gain at all will probably be questioned by many. They will say
that, unless 100 per cent of it is relinquished, none is truly charity.
But I would pose some questions in reply. Does the fact that a
person gives only 10 per cent of his yearly income, not 100 per cent,
deny any of his gifts being charity? Does the fact that a charitable
agency uses part of its income for organizational expenses deny any
of it as being charity?
He who would serve his fellow men by charity can best do so by
saving and investing in tools. Even though he may benefit himself
a little, in the process, he unavoidably and anonymously benefits
others by many times as much.
One who would be wholly self-sacrificing in the matter is free to
refrain from any personal benefits in consumption at all, if he
wishes. He can do this by reinvesting his profits in more tools. He
can use that small part of the product of the tools which the free
market allocates to him in the form of owner-reward to extend
this greatest charity, foregoing all personal gain beyond the title to
tools which are wholly benefiting others.
Beating Communism at its Own Purpose
Has socialism-communism anything to offer to compare with this?
Can their proposals benefit mankind in any such way, even though
the capitalist may get a little out of it for himself? Do they have
any such benefits to offer the commonweal in a parade of progress,
benefiting his children and his children's children on a continuing
basis?
No. A socialist-communist regime, instead of being truly chari-
table, kills off this greatest charity of all. Taxes for "public wel-
fare" kill the goose that lays this golden egg of charity. As taxes
increase more and more and the chance for reward disappears, sav-
ings and venture are discouraged more and more. As rewards be-
come thinner, the players tum away from the game. Original hopes
of a charitable plenty tum into a poverty enforced by orders and
police measures.
There is always the danger that when one has grasped the idea
of the productive power of tools he will propose confiscating funds
from private citizens in order to build more tools. But this denies
the very process of charity. One person cannot be truly charitable
with funds which he steals from another, any more than church
collections can be increased by having the members of the congre-
gation pick each other's pockets every Sunday. If tried, the source
will dry up because those attending will learn to keep their pockets
empty or else stay away from church.
True charity must remain purely private rather than public and
socialized. It must be voluntary. That is the nature of the greatest
economic charity of all-savings invested in privately owned tools
of production.
Conclusion
The intent of this essay has been to bring into focus the conflict
between two views toward economic charity, and to give a basis
for choice between them.
An analogy may illustrate the difference. According to one view,
sharing a crust of bread is advocated as the method of charity. The
other advocates savings and tools for the production of additional
loaves of bread, which is the greatest economic charity.
The two views are in conflict because the two methods are mutu-
ally exclusive in absorbing one's time and means in all the choices
he makes day by day. These cannot be twice used.
The reason for the difference in view really stems from different
concepts about the nature of the economic world. The former view
stems from the belief that the total of economic goods is a constant.
The latter view is built on the belief that expansion in production
is possible without any necessary limit.
The difference between the two views is like the difference be-
tween a two- and three-dimensional perspective of production. The
two-dimensional size is fixed at any instant of time, but the third
dimension and therefore the size of the total is expandable with-
out limit by savings and tools.
If the total of economic goods were fixed, it might seem humane
to spend all one's time dividing it into pieces and carrying them
here and there. If man is assumed to be selfish, voluntary methods
would seem inadequate and centralized control of supplies and their
distribution would seem to be necessary-if only there could be any
assurance of finding unselfish men to rule.
All the history of mankind denies that there is a fixed total of
economic goods. History further reveals that savings and expansion
of tools constitute the only way to any appreciable increase. Christ
seemed to be telling us this in the story of the talents, two thousand
years ago.
9
Were we to grasp fully the meaning of this story, con-
9 Matthew 25.
cepts about what is the best form of economic charity would un-
dergo a revolutionary change.
The greatest economic charity is that which enables persons to
become independent of alms and therefore most self-reliant and se-
cure under freedom. Only when that happens-when persons ad-
vance from the brink of starvation-is time released for devotion to
things of the mind and spirit, which comprise the supremely great
charity.
PART THREE
On Scientific Method
The Place of Economics
Among the Sciences
by WILHELM RoPKE
VIII
(from the German by George D. Huneke)
To ANNOUNCE an essay on the
place of economics among the sciences may seem to be short of
reckless temerity. For there is hardly any subject which offers a
more seductive invitation to be verbose, pedantic, and boring. Such
an invitation virtually amounts to an authorization to iterate obser-
vations which have been made often enough to need no further
emphasis. To be sure, it would be very malicious of me to apply
to economics the characterization once levelled at philosophy which
defined it as .. the continuous abuse of a terminology created for that
express purpose." But it must be admitted that philosophy and eco-
nomics exhibit certain common features which distinguish both
from most other sciences. One of these is that it can be said of each
that the history of its doctrines constitutes an essential part of the
science itself. Another is the highly characteristic tendency of each
toward excessive and incessant preoccupation with itself, its nature
and its methods. Both sciences resemble the introvert whose gaze
is ever turned inward, whose conscience, staggering under the load
of its own sins, is forever engaging in a searching of its own soul.
No science outdoes economics in this sort of "soul-searching," in
puzzling at the crossroads about signposts and direction-pointers,
in discussing the whence, the whither, the whereby, and the where-
for. No science is more persistent in its repetition of a query whose
111
general formula has been made famous by Schiller in his opening
lecture, "What is, and for what purpose do we study, economics?"
If, despite all that, we again broach that question today, there
must be some especially cogent reason to justify us. And in order
to recognize that reason clearly, we should do well to consider two
facts which are as conspicuous as they are important. One of them
is a source of pride to the economist; the other spells humiliation for
him and danger to the position accorded to his branch of knowledge
among the sciences in general, and in the estimation of society at
large.
For on the one hand we note that throughout the civilized world
there has been an increase in the last few decades in the technical
equipment of economic science such as we older economists would
not have dreamed possible when we started our career. Thirty
years ago a university might have twenty to thirty students regis-
tered in courses in economics, and their existence would be regarded
by a faculty of law or philosophy as a bizarre appendage to be
tolerated rather than respected.
1
Each year doctorates were con-
ferred upon a dozen or so candidates who were thereby launched
on a practice that was nearly as difficult to define as their science
itself. Today the enormously augmented scope which organized
research, instruction, and dissemination have attained in the field of
economics is no less remarkable than the corresponding increase
in the student body. In numbers that are positively unwieldy they
swarm about our "chairs in economics," crowd into seminars, hud-
dle over our library tables, and despite the immeasurably increased
amount of scientific material to be mastered, including even algebra
and geometry, they make heroic efforts to plumb the meaning of all
of it.
That is one of the two facts that demand our consideration. In
contrast to it stands the other which is no less striking but for that
very reason highly disquieting. I refer to the fact that the extraordi-
nary expansion of economics in research, organization, expert per-
sonnel, and practical effectiveness has taken place at a stage which
could not conceivably be more critical in the development of a
science which already has a history replete with crises and critical
turning points.
The fact that our science has attained such a high rank in public
esteem at the very moment when it is less sure of itself than ever
before must appear striking to anyone who concerns himself with
1 The author is particularly referring to conditions as they existed in Germany.
ON SCIENTIFIC METHOD 113
economics-a science which may truly lay claim, by reason of its
maturity, experience, and methods, to a place second to none among
the sciences which seek to establish the essential laws that govern
society itself. Are we not here faced with a very serious contradic-
tion which might almost move us to disapproval and gloomy fore-
boding? Are we not accustomed to feeling extremely uneasy
whenever outward appearance does not correspond to inner solidar-
ity? The question itself is no more than natural, yet the contradic-
tion is only apparent. Would it not be more accurate to say that
both facts are attributable to a common cause, namely, the profound
crisis which confronts society itself? And that they are so attribu-
table for the very reason that economics revolves about society,
and especially about those of its problems which are most amenable
to rational analysis?
In the course of the last two decades significant changes in the
political, economic and social structure of our society have taken
place, and these still continue to exert marked influence. It is to
these changes that we may ascribe the extraordinary increase in the
importance which our times accord to economic science. But it is
those same changes, too, and the profundity of the intellectual
sources from which they arise and the conflicts to which they lead,
that are reflected in the altered appearance of that science, in its
tensions, its problems and-let us openly admit-its errors. What at
first seems to be a contradiction between external appearance and
inner content is in fact an inevitably indissoluble combination that
lies in the very nature of the science itself. Recourse is eagerly
taken to economics in the expectation that it will furnish orienta-
tion for problems arising in an era of confusion which looks upon
the birth of much that is new and the death of much that is old.
And there is an intensely practical justification of that expectation.
It lies in the new economic structure of society with its ever-increas-
ing organization, institutionalization, and collectivization; and it
lies in the fact that those characteristics give rise to an exceptionally
augmented need for trained personnel capable of handling the prob-
lems these changes bring, as well as capable of publicly representing
the interests that thereby come into play.
But by the same token it need not be too astonishing that the
science to which recourse is taken is itself caught in the maelstrom
of this era of confusion, and that it, too, is subject to turbulation
and fluctuation. Such would not necessarily have to be the case.
And there is every reason for us to combat with all our power the
forces that tend to sweep economic science from its moorings.
There is no justification for treating as mere cause and effect the
relationship between the cultural and social upheaval of our times,
on the one hand, and the dubious aberrations, on the other, of which
economic science has been guilty. However, it can hardly be denied
that some such relationship does exist and that we are thereby put
upon notice as to our obligation to establish the higher truth which
must reconcile the paradox. And such denial becomes all the more
out of the question when we consider the possibility of the recipro-
cal influence of the two members of the paradox. For attention
must be called to the probability that certain tendencies exhibited
by economic science, while much in accord with the spirit of our
times, are themselves in no small measure responsible for some of
the spasmodic manifestations exhibited by our society and our
economy.
I now propose that we explore the two facts of our paradox, one
after the other, in order to discover what problems they present.
And I suggest that we begin with the second, the internal conditions
of economic science as they affect its position in relation to its fel-
low sciences. A few observations respecting the first member of our
paradox may constitute our concluding paragraphs.
With respect to the present situation in economics and to its
position among the sciences, we may state that it is pregnant with
questions to the point of crisis; but we need not linger unduly long
over a number of well-known matters of a general nature. It is easy
to state in general terms what economics is concerned with, even
though great difficulty may be encountered in the treatment of its
specific problems. The commonest point of departure for the latter
is the general scarcity of goods, which can in turn be attributed
to the scarcity of forces of production except, of course, for the
absolutely rare goods. Thence follow those inescapable rules of all
economic activity which constitute the uttermost in generality-such
as the necessity for evaluation, the exercise of choice among alterna-
tives, optimum utilization of scarce forces of production, and the
like. These are the imperatives which even a collectivist economy
cannot disregard with impunity. In this sense it is, of course, a mis-
take to think of economics as a science whose scope is limited to one
definite method of responding to those general imperatives, that is
to say, as the science of a market economy controlled by free prices
and competition. Quite on the contrary, a purely collectivist eco-
nomic system is better fitted than any other to place those supreme
imperatives in the correct light and so progress to a better under-
standing of how a market economy functions. And it is so fitted, if
for no other reason than that a collectivist economy is in itself a
demonstration that it cannot satisfactorily control those imperatives
and hence that it must necessarily result in disorder and poverty.
There could hardly be anything better calculated to further con-
temporary science than this inordinately costly and painful "instruc-
tion by the case method" which makes whole nations the guinea
pigs on which to demonstrate so utterly convincingly the modus
operandi and the irreplaceable functions of free determination of
price and of the presuppositions behind it.
However, the difference in practice between these two opposing
economic systems finds its counterpart in theory. Only a market
economy makes it possible for economic science to go beyond those
general and platitudinous truths and to discover relationships that
have the objective definitiveness and validity which a market econ-
omy actually establishes by means of the mechanism of price. Only
a market economy makes of economic science an analytical social
science rather than a science which is merely a descriptive-under-
standing one having a logical structure like that of historiography.
In the collectivistic state the science of economics is condemned
to limit the scope of its activity to two extreme positions. The first
of these is the preliminary and introductory stages of instruction
which do not go beyond the general truths and their imperatives;
the other is the doctrine of an economy controlled for the attain-
ment of certain political objectives, not unlike the cameralism of
the old absolute and paternalistic state.
But in saying this much we have not yet told the whole truth.
In fact, we shall see later that it is dangerous to exaggerate the truth
of what we have found so far. But it is indisputable that economics
is, in the main, a science which is rooted in our market economy.
It is, to speak with Ludwig von Mises, pre-eminently catalactics.
That is the field where its actual scientific discoveries have been
made; and it is still true that we can forget only at our dire peril
what really constitutes the content of economic theory, namely, the
economic organization which functions through a system of deter-
mined and determining prices, wages, rates of interest, and other
magnitudes of value. We are, of course, aware that reality differs
to a greater or lesser degree from our theoretical pattern of a free
price mechanism which complies in every respect with the laws of
unhampered competition. Nevertheless that pattern is indispen-
sable to us if we are to arrive at any reasoned judgment at all con-
cerning the importance of the degree to which, in every case, reality
does so differ from the pattern of free and competitive markets.
We have thus more or less determined the intellectual site of the
field where actual economic thinking takes place, and which con-
stantly serves as its point of reference for reorientation. Let us then
proceed a step further in order to characterize that thinking as to its
individuality, its difficulties, its pitfalls. As Keynes once observed,
economics is not difficult in the same sense as, say, theoretical phys-
ics is difficult. But I believe I can hazard a judgment based on my
experience at our own university, where students of international
problems have the option of approaching them from the point of
view of law, of economics, or of "Political Science." And within
that group of the social sciences, at least, economics has the reputa-
tion of presenting heights that are particularly difficult to scale. If
I charitably debar the supposition that the reason might lie in the
professors, then we are confronted by a problem which deserves
considerable reflection.
Indubitably economics demands a kind of thinking which, if not
difficult, is certainly peculiar to itself and which must be the prod-
uct of training as well as of intensive practice. Such must inevitably
be the case since its subject, economic activity, is so prodigiously
varied and complex that it eludes our best efforts to grasp it by the
methods customary in scientific study generally. The same Keynes
who made the remark about economics and theoretical physics told
us on another occasion (Economic journal, 1924) that a man like
Professor Planck, the famous originator of the Quantum Theory,
confessed to him that he thought of studying economics but found
it too difficult. He could have mastered, says Keynes, the whole
corpus of mathematical economics in a few days, but what he
seems to have found so difficult was the "amalgam of logic and
intuition and the wide knowledge of facts, most of which are not
precise, which is required for economic interpretation in its highest
form."
"Thee, boundless Nature, how make thee my own?
Where you, ye breasts? .... "
The descriptive method does not advance our cause. Experi-
mentation is ruled out by the very nature of the subject. The weav-
ing of a fabric spun from ingeniously devised lines of thought only
too often proves an escape from what is relevant and factual. When
confronted by that difficulty, the mind of the untutored and the
unsuspecting is prone to take refuge in the dangerous world of
ON SCIENTIFIC METHOD
117
analogy, of metaphor, of the unwarranted transfer of what is mani-
fest and what is observed in individual experience to economic
activity of the community as a whole. But the latter field is the
very place where the determining influence is exerted, not by that
which is obvious, but by something that must be logically deduced,
and where that which is valid in particular is not necessarily valid
in general. Under these circumstances we get that dreaded "home-
grown economics" which bristles with all the obvious blunders that
characterize the mercantilist thinking of which David Hume and
Adam Smith disposed once and for all and against which the best
antidote is still that collection of essays published a century ago by
Bastiat under the eloquent title "Ce qu' on voit et ce qu' on ne voit
pas." That kind of thinking is the source of one of the most disastrous
of economic fallacies to be designated, perhaps, as anthropomorph-
ism, or as "realism of conception" or by Whitehead's phrase "fallacy
of misplaced concreteness." It is especially to be encountered where
discussions treat questions of international economic relations, and
unfortunately it rears its ugly head even within the ranks of the
professional economists themselves.
2
Indeed, the latter have un-
fortunately and in no inconsiderable numbers succumbed to the
blandishill'ents of still another influence which I shall describe
shortly; and they have betrayed a tendency to relapse anew into
the mercantilistic thinking that antedated the attainment by eco-
nomics of its scientific maturity.
The present occasion is not the one on which to describe what
methods economics does employ in lieu of those erroneous ones, nor
to describe how our science makes use of abstraction, idealization,
typification and the creation of models, in order to make a gradual
approach to reality. But it is in order, on this occasion, to emphasize
that in this process economic science requires the constant applica-
tion of supreme attentiveness and a large dose of that intuitive
power which enables us to keep our eyes on all the complicated
threads at once, and to emulate the juggler who never loses sight
of a single one of the balls he is keeping aloft. If that power for-
sakes the economist, the result is that commonest of economic errors
which consists in a failure to think an economic process through
to its conclusion and hence to lose sight of an important part of it.
Such an error arises, for instance, if we conclude that profit must
have a deflationary effect because (and this is the everlasting fallacy
of all underconsumption theories) demand is thereby barred from
2 On this point cf. my Internationale Ordnung, new ed. 1954 (Erlenbach-Zurich),
pp. 118, 133, 241.
reaching the market. The truth of the matter is that we are dealing
with a demand which is expressing itself in a different direction-
and a direction, incidentally, which as a rule means greater eco-
nomic progress. The particular intellectual effort required of us
economists consists in recognizing that economic science deals essen-
tially, not with constants but with functions, with relations, with
interdependent forces. The logic peculiar to economic science is the
logic of relationships. As one scholar of my generation somewhat
exaggerately puts it, "such thinking in terms of relationships ... un-
doubtedly" is one of "the most difficult problems the human intellect
can encounter.''3
Small wonder, then, that it is at this very point that the economic
reasoning of the untrained mind most frequently comes to grief,
whereas the trained economist is most clearly to be recognized by
the fact that thinking in terms of relationships has become second
nature with him. He knows that imports and exports, or that wages
and employment are most intimately and reciprocally related. And
the diagrams setting forth the mutual interdependence of supply,
demand, and price are as much a part of the economist's mental
"stock-in-trade" as, let us say, is for the jurist the distinction be-
tween claims ad personam and those ad rem. The economist will
not commit the fundamental error of considering the demand for a
particular good in any other light than the relative demand with
respect to a certain price and with respect to the conditions which
determine the demand curve itself. He does not need to be told
that one cannot speak of a "shortage," of a "scarcity of dollars" or
of a "deficit in the balance of payments" as something absolute. He
knows that those terms apply only with respect to a definite price
which is fixed in such a way as to inhibit the normal function of
price, which is to equalize supply and demand. And he knows that
this is so even if, in view of certain social or political postulates,
it seems preferable to deprive price of that function and to assign
the latter to a governmental agency, if not to such agents as the
black market, political corruption, "influence'' or the mere physical
prowess of those who, at that price, can force their way into the
market. The economist who is trained to reason along such lines
must indeed wince when he reads-as it was possible for him to do
in 1943, for instance, in the London Ecorwmist-of a "scarcity of
dollars" which is destined to be permanent because the United
s 0. Morgenstern-Die Grenzen der Wirtschaftspolitik, Vienna, 1934, p. 69.
119
States "needs" so little from other countries, while the latter "need"
so much from the United States. Just as if this "needing" had any
sense at all, except with respect to certain prices and, in this case of
international economic relations, with respect to a certain rate of ex-
change; and as if it were not the theory of comparative costs (that
incontrovertible basic law of international trade) which alone can
explain the necessity, even under these unusual circumstances, of
establishing an equilibrium in international trade.
To be sure, that all sounds a lot simpler than it really is. For it is
another difficulty of economic science that we are everlastingly con-
fronted by a painful dilemma. As Alfred Marshall once observed, all
simple statements in economics are erroneous. But when we modify
them and make them conform to pertinent relationships, we soon
arrive at a point where the process gets out of control and where it
would be possible to reason out economic justification for any abuse
that assumes the name of economic policy. To the field of eco-
nomics we can perhaps apply more aptly than to any other the
dictum which Leibnitz applied to the entire system of human
knowledge. There is no truth, said Leibnitz, which does not have
something erroneous commingled with it, and no error which does
not contain a bit of truth. If we recognize that, we ought to be
secure against all extremes and eccentricities. But it is just as im-
portant for us to shun a thoroughly debilitating relativity. And
if we are to do that, it is imperative from each occasion to the next,
that we distinguish clearly between that which is our fundamental
thesis and our general truth, and that which is a modification of
the fundamental thesis. It is equally imperative that we be aware
that the particular circumstances decide in each case how much
practical significance attaches to the qualifying modification.
But that demands of the economist a further special virtue. He
must possess judgment, sound common sense, a feeling of propor-
tion and perspective-in a word, qualities that are the exact opposite
of those which so often characterize the average type of modern
intellectuaU In the words of Solomon,
5
"To everything there is a
season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven." That which
4
Cf. my Mass und Mitte, Erlenbach-Zurich, 1950, p. 54 et seq. "Celui qui regarde
naturellement les choses a le bon sens," says Vauvenargues (Introduction a la connais-
sance de l'esprit humain, 1746, VII). Then he adds, "Pour avoir beaucoup de bon
sens il faut etre fait de maniere que Ia raison domine sur le sentiment, I' experience
sur le raisonnement."
5 Ecclesiastes 3: 1.
120
is ordinarily folly, may by exception be wisdom, and vice versa. In
a desperate situation, such as the depression of 1930-1933, it may
be correct to place every emphasis on a policy of "spending" and
not on saving. But the economist must possess sufficient judgment
not to make that into an article of faith, but must promptly recall
the general truth, only temporarily modified, which teaches the
exact opposite. Or let us choose a different example. It is, of course,
quite correct, that a "passive balance of payments" can be brought
about not only, as Ricardo taught, through the internal financial and
money policy of a state, but also, as his opponent Malthus empha-
sized, by "real" factors which lie completely outside the sphere of
things for which such a policy is responsible. But the more stub-
born and more pronounced this passivity is, the more does the
monetary policy operate causatively, and the more importance is to
be attributed to the responsibility borne by the state and its central
bank. In the long run, Ricardo's position is right and Malthus's
wrong; and this is all the more true the more violent the departure
from the norm. In the period of the German inflation which fol-
lowed World War I, the most primitive conception of the quantity
theory laying the entire blame for the soaring prices and the dis-
ruption of foreign exchange on the increase in the issue of currency,
was a thousand times superior to the most ingeniously worked out
theory that looked for the trouble elsewhere, e.g., in the "passive"
balance of payments. And even today time is running out for those
countries in Europe that want to excuse the stubbornly continuing
"dollar scarcity" on the ground that it is an effect of the war or
the result of other "real" factors.
These things, unfortunately, require emphasis, even among pro-
fessional economists. For it cannot be denied that these very quali-
ties-the ability to exercise judgment, of "bon sens" and of a sense
of reality-have suffered diminution. They have tended to cede
their position to a formalistic facility in the manipulation of methods
which have been unwarrantably adopted from the natural sciences
and used in economics. That brings me to the painful subject of a
revolution in the field of economics which, on the whole, invites
severe criticism, and which has led to an undeniable crisis in the
status of economic science. I need not do more than mention the
name of Lord Keynes to indicate the origin and character of that
revolution. It is a broad subject, and as any adequate treatment
of it would go far beyond the limits of my present observations, I
ON SCIENTIFIC ME1'HOD
121
shall therefore restrict myself to a few remarks which shall serve to
bring out what is important for us in this connection.
6
Keynes, more than any other one person, became responsible for
a certain lamentable development in the economic science of our
day. It is probable that he did so contrary to his own basic inten-
tion, but that is at this point irrelevant. That development takes on
the high-sounding name of "the new economics" or "Macroeco-
nomics" and consists of a tendency to regard the whole economic
process as something purely objective and mechanical. Hence purely
mathematical and statistical methods, it seems, can be applied and
the whole economic process can therefore be quantitatively deter-
mined and even pre-determined. Under those circumstances an
economic system readily takes on the appearance of a sort of huge
waterworks, and the science which treats of that economic system
quite logically assumes the appearance of a kind of engineering
science, which teems with equations in ever-increasing profusion.
And so oblivion threatens to engulf what, as I see it, is the actual
fruit of a century and a half of intellectual effort in the field of eco-
nomics, namely, the doctrine of the movement of individual prices.
That brings in its train a number of other tendencies well calcu-
lated to arouse anxiety. One of these is an ever-increasing speciali-
zation in research which promotes a sort of fragmentation process
throughout the field of the social sciences. Another phenomenon,
inevitably consequent to the first, is an occultism which at times
positively glories in the esoteric incomprehensibility of its presenta-
tion and proudly points to its use of mathematics as something
which raises the "new economics" almost to the dazzling heights
of physics itself. We encounter, too, a species of intellectualism or
scholasticism which is bereft of all sense of proportion, loses itself
in a maze of hair-splitting, and sets up "models" or "patterns" which
abandon any possible approach to reality. And that leads, finally,
to a stiff-necked intolerance which can justly be termed a "rabies
economica" since it is no whit less intransigently bigoted than the
comparable "rabies theologica." It has come to the point where we
must often ask ourselves, as we open the pages of one of the tech-
nical publications of our science, whether we have not inadvertantly
gotten hold of a technical journal on chemistry or hydraulics.
There is pressing need, then, for calm reflection and critical
6 For a fuller treatment I refer the reader to my essay "Alte und neue Oekonomie"
which appeared as a contribution to a symposium entitled Wirtschuft ohne Wunde,-,
Engen Rentsch, Erlenbach-Zurich, 1953.
deliberation.
7
Their starting point must be the self-evident fact that
economics belongs to the estimable family of the Geisteswissen-
schaften and that it is a "moral science" in the sense that it deals
with man as an intellectual and moral being. But our reflection and
deliberation must also not lose sight of the point previously estab-
lished, that economics occupies a special position, in that it deals
with that institution which we call a market economy. Now that
is an institution which goes so far in translating subjective feelings
into objective actions, that we economists are able to employ meth-
ods which are foreign to other moral sciences. And this special posi-
tion makes economics truly a "border science" with all the attractive
possibilities the term implies, but also subject to all the great dan-
gers inherent therein. Economics does, in actual fact, permit of re-
course to mathematics to illustrate and to formulate with precision
causal relationships of a quantitative character. And there are
indeed few modem economists who would reject all utilization of
mathematics. But this very method is open to question because it
will lure the unwary into pushing forward unduly the frontier that
delimits the border territory, the zone between what is human and
what is mechanical. They will thus advance too far into the region
of the mechanical, the statistical, the mathematical, and they will
be prone to neglect that which lies on the hither side of the bound-
ary, that which is human and unmathematical, that which is intel-
lectual and moral and hence not quantitatively measurable. There
should be a readiness to forgo the technique and methods of the
natural sciences except occasionally and for illustrative purposes,
particularly in view of the fact that the possible gain from their
employment involves disproportionate danger of gross error. "Par-
turient montes-nascetur ridiculus mus" is truly an apothegm that
should be borne in mind by those who engage in studies of this
kind.
And it is an error to attempt to defend mathematical economics
by pointing out that our science does, after all, deal with quantities.
That statement is true. But it is true in even greater measure of
strategy, and yet battles are no mere mathematical problem of com-
putation that can be consigned to the care of an electronic calcu-
lating machine. The determining factor in economic activity is
furnished by things that are as downright unmathematical as a love
letter or a Christmas festival, by forces that are moral and intellec-
tual, by reactions and opinions that simply have no place in curves
7 The reader hardly needs to be told how much the author is indebted to the writ-
ings of Ludwig von Mises for much of what follows.
123
and equations, but lie in the domain of the everlastingly incalculable
and unpredictable. We must not, in our "border science," demand
more from the mathematical method than it can accomplish. I
know of no really effectual economic theory that could be discov-
ered by that method alone, nor indeed any that has actually been
so discovered. There are profound reasons for this, for any eco-
nomic doctrine deserves the jaundiced eye of suspicion if it can be
demonstrated only mathematically without being at the same time
unmathematically comprehensible. Wherever any attempt is made
to advance such a doctrine, it would be well to apply the wise
principle laid down by a brilliant Viennese economist who used to
say in such cases, "Before I marvel, I'd rather disbelieve."
I find equally sound that remark of Voltaire's which Goethe once
quoted in the course of a letter to Zeiter, "J'ai toujours remarque
que la geometrie laisse I' esprit ou elle le trouve." As one of our
contemporary economists, L. A. Hahn, wittily remarks, mathemati-
cal economics all too often resembles the game of egg-hiding that
children play at Easter. How they shout for joy when they find
the eggs in the very place where they hid them! But even that is
one of the most innocent objections that can be raised against this
method. Its worst feature is, that it deludes us into a dehumaniza-
tion of economic science. To rediscover hidden Easter eggs is an
innocent pleasure that we need not, after all, begrudge anyone. But
it becomes a serious matter when the game exposes us to the danger
of sticking our hands into a rattlesnake's nest.
8
The French statesman Philippe Berthelot once said, after the
First World War, "un homme qui meurt-<;a m'emeut. Quinze-cent
mille hommes-c'est de la statistique." It is an observation as bitter
as it is true, and the economist is the last person who should be deaf
to the warning it contains. Of course, we economists cannot avoid
the use of a species of technical shorthand. We speak of supply
and demand, of the purchasing power of money, of the amount of
production, the volume of savings, the volume of investment, not
to mention a pork sector, and we cannot forever be emphasizing
that behind all these pseudo-mechanical concepts there stand indi-
vidual human beings with their feelings, their deliberations, their
appraisals of value, their collective suggestions and decisions. But
neither should we ever forget those things ourselves, nor play heed-
lessly with these collective symbols as children do with building
blocks. Certain economists today speak of "coefficients of elasticity,"
8 On the limitations of the mathematical method cf. G. F. Stigler, Ftve e c t u r e ~
on Economic Problems, London, 1950.
"marginal propensities," "multipliers," "accelerators," and other in-
genious devices, just as if it were a question of physical constants, so
to speak, with which they were going through mathematical proce-
dures. Then the moment has come when we have to express our
disapproval in no uncertain terms.
Those are aberrations which make it very clear why the word
"crisis" is hardly too strong a term to describe the present situation
in economic science. But we have now arrived at the point where
we must revert to a remark I made earlier in these pages. This
tendency toward a quantitative and mechanical conception of our
branch of the moral sciences is, of course, merely a reflection of a
general inclination in the same direction in all the thinking of our
era. It expresses itself with especial clarity in all questions bearing
on our social life and in this respect runs parallel to developments
in the practical politics of our day. The tendencies I deplore in
economics are merely one particular case exemplifying the general
tendency toward impersonalization, toward collectivization, toward
mechanization, toward dehumanization. The spirit of our times is
in very fact predominantly collectivistic, predominantly hostile to
the human being, the human soul, the human personality. Anyone
who perceives in that spirit a threat to human destiny must needs
watch vigilantly for every manifestation whereby that spirit ex-
presses itself. And that applies to economic theory just as truly!
I make bold to aver that basically Keynes and Picasso both demon-
strate that they belong to the same era, and that even in their
alternation between classicism and ultramodernism they are remark-
ably alike. Ortega y Gasset has written a famous essay on "The
Banishment of the Human Being from Art." We economists can
well supplement it by making some observations on "The Banish-
ment of the Human Being from Economic Science." And unfortu-
nately here, too, developments in the field of theory parallel those
in the field of its practical application.
That brings us back to the original point of departure for these
observations. After we have attempted to explain and appraise the
place of economics as a science, it still remains for us to say a con-
cluding word on its place in modern society. What is it accom-
plishing here? What are its specific functions, and how can it fulfill
them?
Let us not linger over the trivial truth that it is the function of
economics to provide governments, organized groups, and public
opinion with orientation and guidance in all decisions concerning
economic policy, and to supply a training ground for the forces that
specialize in these pursuits. There still remain two important ob-
servations to record.
The first of these is the need for repeating emphatically an old
complaint. It is to the effect that hardly any other science has to
struggle as hard as does economics against the layman's stubborn
proclivity to adhere to the ''home-grown economics" I mentioned
earlier. Despite a complete lack of training and in na'ive reliance on
the obvious evidence of his senses, he opposes his own economies
to two centuries of not entirely fruitless reflection and research by
the economist. For economics is the one field where every layman
feels able to render a competent opinion because it is the field
where his interests are involved and his sentiments are aroused.
And, as Frank H. Knight, then president of the American Economics
Association, somewhat bitterly remarked a few years ago, that is
all the more remarkable because it is just the more essential eco-
nomic truths which are of such a nature that people would be
bound to understand them without any elucidation by the econo-
mist, if they only wanted to. But they will not see "that imports are
either paid for by exports, as a method of producing the imported
goods more efficiently, or else are received for nothing. Can there
be any use in explaining, if it is needful to explain, that fixing a
price below the free market level will create a shortage and one
above it a surplus?" And Knight adds the further remark, "Let me
observe that rent freezing, for example, occurs not at all merely
because tenants have more votes than landlords. It reflects a state
of mind, a mode of reasoning, even more discouraging then blind-
ness through self-interest."
9
The second point that I feel requires to be recorded is that the
task which confronts economic science, difficult enough in itself,
becomes virtually impossible of accomplishment if that science itself
betrays in its answers the uncertainty that is evident in the critical
situation that obtains today. That seems even more emphatically
true if economics enrolls under the Keynesian banner and bestows
the blessings of mathematical science on the pronouncements of
unlettered laymen. It is to be expected that the overwhelming
majority of laymen will look upon the "passive balance of payments"
as an Act of God. We may further take for granted that in the eyes
of those same laymen the only cure for this affiiction is an economy
that relies on forcible control of exchange rates plus American sub-
9 Frank H. Knight, "The Role of Principles in Economics and American
Economic Review, March 1951, p. 4.
sidies. But what are we to think of a science of economics that
confirms an ingenious version of that lay theory-a theory already ex-
ploded back in the days of David Hume and David Ricardo? Much
of what goes today under the name of "New economics" has vir-
tually deprived humanity of every last bit of firm ground on which
to stand and combat such things, and there should be no divided
opinion as to the crying need for something to heal the rupture
they have caused in the body structure of our science as a whole.
Fortunately, indications are increasingly numerous that granulation
of the wound is progressing apace.
In the meantime economic science has other social functions
which far transcend the aforementioned orientation and guidance
in matters of economic policy. Thus, it is unquestionable that eco-
nomics has become indispensable to modern man as a component
element of his "culture." By "culture" I mean here the system of
concepts which comprise his universe. In that sense it is the func-
tion of economics to provide the individual with that orientation-
so supremely important for the genuine inner life-which instructs
him concerning the structure and functioning of society and the
place which he himseH occupies within it.
10
It is necessary to add
that orientation of that kind is vitally necessary to the existence of
society and to economic order itself. For as Lucien Romier justly
observed some twenty years ago,
11
no cultural system can long
survive if the great mass of people who are its bearers no longer
understand its inner laws and its essential structure. And it is that
very understanding of our economic system which has gradually
become lost in the ever-increasing complexity of its own bustling
activity.
12
One of the primary tasks confronting present-day eco-
nomic science is to make that system transparently intelligible, to
explain its functioning with elementary clarity to every man, and
thus to indicate beyond question the place he occupies in his world.
But such a task presupposes that the economic scientist is whole-
heartedly convinced of the compelling necessity for so presenting
economics that it should be clearly intelligible, well synthesized and
universal in scope-in short, so that it shall be a living part of the
10 nus characterization of economics gives it its proper place in the total program
developed by Ortega y Gasset in his book, Schuld und Schuldigkeit der Universitiit,
Munich, 1952.
11 Lucien Romier, Si le capitalisme disparaissait, Paris 1933, "Aucune societe,
aucune humanite n'a pu vivre longtemps sans savoir pourquoi elle vivait et comment
elle devait vivre, sans philosophie et sans moral." (pp. 156-157.)
12 Cf. Walter Eucken, Grundsiitze der Wirtschaftspolitik, Bern-Tiibingen, 1952,
p.l94.
body of our era's cultural knowledge. And that task imposes on
economic science (and here we echo another demand by Ortega y
Gasset) the further requirement that it emerge from its esoteric
seclusion and recognize the necessity for making such intimate con-
tact with society's organs of public opinion as to become a vital
factor in its intellectual life.
And as if that were not enough, economics has, besides, a very
specific function to perform in the modern democracy. It has an
humble but all the more useful mission. Amidst the passions and
self-interest of politics, it must assert the logic of things, it must
bring to light all the inconvenient facts and relationships, must put
them in their proper place with dispassionate justice, must prick
all the soap bubbles, must unmask illusion and confusion, and must
defend before all the world the proposition that two and two make
four. It should be the one science par excellence which disillusions,
which is anti-visionary, anti-Utopian, and anti-ideological. Thus it
can render society the priceless service of cooling off political pas-
sion, of combating mass superstition, of making life hard for all
demagogues, financial wizards, and economic prestidigitators. At
the same time it must avoid becoming the willing handmaiden of
that social emotionalism of which Solomon says in the 13th canto of
Il Paradiso, "E poi l'affetto l'intelletto lega."
That does not by any means imply that we economists may or can
retreat to the ivory tower of an economic neutrality. We, beyond
all others, are representatives of the social sciences and under the
duty to make up our minds at the great cross-roads of our civiliza-
tion. It is not enough for us merely to decipher the roadmarkers;
we must know whether we are sending society along the road to
freedom, to humane living, to unalterable truth, or in the opposite
direction and toward slavery, the prostitution of man, and crassest
falsehood. To evade that decision would just as assuredly be a
"trahison des clercs" as if we were to betray the sanctity that lies
in the truth of science to the political passions and the social emo-
tionalism of our era. The performance of that duty means no less
than the erection of the most important possible "guide-post" for
determining the place of economics among the sciences of today.
IX
On Methodology in Economics
by FAUSTINO BALLVE
(from the Spanish by 0. L. Ballve)
WHEN, in 1783, Immanuel Kant
published his Prolegomena in order to dispel the confusion caused
in the philosophical world by his revolutionary Critique of Pure
Reason, he headed the chapters with a number of questions that
could be condensed as follows: "How Is Metaphysics Possible?" If
we, in turn, had to condense Ludwig von Mises' methodological
position, we would have to phrase the question as follows: "How
Is Economics Possible?"
As Manuel Revent6s points out in his prologue to the Catalan
translation of Chapman's Economy, the science of economics, to-
wards the end of the nineteenth century, found itself in the stage
in which metaphysics had been at the end of the eighteen century:
floating between dogmatism and empiricism. Dogmatism was born
with the physiocrats, developed by the classicists, and left its mark
on the mathematical economists. It postulated inescapable economic
laws to which man had to conform under penalty of failure. Em-
piricism was born with mercantilism and, through List and the
historical school, arrived at "state socialism," neo-mercantilism, and
other forms of etatism. It considered economic events only as social
data, the study of which could be profitably employed by politicians
to give order to economic life, thus freeing it from anarchy.
Both these trends gradually declined and their failure stimulated
inquiring minds to reflect. The discredit into which economic laws
had fallen seemed to justify empiricism. But neither did the control
of economic life by political means prove practical. For whenever
128
the state applied an economic measure to attain certain results, the
final results proved to be quite different. Something always inter-
vened. If it was not the discredited economic laws, what then
could it be? If the economic activities of man were not ruled by
"natural laws," nor could be regulated at will, then they had to
have a sense of their own. And this sense was to be searched for
neither by observation nor by experimentation, but by reflection.
The data on economic life were available; only its sense was missing.
And this could only be searched for by methodical reflection. Eco-
nomic life did exist. It disobeyed natural laws and also resisted
social laws. How was this possible?
The economic problem is exposed in a critical manner. In our
opinion, herein lies the great contribution of L. von Mises to the
science of economics.
Economic life, unlike natural life, is not subject to the law of
causality. In natural life the same causes always produce the same
effects. In economic life the same causes may produce different
effects. Why? Because man's volition interferes between causes
and effects. And man's volition is not ruled by causes (past), but
by aims (future). Events in human life are not ruled by the law
of causality, but by that of finality. We can judge natural events
starting from the two fundamental categories of Kant: time and
place. In human events a third category intervenes: action. Garcia
Morente, who in our belief is the most lucid interpreter of Kant,
stated that the nineteenth century further developed Kantism by
discovering a third fundamental category explaining human evolu-
tion and progress. Action is the product of man's elective faculty.
Confronted with facts, which in nature would be causes, man
chooses and consequently acts. He acts whether he is confronted
by an economic or any other human problem.
The study of human action is called praxeology. Economics is a
part of praxeology. But what part? How do we categorize it within
the praxeological group?
In economics the category of exchange which plays no role in
other praxeological phenomena is added to the category of elective
action. In economic life man acts to obtain what he wants. This
is possible only in a bilateral way: do ut des. You give me some-
thing in exchange for what I give you; or I give you something in
exchange for what you give me. Thus economics is catalactical
praxeology. But the act of exchange must take place somewhere.
This place (material or ideal) is the market. Everybody is always
present and acting in the market, even if only in a negative way,
i.e., not exchanging. Not to exchange is also to act in the market,
just as the gambler at a gambling table may momentarily abstain
from placing a bet.
We categorize a science on grounds of its essential, general, and
permanent characteristics. Economics is human action employing
the elective faculty in market exchange. Thus its fundamental cate-
gories are the elective faculty, the exchange of goods, and the
market. Only in the recognition of these categories is economic
thinking possible. Economics is oikos nemo, i.e., running of the
home or caring for one's well-being. From the interplay of choosing
between goods and services for the well-being of oneself and one's
family, and choosing leisure, indifference, or sacrifice, economic life
is born. Its driving force is the autonomous action of individuals.
Its means is choice; its stage, the market.
Therefore, economics is neither pursuit of wealth, nor the pro-
duction or distribution of commodities and services, nor their con-
sumption. These are results, purely external manifestations which
also appear outside the scope of economics. As L. von Mises has
repeatedly stated, production, distribution, consumption, and the
satisfaction of the urge to amass wealth are also feasible by means
not freely elective, such as politics or, more concretely, totalitarian-
ism in any of its forms. But this is not economics. These actions
only concern economics when they originate from the autonomous
action of man exercising his elective faculty in the market. Only
under this condition could the following characteristic phenomena,
which always were considered to comprise economics, be brought
about: supply and demand, mechanism of prices, money and credit,
etc.
What we have just set forth constitutes the fundamental basis
of economic theory. As Rudolf Stammler very accurately asserted,
a theory is a doctrine of general validity. It is the exposition of the
pure form of a certain scientific matter by means of a special focus
or method. In our case it is the praxeological-catalactical focus of
human action. The concrete and changing matters of human activ-
ity lack unity, order, and individuality. They receive these charac-
teristics only from the method. Thus human action resulting from
reflection on goods to be desired and to be offered in exchange may
be an economic case or one of a different nature, depending upon
the method applied. If we inquire why a man acts in a certain way
today, instead of yesterday or tomorrow, why he selects one com-
modity or service instead of others, and why he offers in exchange
one good or medium of exchange instead of others, then we apply
psychology and not economics. We are dealing with economics
when we regard the individual act as an elective act in the market.
We are not interested in motives or "causes" that may have brought
about a definite action at a definite time and place. This is the field
of the psychologist. For the economist the elective-catalactical
action of man is the ultimate given. It is the point of departure for
our science and provides unity for an organic theory, that is to say,
an explanation of the phenomena and problems resulting from
man's use of his elective faculty in the market. If we start from this
point of view we can logically explain and relate all economic
phenomena.
In short, no event in itself is economic. Only the methodical
focus makes it so. Thus we cannot study an economic event until
we know the meaning of an "economic event." Economics, like any
other science, necessarily starts from an a priori synthetical asser-
tion. For economics it is the following: economic activity is elec-
tive-catalactic action. This a priori synthetical assertion has its
"raison d'etre," for it allows us to understand and explain economic
phenomena. It makes economics possible. Through its form it gives
individuality and organic unity to material events which we used to
consider intuitively as economic events. It also enables us to discard
those concepts which, despite their economic appearance ( monopo-
lies, for example), are not economic events although they may influ-
ence economic life.
Starting from the synthetic assertion that defines economics, the
science of economics proceeds in an analytical way, searching for
fundamental elements, in order to construct the theory of economic
life. First it searches for the primary categories of economic
thought. According to L. von Mises, human action is the funda-
mental element; but not every action is economic-only catalactic
action is. It necessarily concerns commodities and services, even
in the case of elective rejection. Being directed to future uses it
necessarily entails insecurity, risks, etc.
According to L. von Mises, the foregoing reasoning explains how
the categories of economic thought flow from the primary category
of action and from reflection on the circumstances in which action
takes place. As he repeatedly points out, the science of economics
does not study an imaginary economy but the real economic life
which it endeavors to comprehend systematically through its gen-
eral elements or essential forms. The primary categories then pro-
duce the secondary categories: value, price, cost, calculation, etc.
Economics thus proceeds from fundamental to secondary and ter-
tiary categories until the building of economic theory is completed.
However, there is one problem to which an answer has not yet
been given by economists, not even by L. von Mises who in his
Human Action did not give us a theory, but a treatise on economics.
Even a theory is not the whole of a science, but merely the unitar-
ian, organic, and exhaustive explanation of its object at which we
arrive by the method implicit in the a priori synthetic assertion,
establishing its definition. That is to say, theory furnishes us with
the explanation of the object in question. Then the method of reali-
zation, which is a technical problem, must be searched for. This
does not imply that man is to receive advice on the use of his elec-
tive faculty in catalactic action. L. von Mises stated correctly that
economics is not an axiological science and does not solve problems
of justice or morals. Our task is to search for the most adequate
means to attain the end that man has chosen.
Economics encounters many modus faciendi problems in its path,
especially in the fields of money, economic calculation, etc. In
treatises on economics these problems usually are intermingled with
purely theoretical problems, which is not only antimethodical but
also dangerous. For sometimes this is the reason a technical solution
is given too great an importance insofar as the fundamental theoreti-
cal problem is subordinated to it. We all remember the confusion
created in economic theory by the feud between monometalists and
bimetalists. In jurisprudence we are now witnessing a similar aber-
ration. The state is a juridical person. Now, the juridical person is
a fiction of the technique of law. But notwithstanding, the state
has lately been invested with ontological reality. People talk of the
interests of the state, of state sovereignty, etc. And so we arrive at
the omnipotent government, so justly attacked by L. von Mises. We
believe that in this area important work is to be done by the econo-
mist. Careful distinction must be made in economics between theo-
retical problems of principle and technical problems of application.
Both must be presented distinctly separated in treatises on eco-
nomics, especially those for students.
But economics is not only theory and technique, it is also practice,
i.e., the solution of concrete cases. L. von Mises does not expressly
mention it, but he does so implicitly when he speaks of "history."
1
According to him, the method of history is understanding, not com-
prehension which characterizes theory. He speaks of history as the
understanding of past events. But man not only understands or
1 Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn.,
pp. 47-58.
endeavors to understand history, he makes it. He makes it by acting
in concrete cases, by exercising his faculty of election-that is, he
solves praxeological problems. As L. von Mises repeats so insist-
ently, he solves them through reasoning, classifying the data, the
pros and cons that cause him to elect and act in order to attain a
panoramic view which enables him to choose the proper road. It
is not enough for him theoretically to comprehend the kind of
action to be taken (in this case an economic action), nor to master
the technical instruments which were not invented for his specific
case, but for a larger group of cases. He must also take into con-
sideration the individual circumstances of the concrete case he is
facing, estimating the relevancy of each circumstance in itself, its
relation to others, its relation to the precedents of similar cases in
the past, and to the desired end. In short, he must judge the case
in perspective and in relief. To a certain degree he must consider
it as if he were confronting a minor premise (Untersatz) searching
for the major premise (Obersatz) to which he can submit the case
and thus reach the conclusion which will determine his elective
action. We repeat, neither a theoretical comprehension nor the
mastery of the technical means is sufficient for this. He must go
deeper and exercise what L. von Mises calls specific understanding,
and which may also be called criterion, discretion, or savoir faire.
In a word, he must interpret the case. His situation is like that of an
historian who endeavors to understand an historical case, but he not
only has to understand, he must also act. L. von Mises advances
a number of rules of understanding for the interpretation of past
events. We believe that economists should also endeavor to find
interpreting rules that serve as guides for the solution of prac-
tical cases and the discovery of the major premise, even if such
guides are not exact or infallible. Indeed, it is deplorable to err in
the interpretation of past historical cases as, for example, in the
interpretation of the last depression. But it is fatal to err in actions
affecting the future, especially if they concern not only an indi-
vidual, but also a collective body. The examples of the revaluation
of the pound sterling after the first world war and its devaluation
by the last labor government clearly demonstrate this. The fatal
effects of both measures for British citizens and even for non-Brit-
ishers can only be attributed to a lack of understanding of the
measures to be taken. We, therefore, believe that economists should
not neglect the practical problems, that they should endeavor to
find exact rules for the interpretation of economic phenomena.
Books should be written and courses be organized to help all those
who, in some way or other, endeavor to solve practical eases, to
avoid the pitfalls that may divert them from the true path of
realizing economics in practice.
Let us conclude by returning to the beginning. We believe that
Professor von Mises has done in economics what Kant did in meta-
physics. He has demonstrated how economics is possible. But it
is one thing to know "what is possible," and another to know reality.
Today nobody can philosophize ignoring Kant. In the future no-
body will be able to deal with economics ignoring L. von Mises.
But we are still only in the beginning. As he has put it so well,
economics is a young science. It must be made to grow, and we
have endeavored to make a few suggestions to stimulate this growth.
Of course, we do not hope to achieve its perfection because "there
is no such thing as perfection in human knowledge, nor for that
matter in any other human achievement. Omniscience is denied to
man ... _ Science does not give us absolute and final certainty ....
A scientific system is but one station in an endlessly progressing
search for knowledge. . . . But to acknowledge these facts does not
mean that present day economics is backward. It merely means
that economics is a living thing-and to live implies both imperfec-
tion and change."
2
::Ibid., p. 7.
Some Considerations on
Economic Laws
by CARLO ANTONI
(from the Italian by Micheline Mitrani)
X
WRITING many years ago, Luigi
Einaudi pointed out how it had become the fashion after World
War I to proclaim that the war had demonstrated the spuriousness
of all economic laws. In reality the war provided an almost experi-
mental confirmation of their validity. The alleged spuriousness
simply consisted in the fact that the war provided politicians with
an opportunity to commit a multiplicity of blunders, the inevitable
effects of which were then ascribed to the war.
During the period of dictators' miracles, the recurring phrase of
the bankruptcy of economic theory became almost deafening. Those
titans bragged of their power to bend to their will even economic
laws, as if a politician needed strength of character to violate, rather
than to respect those laws.
But this did not suffice. Even today we must listen to the fatuous
talk by all kinds of administrators and economic planners on the
"rejection" of economic theory for the sake of politics.
It seems strange that in these matters theorists are primarily ac-
cused of abstractness, as if it were possible for a science not to be
abstract, for science proceeds by general, schematic concepts. The
political "realists" probably do not believe that abstract intellect
itself is an instrument of action, and that a concept, to prove useful,
must be abstract. The laws of economics are practical only insofar
as they are abstract. It goes without saying that action also requires
the intervention of that faculty which the ancient logicians called
135
"secunda Petri" and which Kant called "judgment." We may name
it "intuition." It serves to apply the general scheme to the concrete
case. Without this faculty, according to Kant, a judge can possess
all of juridical knowledge and yet be a fool. But to assume that
intuition can act alone would be to believe that the "clinical eye"
can exempt the doctor from a knowledge of medicine.
It is possible that those who deny the validity of economic laws
may assume the role of champions of human liberty against nat-
uralistic determinism. Alluding to the physicists' discovery of the
principle of indetermination in natural phenomena, they find it
completely indefensible to believe in determination in the phe-
nomena of the human world.
In reality the concept of law can be similarly applied to nature
and human action alike. The difference does not lie in the object,
but in the method and point of view. At the beginning of this
century Dilthey, Windelband, and Rickert in Germany, and Croce
in Italy opposed the positivists' application of the methods of nat-
ural science to history. They raised the objection that historical
knowledge was not the science of classes and general laws, but of
individual facts. Their objection was irrefutable even though cer-
tain philosophers of history are still pretending to arrive at the
"laws" of history from events and then explaining the events them-
selves in the light of these "laws." But if historical knowledge
actually deals with individual facts, the elaboration of experience
for practical purposes deals with the general. Nothing prevents us
from extending this method also to the world of human behavior,
provided, however, we bear in mind that life is always more varied
and unpredictable than our schematization. Economic history as an
historical science must aim at the individuality of facts; but eco-
nomics, with due respect for the memory of Schmoller and the
historical school of economics, is not merely knowledge of the past.
The economic theorist is the successor and heir of the economic
adviser who, in the past, counseled the sovereign on matters of fi-
nancial policy.
Indeed it is fallacious to assume that in formulating a law the
economist subjects human will to necessity. On the contrary, he
merely attributes to the individual the capacity to act freely accord-
ing to his interest. Having established that man acts in a utilitarian
manner, the economist proceeds from an established situation and
then anticipates the action which man will freely choose in his own
interest.
The champions of politics probably will be surprised to learn that
they prove themselves to be pure idealists in contesting the validity
of economic laws. They forget that man is and remains an economic
creature in spite of his noble sentiments; that he must satisfy his
own vital needs and that he does so with gratification. In final
analysis, however, these idealists reveal themselves as believers in
force and the efficacy of police measures which are to curb the
egoism of individuals and, as Hegel proclaimed, are to raise them
from the level of base nature to the "ethical" level of the state. The
affirmation of the validity of economic laws thus is identical with
the affirmation of an insuppressible economic "nature" in man,
which indeed is not the whole man-for he is also art, thought,
moral and religious life-but it is a factor or vital element of his
nature.
It must be admitted, however, that a layman who turns to an eco-
nomic treatise to search for economic laws will be disappointed. He
usually finds a description of the structure and operation of modern
economic society, its monetary system, markets, banks, stock ex-
changes, corporations, taxes, duties, etc. He will find an explanation
of the disturbances and damages which may affect this organism
together with suggested remedies. Such a treatise is apt to create
the belief that the laws which it sets forth concern the proper func-
tioning of a particular society, the capitalist society, under the
assumption of a free market, free choice of consumers, and free
initiative of private producers. Without these premises or in a dif-
ferent organization of society, the laws of economics are said to be
different like the non-Euclidean geometries which proceed from
different postulates. But the truth is that these laws operate in all
human societies, even in associations of ascetic abnegation or
monastic communities.
The active element in laws is the factor of utility which is always
alike, for it is a form or category of activity of the human mind.
From this point of view all laws are comprised in only one, namely,
that man, besides being a "spiritual" being, is also utilitarian. He
is so in a manner not only insuppressible but also legitimate because
he lives on earth and not in the kingdom of heaven. An economic
law classifies the situation, renders it typical, and thus abstracts.
Economics determines a certain number of typical situations which
may even be infinite, in order to calculate or rather to deduce the
subsequent action of the economic factor, i.e., individual interest.
Therefore, contrary to the natural sciences which are empirical and
merely summarize the data of experience and group them in their
classes and laws, the science of economics "calculates." It deduces
from certain abstract premises. In the calculation it reduces the
terms of the useful, such as damages, profits, losses, and gains, to
quantity. For this reason it adopts the form of a mathematical
calculation.
Max Weber, who sought to deprive the law of its character of
naturalistic necessity, set forth the concept of "ideal type." Accord-
ing to him, given certain premises, it is probable that concrete action
takes place in conformity to the "type" which is deduced from those
premises. In reality, the "type" concerns the premises; in other
words, the situation abstractly presumed, as for instance, free com-
petition.
The typical situations from which laws are deduced are, we
repeat, schemes which more or less adhere to reality. The economic
factor, however, is not abstract, but a real force, even though science
must reduce it to quantitative terms for the sake of calculation.
There may be instances in which patriotic enthusiasm, charity, so-
called social morality, etc., induce individuals to act outside of and
perhaps against their immediate advantage. But in a society of men
and not of saints and heroes, all these ideal impulses cannot nor-
mally and permanently expel and suppress this economic factor
which by nature and definition is individualistic.
It is a matter of fact that the science of economics came into
being in the eighteenth century as a result of the "discovery of the
useful," that is to say, of positive value and the fecundity of the
economic interest in man's life. Comparing the origin of economics
with that of aesthetics, Benedetto Croce called both sciences
"worldly" and even "diabolic." According to him, both attribute
positive and autonomous value to activities which in themselves,
strictly speaking, are not moral. But it is a fact that the forerunners
of economics praised those private vices and transformed them into
public benefits. They approved as courage, initiative, and enterprise
what the ancient morality had condemned as sins of avarice and
cupidity. From Adam Smith on, some economists even attempted
in vain to reduce moral life itself to utility. On the other hand,
socialism, though proclaiming itself "materialistic," attempts to re-
vive ascetic morality. It does so not only by condemning entrepre-
neurial profit as theft, but also by advocating a "social" morality
according to which the individual is to labor not for himself, but
for society. Socialism claims to repress the very economic factor in
the economic world itself, rejecting or even censuring that formida-
ble vital force. But moralistic edification and ideological propaganda
cannot suffice to stimulate zeal. Socialism then returns to individual
interest by means of a system of "incentives." Since even this seems
insufficient it turns to forced labor. And yet, since not even the
merciless dictator can deprive the human soul of that vital motive,
economic laws reappear also in collectivist societies, alive and
petulant, in the form of guilt and crime, sabotage and treason, or
less vividly as black markets.
Averages and Aggregates
in Economics
by LOUIS M. SPADARO
XI
IN AN interesting, though appar-
ently neglected, aside, Professor Hayek has remarked that" ... nei-
ther aggregates nor averages do act upon one another, and it will
never be possible to establish necessary connections of cause and
effect between them as we can between individual phenomena, in-
dividual prices, etc. I would even go so far as to assert that, from
the very nature of economic theory, averages can never form a link
. 't . , 1
m 1 s reasonmg. . ..
Now, any serious doubt concerning the validity of aggregates and
averages is a dagger aimed straight at the heart of much current
empirical research and statistical analysis in economics. Therefore
it deserves close and systematic attention, even if this involves, in
the opinion of some dedicated empiricists, an annoying interruption
of the "front-line" activity of measurement for the mere purpose of
"armchair" discussion of methodological issues.
2
Yet such is our
contemporary spirited march on "objective data" that one who be-
gins to suspect that a wrong turn may have been made sometime
back almost naturally feels guilty for harboring this traitorous
thought, and, if he expresses it at all, must expect to be regarded
as a ruminant obstructionist in the company of men of action.
1 F. A. Hayek, Prices and Producticm, London, 1935, 2nd ed. rev., pp. 4-5.
2
Even Marshall comes close to this view in his advice to Schumpeter; ( cf. P. A.
Samuelson, "Economic Theory and Mathematics-An Appraisal," Amer. Econ. Rev.,
vol. xlii, May 1953, no. 2, p. 65).
140
But methodology should need no apology. In the first place, any-
one concerned with policy and the "planned economy" should be
the least able to deny the need for a "planned economics." Second,
as even a little reflection will show, so great a proportion of our data
is presently accumulating in the form of aggregates and averages
3
that it would be, in prudence, uneconomic to ignore a possibility
which, if true, would largely vitiate their usefulness.
4
Nor can eco-
nomics avoid the difficulty by leaning, methodologically, on the
physical sciences. On the one hand, it is by no means established
that the physical sciences can make more than tentative, hypotheti-
cal use of statistical inference and probabilistic reasoning; and, on
the other, even if they could, it would not necessarily follow that
the kind of problem which is posed by economics is amenable to
the same treatment.
5
That the implications of the concept of '1aw"
in the natural sciences rule out applicability to the social sciences
has been pointed out by too many
6
to need further discussion here.
Our task here is not to discuss any of the broad methodological and
even philosophical aspects of economic science, important and in-
teresting as these doubtless are; it is, rather, the relatively narrow
one of inquiring into some of the characteristics of averages and
aggregates which may escape the attention of research workers in
our field, and to attempt to clarify a few of the implications in their
use, since this use is so integral a part of empirical research.
It might be well for us to note at the outset of our discussion
something frequently pointed out about the statistical method: that
3 Cf., e.g., R. A. Gordon, "Business Cycles in the Interwar Period: The Quantita-
tive-Historical Approach," Amer. Econ. Rev., vol. xxxix, May 1949, No. 3, pp. 51-3.
Gordon points out that both the econometric "models" of Tinbergen and the Cowles
Commission group and the cycle studies of the National Bureau as well as other
forms of statistical approach find it difficult to cope with information which cannot
be quantified and expressed in the form of averages.
4 We cannot, I think, simply accept "aimless floundering" as inevitable for the
social sciences because of their "youth" as Miss Wootton appears to do ( cf. Testament
for Social Science, New York, 1950, p. 71). Indeed the very fact, which this writer
rightly deplores, that ". . . many blind alleys are long ones, and . . . we do not
always recognize this till we have gone a very long way off the right track. . . ."
is evidence of the ultimate economy ( much like that of all indirect production) of
pausing for methodological issues.
Cf. F. S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities (New York,
1949), pp. 33, 240-3; P. A. Samuelson, Foundatians of Economic Analysis (Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1948), pp. 91, 93, 226, 351-2.
6 Cf., e.g., M. Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences (Glencoe, Ill., 1949 ),
pp. 73-5, 86; J. Marschak, "Probability in the Social Sciences," in P. F. Lazarsfeld,
ed., Mathematical Thinking in the Social Sciences (Glencoe, Ill., 1954), pp. 190,
194; Northrop, op. cit., pp. 212, 243-9, 261, 263; T. G. Connolly and W. Sluclcin,
An Introduction to Statistics for the Social Sciences (London, 1953), p. 101.
it divides into two easily distinguishable, though, as we shall see,
not entirely unrelated parts-( 1) the description of phenomena, and
( 2) the drawing of inferences as to meaningful relations among
these phenomena.
7
Inasmuch as the second of these aspects neces-
sarily depends upon, and makes detailed use of, the first as its data,
it follows that any averages which are an important part of descrip-
tive statistical inquiry must also, eo ipso, enter the second, or in-
ferential, stage. Nor is this the full extent of their involvement in
statistical inference. Averages also enter inferential statistical anal-
ysis independently of their descriptive value; analysis has come to
depend upon them not merely because its data are usually in that
form, but also, more significantly, because it appears to be able
to draw tighter inferences concerning probability distributions of
data when these data are in the form of averages than when they
are in the "raw" form of individual observations. The possibility
that this seeming initial advantage may ultimately result in error
or distortion is precisely the point of our discussion.
Regard for space and for the reader's patience does not permit an
exhaustive examination of the many problems posed by the use of
aggregative materials in general in our field; this discussion will
therefore restrict itself to some reflections on averages as a special
type of aggregate. It seems best to proceed by listing several char-
acteristics of averages and examining their implications.
I. The Average Is a Special Type of Aggregate
It has been noted
8
that an average is merely a certain value of
the variable which it measures and is therefore necessarily of the
same dimensions as that variable. Thus, if the variable is age, or
income, or a percentage, an average of that variable is expressed,
respectively, as an age, income, or percentage.
9
In this fact, other-
7 For a discussion of the application of this double aim to physical science gen-
erally, cf. P. Duhem, "Representation vs. Explanation in Physical Theory," in P. P.
Wiener, ed., Readings in the Philosophy of Science (New York, 1953), pp. 454ff.
Cf. also J. M. Keynes, A Treatise on Probability (London, 1921 ), pp. 3, 327.
8 G. U. Yule and M.G. Kendall, Introduction to the Elementary Theory of Statistics
(New York, 1950), 14 ed. rev. and enl., p. 112.
9
It is interesting to note that even cr, the other determining parameter of a dis-
tribution besides the mean, is itself not free of the difficulties of averaging. We
compute each deviation from the mean in arriving at the variance, but in computing
the standard deviation we extract the square root of the average of the squared devia-
tions, thus causing extreme cases to affect the variance and the standard deviation
unequally. Cf., e.g., L. Cohen, Statistical Methods for Social Scientists (New York,
1954), p. 46; W. E. Deming and R. T. Birge, On the Statistical Theory of Sampling
(Washington, D.C., 1937), p. 147; P. G. Hoel, Introduction to Mathematical Statistics
(New York, 1954), 2nd ed., p. 52.
wise so convenient, may lurk some danger. If averages are really
theoretical constructs at some remove from reality (as further dis-
cussion will attempt to show), then the fact that they are expressed
in the same terms as the variable itself may give them an illusory
realism and may lead the incautious to confuse shadow with sub-
stance.10 Of course, this danger is very much smaller in those areas
where realities are unmistakably in discrete units; no one would be
likely to overlook the fact that an average family of, say, 2.73 mem-
bers is merely a symbol and describes no real family. But where
reality is less discrete or the units less shudderingly indivisible, the
danger persists. And it is just as serious, where the explanation of
causality is concerned, in the case of even a perfectly continuous
variable as in that of a clearly discontinuous one-it is merely much
less obvious.
In its own way, the average admits of the cumulative addition
which is more usually associated with other aggregates. It is com-
monplace procedure, wherever the number of individual observa-
tions is large, to avoid the pedestrian task of adding individual
items by calculating from frequency distributions; yet this proced-
ure will be seen necessarily to involve averaging within each class
interval on the basis, not of specific and exact information (which
may even be no longer available), but by making some broad as-
sumptions about the distribution of individual values within the
class grouping. These assumptions tend to introduce into our cal-
culations a systematic error which even ingenious mathematical
manipulations (like "Sheppard's corrections" for example) cannot
entirely eliminate.U In current economic research, many entities
which inspection would show to be themselves averages are then
combined into further aggregations or super-averages of which the
price-indices are, perhaps, the arch-example. If the process of
averaging in any way logically involves a retreat from causally
effective specificity, this process of cumulative averaging presents
us more and more with a Gordian knot which only the usual drastic
surgery, and not mere statistical adjustment, can undo.
10 Curiously, Yule and Kendall ( op. cit., pp. 113-4), appear to base their claim of
easy comprehensibility for the average precisely by ignoring this danger; their ex-
ample of an average income in this connection admittedly assumes an equalizing
redistribution (statistically, of course) of income. Cf. also F. A. Hayek, The Counter-
Revolution in Science (Glencoe, lll., 1952), pp. 36-43.
11 Cf., e.g., R. G. D. Allen, Statistics for Economista (London, 1949), pp. 86-7;
J. F. Kenney, Mathematics of Statistics, Part One (New York, 1947) 2nd. ed., p. 78.
. 2. Averages Are Mental "Constructs"
An average is not an immediate datum of experience but an in-
directly apprehended "summary" of the data of perception. In this
regard, it seems fair to say that an average is of the form of a
proposition,
12
and one whose determinacy may depend, as Marschak
points out/
3
on cca priori information" in our possession even before
we collect the data on which we base it. The immediately appre-
hended data of experience are relatively independent of concepts
and theory; averages are not, but are, rather, described fact.U An
average cannot, therefore, be regarded as a simple aggregation of
individual observations; it attempts to summarize and thus neces-
sarily sacrifices a certain measure of realism for the sake of numeri-
cal accuracy.
15
The desire for this form of "accuracy" is, of course,
part of the age-old conviction in economics that, if we can quantify
economic phenomena, we can then formulate cclaws" applicable to
them;
16
but it has not always been recognized that the require-
ments of quantification and of the formulation of laws may tend lo
subordinate the basically individual nature of phenomena-that is,
to regard them as merely representative illustrations of lawsY Per-
haps because of the special significance of differences in the social
sciences, the suppression of the individuality of things as scientifi-
cally unimportant which Max Weber termed ccnaturalistic monism
in economics" appears to have especially important consequences,
among which may be the veneration of averages which we are dis-
cussing.18
12 Cf. Northrop, op. cit., pp. 35, 39, 247, 261.
13 Cf. Marschak, op. cit., pp. 198-9.
14
Cf. L. Robbins, An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science
(London, 1935), 2nd ed., p. 105; C. V. Langlois and C. Seignobos, Introduction to
the Study of History (London, 1898), p. 218; Hayek, The Counter-Revolution in
Science, pp. 38-9.
15 Cf. L. von Mises, Human Action (New Haven, 1949), pp. 347-54; M. J.
Maroney, Facts from Figures ( Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1951), p. 43.
16
Cf., e.g., A. Standen, Science is a Sacred Cow (New York, 1950 ), p. 82: "If the
idols of scientists were piled on top of one another in the manner of a totem pole,
the topmost one would be a grinning fetish called Measurement." Cf. also Hayek,
The Counter-Revolution in Science, pp. 50-1.
17 Cf. Northrop, op. cit., pp. 241 ff., 268; Kenney, op. cit., p. 81; G. J. Stigler,
Five Lectures on Economic Problems (New York, 1950), p. 43; R. A. Fisher, The
Design of Experiments (London, 1937), 2nd ed., pp. 4, 119; C. E. Weatherburn,
A First Course in Mathematical Statistics ( Cambridrge, 1946), p. 30; Maroney,
op. cit., p. 37. Hayek points out ( op. cit., p. 214, note 45) that the use of mathe-
matics has no necessary connection to the attempts to measure social phenomena, but
may be used merely to represent relationships to which numerical values cannot ever
be assigned.
18 Cf. Weber, op. cit., pp. 73, 75, esp. 86; Standen, op. cit., pp. 204-6.
In this connection, it is perhaps very important to realize that the
average is, in a sense, the denial of the significance of differences
and changes.
19
The notion of an average necessarily suppresses, in
the dimension averaged, whatever variations or "deviations" there
may be among its components; and, even if the fact of the individ-
ual differences is not deliberately thrown away, those differences,
so long as the average substitutes for the original data in further
computations, are rendered entirely indeterminate and thus causally
inoperative. When we say that the average income of a group of,
say, ten families is $4,000, and go on to use this figure in our ex-
planations of economic results, we are implicitly transferring the
causative power of the individual incomes which went into that
average to a group of ten fictitious families each of which is pre-
sumed to have an income of $4,000. Some, indeed, even appear
ready to proceed to draw imporant inferences as to the "propensity
to consume" of this group as contrasted with that of another group
whose average income is, say, $5,000. But it is possibly inconsistent
to insist on the consequences of a difference between two averages
in this respect while leaving out of account the differences within
each of them; the latter type may even be the more causally signifi-
cant of the two. In any event, there may be at least as much eco-
nomic "force" explained by the fact that, within each group, there
may be a very wide range of difference of individual incomes than
by the necessarily attenuated differences between averages. If, in
the first group in our example, there were 9 families with incomes
of $1,000 and one with $31,000, (average: $4,000), and, in the sec-
ond group, 4 with $11,000 each and 6 with $1,000 each, (average:
$5,000), there would conceivably be much more causative "poten-
tial'' present than is shown in the comparison of the averages. The
"average propensity to consume" is thus possibly one of our crasser
abuses of the average.
To the extent that economic action is ultimately dependent for
explanation on individual differences,2{) the employment of averages
puts us out of reach of such explanation simply by understating
these differences. For an average, by its nature, can only minimize
if not entirely eliminate, differences; it can never magnify them.
There is thus no possibility of drawing comfort from any compensat-
ing effect of large numbers; for the distortion brought into play by
the use of averages cannot, ironically, itself be "averaged out." The
19 Cf. Mises, op. cit., pp. 223-4, 410-11.
2{) Cf. R. M. Maciver, Social Camation (Boston, 1942), pp. 27, 65, 377; Kenney,
op. cit., p. 84.
least distortive possibility for an average is neither to minimize nor
magnify-and this only in the case of identical components (in our
example, that of 10 families each with an actual income of $4,000 or
$5,000)-in the very case, in other words, in which the average loses
most, if not all, of its representative usefulness. For the "construct"
of average will be seen on reflection to owe its very existence to
differences; there would be no need or even usefulness in its calcula-
tion or use were it not for such differences. The student of statistics
who experiences any surprise whatever in reading that the sum of
deviations from the arithmetic mean always equals zero either
never before really understood the meaning of average or is mo-
mentarily dazzled by a new terminology; the statement is merely
tautological-it is true "by construction."
Why any averages, then? Precisely because the individuality of
cases (in the physical as well as the social sciences) has often
proved intractable for those intent on the discovery of exact laws to
describe and predict events.
21
There is a principle of "safety in
numbers" even in science, it appears, and when the unit is recalci-
trant to exact ordering, we retreat into consideration of great masses
of such units and appear to find regularities in their group behavior
to compensate for our frustration vis-a-vis the single unit.
22
And
this, to repeat, is not true of the social sciences alone;
23
the reaction
of modern physics, for instance, to the Heisenberg principle of un-
certainty was the recasting of sub-atomic hypothesis along prob-
abilistic lines
24
-and only time will tell whether this turns out to
be a form of mere temporizing, since the methodological, and even
philosophical, implications of this approach have yet to be fully
faced.
23
In our science, the individual economic reality has shown
itself to be even less docile than the single electron; for, while it is at
least possible to posit average behavior for particles which are by
hypothesis identical in structure and unchanging in composition
21 Cf. Weber, op. cit., p. 119.
22 Cf. Fisher, op. cit., pp. 45, 225-6; T. C. Koopmans, "The Econometric Approach
to Business Fluctuations," Amer. Econ. Rev., vol. xxxix, May 1949, no. 3, p. 64;
J. A. Schumpeter, "Science and Ideology," Amer. Econ. Rev., vol. xxxix, March 1949,
no. 2, p. 345. See especially Mises, op. cit., pp. 106-17, 396; the distinction here
made between "class" and "case" probability appears to apply pertinently to this
problem.
23 Cf. P. A. Samuelson, "Economic Theory and Mathematics-An Appraisal," Amer.
Econ. Rev., vol. xlii, May 1952, no. 2, pp. 61-2.
24
Cf. Northrop, op. cit., pp. 201-12; M. R. Cohen, Reason and Nature (Glencoe,
Ill., 1953), 2nd ed., p. 224; K. Pearson, The Grammar of Science (London, 1937),
pp. 128-9; Maciver, op. cit., pp. 54, 60 n.
25 Northrop, CYfJ cit., pp. 343-7.
over time, human action remains nndeniably individual and capri-
ciously changeable.
26
Yet it is the same mass analysis to which we
have resort; and it is curious that social scientists-with less reason
to be-appear much more comfortable in their adoption of the aegis
of "large numbers" than are the physicists.
27
The average is thus part of our response to the elusiveness of eco-
nomic reality. And what is the price we pay for the elimination of
the troublesome differences? One is that these differences are not
really eliminated but merely made indeterminate. By extending our
use of averages into "distributions" we appear still to have a hold
on the differences; we can express a whole "population" with only
two parameters: the mean and the standard deviation. Many assure
us that a distribution is entirely determinate if only these two param-
eters are known; yet it is not often pointed out as clearly as it de-
serves that, in the first place, these are almost never known with any
exactitude, but only within degrees of probability or "confidence
limits," and, secondly, that within any realistic range of empirical
practice, these are much lower scales of probability than obtain in
other disciplines. It is not of much use for the proponents of the
aggregative statistical approach to remind us that, after all, we know
nothing inductively with absolute certainty; we may readily admit
this and still be unable to order our economic affairs on the basis of
the probabilities they offer; we can admit that we can expect night
to follow day only with a very high degree of probability and still
wish we were just as "uncertain" about market behavior. The in-
adequacy of current economic statistical inquiry cannot be avoided
by simply substituting probability for certainty-where it was true
that we were not able to derive laws with any certainty, it is now
equally true that we cannot derive them with a sufficiently high
degree of probability to be of any practical use. While the differ-
ence may be less embarrassing, it is no less real.
Another cost of abandoning research to the frenzied accumulation
of averages and other aggregates has been the resulting loss of
specificity in our data.
28
An average is indeterminate. Once it is
computed, if the component individual items are not retained, it
tells no unique story; there are literally an infinite number of con-
stellations of data which might have resulted in this same average
Z6 Cf. ibid., pp. 245, 248-9, 261-3; Connolly and Sluckin, op. cit., p. 101; P. A.
Samuelson, Foundations of Econmnic Analysis, pp. 21-7; Marschak, op. cit., pp. 190-2.
27 Cf. ibid., p. 194; Standen, op. cit., pp. 146, 155-6; Maciver, op. cit., p. 263;
Wootton, op. cit., pp. 17, 21, 25, 30-1, 34-5.
28 Cf. Allen, op.cit., p. 17.
figure. It is, therefore, also irreversible. It is impossible to reason
back from an average to the original items which formed it; it is
freely admitted that there is a "loss of information" involved. But
it should be borne constantly in mind that this loss is, on the one
hand, irretrievable-we cannot have recourse to averages as we do
to logarithms: for ease of computation at the end of which we re-
convert to real terms; and, on the other, that the loss may be pre-
cisely in the area where we can least afford it-that of particular
differentials where economic causality appears to originate.
29
The
attractive stability which aggregates, including averages, exhibit in
contrast to individual events may thus be purely illusory; this
"stability" appears to increase directly with the inclusiveness of
totals and may be nothing more than the result of the progressive
elimination of significant causative differences. If we average over
long enough periods of time, even the business cycle itself will dis-
appear. Therefore, even apart from other shortcomings of aver-
ages, there is a point beyond which even their most enthusiastic
supporters must beware of going, or risk leaving all meaningfulness
behind, regardless of the degree of mathematical sophistication.
It is possible that this same phenomenon of loss is significant,
though, of course, in minor fashion, in the simplest average; it is
undoubtedly so in procedures which compound, out of already
complex averages, still larger ones.
3. The "Superiority" of the Mean as a Measure of Location
It is common for texts in statistical method to point out that the
mean is, for most purposes, the best of the available measures of
"central tendency." This claim of superiority for the mean appears
to be based primarily on the often observed phenomenon that it
exhibits more stability over a number of samplings than do other
measures of location.
30
In practice this stability shows itself in the
fact that the means computed from a number of samplings tend to be
clustered more closely than is usually the case with either individual
observations or with other measures of location, like the median
or the mode. Now this proves to be a crucial claim which deserves
to be examined closely and critically,
31
since it relates not only to
29 Cf. Hayek, "The Use of Knowledge in Society," Amer. Econ. Rev., vol. xxxv,
September 1945, no. 4, pp. 521-4.
so Cf. ibid.; also, Hoel, op. cit., pp. 50-1.
31 In this section is discussed only the descriptive side of this claim; the inferential
side will be examined later. Cf. Keynes, op. cit., p. 336; Deming and Birge, op. cit.,
p. 160.
the average as a tool of description, but, even more importantly,
to its use in statistical inference.
One might begin by asking whether the stability or clustering
involved here inheres in the subject matter described by the mean
or is contributed, partly or wholly, by the measure itself. When we
say that the mean is a better measure of central location, are we
praising it as a more accurate description of the distribution of the
actual variable, or as a construct which, by its very composition,
tends to manufacture more central tendency than may possibly in-
here in the observations of reality as actually made? The illuminat-
ing fact that the means of samples drawn from certain populations
show more clustering than tpe single observations themselves ap-
pears to be more indicative of the second possibility than of the first.
An interesting further aspect of this phenomenon will be discussed
in a later section; here we content ourselves with inquiring into
what assumptions, if any, would appear to underlie the presumed
superiority of the mean in its descriptive aspect.
It is perhaps worthy of note, in this connection, that if we assume
a population which is perfectly "normal" in the statistical sense, the
purely descriptive superiority of the mean over, say, the mode and
the median largely disappears. In such a case, the three measures
coincide completely and the mean would oHer no descriptive advan-
tage; indeed, since it is somewhat more laborious to compute, quite
the reverse would appear to be true. Its sampling (i.e., clustering)
superiority would, of course, remain, but this, as we have said, may
be extraneously introduced by the very concept of averaging. It is
only as we begin to leave "normality" of distribution that the de-
scriptive superiority of the mean asserts itself. Let us see what this
implies.
The two salient characteristics of a normal distribution are its
symmetry and unimodality. If we consider small departures from
normality by introducing some asymmetry into our distribution
(but retaining, for the moment, its unimodality), the three meas-
ures will cease to coincide. Under this condition, the mode will still
describe the most typical value, but will no longer be located at the
center of the distribution; the median will no longer fall at the most
typical value, but will still indicate the center (though now only of
the number of cases and not the center of total value); the mean
will no longer lie at the typical class, nor at the numerical center,
but will still indicate, so to speak, the "center of gravity" of the
distribution (that is, the total value of the distribution divided by
the number of cases). Now, it is clear that each of these measures
150
has retained, according to its nature, a different kind of descriptive
centrality; therefore, it is logical to assume that the claim of superi-
ority for the mean must be based on the conviction that it retains
the kind of centrality which is deemed most important to accurate
description, in this case, namely, the centrality of total value. A
little reflection will show that this conviction must, in its turn, be
based on some notion of the additive nature of the phenomena meas-
ured; (and we thus return, by another route, to recognition of the
mean as one type of aggregate). But, at least in economics, it is no
light matter to assume the additive nature of things; there are many
who would deny vigorously, and with impressive arguments, such a
possibility in any body of material relating to human valuations.
Here, certainly, is an issue which should have been definitively set-
tled before we could proceed to settle upon the average as a favored
tool of calculative analysis; yet it was not. Until it is, it is at least
permissible for some economists to regard the modal value, since
it occurs more frequently in actual experience than a theoretically
adjusted, virtual value like the average, as more useful for their
field. The argument that the mean is representative of the whole
distribution (while the mode is not) and can thus enter further
algebraic calculation should not deceive us. In the first place, ease
of further mathematical treatment is not, by itself, sufficient to
justify the average; in the second, the representativeness alluded to
may ultimately depend on the unsupported assertion of the addi-
tivity of economic phenomena.
If we depart from unimodality as well as from symmetry in dis-
tribution, the descriptive value of the mean recedes even further
from actual cases and becomes more clearly a purely theoretical
symbol whose superior applicability to problems of both description
and estimation admittedly diminishes.
32
It turns out, therefore, that
the area of superiority of the mean is the relatively narrow one
determined by distributions which differ only mildly from complete
normality. The scope of this paper does not permit any detailed
examination of the important corollary which suggests itself: the
question as to the extent to which real economic phenomena natu-
rally arrange themselves in the shape of quasi-normal distributions;
this consideration alone would take us far afield into such intricate
32 Cf. Connolly and Sluckin, op. cit., p. 29; L. Cohen, op. cit., pp. 40, 155; Hoe!,
op. cit., pp. 50-7. One extreme example is the so-called Cauchy distribution whose
theoretical moments are infinite and hence where the median becomes a far better
measure of location than the mean.
matters as the theory of probability,
33
the nature of causality and
even the nature of reality.
34
For our special purpose here it is per-
haps sufficient to recognize that much current research appears to
be based on the proposition that near-normal distributions accu-
rately describe many important economic realities. We must there-
fore cope, in the next two sections, with the possibility that some
aspects of this seeming regularity in the statistical material we use
may perhaps have been inadvertently introduced by ourselves in
the very act of adopting averages as a tool of analysis.
4. Some Assumptions about Phenomena Implicit in the Use of
Averages.
We have seen that the justification of the use of averages may de-
pend to a great extent on the validity of the assumption that the
phenomena so treated are de natura usually distributed in a manner
more or less approximate of the normal curve.
35
This assumption
implies, in turn, a number of propositions about the nature of the
average and its components; it is therefore perhaps useful to exam-
ine each of these briefly to determine whether or not they appear
to be valid, especially in the case of economic data.
(a) "Continuous" variables. In any strict sense, a variable cannot
actually be perfectly normally distributed if it is of the discontinu-
ous type.
36
As an illustration of this which will again be useful
later on, let us consider the well-known convergence of the binomial
and normal distributions. The binomial expression often used in
the elementary theory of probability as applied to two events is:
(p + q)"
33Cf., e.g., A. Eddington, The Philosophy of Physical Science (New York, 1939),
p. 61; Marschak, op. cit., pp. 2-3; C. S. Peirce, "The Doctrine of Necessity Ex-
amined," in P. P. Wiener, op. cit., pp. 485-96.
34 It is virtually impossible to discuss statistical distributions without being led,
as most writers are, into probability theory. The works cited here are, of course, no
exceptions; cf., e.g., Hoel, op. cit., p. 30; L. Cohen, op. cit., pp. 89-100; Yule and
Kendall, op. cit., pp. 207-12, 312, 335-43; Connolly and Sluckin, op. cit., pp. 79,
87-8, 102; Lazarsfeld, op. cit. pp. 9, 168, 188, 423; Deming and Birge, op. cit., pp.
131, 137; Fisher, op. cit., p. 19; Kenney, op. cit., p. 131; Weatherburn, op. cit.,
pp. 34-5; Northrop, op. cit., pp. 210, 218; Samuelson, Foundations of Economic
Analysis, p. 23. Also see especially H. Poincare, Science and Hypothesis (New York,
1952), ch. XI, pp. 183-210 and Science and Method (New York, 1952), pp. 64-6,
74-90, 87-8, 284-8 (both in English transl. by F. Maitland).
B5 Cf. Connolly and Sluckin, op. cit., pp. 70-1; Yule and Kendall, op. cit., pp. 180,
185, 437; Kenney, op. cit., pp. 114-119; Fisher, op. cit., pp. 40-51; Poincare, Science
and Hypothesis, pp. 206-7.
sa Cf., e.g., L. Cohen, op. cit., p. 61; Yule and Kendall, op. cit., p. 176; Keynes,
op. cit., pp. 48-9.
The expansion of this binomial, as the exponent n is increased, pro-
duces coefficients (of p and q and their intermediate terms) which
arrange themselves in a symmetrical and unimodal fashion. The re-
sulting histogram-if one were to draw it to aid visualization-while
it approaches the normal distribution
37
as the exponent increases,
can never actually become identical with the smooth curve of the
statistically-perfect normal distribution because the intervals of the
variable n do not, in this case, decrease infinitely; in order to arrive
at the normal distribution in this instance it is necessary to imagine
n as being able to take any value, no matter how small; in other
words, to become a continuous variable. The eminent French
mathematician, Henri Poincare, has generalized the demonstration
of this by showing that what leads to this distribution is a property
possessed by any continuous variable, namely, that its derivatives
are limited.
38
Now, how characteristic of economic phenomena is continuous
variability? Are actual prices, production, income, market demand,
or any of the other important data continuously variable? Not con-
ceivably; therefore, the normal distribution can only apply to them
theoretically (i.e., by a species of conceptual interpolation), and this
fact should be carefully borne in mind in assessing the validity of
any of the instrumentalities of analysis based on the dimensions
of the perfectly normal curve-and that considerable part of statisti-
cal inference which depends, through the employment of some
types of test of significance, for its validity on the "theory of errors"
and other probability distributions should perhaps head the list.
(b) Independence. It is an important qualification of the applica-
tion of the binomial we have been considering to the theory of
probability that the events to which it refers be statistically inde-
pendent; that is, that the occurrence of one have no effect whatever
on the possibility of occurrence of others.
39
This is clearly the case
when we are dealing with the tossing of a perfect coin or the throw-
ing of perfect dice; but one can reasonably wonder about the co-
gency of applying this sort of independence to economic, or any
other social events. Of how many human actions can we predicate
37 Cf. Yule and Kendall, op. cit., pp. 171-6; Poincare, Science and Method, p. 79;
L. Cohen, op. cit., pp. 71-2; Northrop, op. cit., p. 207; Connolly and Sluckin, op. cit.,
p. 69; Maroney, op. cit., pp. 91, 96, 129.
as Poincare, Science and Hypothesis, pp. 193-200; Science and Method, pp. 78-84.
Cf. also Weatherburn, op. cit., pp. 34-5; R. von Mises, "Causality and Probability,"
in Wiener, op. cit., pp. 501-4.
39 Cf. L. Cohen, op. cit., pp. 64-5. For a special feature of the Poisson distribution
in this connection, see Maroney, op. cit., pp. 97-100.
the needed statistical independence, even when sampled at ran-
dom?
40
The study of the social behavior of the individual is ever
bringing to light new interrelationships in the economic responses
of the gregarious social animal; we thus appear to be going toward
the recognition not of less, but actually of more interconnection
among social phenomena.
41
(c) Mutual exclusiveness. Another requirement for the binomial
is that the events p and q must be mutually exclusive; that the oc-
currence of both p and q together must be impossible. Again, this
quality applies much more clearly to coins and dice than to people
and their actions. The statistician may imagine he can satisfy this
requirement by merely seeing to the form of his proposition: e.g.,
A either buys or does not buy. But how often is the real case one
of buying less, or buying a substitute, which, when reduced to the
terms of this proposition, is equivalent to both buy and not-buy.
We can easily construct mutually-exclusive semantic categories
which satisfy every analytical requirement except the crucial one of
corresponding to everyday actualities.
(d) Exhaustiveness. Not only is the probability of p in our bi-
nomial exclusive of that of q, it is also necessary that, between them,
they be exhaustive of the total probability. In the usual mathe-
matical formulation, the entire range of probability is contained
from 0 to 1, and what is required of p and q here (or, in the case
of a multinomial, of the whole set of terms) is that they must invari-
ably add exactly to unity.
42
Now it is patently impossible for the
social scientist even to conceive of all the possibilities in his subject,
much less to compute the probability-weight of each of them. And
this certainly not for lack of trying; current economic literature
gives eloquent, if inconclusive, evidence of heroic attempts to ap-
proach all-inclusiveness by the use of "models," or systems of
simultaneous equations-a method which appears to be able to ex-
plain nothing unless it explains everything. One cannot avoid the
impression, in this regard, that economists may have been guilty of
trying to arrive directly at the equivalent, in their field, of a Unified
40 Statistical independence can also be described as "obedience to the multiplica-
tion theorem of probability," ( cf. Weatherburn, op. cit., pp. 26-7, 81); the distinc-
tion made by the latter between "statistical" and "functional" independence does
not, I believe, necessarily eliminate the difficulty mentioned in this section. Cf. also
Keynes, op. cit., p. 54.
4
1 Cf. Marschak, op. cit., pp. 202-4; Maciver, op. cit., pp. 93, 300, 309; Fisher,
op. cit., pp. 222-3.
42 That this applies all the way to the limiting case of a perfectly continuous
variable is illustrated by the similar equating to unity of tlte area under the normal
curve; ( cf., e.g., Maroney, op. cit., p. 113).
Field Theory without yet having formulated the component laws
of gravitation and of electro-magnetism. We can readily admit that
there is, after all, no science like omniscience and yet question the
practical value of this approach as an avenue of knowledge for
mortal man.
43
(e) Homogeneity. It is a consequence of the additive implica-
tions of the average that the items entering it be homogeneous, or
"of the same genus."
44
This requirement assumes greater impor-
tance, indeed insistence, in measure as we are engaged-as is cur-
rently frequently the case-in compounding averages without
always fully assessing their comparability; for most economic statis-
tics are what R.G.D. Allen has called
45
"mixed bags" of heterogene-
ous items, whose claim to any homogeneity is either partial or
contrived or both. In this regard, the statistical analyst must con-
stantly guard against gross misinterpretation of the scope of his
measurements; for a person of "average" income may be average in
nothing else and, as we have seen, may be very far from typical
even in that. Moreover, where data spanning an appreciable inter-
val of time are concerned, certainty of homogeneity requires check-
ing to exclude the possibility that any of those directly unobservable
variations which have been termed "structural changes"
46
have
entered to vitiate any real comparability of data. Consequently, the
homogeneity requisite for valid quantification of economic data is,
or should be, one of the most discouraging obstacles to mathematical
analysis in economics.
47
One is never sure, for example, whether
the prices (probably the most frequently used numerical quantities
in our field) paid by different individuals, or by the same individual
at different times, really differ by more or by less than their ratio
seems to indicate, since the unit in which they are expressed is it-
self the object of varying individual appreciation. An average made
up of prices with different valuation-meanings would have only a
43 Cf. Hayek, "The Use of Knowledge in Society," Amer. Econ. Rev., vol. xxxv,
September 1945, no. 4, p. 521.
44 Cf. Maroney, op. cit., p. 35.
45 Op. cit., p. 19.
46 Cf. T. C. Koopmans, ed., Statistical Inference in Dynamic Economic Models
(New York, 1950), p. 266; A. G. Hart, "Model-building and Fiscal Policy," Amer,
Econ. Rev., vol. xxxv, September 1945, no. 4, p. 538; P. A. Samuelson, Foundations
of Economic Analysis, pp. 354-5; L. Cohen, op. cit., pp. 131-2; A. Marshall, Principles
of Economics (New York, 1925) 8th ed., pp. 36-7.
47 The instantaneous or timeless character of mathematics has no "passage" or
duration and cannot represent, in its equations, the irreversibility of time; ( cf. Mac-
Iver, op. cit., pp. 66-7). Cf. also Koopmans, op. cit., p. 3; Samuelson, op. cit., p. 4;
and L. von Mises, op. cit., p. 56.
superficial homogeneity and therefore dubious

This may
very possibly be one reason for the puzzling inability of even the
most elaborately devised price-index to furnish us a coefficient
which can then be exactly and meaningfully applied to the very
same individual data out of which the index itself was computed.
5. The Average is a "Multiplier"
It is commonly thought that one of the clear advantages of the
average is that it summarizes the information of many individual
observations into the relatively brief compass of a single representa-
tive figure. In one sense this is undoubtedly true; where there were
previously a number of items there appears now to be only one-
and we have discussed some of the implications of the descriptive
power of this "single" figure. Yet a curious fact emerges if we start
with a finite number of actual observations and then consider the
total number of possible averages which this finite number of items
can produce. It is that, for any number of original observations in
excess of two, the total number of averages possible: (a) exceeds
the number of original items, and (b) rapidly outdistances the lat-
ter as these increase in number. Ordinarily, since we tend to regard
the number of averageable events to be infinite, or at least indefi-
nite,49 this aspect of the matter is not apparent and we are likely to
go on unquestioningly accepting the average as a distillation or
summarization of information. (The concept of infinity, necessarily
vague and elusive for us, is a poor frame of reference for our finite
minds and experience; a larger finite number is, for instance, not
perceptibly any nearer to infinity than a smaller, and the deduction
that it is will be found to be based on a comparison of the finite
numbers with each other and not with infinity. ) Let us therefore,
in the following discussion, consider only a finite and definite num-
ber of events or observations, say ten, and, in order to avoid any
unintended numerical connotations, let us further designate these
ten by A, B, C, . . . ].
Now, how can we determine the number of averages which these
48 Cf. Marschak, op. cit., p. 175; Northrop, op. cit., pp. 33, 239-43.
49 Cf. Yule and Kendall, op. cit., p. 333. On the resort to probability analysis
as a method of dealing with what we are ultimately ignorant of, cf. Poincare, Sciern:e
and Hypothesis, pp. 184-5, 189-90, 208-9; and Sciern:e and Method, pp. 64-5, 87-90,
284-8. Further, reasoning from probability-and tests of significance based upon it
-may have only a permissive force; cf. Connolly and Sluckin, op. cit., pp. 87-8, 102,
153-5; L. Cohen, op. cit., pp. 89-99; Yule and Kendall, op. cit., pp. 207-12, 312,
335, 423, 437; Lazarsfeld, op. cit., pp. 9, 168, 188, 423; Deming and Birge, op. cit.,
pp. 131, 137 ff; Fisher, op. cit., p. 19; Maroney, op. cit., pp. 219-20.
156
ten make possible? Here the mathematical theory of combinations
comes readily to our aid;
50
according to this principle, the total
number of combinations, c:, of n things taken rat a time is:
n n!
C r = r!(n-r)l
Now, n things can variously be taken 0, or 1, or 2 ... ornata time,
so that by simply solving the above formula successively for
r = 0,1,2, ... n and adding the results will give us the total number
of possible combinations. In our example, in which n was taken to
be 10, the results can most graphically be shown by reference to
the famous Pascal triangle:
r.oO
Tolal no. of
2
combinalion$
n=l
I 3
2
2
2 4 4
3 3 3 5 8
4 4 6 4 6 16
5 5 10 10 5 1 32
6 6 15 20 15 6 8 64
7 7 21 35 35 21 7 9
128
8
28 56 70 56 28 8 10 256
9 I 9 36 84 126 126 84 36 9 I 512
10 10 45
120 210 252 210 120 45 10 I 1024
-----------
10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
do do
c c c c c c c c c
0 I 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Entered below the last line (that corresponding to our example of
ten items) are the symbols indicating, respectively, 10 things taken
0 at a time (
1 at a time ( cf
0
), and so on to 10 at a
time ( The number directly above each of these symbols and
along the line n = 10 indicates the number of different combina-
tions possible in each case.
The first and second diagonal columns along the left side of the
triangle will be seen to relate to the cases r = 0 and r = 1 respec-
tively (that is, to things taken 0 and 1 at a time). Since neither of
these types of combination can be considered an average, we have,
for our purpose, excluded them by drawing a line between them
5
0 This is on the supposition that the order of the events is not a factor; ( cf.,
e.g., Hoel, op. cit., p. 293 ). If the order of events entering the average were germane
(as it very possibly could be in economics), we would have to deal not with
"combinations," but with "permutations"-an even more numerous group.
157
and the rest of the triangle, the latter representing the whole gamut
of combinations which can properly be considered as averages.
Moreover, since the r = 0 column gives the value of unity through-
out and the r = 1 column a value equal in each instance to the
corresponding value of n, we can easily adapt the above formula
for the total number of combinations so as to give us the total num-
ber of averages, A ~ ) :
n nl ( )
A = -,(--), - n + 1 .
r r. n-r.
Tabulating these results as n is increased from 1 to 10:
No. of events (n): I 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Total no. combinations ~ c;): 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024
n
Total no. averages ~ Ar): 0 1 4 11 26 57 120 247 502 1013
Inspection of the progression of the total number of combinations
shows that this figure is a function of n:
~ e n =2n;
r
as is, too, the total possible number of averages:
~ A ~ =2n-(n + 1).
It is clear that the total number of averages it is possible to form
out of a given number of items increases at a rate only slightly less
than the number 2 raised to a power equal to the number of items.
A glance at our tabulation shows that even for the relatively small
number of components in our example ( 10) the number of possible
averages has already exceeded 10
8
It is therefore not necessary
to go beyond our very modest example to see the steeply multiplica-
tive effect of averaging. Not only are averages, therefore, theoretical
constructs and not data of experience, but they are also increasingly
more numerous than the items of which they are usually presumed
to be summaries. Here, perhaps, is loss of information of another
sort; so that if, for example, we are given a set of five averages (still
within the ten ultimate items of our example) we have, in one sense,
much less of the total picture ( 5/1023) than we have if we are
given five actual observations ( 5/10).
But it is a central part of much statistical inference that averages
tend to cluster much more closely than do single observations them-
selves.
51
How can we account for this in the face of the multipli-
cative tendency just discussed? A brief examination of our Pascal
triangle will show that the multiplicity of combinations, far from
being evenly distributed, are heavily concentrated about the point
r = n/2 as a center. This concentration is such that at n = 10 the
three middle classes of combinations include well over half of all
the possible combinations for that interval. It is, perhaps, especially
worth noting that this triangle reports nothing other than the coeffi-
cients of expansion of our old friend the binomial
(p + q)n
as n increases. The relation of the concentration of averages to the
approximation of the normal curve appears, in consequence, to
become a little clearer. Averaging does not simply multiply cases;
it multiplies them according to a principle which progressively ap-
proximates the normal curve. It is therefore not a wondrous quality
of phenomena that their averages cluster; it is something we may
have extraneously introduced by the very act of applying the aver-
age to their measurement. For in admitting averages and their
greater multiplicity we have also admitted a great deal of concen-
trated overlapping or repetition. If we take as a crude measure of
this overlapping the number of times any same single item (say,
A of our original A, B, ... ]), plus the number of times each double
(e.g., AB ), plus the number of times each triple (e.g., ABC), and
so on, are repeated within the total of combinations shown in our
triangle, it can be shown by calculation with which we shall not
further impose on the reader, that the greatest degree of overlap
lies at the center of the average-size and decreases symmetrically
on either side of it. Taking the last row of our triangle (i.e., at
n = 10), and restricting ourselves to those combinations which can
qualify as averages (i.e., from r = 2 tor= 10), and noting below
each the total number of "repetitions" (singles, doubles, etc.) as
described above, we have:
No. of averages:
Total no. "repetitions":
10
c2
45
10
10
Cs
120
45
10
c4
210
120
10
c5
252
210
10
Cs
210
252
10
c7
120
210
10
Cs
45
120
10 10
c9 clO
--
10 1
45 10
Enough has perhaps been said to show that when it is pointed out
by statistical workers that sample means approximate the normal
51 Cf. Yule and Kendall, op. cit., pp. 382-7; 434-7; L. Cohen, op. cit., pp. 87-90;
Connolly and Sluckin, op. cit., pp. 28, 81-5, 92-3; Deming and Birge, op. cit., p. 123;
Weatherburn, op. cit., pp. 119-25; Allen, op. cit., p. 117; Keynes, op. cit., pp. 337-66.
distribution even if the observations themselves are skewed, what
they may be saying is, in effect, that the semblance of symmetry
can be introduced into non-normal distributions
52
by applying to
the latter a device which has a built-in tendency to multiply dilier-
entially so as to lend centrality and unimodality to the data.
6. Averages, Aggregates and Public Policy
We have seen that it is characteristic of averages and other aggre-
gates ( 1) that they tend to suppress individual differences and
actual typicalness
53
for the sake of quantification or "summariza-
tion," and (2) that they represent, in economics as elsewhere in
science, an attempt to deal with phenomena in the mass. In part,
this latter is a reaction to the inability to deal, with any degree of
certainty, with individual events and represents a compromise with
epistemological difficulties.
54
Being unable to paint in clearly the
details of our picture, we appear to have been content to back away
from it by adopting the use of mass analysis and, further, to squint
at reality through the half-closed lids of probabilistic reasoning.
55
Methods like these will make even a poor painting look good-but
only so long as we neither come closer nor open our eyes. Ulti-
mately, however, all will have to be judged in clear light and at
close range; whatever we may do to disguise it, economic reality
remains distressingly individual and particular. Moreover, it is un-
fortunately not yet widely enough appreciated-even by some sci-
entists-that to adopt a probabilistic explanation of phenomena is
tantamount to the Hat denial of causality.
But in part, too, the current resort to aggregates of all kinds is a
facet of our hastening approach to central control as an ideal in
economic affairs. Bureaucracy requires classification of economic
fact into relatively few broad bands of manageable "homogeneity";
it abhors differences because it simply cannot operate in a field of
bewildering individual complexity. In a sense, Socialism itself can
be defined as the political form of central tendency;
56
it uses the
52 Cf. Hoel, op. cit., pp. 103-5; Maroney, op. cit., pp. 94, 135-40.
53 Cf., e.g., Weber, op. cit., pp. 100-1; Fisher, op. cit., pp. 45, 225-6.
54 Cf. L. von Mises, op. cit., pp. 39, 47, 57, 64, 86, passim.
55 Cf. Hoel, op. cit., pp. 15, 29-30; Northrop, op. cit., pp. 210 ff. One part of
this has been the resort to randomness and the related assumption of the equi-
probability of whatever is not known; cf. Fisher, op. cit., pp. 23 ff; Poincare, Science
and Method, pp. 9-10, 66, 74-5, 80-1; Koopmans, op. cit., pp. 2-6; Connolly and
Sluckin, op. cit., p. 79; Samuelson, op. cit., p. 23; Keynes, op. cit., pp. 7-15, 21-4,
42-4, 61-4.
56 Cf. Northrop, op. cit., p. 355.
concept of average not only as a means of computation but also
as an end. In the fully developed ideal socialist state the "average"
individual will no longer be a statistical device of the sort discussed
here, but an accurate description of every actual individuaJ.5
7
This
accuracy, however, will not have been attained by the refinement
of descriptive method so as to fit actuality better, but actually the
reverse. The aggregative approach in economics suits this program
very well. The word "average" even etymologically betrays its redis-
tributive reference-in this case specifically the redistribution of
losses of cargo in transit.
58
And our contemporary treatment of
whole aggregates like "income," "wages," "capital" and the like is
implicitly in the same vein. Within each of these aggregates lie
innumerable functioning differences which have been merely sup-
pressed by classification.
59
It is one thing to use these aggregates as
a rough summary measure of past social and economic outcomes; it
is quite another to regard them as causally operative upon one
another.
60
Yet this appears to be what we are doing, and in no small
measure as a result of the confusion as to the limitations of statistical
devices in wide use. Our concern in this section is specifically with
the average and with the somewhat desperate claim made by some
that it is indispensable for the operation of controls in effecting pub-
lic policy.
61
But this is a tenuous argument: one should be free to
question the desirability of central planning and control-and there-
fore to point out that we cannot submerge the moral falsity of the
assertion that the ends justify the means by the simple expedient
of making the latter geometric or harmonic.
5
7 C. K. Marx, Capital (New York, n.d. ), Modern Library edition, p. 22; Samuel-
son, op. cit., p. 223; Hayek, The Counter-Revolution in Science, pp. 53-63; L. von
Mises, op. cit., pp. 257, 697-9, 706-ll.
58 Cf. Maroney, op. cit., p. 34.
59
Cf. A. N. Whitehead, An Introduction to Mathematics (New York, 1948),
p. 32 ff; Keynes, op. cit., pp. 328-9. For a very recent and rather extreme example
of faith in classification as the road to knowledge in economics, see E. C. Harwood,
Reconstruction of Economics (Great Barrington, Mass., 1955), pp. 8-9; Mr. Har-
wood finds great comfort in the identification of "knowing" with the "naming transac-
tion" as made by John Dewey and A. F. Bentley (Knowing and the Known, Boston,
1949, p. 296), and while he admits that " ... nothing just said enables economists
or anyone else to use the word 'knowledge' for the purpose of specifying ( scienti-
fically naming) anything in particular.", he nevertheless asserts that, as a result
of this approach, " ... the economists can at least climb down their various trees of
'knowledge' and survey the relatively firm ground of knowing and the known."
[One hastens to add that they had been in the trees for epistemological rather than
atavistic reasons.]
60 Cf., e.g., Samuelson, op. cit., pp. 9, 99, 118, 223-7, 351-2; Connolly and Sluckin,
op. cit., pp. 118-35.
6l For some very optimistic expectations expressed by writers on statistics in this
regard, cf. Kenney, op. cit., p. 2. Cf. also. Yule and Kendall. op. cit .. p. 206.
The Inferiority Complex
of the Social Sciences
by FRITZ MACHLUP
XII
IT IS said and repeated over and
over again that the social sciences are so very young, relatively
speaking. Why is it that social scientists insist on this as a state-
ment of fact and why do they consider it worth-while repeating?
The habit of not-so-very-young women of understating their
age and emphasizing their youthfulness probably rests on the ob-
servation that, as a rule, younger women are regarded as more eligi-
ble, desirable and attractive, partly because from some point on
beauty is a decreasing function of age, partly because inexperience
and innocence are associated with youth and are highly valued by
many men. This, however, is not a helpful analogy for us. Inno-
cence, inexperience, beauty-these are surely not the attributes
which social scientists wish to claim for their subjects as means of
attracting more followers and admirers.
Another analogy may come closer to an explanation. Very young
children are forgiven when they misbehave and do silly things. Per-
haps social scientists wish to claim this privilege of childhood in
order to secure the indulgence of the adult world; as if they were
saying: "Pardon us for being so dumb, but we are still so very
young." By implication they seem to promise: "Wait till we grow
up, wait just a few hundred years, then you will see how smart we
shall be." In any case, apparently, while they are children they
should be accorded the privilege of being silly; after all, children
do not know what they are doing.
161
The closest analogy, in my opinion, is the well-known apology of
many people in games and in sports, trying to account for their
awkwardness and clumsiness. If they admit that they are old prac-
titioners of the game or sport, their poor performance may be at-
tributed to lack of intelligence or talent; but for "novices" they are
not doing so badly. Thus, "Excuse me, I am just a beginner," is an
often-heard apology from participants in sports and games who
have a feeling of inferiority. This is what is probably behind the
social scientists' pronouncements emphasizing how young the social
sciences really are: "Please do not think we are stupid; we are
merely beginners."
Only those who feel that their accomplishments are unsatisfactory
and inferior to those of others have a reason to point to the fact
that they are relatively new at their business and thus should not
be expected to be any better than they are. Whether or not they
actually are poor performers is not of the essence: an inferiority
complex may or may not be justified by some "objective" standards.
It is the feeling of inferiority which makes the sufferers over-apolo-
getic, excessively aggressive, or looking for other sorts of compen-
sations.
The trouble with the protestations by social scientists is that their
story about their "young" science is not true. We have only to open
our text-books on the history of social theory, political science, or
economics to find that we have no right to engage in that baby talk
about being mere children, or in those novices' excuses of being
mere beginners. Our subjects are as old as any; the scholars and
writers in classical Greece had as much interest in problems of so-
ciety as in problems of the physical world, and their achievements
in the former are not less than those in the latter.
But the social science "youngsters" or "beginners" will quickly
protest against my reference to our ancient predecessors and will
proclaim: ""What they did must not be called 'science'! Only re-
cently has social thought become social science." Such pronounce-
ments force me to return to the analogy of the "beginner" in sports.
When I once heard the familiar '"I am just a beginner" from a ski
bunny whom I had seen snow-plowing many years before, I was
impolite enough to remind her of it. But undaunted she said: "Oh,
that does not count! That was not the right technique; you cannot
call it skiing!"
This is precisely the line these perennial beginners, the social
scientists, are trying to sell: "Oh, what all these people, long ago,
were doing was not the right scientific method, you cannot call it
Social Science!" I do not buy this line about the "right method" and
want to warn against it. The old students of society used whatever
method they believed was right and expedient, and they thought-
2500 years ago, 2000, 1000, 200 years ago-that they had succeeded
in acquiring more knowledge, and more accurate knowledge, about
human action than the man-in-the-street had. That should make
them social scientists in no less "good standing" than anybody who
uses the most fashionable methods of our day.
1
That the old scholars engaging in the study of society did not
call themselves "social scientists" is surely irrelevant. Until recently
their subjects were part of "moral philosophy," just as physics was
part of "natural philosophy." The fact that Newton and his con-
temporaries considered his work as natural philosophy does not
prevent us from calling him a physicist (although he also wrote
much on philosophy and theology and believed that his contribu-
tions to these subjects were of major importance). It is not by what
name it was called, nor by what method was used, nor by what
success was had from the point of view of posterity that we should
judge whether a certain body of knowledge at some time past was
"science." Knowledge is "scientific" if it is impartial, systematic,
and more complete or more accurate than "popular" knowledge at
the time. The fact that in the course of the last hundred years sev-
eral writers have proposed rather narrow definitions of "science"-
restricted in terms of particular subject matters or particular meth-
ods-and were allowed to get away with these restrictive definitions,
has caused anguish to many social scientists. If the restriction had
always been in terms of subject matter and had excluded social
phenomena once and for all, less serious harm would have followed
2
-because the study of society could do nothing to "qualify" for the
title of "science." But many of the restrictions were in terms of
particular methods and this created an ambition on the part of so-
cial scientists to earn the right to the honorific title by adopting as
1 "We cannot refuse the name science to logic or to the non-quantitative branches
of mathematics ... etc. Nor is there good reason for refusing the adjective scientific
to such works as Aristotle's Politics or Spinoza's Ethics and applying it to statistical
'investigations' or 'researches' that do not advance the understanding of anything."
Morris R. .Cohen, Reason and Nature: An Essay on the Meaning of Scientific Method
(Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1953), p. 89.
2 Of course, there are so many connections between physical nature and social
phenomena, that a division of disciplines as "sciences" as far as they relate to
"nature" and "non-scientific studies" as far as they relate to "human action" would
be rather silly. Just think of physical and cultural anthropology, of physical and
human geography, of physiological and social psychology.
far as possible, and even farther, the methods that were elected as
the definitional characteristics of "Science."
It is in terms of some of these restrictive definitions that the social
sciences are deemed to be so very young. Those who insist that a
science must be a system of deductions inferred from a small num-
ber of axioms or postulates will date the birth of economic science
with the publication of Ricardo's Principles and will reject the
scientific character of political science, sociology and most other
social disciplines. Those who insist that a science must be exclu-
sively based on a series of inductions from a large number of exact
observations and precise measurements of objectively discerned
phenomena, will date the science of sociology as a rather recent
creation and will reject the scientific character of economics, politi-
cal science and most other disciplines commonly counted among the
social sciences. These are only two of a large number of definitional
restrictions. When in a recent textbook on the methodology of so-
cial science the author states that "If we are honest we have to
admit that the first century of social science has left us somewhere
short of victory,"
3
we can infer that he proclaims Auguste Comte
as the progenitor of social science and accepts his method of "posi-
tivism" as the essential criterion of "science."
Perhaps it ought to be said that there exists no method-oriented
definition of science under which all parts and sections of physics,
chemistry, biology, geology and other generally recognized natural
sciences could qualify as "sciences." Definitions of science which
stress the theoretical system, the network of logically interrelated
hypotheses using mental constructions of ideal exactness, undoubt-
edly exclude large parts of chemistry and biology. Definitions
stressing repeatable experiments and verified predictions clearly
exclude the parts of biology, geology and cosmology which deal
with the evolution of life, of the earth and of the universe. And
even within physics-the discipline which is the science par excel-
lence because most definitions of science were formulated with
physics in mind as the model-the authorities are by no means
agreed as to whether the deductive system or the inductive tech-
nique constitutes its scientific nature.
4
It would be interesting to catalogue the definitions of science
S John Madge, The Tools of Social Science (New York: Longmans, Green & Co.,
1953), p. 290. (Italics supplied.)
4 For an exposition of the former view see Henry Margenau, The Nature of Physi-
cal Reality: A Philosophy of Modem Physics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950). For
an expression of the latter view see P. W. Bridgman, The Logic of Modern Physics
(New York: Macmillan, 1927).
proposed or adopted by writers in different fields or in specialized
branches of larger disciplines. They all formulate the specific char-
acteristics in such a way that their own kind of work would still
qualify as "scientific," while they have little concern, if not undis-
guised scorn, for fellow workers in their own discipline, in cognate
fields, or in fields with which they are entirely unfamiliar. Many a
scholar thus excluded from the honorary fraternity of "true scien-
tists" suffers from severe frustrations and develops an inferiority
complex, or aggravates the one he had to begin with. In defense
against the humiliating "rejection" he either tries to change the defi-
nition of science
5
by enlarging the extension of "scientific method"
just enough to have his own particular working techniques covered
or he adopts working techniques which, however unsuitable to the
subject matter or problems under investigation, are safely approved,
or can somehow be represented, as "scientific."
A mere enumeration of the subjects now customarily regarded as
social sciences will suffice to make it clear that a demand that they
follow the same methods (let alone, the same method) is entirely
impractical, if not fantastic. The list includes Sociology, Cultural
Anthropology, Social Psychology, Human Geography, Demography
and Population Theory, Ethnography and Ethnology, Political Sci-
ence, Economics, History, International Studies. This list is incom-
plete and overcomplete, depending on whether particular fields are
granted "autonomy."
6
Moreover, it can easily be shown that many
5 An analysis of the attitude of German social scientists may well show that their
inferiority complexes are relatively smaller than those of their Anglo-American col-
leagues. For they do not suffer from frustrations resulting from restrictive definitions
of science. The German Wissenschaft cannot meaningfully be restricted to exclude
any kind of scholarly inquiry, be it in the social sciences, the humanities, philosophy,
or jurisprudence. When a lawyer writes an article for a law review he writes a
scientific paper ( Wissenschaftliche Arbeit); and the historians of literature, the
philowgists, the philosophers, the mathematicians, the sociologists, they all are sci-
entists ( Wissenschaftler) no less and no more than the physicists and biologists.
Feeling secure in their title and status as scientists, they do not have to "assert them-
selves" as scientists and do not have to show off with working techniques unsuited
to their worl-- but "acceptable" under some restictive definition of science. This is
not to say that German scholars or German social scientists are free from inferiority
complexes-yet one source at least is removed.
6 Sociology, for example, may be given a larger scope so that it may comprise
some of the other subjects enumerated; or its scope may be narrowed so that other
subjects, such as criminology, become independent. International Studies, which
merely emphasize the international aspects of political science, economics, geography,
and history, have recently been granted autonomy in many university curricula.
History, customarily listed among the social sciences, is sometimes regarded instead
as a "method" of social science and sometimes as an "application" of social sciences;
again, there are those who insist on excluding it entirely from the social sciences,
grouping it with "humanistic studies" ( or cultural sciences ) .
of the supposedly separate fields are largely interdependent. Fi-
nally, most of the subjects call for several approaches, descriptive,
historical, statistical, and theoretical, which have to be skillfully
integrated in the application to concrete problems. An insistence on
the use of "the" scientific method for all would be nonsensical.
What is really meant by "the" scientific method? In its narrowest
sense, scientific method is supposed to mean experimental method,
or the demand that every proposition be "verified" by repeated
laboratory experiments with strict controls of all conditions. In a
wider sense, scientific method is supposed to mean statistical
method, or the demand that every proposition be "verified" by nu-
merous sets of statistical data relating to sufficiently comparable
situations. If no wider extension of the definition is conceded and
if no proposition is deemed "scientifically" acceptable unless it is
confirmed by such scientific method-alas, only a minute fraction
of all propositions about human action in society would be accept-
able, and only the most insignificant propositions at that. Needless
to say, all sorts of additional concessions are proposed in order to
accommodate other kinds of scientific inquiry. But there is no
epistemologically defensible borderline short of the widest meaning
of scientific method, defined in the Encyclopedia Brittanica as "any
mode of investigation by which impartial and systematic knowledge
is acquired." Such largess would give away any pretensions by
which one scholar may assert superiority over another on grounds
of the purity and sanctity of his method; it would remove any need
for feelings of guilt or inferiority on the part of scholars who ably
and diligently add to our store of knowledge by inquiries which are
neither experimental, nor statistical, nor quantitative, nor of predic-
tive usefulness. But this largess in the meaning of scientific method
is not widely accepted and we must continue to labor under the
restrictive definitions and to bear the consequences of the inferiority
complex of the social sciences.
These consequences or manifestations of the inferiority complex
of the social sciences are chiefly in the form of scientistic
7
compen-
sations. Some of them are old and may yield to treatment; for some
more recently observed forms no cures have as yet been developed.
Some, though satisfactorily described have not even been given
.
7 This expression, introduced though not coined by F. A. Hayek, is almost self-
explanatory: It expresses the desire of an investigator of social phenomena to apply
in his studies methods found useful in the natural sciences however ill-adapted for
his own purposes. See F. A. Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on
the Abuse of Reason (Glencoe, lll.: Free Press, 1952), p. 15. The present paper
owes much to Hayek's essay.
technical names, and I shall have to propose nomenclature. Al-
though there are probably several more, we shall deal here only
with the following: ( 1) Historicism, (2) Institutionalism, (3) Holism,
( 4) Behaviorism, ( 5) Operationism, ( 6) Metromania, ( 7) Predic-
tionism, ( 8) Prescriptionism, ( 9) Mathematosis, and ( 10) Experi-
mentomania. Needless to say, most of the affiicted will not recog-
nize their attitudes as aberrations in any sense, but will insist that
they, and they alone, have the right insights and all others are "un-
scientific."
Before I attempt to formulate the briefest possible statements of
the symptoms and manifestations of these conditions, it may be
well, in order to avoid even temporary misunderstandings, to antici-
pate here in the form of examples some explanations that will later
be given in greater detail. A historian need not be a historicist-
indeed, few historians are-and, moreover, even a fanatic historicist
may be an excellent historian. Scholars engaged in social statistics,
quantitative economics, econometrics, mathematical economics, or
mathematical analysis in the other social sciences-however exclu-
sively their interests may be in quantitative and numerical research
and analysis-may be far removed from the attitudes characterized
as metromania and mathematosis; and even some who are affiicted
may produce useful results. Thus, their work is not in question here.
What I find unhealthy in the ten listed attitudes or beliefs is, above
all, the attempt to urge certain methods on others in the name of
"science" and to disparage the research of others, not perhaps be-
cause their arguments or findings are fallacious, self-contradictory,
or contradicted by evidence, but because they fail to employ the
method claimed to be the only "scientific" one.
Historicism insists on the accumulation of historical facts as the
only legitimate beginning and as the sole basis of social research; on
the prohibition of the use of theory in the interpretation of past
events, though sometimes admitting that theories might eventually
be distilled from large masses of historical data; but the validity
(not merely applicability) of any such theories will be strictly lim-
ited as to time and place. What laboratory experiments are to the
. natural sciences historical research is to the social sciences: just as
the experimental method is required in the study of nature, the
"historical method" is required in the study of society and makes it
"scientific." Pure theory is useless speculation, sheer metaphysics;
history is the scientific method of the social sciences.
Institutionalism, sharing with historicism the view that social the-
ory cannot be general theory and is neither "perpetual" nor "cosmo-
politan," holds that human attitudes, objectives, and organizations
-all called "institutions" -are subject to human control and, hence,
must not be taken as fundamental assumptions in the analysis of
human action; instead, social sciences must concentrate on factual
descriptions of the institutions and their evolution; thus they will
be based on facts rather than on speculation and preconceptions.
Holism (derived from "the whole" rather than "the holy") takes
several forms; one insisting on the notion that the whole is prior
(logically and historically) to its parts and that, therefore, the study
of society must start with the "social wholes" or collectives-the
nation, the community, the market, etc.,-rather than with the
individual and some of his motivations and actions; another insisting
that different aspects of human action should not be separated in
analysis, but that social conduct and organization should be studied
realistically and "as a whole." To start with the individual and
to isolate particular aspects of his actions is held to be unrealistic
speculation, whereas the observation of the undissected whole will
permit scientific social research.
Behaviorism insists on confining social sciences (as well as psy-
chology per se) to the establishment of regularities in the physical
behavior of man under strictly controlled conditions. All interpreta-
tion of human action on the basis of introspective insights or in
terms of mental constructions, postulating the existence of motiva-
tions or preferences, is rejected as speculative; in order to be scien-
tifically sound research must be restricted to objectively discernible
facts, observable and describable in physical terms.
Operationism (or operationalism) insists on the exclusive use of
so-called operational concepts in scientific discourse; that is, all
concepts must be defined in terms of operations, chiefly physical
operations of the scientific observers. Mental constructs without
operational counterparts-idealized concepts-are either rejected
outright or only temporarily admitted on the expectation that they
will soon be replaced by operational concepts. "Conceivably oper-
ational" concepts are sometimes, in exceptional cases and only
grudgingly, condoned for want of "practically operational" con-
cepts. As a concession it was (somewhat inconsistently) proposed
to admit "mental operations" besides physical operations, but this
was not widely accepted since it would open the door to meta-
physical speculation.
8
8 Operationalism has been urged upon both natural and social sciences. In the
social sciences, behaviorists are perhaps the truest observers of operationalism.
Metromania, stemming from a fixation on the dogma that "science
is measurement,"
9
takes the form of attempts to measure everything
however faintly connected with the subject under investigation and
to imagine the resulting figures to be relevant, and of urgent claims
that any proposition not amenable to quantitative verification be
rejected as "unscientific." The questions of the stability of com-
puted numerical relations and of their historical relativity are usu-
ally ignored and ever new statistical figures for different or longer
time intervals are produced in order to devise "corrected" para-
meters or coefficients "explaining" the measured magnitudes of so-
cial reality.
Predictionism, impressed by the success of natural scientists in
predicting the outcome of controlled laboratory experiments, sees
the sole purpose and justification of scientific inquiry in the formu-
lation of propositions instrumental in successful predictions of events
in the real world, including the social world in which only few
relevant factors can be controlled or even reliably ascertained, let
alone measured. Generalizations of merely explanatory, not predic-
tive, usefulness are rejected as speculative.
Prescriptionism insists, in emulation of the great practical achieve-
ments of the physical sciences, on practical usefulness of the findings
of research in the social sciences; it demands their use in devising
improved social institutions and, especially, in economic organiza-
tion that satisfies the needs of mankind substantially better than the
present one; embracing the dogma "savoir pour prevoir pour pour-
voir,"
10
it denounces pure theory as apology of the status quo and,
in the name of "science," calls for action to carry out the prescrip-
tions. These are usually for social control of economic life either
on the basis of "scientific socialism" or by governmental planning
and interventions.
11
Mathematosis is the urge, incited by admiration of the paramount
use of mathematics in the physical sciences, to employ higher math-
ematics in expressing propositions that could equally well be ex-
pressed in ordinary language. Purely "literary" arguments are
Anot11er expression of operationalism in the social sciences is the demand that social
scientists employ only statistically measurable concepts.
9 Lord Kelvin.
10
Auguste Comte. The teachings of certain brands of pragmatism are also in-
voked by prescriptionists.
11
What distinguishes prescriptionism from controlism, interventionism, socialism
and other programs of economic policy is its appeal to "science." It urges these
practical applications of scientific findings as the raison d' etre of science, as a require-
ment of the true scientific spirit.
170
scorned, and ideas or problems not reducible to mathematical
formulation are suspected of being "metaphysical" or "pseudo-prob-
lems."
Experimentomania combines the firm conviction that practical
experiments alone are "scientific" with the illusion that social re-
search will eventually be "solidly" founded on practical experiments
under strictest controls; all present research techniques are regarded
as preparations for eventual experimental research, and research
problems are invented that are immediately amenable to laboratory
techniques even if they are of little relevance to any hypotheses
significant in the systems thus far employed in the various social
sciences.
All these attitudes, beliefs, and ambitions use the flag of "true
science" as a means for gaining support and allegiance and for
combatting the non-believers. Their own method is the best-not
perhaps because it has proved particularly fruitful and has yielded
results not obtained by other methods-but because it is the only
"truly scientific" one. All other methods ought to be rejected-not
perhaps because they have not been instrumental in producing or
confirming knowledge or insights-but because they are "not scien-
tific."
There is at least one other notion that the described attitudes,
beliefs, ambitions have in common. The social scientists who dis-
play them are apparently ashamed of the one thing that really
distinguishes social sciences from natural sciences, namely, the fact
that the student of human action is himself an acting human being
and therefore has at his command a source of knowledge unavail-
able to the student of the phenomena of nature. The student of
atoms, electrons, magnetic fields, enzymes, genes, etc., is himself
none of these things and has no immediate experience of them,
whereas the student of human thinking and acting is a thinking
and acting human being and knows a good deal about the subject
of his inquiries before he starts inquiring. The close and unbreak-
able link between pre-scientific everyday knowledge and scientific
knowledge about the subject matter of social sciences is both an aid
and a burden. It is an aid in that it furnishes the social scientist
with an initial stock of experiences, working hypotheses, and inter-
pretations of fundamental importance. It is a burden in that it
saddles him with the obligation to work with constructs that are
understandable to him and his fellow men in terms of their every-
day experiences; that is to say, he is under the obligation to make
his scientific constructs correspond in all relevant respects to the
constructs that are used in everyday life in the common-sense inter-
pretation of our fellow men's actions.
12
Social scientists laboring under the inferiority complex they have
developed under the frustrating notion that the methods of the
natural sciences are the only truly scientific ones refuse both to
recognize the "obligation" and to take advantage of the "aid" just
mentioned. They mistake the prescription of scientific "objectivity"
for a proscription of "subjectivism" -confusing "subjective" in the
sense of impartial with "subjective" in the sense of cognizant of
inner experiences.
But we must also guard against a possible misunderstanding: that
we do not respect the positive and constructive values in the de-
scribed attitudes, convictions, and ambitions; such values should be
recognized. Thus we must be sure not to confuse historians with
historicists, nor to discount the value of good historical work merely
because its author happened to cling to historicist views aggressively
critical of all theoretical analysis. We must not underestimate the
importance of descriptive work on the institutional features of our
social organization, even if its author is a firm believer in institu-
tionalist methodology and should be deadly opposed to all general
theory. We should admit that the holists' fervor for integrated
studies, though often destructive in their rejection of isolating
abstraction, may at times result in the discovery of data and the
development of promising hypotheses. We must acknowledge that
behaviorists have done good work and have come out with signifi-
cant findings, even if their campaign against introspection and
speculative reasoning about intervening variables probably has ob-
structed progress in the social sciences more than a little. Although
it is true that the attempts of the operationalists to ban pure con-
structs has had obscurantist effects, we must grant that they have
been successful in developing a number of statistically operational
concepts as useful counterparts for pure constructs and thus have
contributed much to our stock of factual information. We must not
take all specialists in social statistics, quantitative economics, or
econometrics for metromaniacs; moreover, while some metromaniac
may have wasted money on piling up mountains of stultifying sta-
tistics, and may have misdirected some of our best talents, his enthu-
siasm for empirical work has probably been productive also of useful
quantitative studies, for which he deserves credit regardless of the
damage done by his preaching about his exclusive scientific method.
12 See Alfred Schuetz, "Common-Sense and Scientific Interpretation of Human
Action," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. XIV, September 1953, p. 34.
The predictionists are of course perfectly right in encouraging the
formulation of generalizations useful for prediction and testable by
the success of predictions based on them, and we must thank them
for such encouragement, despite the gratuitous and harmful dis-
paragement of purely explanatory hypotheses. The prescriptionists
have frequently turned the attention of the social analyst to prac-
tical problems of immediate urgency when the latter was preoc-
cupied with spinning hypotheses of remote applicability; for this
they must be given credit even if most of the time their zeal has
badly messed up theoretical analysis as well as practical policy-
making. We should be careful not to regard every mathematical
analyst as a mathematotic; and even the latter should be thanked
for having contributed to substantial improvements in the mathe-
matical training of social scientists, useful for a better selection of
talents and also for greater elegance of exposition. Perhaps there
is also something good to say about the achievements of the social
science experimentomaniacs, though I have not yet been able to
find anything.
In brief, good historical and institutional studies, interesting
holistic hypotheses and behavioristic research, the development of
operational concepts, improved quantitative-empirical research, en-
couragement of attempts to predict and to test, attention to the
practical problems of the day, and better training in mathematics
-all these are highly desirable things in the social sciences. What
is harmful is the attitude of snubbing, disparaging, excommunicat-
ing, or prohibiting the working habits of others and of preaching
a methodology that implies that they are inferior in scientific work-
manship.13
Good "scientific method" must not proscribe any technique of
inquiry deemed useful by an honest and experienced scholar. The
aggressiveness and restrictiveness of the various methodological be-
liefs which social scientists have developed-in subconscious at-
tempts to compensate for their feelings of inferiority vis-a-vis the
alleged "true scientist" -are deplorable. Attempts to establish a
monopoly for one method, to use moral suasion and public defama-
tion to exclude others, produce harmful restraints of research and
analysis, seriously retarding their progress.
13 Lest someone think that I myself have engaged in such activities, he had better
re-read the last sentence with greater care. For I have not said anything against
the working habits of others and have not questioned anybody's scientific workman-
ship. I have dealt with their claims of exclusive possession of the one and only
scientific method.
PART FOUR
The Economics of Free Enterprise
XIII
The Market Economy and the
Distribution of Wealth
by L. M. LACHMANN
EvERYWHERE today in the free
world we find the opponents of the market economy at a loss for
plausible arguments. Of late the "case for central planning" has
shed much of its erstwhile luster. We have had too much experi-
ence of it. The facts of the last forty years are too eloquent.
Who can now doubt that, as Professor Mises pointed out thirty
years ago, every intervention by a political authority entails a
further intervention to prevent the inevitable economic repercus-
sions of the first step from taking place? Who will deny that a
command economy requires an atmosphere of inflation to operate
at all, and who today does not know the baneful effects of "con-
trolled inflation?" Even though some economists have now in-
vented the eulogistic term "secular inflation" in order to describe
the permanent inflation we all know so well, it is unlikely that any-
one is deceived. It did not really require the recent German exam-
ple to demonstrate to us that a market economy will create order
out of "administratively controlled" chaos even in the most unfavor-
able circumstances. A form of economic organization based on
voluntary cooperation and the universal exchange of knowledge is
necessarily superior to any hierarchical structure, even if in the
latter a rational test for the qualifications of those who give the
word of command could exist. Those who are able to learn from
reason and experience knew it before, and those who are not are
unlikely to learn it even now.
175
Confronted with this situation the opponents of the market econ-
omy have shifted their ground; they now oppose it on "social" rather
than economic grounds. They accuse it of being unjust rather than
inefficient. They now dwell on the "distorting effects" of the owner-
ship of wealth and contend that "the plebiscite of the market is
swayed by plural voting." They show that the distribution of wealth
affects production and income distribution since the owners of
wealth not merely receive an "unfair share" of the social income,
but will also influence the composition of the social product: Lux-
uries are too many and necessities too few. Moreover, since these
owners do most of the saving they also determine the rate of capital
accumulation and thus of economic progress.
Some of these opponents would not altogether deny that there is
a sense in which the distribution of wealth is the cumulative result
of the play of economic forces, but would hold that this cumulation
operates in such a fashion as to make the present a slave of the
past, a bygone an arbitrary factor in the present. Today's income
distribution is shaped by today' s distribution of wealth, and even
though today's wealth was partly accumulated yesterday, it was
accumulated by processes reflecting the influence of the distribution
of wealth on the day before yesterday. In the main this argument
of the opponents of the market economy is based on the institution
of Inheritance to which, even in a progressive society, we are told,
a majority of the owners owe their wealth.
This argument appears to be widely accepted today, even by
many who are genuinely in favor of economic freedom. Such peo-
ple have come to believe that a "redistribution of wealth," for in-
stance through death duties, would have socially desirable, but
no unfavorable economic results. On the contrarv, since such meas-
ures would help to free the present from the "dead hand" of the past
they would also help to adjust present incomes to present needs.
The distribution of wealth is a datum of the market, and by chang-
ing data we can change results without interfering with the market
mechanism! It follows that only when accompanied by a policy de-
signed continually to redistribute existing wealth, would the market
process have "socially tolerable" results.
This view, as we said, is today held by many, even by some econ-
omists who understand the superiority of the market economy over
the command economy and the frustrations of interventionism, but
dislike what they regard as the social consequences of the market
economy. They are prepared to accept the market economy only
THE ECONOMICS OF FREE ENTERPRISE 177
where its operation is accompanied by such a policy of redistribu-
tion.
The present paper is devoted to a criticism of the basis of this
view.
In the first place, the whole argument rests logically on verbal
confusion arising from the ambiguous meaning of the term "datum."
In common usage as well as in most sciences, for instance in statis-
tics, the word "datum" means something that is, at a moment of
time, "given" to us as observers of the scene. In this sense it is, of
course, a truism that the mode of the distribution of wealth is a
datum at any given moment of time, simply in the trivial sense that
it happens to exist and no other mode does. But in the equilibrium
theories which, for better or worse, have come to mean so much for
present-day economic thought and have so largely shaped its con-
tent, the word "datum" has acquired a second and very different
meaning: Here a datum means a necessary condition of equilib-
rium, an independent variable, and "the data" collectively mean
the total sum of necessary and sufficient conditions from which,
once we know them all, we without further ado can deduce equilib-
rium price and quantity. In this second sense the distribution of
wealth would thus, together with the other data, be a DETERMINANT,
though not the only determinant, of the prices and quantities of the
various services and products bought and sold.
It will, however, be our main task in the paper to show that the
distribution of wealth is not a "datum" in this second sense. Far
from being an "independent variable" of the market process, it is,
on the contrary, continuously subject to modification by the market
forces. Needless to say, this is not to deny that at any moment it is
among the forces which shape the path of the market process in the
immediate future, but it is to deny that the mode of distribution as
such can have any permanent influence. Though wealth is always
distributed in some definite way, the mode of this distribution is
ever-changing.
Only if the mode of distribution remained the same in period
after period, while individual pieces of wealth were being trans-
ferred by inheritance, could such a constant mode be said to be a
permanent economic force. In reality this is not so. The distribu-
tion of wealth is being shaped by the forces of the market as an
object, not an agent, and whatever its mode may be today will soon
have become an irrelevant bygone.
The distribution of wealth, therefore, has no place among the
data of equilibrium. 'What is, however, of great economic and social
interest is not the mode of distribution of wealth at a moment of
time, but its mode of change over time. Such change, we shall see,
finds its true place among the events that happen on that problem-
atical "path" which may, but rarely in reality does, lead to equilib-
rium. It is a typically "dynamic" phenomenon. It is a curious fact
that at a time when so much is heard of the need for the pursuit and
promotion of dynamic studies it should arouse so little interest.
Ownership is a legal concept which refers to concrete material
objects. Wealth is an economic concept which refers to scarce
resources. All valuable resources are, or reflect, or embody, material
objects, but not all material objects are resources: Derelict houses
and heaps of scrap are obvious examples, as are any objects which
their owners would gladly give away if they could find somebody
willing to remove them. Moreover, what is a resource today may
cease to be one tomorrow, while what is a valueless object today
may become valuable tomorrow. The resource status of material
objects is therefore always problematical and depends to some
extent on foresight. An object constitutes wealth only if it is a
source of an income stream. The value of the object to the owner,
actual or potential, reflects at any moment its expected income-
yielding capacity. This, in its tum, will depend on the uses to
which the object can be turned. The mere ownership of objects,
therefore, does not necessarily confer wealth; it is their successful
use which confers it. Not ownership but use of resources is the
source of income and wealth. An ice-cream factory in New York
may mean wealth to its owner; the same ice-cream factory in
Greenland would scarcely be a resource.
In a world of unexpected change the maintenance of wealth is
always problematical; and in the long run it may be said to be
impossible. In order to be able to maintain a given amount of
wealth which could be transferred by inheritance from one genera-
tion to the next, a family would have to own such resources as will
yield a permanent net income stream, i.e., a stream of surplus of
output value over the cost of factor services complementary to the
resources owned. It seems that this would be possible only either
in a stationary world, a world in which today is as yesterday and
tomorrow like today, and in which thus, day after day, and year
after year, the same income will accrue to the same owners or their
heirs; or if all resource owners had perfect foresight. Since both
cases are remote from reality we can safely ignore them. What,
then, in reality happens to wealth in a world of unexpected change?
All wealth consists of capital assets which, in one way or an-
other, embody or at least ultimately reflect the material resources
of production, the sources of valuable output. All output is pro-
duced by human labor with the help of combinations of such re-
sources. For this purpose resources have to be used in certain
combinations; complementarity is of the essence of resource use.
The modes of this complementarity are in no way "given" to the
entrepreneurs who make, initiate, and carry out production plans.
There is in reality no such thing as A production function. On the
contrary, the task of the entrepreneur consists precisely in finding,
in a world of perpetual change, which combination of resources will
yield, in the conditions of today, a maximum surplus of output over
input value, and in guessing which will do so in the probable condi-
tions of tomorrow, when output values, cost of complementary
input, and technology all will have changed.
If all capital resources were infinitely versatile the entrepre-
neurial problem would consist in no more than following the
changes of external conditions by turning combinations of resources
to a succession of uses made profitable by these changes. As it is,
resources have, as a rule, a limited range of versatility, each is spe-
cific to a number of uses.
1
Hence, the need for adjustment to change
will often entail the need for a change in the composition of the
resource group, for "capital regrouping." But each change in the
mode of complementarity will affect the value of the component
resources by giving rise to capital gains and losses. Entrepreneurs
will make higher bids for the services of those resources for which
they have found more profitable uses, and lower bids for those
which have to be turned to less profitable uses. In the limiting case
where no (present or potential future) use can be found for a re-
source which has so far formed part of a profitable combination,
this resource will lose its resource character altogether. But even
in less drastic cases capital gains and losses made on durable assets
are an inevitable concomitant of a world of unexpected change.
The market process is thus seen to be a leveling process. In a
market economy a process of redistribution of wealth is taking place
all the time before which those outwardly similar processes which
modern politicians are in the habit of instituting, pale into com-
parative insignificance, if for no other reason than that the market
gives wealth to those who can hold it, while politicians give it to
their constituents who, as a rule, cannot.
1 The argument presented in what follows owes a good deal to ideas first set
forth by Professor Mises in Das festangelegte Kapital. See "Grundprobleme der
Nationaloekonomie," pp. 201-14.
This process of redistribution of wealth is not prompted by a con-
catenation of hazards. Those who participate in it are not playing a
game of chance, but a game of skill. This process, like all real
dynamic processes, reflects the transmission of knowledge from
mind to mind. It is possible only because some people have knowl-
edge that others have not yet acquired, because knowledge of
change and its implications spread gradually and unevenly through-
out society.
In this process he is successful who understands earlier than any-
one else that a certain resource which today can be produced,
when it is new, or bought, when it is an existing resource, at a cer-
tain price A, will tomorrow form part of a productive combination
as a result of which it will be worth A'. Such capital gains or losses,
prompted by the chance of, or need for, turning resources from one
use to another, superior or inferior to the first, form the economic
substance of what wealth means in a changing world, and are the
chief vehicle of the process of redistribution.
In this process it is most unlikely that the same man will continue
to be right in his guesses about possible new uses for existing or
potential resources time after time, unless he is really superior. And
in the latter case his heirs are unlikely to show similar success-
unless they are superior, too. In a world of unexpected change
capital losses are ultimately as inevitable as are capital gains. Com-
petition between capital owners and the specific nature of durable
resources, even though it be "multiple specificity," entail that gains
are followed by losses as losses are followed by gains.
These economic facts have certain social consequences. As the
critics of the market economy nowadays prefer to take their stand
on "social" grounds, it may be not inappropriate here to elucidate
the true social results of the market process. We have already
spoken of it as a leveling process. More aptly, we may now de-
scribe these results as an instance of what Pareto called "the circula-
tion of elites." Wealth is unlikely to stay for long in the same hands.
It passes from hand to hand as unforeseen change confers value
now on this, now on that specific resource, engendering capital gains
and losses. The owners of wealth, we might say with Schumpeter,
are like the guests at a hotel or the passengers in a train: They are
always there but are never for long the same people.
It may be objected that our argument applies in any case only to
a small segment of society and that the circulation of elites does not
eliminate social injustice. There may be such circulation among
wealth owners, but what about the rest of society? What chance
have those without wealth of even participating, let alone winning,
in the game? This objection, however, would ignore the part played
by managers and entrepreneurs in the market process, a part to
which we shall soon have to return.
In a market economy, we have seen, all wealth is of a problem-
atical nature. The more durable assets are and the more specific,
the more restricted the range of uses to which they may be turned,
the more clearly the problem becomes visible. But in a society
with little fixed capital in w i ~ most accumulated wealth took the
form of stocks of commodities, mainly agricultural and perishable,
carried for periods of various lengths, a society in which durable
consumer goods, except perhaps for houses and furniture, hardly
existed, the problem was not so clearly visible. Such was, by and
large, the society in which the classical economists were living and
from which they naturally borrowed many traits. In the conditions
of their time, therefore, the classical economists were justified, up
to a point, in regarding all capital as virtually homogeneous and per-
fectly versatile, contrasting it with land, the only specific and irre-
producible resource. But in our time there is little or no justification
for such dichotomy. The more fixed capital there is, and the more
durable it is, the greater the probability that such capital resources
will, before they wear out, have to be used for purposes other than
those for which they were originally designed. This means prac-
tically that in a modern market economy there can be no such
thing as a source of permanent income. Durability and limited
versatility make it impossible.
It may be asked whether in presenting our argument we have not
confused the capital owner with the entrepreneur, ascribing to the
former functions which properly belong to the latter. Is not the
decision about the use of existing resources as well as the decision
which specifies the concrete form of new capital resources, viz. the
investment decision, a typical entrepreneurial task? Is it not for the
entrepreneur to regroup and redeploy combinations of capital
goods? Are we not claiming for capital owners the economic func-
tions of the entrepreneur?
We are not primarily concerned with claiming functions for
anybody. We are concerned with the effects of unexpected change
on asset values and on the distribution of wealth. The effects of
such change will fall upon the owners of wealth irrespective of
where the change originates. If the distinction between capitalist
and entrepreneur could always easily be made, it might be claimed
that the continuous redistribution of wealth is the result of entrepre-
neurial action, a process in which capital owners play a merely
passive part. But that the process really occurs, that wealth is
being redistributed by the market, cannot be doubted, nor that the
process is prompted by the transmission of knowledge from one
center of entrepreneurial action to another. Where capital owners
and entrepreneurs can be clearly distinguished, it is true that the
owners of wealth take no active part in the process themselves, but
passively have to accept its results.
Yet there are many cases in which such a clear-cut distinction
cannot be made. In the modern world wealth typically takes the
form of securities. The owner of wealth is typically a shareholder.
Is the shareholder an entrepreneur? Professor Knight asserts that
he is, but a succession of authors from Walter Rathenau
2
to Mr.
Burnham have denied him that status. The answer depends, of
course, on our definition of the entrepreneur. If we define him as
an uncertainty-bearer, it is clear that the shareholder is an entrepre-
neur. But in recent years there seems to be a growing tendency to
define the entrepreneur as the planner and decision-maker. If so,
directors and managers are entrepreneurs, but shareholders, it
seems, are not.
Yet we have to be careful in drawing our conclusions. One of the
most important tasks of the entrepreneur is to specify the concrete
form of capital resources, to say what buildings are to be erected,
what stocks to be kept, etc. If we are clearly to distinguish be-
tween capitalist and entrepreneur we must assume that a "pure"
entrepreneur, with no wealth of his own, borrows capital in money
form, i.e., in a non-specific form, from "pure" capital owners.
But do the directors and managers at the top of the organizational
ladder really make all the specifying decisions? Are not many such
decisions made "lower down" by works managers, supervisors, etc.?
Is it really at all possible to indicate "the entrepreneur" in a world
in which managerial functions are so widely spread?
On the other hand, the decision of a capital owner to buy new
shares in company A rather than in company B is also a specifying
decision. In fact this is the primary decision on which all the mana-
gerial decisions within the firm ultimately depend, since without
capital there would be nothing for them to specify. We have to
2 Vom Aktienwesen, 1917.
s This definition has, of course, certain social implications. Those who accept it
can hardly continue to regard entrepreneurs as a class access to which is impossible
for those with no wealth of their own. Whatever degree of the "imperfection of the
capital market" we choose to assume will not give us this result.
realize, it seems, that the specifying decisions of shareholders, di-
rectors, managers, etc., are in the end all mutually dependent upon
each other, are but links in a chain. All are specifying decisions
distinguished only by the degree of concreteness which increases
as we are moving down the organizational ladder. Buying shares in
company A is a decision which gives capital a form less concrete
than does the decision of the workshop manager as to which tools
are to be made, but it is a specifying decision all the same, and one
which provides the material basis for the workshop manager's ac-
tion. In this sense we may say that the capital owner makes the
"highest" specifying decision.
The distinction between capital owner and entrepreneur is thus
not always easily made. To this extent, then, the contrast between
the active entrepreneurs, forming and redeploying combinations of
capital resources, and the passive asset owners, who have to accept
the verdict of the market forces on the success of "their" entrepre-
neurs, is much overdrawn. Shareholders, after all, are not quite
defenseless in these matters. If they cannot persuade their directors
to refrain from a certain step, there is one thing they can do: They
can sell!
But what about bondholders? Shareholders may make capital
gains and losses; their wealth is visibly affected by market forces.
But bondholders seem to be in an altogether different position. Are
they not owners of wealth who can claim immunity from the market
forces we have described, and thus from the process of redistribu-
tion?
In the :6.rst place, of course, the difference is merely a matter of
degree. Cases are not unknown in which, owing to failure of plans,
inefficiency of management, or to external circumstances which
had not been foreseen, bondholders had to take over an enterprise
and thus became involuntary shareholders. It is true, however, that
most bondholders are wealth owners who stand, as it were, at one
remove from the scene we have endeavored to describe, from the
source of changes which are bound to affect most asset values,
though it is not true of all of them. Most of the repercussions radiat-
ing from this source will have been, as it were, intercepted by
others before they reach the bondholders. The higher the "gear"
of a company's capital, the thinner the protective layer of the
equity, the more repercussions will reach the bondholders, and the
more strongly they will be affected. It is thus quite wrong to cite
the case of the bondholder in order to show that there are wealth
owners exempt from the operation of the market forces we have
described. Wealth owners as a class can never be so exempt, though
some may be relatively more affected than others.
Furthermore, there are two cases of economic forces engender-
ing capital gains and losses from which, in the nature of these cases,
the bondholder cannot protect himself, however thick the protective
armor of the equity may happen to be: the rate of interest and
inflation. A rise in long-term rates of interest will depress bond
values where equity holders may still hope to recoup themselves
by higher profits, while a fall will have the opposite effect. Inflation
transfers wealth from creditors to debtors, whereas deflation has the
opposite effect. In both cases we have, of course, instances of that
redistribution of wealth with which we have become acquainted.
We may say that with a constant long-term rate of interest and
with no change in the value of money, the susceptibility of bond
holders' wealth to unexpected change will depend on their relative
position as against equity holders, their "economic distance" from
the center of disturbances; while interest changes and changes in
the value of money will modify that relative position.
The holders of government bonds, of course, are exempt from
many of the repercussions of unexpected change, but by no means
from all of them. To be sure, they do not need the protective
armor of the equity to shield them against the market forces which
modify prices and costs. But interest changes and inflation are as
much of a threat to them as to other bondholders. In the world
of permanent inflation in which we are now living, to regard wealth
in the form of government securities as not liable to erosion by the
forces of change would be ludicrous. But in any case the existence
of a government debt is not a result of the operation of market
forces. It is the result of the operation of politicians eager to save
their constituents from the task of having to pay taxes they would
otherwise have had to pay.
The main fact we have stressed in this paper, the redistribution
of wealth caused by the forces of the market in a world of unex-
pected change, is a fact of common observation. Why, then, is it
constantly being ignored? We could understand why the politicians
choose to ignore it: After all, the large majority of their constituents
are unlikely to be directly affected by it, and, as is amply shown in
the case of inflation, would scarcely be able to understand it if they
were. But why should economists choose to ignore it? That the
mode of the distribution of wealth is a result of the operation of
economic forces is the kind of proposition which, one would think,
appeal to them. Why, then, do so many economists continue to
regard the distribution of wealth as a "datum" in the second sense
mentioned above? We submit that the reason has to be sought in
an excessive preoccupation with equilibrium problems.
We saw before that the successive modes of the distribution of
wealth belong to the world of disequilibrium. Capital gains and
losses arise in the main because durable resources have to be used
in ways for which they were not planned, and because some men
understand better and earlier than other men what the changing
needs and resources of a world in motion imply. Equilibrium means
consistency of plans, but the redistribution of wealth by the market
is typically a result of inconsistent action. To those trained to think
in equilibrium terms it is perhaps only natural that such processes
as we have described should appear to be not quite "respectable."
For them the "real" economic forces are those which tend to estab-
lish and maintain equilibrium. Forces only operating in disequilib-
rium are thus regarded as not really very interesting and are
therefore all too often ignored. There may be two reasons for such
neglect. No doubt a belief that a tendency towards equilibrium
does exist in reality and that, in any conceivable situation, the
forces tending towards equilibrium will always be stronger than the
forces of resistance, plays a part in it.
But an equally strong reason, we may suspect, is the inability of
economists preoccupied with equilibria to cope at all with the forces
of disequilibrium. All theory has to make use of coherent models.
If one has only one such model at one's disposal a good many phe-
nomena that do not seem to fit into one's scheme are likely to re-
main unaccounted for. The neglect of the process of redistribution
is thus not merely of far-reaching practical importance in political
economy since it prevents us from understanding certain features
of the world in which we are living. It is also of crucial meth-
odological significance to the central area of economic thought.
We are not saying, of course, that the modem economist, so
learned in the grammar of equilibrium, so ignorant of the facts of
the market, is unable or unready to cope with economic change;
that would be absurd. We are saying that heis well-equipped only
to deal with types of change that happen to conform to a fairly
rigid pattern. In most of the literature currently in fashion change
is conceived as a transition from one equilibrium to another, i.e.,
in terms of comparative statics. There are even some economists
who, having thoroughly misunderstood Cassel's idea of a "uni-
formly progressive economy," cannot conceive of economic pl'()gress
186
in any other wayl
4
Such smooth transition from one equilibrium
(long-run or short-run) to another virtually bars not only discussion
of the process in which we are interested here, but of all true eco-
nomic processes. For such smooth transition will only take place
where the new equilibrium position is already generally known and
anticipated before it is reached. Where this is not so, a process of
trial and error (Walras' "tatonnements") will start which in the end
may or may not lead to a new equilibrium position. But even where
it does, the new equilibrium finally reached will not be that which
would have been reached immediately had everybody anticipated
it at the beginning, since it will be the cumulative result of the
events which took place on the "path" leading to it. Among these
events changes in the distribution of wealth occupy a prominent
place.
Professor Lindahl
5
has recently shown to what extent Keynes'
analytical model is vitiated by his apparent determination to
squeeze a variety of economic forces into the Procrustean bed of
short-period equilibrium analysis. Keynes, while he wished to de-
scribe the modus operandi of a number of dynamic forces, cast his
model in the mold of a system of simultaneous equations, though
the various forces studied by him clearly belonged to periods of
different length. The lesson to be learned here is that once we allow
ourselves to ignore fundamental facts about the market, such as
differential knowledge, some people understanding the meaning
of an event before others, and in general, the temporal pattern of
events, we shall be tempted to express "immediate" effects in short-
period equilibrium terms. And all too soon we shall also allow our-
selves to forget that what is of real economic interest are not the
equilibria, even if they exist, which is in any case doubtful, but
what happens between them. "An auxiliary makeshift employed
by the logical economists as a limiting notion"
6
can produce rather
disastrous results when it is misemployed.
The preoccupation with equilibrium ultimately stems from a con-
fusion between subject and object, between the mind of the ob-
server and the minds of the actors observed. There can, of course,
be no systematic science without a coherent frame of reference, but
we can hardly expect to find such coherence as our frame of refer-
4 For a most effective criticism of this kind of model-building see, Joan Robinson
"The Model of an Expanding Economy," Economic Journal, March 1952.
5 Erik Lindahl, "On Keynes' Economic System," Economic Record, May and
November 1954.
6 Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn.,
p. 352.
ence requires ready-made for us in the situations we observe. It is,
on the contrary, our task to produce it by analytical effort. There
are, in the social sciences, many situations which are interesting to
us precisely because the human actions in them are inconsistent
with each other, and in which coherence, if at all, is ultimately
produced by the interplay of mind on mind. The present paper is
devoted to the study of one such situation. We have endeavored to
show that a social phenomenon of some importance can be under-
stood if presented in terms of a process reflecting the interplay of
mind on mind, but not otherwise. The model-builders, econometric
and otherwise, naturally have to avoid such themes.
It is v-ery much to be hoped that economists in the future will
show themselves less inclined than they have been in the past to
look for ready-made, but spurious, coherence, and that they will take
a greater interest in the variety of ways in which the human mind
in action produces coherence out of an initially incoherent situation.
XIV
Unearned Riches
by LEONARD E. READ
0 NE of the cornerstones of eco-
nomic theory is the economic value we attach to commodities and
services that possess a relation to our well-being. Economic value
is the importance which a good possesses for us because it is useful
and scarce.
It is to the everlasting credit and fame of Carl Menger and other
scholars of the Austrian School to have found and expounded this
elementary knowledge of subjective value. They then proceeded
to apply the value analysis in the field of complementary goods, i.e.,
goods that are required to cooperate in the rendition of use services,
and finally in the field of capital goods, which they called "goods of
higher order." The theory of the value of complementary goods
then became the key for the solution of one of the most important
and difficult problems of economics: the problem of distribution.
The valuations of the consumers in a market economy, in final
analysis, determine the way in which the ultimate product is distrib-
uted among the cooperating factors of production. How little this
elementary knowledge of economic valuation is known can be seen
at the widespread acceptance and circulation of wage theories that
deny any relation to the valuation process. The American public
embraces and most institutions of economic education teach
theories of "bargaining-power," "purchasing-power," "standard-of-
living," the "subsistence theory," or even the unadulterated "ex-
ploitation theory." Distribution through the valuation process seems
to be known to a few remnants of "reactionary" and "outdated"
scholars and writers only. It is to the enduring credit of Ludwig
von Mises that he, for several decades, has been the foremost "reac-
188
tionary" among scholars, a reactionary of reason and economic
theory. For this he merits our admiration and gratitude.
Many people sincerely believe that the value of anything is deter-
mined by the labor used in producing it; that its price ought to
reflect quite objectively the amount of labor put into it. The belief
in this labor theory of value, however, is founded in myth, not fact.
Day-to-day experiences reveal its error. For a far-fetched example,
the same labor could be used to make mud pies as to make mince
pies, yet the value in the market place would differ. A service or a
product of little value at one time or in one place may be highly
valued at another time and place. For instance, an artist may pro-
duce hundreds of paintings considered freakish by others and be
rewarded with starvation for his labors. But, let his style become
the fad, and for less labor than before, he can revel in luxury.
Lost and adrift on a raft for days, a man might offer his fortune
in exchange for a hamburger. Yet, the same person, following a
lusty meal, might not offer a penny in exchange, though the ham-
. burger had changed not at all.
Individuals have varying value judgments. Value in the market
sense, therefore, is a subjective rather than an objective determina-
tion. In a way, it is like beauty. What is beauty? It is what you or
I or other individuals think is beautiful. It depends on subjective
or personal value judgments, judgments characterized by constant
variation. Value, as beauty, cannot be objectively determined. That
all persons may think of a certain sunset as beautiful, a given mon-
ster as hideous, gold as desirable, or mud pies as useless does not
alter the fact that these are subjective judgments. Such unanimity
merely asserts that some subjective judgments are similar.
It is not at all surprising that many persons in the United States
and throughout the world do not subscribe to the subjective nature
of value. As far as can be determined, no one understood it well
enough to try an explanation until the latter part of the nineteenth
century. Prior to that, such a notable as John Stuart Mill and the
very best of economists, including Adam Smith and Ricardo, were
stymied in their development of economic theory because they ac-
cepted the cost-of-production or labor theory of value. They simply
could not explain what they otherwise knew to be the great advan-
tages of the free market process of voluntary exchange. They knew
full well that both parties must gain when each traded what he
wanted less for what he wanted more, yet they could not show
that such gain had been "earned," for they were unable to explain it
190
in terms of labor costs. In short, they were unable to see how the
free market price might be competitively or subjectively determined
by individuals who had no accurate knowledge of the labor or other
costs involved in producing a particular item.
How Adam Smith, holding to this labor theory of value, could
have seen the great advantages of trade-the untold blessings of
others, or society, to the individual-and could have come out in
favor of private enterprise instead of socialism, is a miracle more
to be attributed to sound instinct than to economic reasoning.
Marx, as distinguished from Adam Smith, followed the labor
theory of value to its logical conclusion: socialism. Marx looked
upon all things useful as one great "wages fund" and believed that
the entire fund ought to be distributed directly to laborers. To al-
low any part of this fund as a return on capital would amount to
unearned increment and, he argued, would be exploitation. How
any advocate of the cost-of-labor theory could believe in anything
but socialism is difficult to understand. Smith, Ricardo, Mill, and
many others instinctively, not logically, concluded otherwise.
Only if one understands the marginal utility or subjective theory
of value based upon the judgments of countless individuals acting
freely and voluntarily in the market may he proceed logically to a
belief in private ownership and control of property. With this kind
of an understanding, he can see why any person may have a perfect
right to consume more than he could ever hope to produce by his
own labor. He can, it is plain, properly own anything others will
freely offer in exchange for what he has to offer them. This means
gains for all participants in the exchange process, gains which must
always appear to be unearned in terms of labor expended. N onethe-
less, it reflects the approval of all who are properly concerned in
any transaction. The marginal utility or subjective theory of value
needs no other justification. Because it is based on willing ex-
change, it works without coercing anyone. The labor theory of
value-the labor theory of price determination-on the other hand,
founded on unwilling exchange, cannot function without coercion.
Now, let us proceed to the person whose father invested $500 in
an early auto industry and who now wonders to whom he should
give the resulting millions. He is no more the recipient of unearned
increment than is the person who today works for a wage in the
same company. Both exist on what they themselves do not and
could not produce. And if the wage earner were to succeed in cut-
ting off what he might think are the unearned riches of his "lucky"
brothers, he would at the same time destroy his own source of liveli-
hood.
Let us contemplate this wage earner. He lives in a house he could
not build. Perhaps, given enough materials and tools properly
fabricated and the plans some architect has drawn, he could put
together something resembling a house. But he wouldn't know how
to make a lowly nail: mine the ore, alloy the metals, construct the
furnaces, build the extrusion and other machinery, and so on. Could
he make a hammer? A saw? Bring the lumber to its finished state?
Even make the string on which his plumb hangs? Grow and gin
and spin and comb and weave the cotton from which it is made?
Could he build the machinery that mines the coal he uses to heat
his house? He could not make the lamp the miners wear if every
ingredient depended solely on his own resources.
What about the automobiles he helps to put together, one of
which he owns? Neither he nor any other person on this earth could
produce it alone. What about the food he eats? The clothes he
wears? The books and magazines he reads? The telephone he uses?
The counsel on health that is his? The opportunities that are con-
stantly presented to him? All are done by a vast work and exchange
process, millions of individuals with as many varied skills, laboring
cooperatively and competitively, a world of complex and flowing
energy, the organization of which is more complicated than any one
person can understand, let alone control. Others-society past and
present-place within his reach goods and services and knowledge
in such an array and abundance that he could not himself produce
in thousands of years that portion of it which he consumes in a
single day. And he obtains all of this in exchange for his own
meager efforts.
The astounding thing is that it is possible for him to gain without
any change in his efforts, his skills, his knowledge. Let others be-
come more inventive and more productive, and he may receive
more in exchange for what he has to offer. Parenthetically, it is
also possible for him to lose out entirely, as might happen if he per-
sisted in offering nothing in exchange but buggy whips.
There is a fact still more astounding. Our wage earner may think
of his plight as hapless when compared to the one who inherited his
millions. True, the millionaire has gained much from the doings of
others. But the wage earner himself owes his life to the doings of
others. It is not that possessing millions and having life are alterna-
tive propositions. That is not the point. The point is that both flow
from the same exchange process and that whatever each has-be it
autos, houses, food, clothing, heat, millions, knowledge, or life itself
-comes to him unearned in the sense that he alone did not produce
all of it. We trade because we can all get more satisfaction from our
labor by that means. Vast stores are available to those who have
anything to trade that others value. In the free market, each earns
all that he receives in willing exchange. This is fantastically more
than one could produce by himself.
In order fully to grasp the process by which one can consume in
a day that which he could not produce in thousands of years-the
process by which he can earn in a day that which he could not earn
by himself in thousands of years-it is only necessary for one to see
that one's earning power is capable of unlimited expansion by the
productivity and exchange and value judgments of others. This
world of creative energy, this productivity exterior to self, then, be-
comes of singular importance to each one of us. Not only does our
prosperity-material, intellectual, and spiritual-depend upon it, but
life itself comes under its government. In short, each of us is the
beneficiary of this productivity through division of labor and capital
accumulation and investments by others.
Let us sample this world of productivity through division of labor
from the standpoint of oneself as a potential beneficiary of its largess.
The mathematics of nuclear fission is known to some scholars. I,
however, do not know that much mathematics. Such knowledge
conceivably can be mine. But I can possess it only by increas-
ing my own perceptive powers. It may very well be that the re-
quired increase in perception is beyond my competency or that I
may choose to increase my perception along other lines to the ex-
clusion of perceptive powers along this line. But, assuming that I
do gain this knowledge, do I earn it? Yes, as much as though I
gained the knowledge by direct revelation. Direct, or indirect
through study of the knowledge of others, does not alter the matter.
The same principle applies to a product as to an item of knowl-
edge. Luxurious yachts are available. Their making is as foreign
and as unrelated to me as presently is the mathematics of nuclear
fission. I do not have one. Such a possession conceivably could be
mine. I could become the beneficiary of its existence by increasing
my own exchange powers or, should all others become sufficiently
productive, I could have one in exchange for efforts no greater than
I now exercise. But assume that I do obtain one in exchange for
my present meager efforts, do I earn it? Yes, even though it is in
the sense I earn a deer by choosing the path I will walk and by
pulling the trigger on a gun. All else is supplied. The deer, a
miracle about which man had nothing to do, crossed my path.
The gun, the powder, the shot represented creative ingenuity flow-
ing through space and time about which I have but the dimmest
of notions. As with the deer, so with the yacht. I earn it as though
I had done it all myself. Others in their productivity, knowledge,
skills willingly exchanged what I offered them.
Someone may argue that I could have exchange power to obtain
a yacht had I been born the son of a father who "hit it lucky." By
the same token, I might have the perceptive powers to understand
the mathematics of nuclear fission had my parentage been different.
Seeing oneself in true perspective as related to all others is utterly
impossible. We but dimly comprehend ourselves; the comprehen-
sion of others is much dimmer. However, it is not necessary that
this perspective be perfect. It is only necessary that we grasp the
idea of being a beneficiary of this benefactor, this division of labor,
and that we understand and appreciate our dependence on and our
relationship to it.
No better example of the beneficent effects of the division of
labor together with capital accumulation is to be found than in the
area of our own 48 states. Here, less than 400 years ago, there were
perhaps 200,000 Indians. Why was the population limited to this
number? Certainly it was not for any lack of natural resources,
friendly climates, or fertile soils. Nor was it because of the In-
dians' inability to breed. The population was limited and the
standard of life was relatively impoverished because of a low form
of cooperant society. They lived in a foraging economy, all of them
in a near sameness. There was little in the way of division of labor,
of variable skills, knowledge. Society was indeed so uncooperative
that as a result only 200,000 could live in it, and they not very well.
Today, in this same area, 160,000,000 persons, 800 times as many,
live in relative luxury, be luxury measured in terms of goods and
services, leisure, opportunities, knowledge, or insights into the na-
ture of things. It is fair to say that 159,800,000 of us have life, and
a rather full one at that, due to a higher form of cooperant society,
to the freeing of creative energy, to large capital investments per
head of population, to an advanced state of division of labor. It is
fair to say that nearly all of us exist and have the possessions we
enjoy because of a greater division of labor in a market economy.
These millions of people with their varied skills and specializations,
taken together, constitute a benefactor without which most of us
could have no life at all. Each one of us is a beneficiary of this
phenomenon.
Looked at in this light-oneself as a benefl.ciary and division of
labor as a benefactor-it becomes pertinent to re-examine one's
own behaviors, attitudes, actions. If we would best serve our in-
dividual self-interest, we would do well to live in harmony with
the facts of life, not in disharmony with them.
Looked at in this light, one should do everything possible to
increase his own perceptive and exchange powers. It is only by self-
improvement that one can best serve self. And, clearly, it is only
by self-improvement that one can better serve others-that is, add
to someone else's well-being.
Who composes this benefactor of ours, this storehouse of energy?
It is composed of individuals who, like ourselves, are different from
all others and who, like ourselves, depend on others. And what
ought to be our attitude toward these millions of others if looked at
from the standpoint of self-interest?
1. Self-reliance, a great virtue, should be emphasized. The way
to be self-reliant is to keep off the backs of others and to en-
gage in willing-never unwilling-exchange. This is the free
market.
2. It is a primary fact of observation that these others, like one-
self, will work at their best if permitted the ownership and
control of the fruits of their own labor-and of their own
participation in the exchange process. It is in one's interest
to preserve his incentive. This is the institution of private
property.
3. As with oneself, these others will act at their best creatively if
left free to do so. One should, therefore, look with great dis-
favor on any intederence with creative activity and on any
inhibitions to free exchange and communication of creative
action. One's own interest is impaired if there are marauders
or robbers or authoritarians among these others; if there are
men among them practicing violence, fraud, misrepresenta-
tion, or predation. One's own interest suffers if voters use the
political apparatus to gain their own ends at the expense of
the vast majority of the public. The form of government that
protects the smooth operation of the free market economy and
its voluntary division of labor is limited government.
For each individual to save his own skin and soul he must give at
least as much concern to the rights of others as he does to his own.
He would be as eager to protect the creative energies and the free
exchange and communication of others as his own. For each of us
can truly say, "I am the beneficiary of their existence."
If we as individuals would save our own skins and our own souls,
we would use all the moral suasion at our command to see that all
men are free:
... to pursue their ambition to the full extent of their abilities;
... to associate with whom they please for any reason they please;
... to worship God in their own way;
... to choose their own trade;
... to go into business for themselves, be their own bosses, and
set their own hours of work;
... to use their honestly acquired property or savings in their own
way;
... to offer their services or products for sale on their own terms;
... to buy or not to buy any service or product offered for sale;
... to agree or to disagree with any other person;
... to study and learn whatever strikes their fancy;
... to do as they please in general, as long as they do not infringe
the equal right and opportunity of every other person to do as
he pleases.
According to these observations, here is a way of life harmonious
with the interests of others. The envy of others for accomplishments
or rewards can be made naturally and easily to give way to appreci-
ation and pleasure. Inequality, being but the team-mate of varia-
tion without which survival is impossible, would, therefore, be
favored rather than disparaged.
Are the riches received in a free society unearned? Only in the
sense that all producers reap fantastically more than they could
earn in isolation. The benefits flowing from our division of labor are
available to all of us in willing exchange if freedom prevails. Such
are the thoughts of one who believes himself a beneficiary and who
believes that all others who act creatively are his benefactors. I
owe my life to them; hence if I would live and prosper, I shall work
as diligently for their freedom as for my own.
XV
The Yield /rom Money Held
byW. H. Hurr
MY AIM in this essay is to at-
tempt to carry the tenor of Mises' teaching a step further in the field
of monetary theory. A feature of his great contribution, Human
Action, is its insistence that all goods and services have the same
scarcity significance, i.e., that they all stand in an identical relation
to human choice and exchange. It seems to me that money and
monetary services ought to be included under this principle, in a
manner in which Mises himself has not argued. In this field all
economists have shared, I feel, in a hindering tradition which, had
the logic of his approach been extended, Mises would have thrown
off. I refer to the notion that money is "barren," "sterile," "unpro-
ductive," "offering a yield of nil." This view is held today by econ-
omists of all schools. Yet practically without exception they talk of
the "services" rendered by money or the "utilties" derived from
money. It is in this respect that we find the clearest justification for
Wicksell's confession that in the field of monetary theory, "diametri-
cally opposed and sometimes self-contradictory views are defended
by the most famous writers."
1
To the best of my knowledge the
doctrine of the sterility of money has so far been subject to explicit
challenge only by T. Greidanus.
2
The latter has, however, not yet
explained the full significance of his "yield theory."
3
1 Wicksell, Lectures, II, p. 190.
2 T. Greidanus, The Value of Money.
3 Mises has criticized Greidanus' work on the grounds that an analysis of the
motives which lead people to keep money on hand cannot explain purchasing power
without bringing in the notions of cash holding and the demand for and supply of
money. But I have interpreted Greidanus as meaning that the "yield" he stresses is
the return to the holding of money.
196
In three articles published since 1952,
4
I have discussed an am-
biguity in the concept of the "volume of money." We have to dis-
tinguish, I have suggested, between the idea of the aggregate
amount of money measured in actual money units, like pounds, dol-
lars, francs, etc., and the aggregate amount of rrwney assets meas-
ured in "real terms," i.e., measured in units of constant value in
terms of "things in general."
5
The former, I regard as "containers"
of varying amounts of the latter.
6
The notion that money has a "yield of nil," i.e., that it differs
from other assets in that it is "dead stock," persists, I think in part
owing to the above-mentioned ambiguity. For one of the usual
explanations of this supposed peculiarity of money relies on the fact
that an increase in its "quantity" does not mean that there is any
increase in "wealth" or "welfare" or "total utility." But this is true
only of the number of money units or "containers" and not of what
is contained in them. It is not true of the aggregate amount of
money assets measured in real terms. Money so conceived is as
productive as all other assets, and productive in exactly the same
sense. And the fact that the number of "containers" (units) may
be varied whilst the aggregate amount of what is contained in
them may remain constant (or vice versa) in no way affects the
truth that money assets offer prospective yields just as the rest of
the assets possessed by individuals, firms, banks or governments.
As objects of investment, they are chosen for the same reason that
other objects are chosen. Thus, if their marginal prospective yield
at any time is below that of other assets, it will pay to part with
some of them, and if it is above, it will pay to acquire money assets
up to the point at which the marginal prospective yield has fallen
to the rate of interest. Now Mises himself, and several other econ-
omists, maintain explicitly that the amount of money which individ-
uals and firms decide to hold is determined by the marginal utility
In The South African journal of Economics as follows: The Nature of Money,
September, 1952; The Notion of the Volume of Money, March, 1953; The Notion
of Money of Constant Value, September and December, 1953.
5 The definitions which I have found useful differ from those which Mises em-
ploys, in that the term "money assets" as I use it covers all assets (tokens or com-
modities) the value of which is affected by reason of their being demanded for
their "liquidity," i.e., for the medium of exchange services which they can perform.
Commodities and securities which perform monetary services and other functions as
well are included in the proportion to which they are money. On this point, see
The Nature of Money, op. cit., p. 61.
6 Some of the difficulties arising from the concept of "real terms" are discussed in
The Notion of Money of Constant Value, op. cit.
198 ON FREEDOM AND FREE ENT.ERPBDE
of its services.
7
Yet for some reason they have not made the next
small step needed to recognize this prospective yield (of .. utilities"),
which invites the holding of money, as the normal return to invest-
ment.
The prospective yield from investment in money assets consists,
I suggest, (a) of a prospective pecuniary yield, in which case the
money assets are producers' goods;
8
or (b) of a prospective non-
pecuniary yield in personal convenience, in which case the money
assets are consumers' capital goods;
9
or (c) of a prospective "real,"
i.e., non-pecuniary, speculative yield, in which case the assets are
producers' goods, whether held privately or in the course of busi-
ness. In the case of (a) and (b), the yield is derived in the form of
technical monetary services of various kinds, which permit the most
economic acquisition of other factors of production or goods for con-
sumption. In the case of (c), the yield is derived in the form of
the greater command over non-money assets which a unit of money
is expected to have at some later period. As we shall see, these
statements are all implied by Mises' teaching, but never expressed
by him in terms of prospective yield. In the following pages, I shall
try to support my thesis that it is logically correct, and appropriate
from the standpoint of exposition, to refer to the prospective yield
or return from the holding of money assets, just as one does from
the holding of non-money assets. I shall do so through an exami-
nation of the principal arguments which have been used by econo-
mists since the earliest times to explain why money has no yield,
pecuniary or otherwise.
I am inclined to think that the tradition which I am questioning
arose originally through the influence of Locke upon Adam Smith.
The latter's description of "ready money ... which a dealer is
obliged to keep by him unemployed," as so much "dead stock,
which ... produces nothing either to him or to his country,"
10
gave
influential emphasis to a bad precedent. Locke had three times
used the very same words of money, "produces nothing." Unlike
land, which produces something valuable to mankind, said Locke,
7 E.g., Mises, Human Action, p. 445.
8
E.g., cash in the till, which offers prospective pecuniary yields in exactly the
same way that the site, or the buildings, or the materials, or the labor necessary in
business offer pecuniary yields.
9
E.g., the notes or cash in one's purse or the balance in one's personal current
account, the yield from which is in terms of "gratifications," just as with one's
furniture or house.
10 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Cannan Edition, Vol. I, p. 303. (My
italics.)
"money is a barren thing"; and yet it was, he argued, subject to the
same laws of value as other commodities.
11
But the idea is ancient. Several writers have attributed it to
Aristotle,
12
for he condemned usury on the grounds that "the birth
of money from money" was "the most unnatural" mode of making
money.
Edwin Cannan insisted that it is by no means certain that Aris-
totle thought money was barren, but merely that he thought it
ought to beP Wicksteed pointed out that Dante, following Aris-
totle, emphasized the unnaturalness of money breeding money, by
expressly associating usurers with sodomitesl
14
Bacon (who argued
for the toleration of usury) said, 'They say that it is against nature
for money to beget money,"
15
but did not explain whether "they"
meant that it was immoral or impossible. Shakespeare, in the same
context of the controversy over usury, made Antonio, in The Mer-
chant of Venice, refer to "a breed of barren metal."
16
We can
hardly blame Shakespeare for what he made one of his characters
say; yet through this passage, Bonar agreed, "a wrong twist" was
probably given to Aristotle's meaningP And Bentham, face-
tiously
18
ridiculing what Aristotle was supposed to have held, al-
leged that the "celebrated heathen" philosopher described money
as barren because he "had never been able to discover, in any one
piece of money, any organs for generating any other such piece."
19
Now although this discussion of the legitimacy of usury contin-
ued to be clouded by the confusion of the concept of money with
that of capital (all money is capital, but not all capital is money),
it appears to have been responsible for the continuing and still cur-
rent fallacy that "money does not mulitply itself," as do other forms
11 Locke, Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest
... , 1691. In Locke, Works, Vol. V, 1801 Edn., pp. 36-7. Locke discussed payment
for the use of money, but then became caught in the persistent confusion between
capital and money which was so common before Mill's time.
12 Aristotle, Politics, I, { 10), Jowett Translation, 1258 b. Adam Smith was un-
doubtedly directly influenced also by Aristotle's remarkable insight into the nature
of money. Senior pointed out that Adam Smith used a phrase which would serve
as a translation of a phrase in Aristotle's Ethics.
13 See the delightful symposium, Who said "Barren Metal?", by Cannan, Ross,
Bonar and Wicksteed, in Economica, 1922, No. 5. This paragraph is based on that
symposium.
14 Wicksteed, in Ibid., p. 109.
15 Bacon, Essay on Usury, quoted in Ibid., p. 107.
16 Quoted in Ibid., p. 105.
17 Ibid., p. 107. Bonar pointed out also that Aristotle's ideas on the subject had
come down via the canonists.
18 Bohm-Bawerk described it as "witty," Cannan as "coarse."
19 Bentham, Defence of Usury, quoted in Ibid., p. 105.
of productive capital. And we must, I fear, blame either Locke,
whose failure to throw off the ancient and barren notion of "barren
metal'' thereby perpetuated it, or else Adam Smith, who was too
uncritically indebted to Locke (or Aristotle directly) and propa-
gated the insidious fallacy.
Locke's influence was all the greater by reason of the impressive,
rational treatment which he devoted to the role and functions of
money. He had a remarkably modern grasp of the tasks which
money has to perform.
20
Indeed, he perceived clearly what we call
today the "institutional" factors determining the demand for
money."
21
And most interesting of all, he saw that money had "the
nature of land," the interest on land being but the rent.
22
In using
these words, he seemed to come very near to stating the very truth
for the recognition of which I am now pleading; for, he said, the
"income" of land is called "rent" and that of money, "use." (See
page 216) A little later on, however, he apparently remembered
Aristotle (or Antonio!) and wrote: "Land produces something new
and profitable, and of value to mankind; but money is a barren thing
and produces nothing."
23
In part, the confusion here seems to be due
to the narrow view of what constitutes productiveness; although, as I
have said, the old confusion between the concepts of money and cap-
ital seems mainly to blame. He thought of money lent as productive
to the lender, but presumably not productive to the borrower. Yet
there is similarly no direct pecuniary return from land unless it is
20 Thus, he recognised "the necessity of a certain proportion of money to trade"
(Locke, op. cit., p. 21); he saw that the necessary proportion "depends not barely
on the quantity of money, but the quickness of its circulation" (Ibid., p. 23); he
explained that a coin could, "rest in the same hands one hundred days together,"
which would make it "impossible exactly to estimate the quantity of money needful
in trade" (Ibid., p. 23); and he gave a surprisingly complete treatment of the
indispensability of money as an instrument in the hands of different classes of the
community (laborers, farmers, tradesmen, landholders, brokers, consumers, etc.).
(Ibid., pp. 24 et. seq. ) .
21 For example, he wrote: "It were better for trade, and consequently for every-
body, (for money would be stirring, and less would do the business) if rents were
paid by shorter intervals. . . . A great deal less money would serve for the trade
of a country." Ibid., p. 27 (my italics). If he had said, instead, that there would
have been less work for money to do, he would have been much nearer to enunciat-
ing a really satisfactory theory.
22 Ibid., p. 33.
23 Locke, op. cit., p. 36. On other occasions he appeared to waver. Thus, at
another place, he actually implied that money is productive, although less frequently
than land. He referred to "the many and sometimes long intervals of barrenness,
which happen to money more than land. Money at use, when returned to the hands
of the owner, usually lies dead there, till he gets a new tenant for it" (Ibid., p. 65,
my italics). But as we shall see, money does not work by circulating.
hired out to someone else. Does that mean, then, that our land
brings us no return, pecuniary or real, when it is not lent? Obvi-
ously not. Of course, if one finds that the whole of one's cash bal-
ance is unnecessary (i.e., if some part of the balance offers no
speculative or convenience yield valued at above the rate of inter-
est), and one then fails to make other use of the redundant sum,
or to lend it to someone who can, the surplus will remain "barren,"
just like unutilized land. A trader's stocks of anything may be waste-
fully large. There is nothing unique about money in this respect.
It was owing to Locke's failure to make the small further jump
necessary, and to state that the productiveness of money does not
differ in any material manner from that of land, that we may have
the origin of the root fallacy which has confused monetary theory
ever since. The subsequent tradition has been to regard money as
having "resource value" or capital value, but no "service value."
Between Locke and Adam Smith, various writers perceived the
usefulness of money, e.g., Cantillon and Hume, but they failed to
see that "usefulness" is a mere synonym for "productiveness" or
"yield."
24
Adam Smith's contribution on the point, although obviously in-
spired by that of Locke, differed slightly from it. At times, he re-
garded money as "the instrument of commerce,"
25
but at other
times he denied that it was "a tool to work with."
26
"Gold and silver,"
he wrote elsewhere, "whether in the form of coin or of plate, are
utensils . . . as much as the furniture of the kitchen."
27
But he
would not have described furniture as "productive." This "dead
stock," he said of money, "is a very valuable part of the capital of
the country, which produces nothing to the country."
28
His ac-
ceptance of such a paradox can probably be explained, as with
Locke, by the narrow conception of "productivity" of his day. "The
gold and silver money which circulates in any country may," he
said, "very properly be compared to a highway, which, while it
circulates and carries to market all the grass and corn of the country,
produces itself not a single pile of either."
29
To some extent he
24 See Greidanus, The Value of Money, pp. 21-31.
25 Adam Smith, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 396. Hume also used the word "instrument" for
money. (Quoted Greidanus, op. cit., p. 31.)
26 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 279.
27 Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 406-7.
28 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 304. (He repeated these words-"dead stock," "produces noth-
ing" -in the same paragraph.)
29 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 304.
was, I think, misled through his desire to refute the fallacies of the
Mercantilists. He wanted to show the folly of accumulating money
in the belief that it represented "wealth," and was accordingly led
to the assertion that, whilst it "no doubt, makes always a part of the
national capital, ... "it is "always the most unprofitable part of it."
30
It is surprising that, as the eighteenth century view of productivity
was abandoned, the essential yield from money assets did not come
to receive explicit recognition. But as Greidanus has pointed out,
Ricardo failed to recognize that money is needed, not only for pay-
ments but to be kept on hand.
31
Senior recognized that money was
"of the highest utility"
32
but contended that its use gave "no pleas-
ure whatever." He added, "its abundance is a mere inconvenience"
because we should have to carry more of it.
33
Obviously, he was
here thinking of what I have called "money units."
J. S. Mill's insight was not very much deeper. He recognized
that money assets had a task, he referred to "the quantity of work
done" by them, he even spoke of their "efficiency," and he fully un-
derstood that the demand for such assets was a function of the
amount of traffic which they facilitated.
34
But he confused the no-
tion of "rapidity of circulation" with that of "efficiency." He did
not realize that, certis paribus, if units of money circulated more
slowly, that would be due to there being more work, not less work,
for them to do. (See below, pp. 213, 214.)
Cairnes (like Adam Smith) was led astray through an attempt at
easy refutation of mercantilist ideas.
35
He wanted to answer Tooke,
who had discussed metallic money as though it were, in itself, a
source of productive energy, and who had argued that "an addition
to the quantity of money" was "the same thing as an addition to the
Fixed Capital of a country" -as equivalent in its effects to "improved
harbours, roads and manufactories."
36
But to deny that the acquisi-
tion of specie is necessarily a wise form of investment is not to deny
that money is instrumental capital. Nor does the fact that it may
take a wasteful form (e.g., gold coin, when convertible paper would
30 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 404.
31 Greidanus, op. cit., p. 39.
32 Senior, Industrial Efficiency and Social Economy, Vol. II, p. 42.
33 Ibid., p. 41.
34 J. S. Mill, Principles, Book III, Ch. viii, section 3.
35 Cairnes, Essays, p. 45 et. seq.
36 Tooke, History of Prices, Vol. VI, p. 216. He elaborated Adam Smith's com-
parison of money to a highway, and argued that more money was equivalent to
broader, smoother and longer roads.
THE ECONOMICS OF FREE ENTERPRISE
203
serve equally well) imply that money assets as such do not provide
a flow of valuable services.
37
Bohm-Bawerk was surprisingly contented with the na'ivety of
Aristotle, whose argument he summed up as follows: "Money is by
nature incapable of bearing fruit."
38
And yet he recognized that
interest "may be obtained from any capital, ... from goods that are
barren as well as from those that are naturally fruitful."
39
The ex-
planation of the paradox again appears to lie in the dogged persist-
ence of the crude notion of productiveness, a notion which was
responsible for Bohm-Bawerk's rejection of the "use theories" of
interest. He twice quoted the same trenchant passage from Her-
mann in which it was pointed out that "land, dwellings, tools, books,
money, have a durable use value. Their use ... can be conceived of
as a good in itself, and may obtain for itself an exchange value
which we call interest."
40
But this repeated quotation was merely
for the purpose of refutation. To Bohm-Bawerk, "use" meant "phys-
ical" or "material" services onlyY "For any 'use of goods' ... other
than their natural material services," he said, "there is no room,
37 Cairnes argued (assuming a metallic currency) that if a merchant "can safely
dispense with a portion of his ready cash, he is enabled, with the money thus
liberated ... to add to his productive capital. . . . On the other hand, if he finds
it necessary to increase his reserve of cash, his productive capital must be propor-
tionally encroached upon ... " (Cairnes, op. cit., p. 92.) And "precisely the same
may be said of the currency of a nation"; for "the chief advantage of a good banking
system consists . . . in enabling a nation to reduce within the narrowest limits this
unproductive portion of its stock" (meaning metallic stock). (Ibid., pp. 92-3.)
Unfortunately, he was not led to face the paradox that, even under such a banking
system, the metallic backing, reduced to these "narrowest limits," must have had
some productive function or it could have been dispensed with entirely. Still less
was he led to perceive that credit was performing a productive function of an
identical nature at a much smaller social cost (i.e., at a much smaller sacrifice of other
things). This was in spite of his recognition that credit will "affect prices in
precisely the same way as if it were actually the coin which it represents." (Ibid.,
p. 95.)
88 Bohm-Bawerk, Capital and Interest, Smart Translation, p. 17.
39 Ibid., p. 1.
40 Hermann, quoted in Ibid., pp. 194 and 233. (My italics.)
41 He admitted some fears about the "employment of this physical conception
in regard to a certain limited class of material goods . . . e.g., a dwelling house, a
volume of poems, or a picture. . . ." But, he argued, the fact that "a house
shelters and warms, is nothing else than a result of the forces of gravity, cohesion,
and resistance, of impenetrability, of the non-conducting quality of building ma-
terials"; and "the thoughts and feelings of the poet reproduce themselves . . . in
a direct physical way, by light, colour, and form of written characters; and it is
this physical part of the mediation which is the office of the book." (Ibid., p. 222.)
He would evidently have regarded the books in a library as wholly without use ex-
cept when a reader's book was brought "into the necessary relation with his eye for
the image, which is continually being formed by reflection, to fall on the retina."
(Ibid., p. 221.)
204
either in the world of fact, or in the world of logical ideas."
42
It is
"theoretically inadmissible to recognise relations as real goods."
48
Von Wieser mentioned various reasons why holdings of ready
money were indispensable or speculatively profitable;
44
but he
thought that the "advantage in value" is only realized by such hold-
ings when the object is ultimately acquired for which the money
was accumulated.
45
And although he used phrases which at first
suggest that he had perceived that money units are useful or neces-
sary for reasons of the same economic nature as other productive
assets or durable consumption assets/
6
and although he clearly re-
garded money as part of circulating capital,
47
he used his chief
concepts in a far from rigorous manner. One can hardly feel that
he was visualizing, even dimly, the prospective yield which induces
the acquisition of money assets.
48
Wicksell accepted explicitly Aristotle's contention that money is
"sterile."
49
It "does not itself enter into the processes of production,"
he said. 50 Yet, in discussing the various functions of money (e.g., as
resources to meet unforeseen disbursements), he discussed also the
factors determining its average period of "rest" or "idleness," notions
which suggest that it must have periods of work or activity. He
held that money was held "not to be consumed . . . or to be em-
ployed in technical production, but to be exchanged for something
else .... "
51
He did not explain why the fact that money is not con-
sumed, or intended to be exchanged for something else, should pre-
42 Ibid., p. 231. The argument which occurred to him, and should have shaken
him, that "the possession of good machines might assist the maker to secure, say, a
good credit, a good name, good custom," etc., he dismissed as "hairsplitting." (Ibid.,
p. 230, footnote. )
43 Ibid., p. 261.
44 Von Wieser, Social Economics, pp. 284-6.
45
Ibid., p. 169. (For a refutation of this view, see below, pp. 213-215.)
46 E.g., " ... in order to cover the same marginal use, more or less money has
to be expended." ( Op. cit., p. 263.) "The theory of the value of money must start
from the service of money, just as that of the value of wares starts from their
serviceability." (Ibid., p. 265.) " ... The need of money is nearly akin to the
need of commodities. In the monetary economy, everyone meets his personal need
of goods by first covering the need of money. The latter, like the former, is also
influenced in the final analysis by the magnitude of the needs and the law of satiety."
(Ibid., p. 285.)
47 Ibid., p. 294-9.
48 The omission of references to important writers on money like J evons, Menger
and Irving Fisher is due to their having followed the tradition I am criticizing with-
out having contributed any new slant on the point at issue.
49 Wicksell, Lectures, Vol. II, p. 191.
so Ibid., p. 190.
51 Ibid., p. 15. (My italics.)
vent it from providing continuous services in production.
52
But in
criticizing Menger for his false distinction between "money on the
wing" and "money in hand," he wrote, "Some money may often lie
untouched for years in the till, though it has not, on that account,
ceased to serve as a means of circulation."
53
Here, surely, is an ad
mission that money in the till is providing continuous services, that
it is not economically idle, or "resting," and that its usefulness is not
concentrated into the moment at which it is spent.
54
Marshall referred to the services (without using this word) ren-
dered by holdings of currency, in making business "easy and
smooth,"
55
and discussed the balancing of the "advantages" of hold-
ing resources in this form with the "disadvantages" of putting more
of a person's resources into a form "in which they yield him no
direct income or other benefit."
56
But somehow he did not see that
he was comparing one "advantage" with another "advantage," i.e.,
one end or means with another end or means. It certainly seems
that he also was in some measure misled by the realization that a
mere increase in the number of money units (pounds, francs, dollars,
etc.) does not, in itself, result in an increase in the flow of monetary
services. He said, "currency differs from other things in that an
increase in its quantity exerts no direct influence on the amount
of services it renders."
57
That view, combined with the influence
of the "barren money" tradition, appears to account for his insist-
ence that the holding of resources in the form of currency "locks up
in a barren form resources that might yield an income of gratifi-
112 Wicksell seems to have had some misgivings on this point. He wrote: "Now
this is also true of a merchant's goods." He says, however, that it is then "a question
of continued production ... or ... an intermediate link in the process." (Ibid ..
p. 15.) But are not a merchant's stocks of money just as much a link in the produc-
tive process?
53 Ibid., p. 21.
114 Never quite happy on the subject, Wicks ell argued also (a) that money assets
are different from other assets because they always remain in the market, "though
in different hands"; and (b) that "money itself has no marginal utility, since it is
not intended for consumption." (Ibid., pp. 19-20.) Yet are money assets any differ-
ent in this respect from other durable assets? They do not come into the market
unless we put them in. And no durable goods have marginal utility "in themselves,"
unless they are consumed or "used up" in production. Only the services which they
render have marginal utility. He contended also that, whilst the supply of real
capital is limited by physical conditions, "the supply of money is in theory un-
limited." (Interest and Prices, p. xxvi.) Here he obviously meant "money units."
55 Marshall, Money, Credit and Commerce, p. 45.
li6 Ibid., p. 44. (My italics.) Why did Marshall use the word "direct"? I feel
that he was almost on the point of recognizing explicitly the "indirect" yield
(pecuniary or non-pecuniary) from money assets. He may have meant, "or other
direct benefit."
57 Marshall, Money, Credit and Commerce, p. 49.
cation if invested, say, in extra furniture; or a money income if
invested in extra machinery or cattle."
58
This contrast of fur-
niture and money (as opposed to Adam Smith's identification of
furniture with money) curiously failed to suggest to him, or his
critics and disciples, that he was making a false distinction. Money
assets (held as consumers' capital goods) render non-pecuniary
gratications just like those rendered by furniture.
How much wiser was Edwin Cannan's insight, in his Modern
Currency: "Our need for currency is analagous to our need for
houses," he said.
59
And he was, I feel, ahead of his contemporaries
in his recognition, from the beginning, that the demand for money
is essentially a demand to hold.
60
Nevertheless, the passage quoted
seems to be inconsistent with what he wrote elsewhere. Thus, in his
Money, he wrote at one point in the traditional way, that "people
only want money in order to buy other things with it .... "
61
In real-
ity, people want money so as to be in a position to acquire other
things at the most profitable time, or at the most convenient time.
Had it been put this way to him Cannan, like anyone else, would
have agreed at once.
62
As things are, after having recognized that
the services of money are analogous to those of a house, he wrote
that holdings of money "are not directly productive."
63
People
would not diminish their holdings "without reason," he continued,
"because it would, they believe, be inconvenient to have less in
hand." But cash in hand and at the bank does not differ in this
respect from any type of stock in trade. The main difference is that,
in the case of money stocks, it is easier to rectify any mistaken
judgment which has led to surplus stocks (but less easy to rectify
any deciency).
Wicksteed (agreeing with his interpretation of Aristotle) illus-
trated what he thought was "the exact nature of a circulating me-
dium,. as "something which X, when he has given Y something that
Y wants, is willing to receive in exchange though he has no use for
58 Ibid., p. 45. (My italics.)
59 Cannan, Modem Currency and the Regulation of Its Value, p. 11. It is interest-
ing to notice that Keynes contrasted houses and money (General Theory, pp. 226-
228).
60 See T. E. Gregory, Professor Cannan and Contemporary Monetary Theory, p. 37,
in London Essays in Economic!J.
61 Cannan, Money: Iu Connexion with Rising and Falling Prices, 4th Edn., Jl 19.
62 Had he consistently thought in this way, however, he would have made the
point referred to in his passage quoted in my footnote 71 much more effectively.
63 Modern Currency, p. 12. (My italics.) It is interesting to compare Marshall's
phrase, "no direct income," with Cannan's "not directly productive." The word
"direct" is not very helpful.
it himself, because he knows that he can, in his tum, get something
that he does want in exchange for it."
64
No article, he contended,
which is accepted as a medium of exchange, occupies "on its own
merits ... such a place on (people's) relative scale as would justify
the exchange."
65
But if we had "no use for" money, would we not
always part with it immediately we got it, so that the velocity of
circulation would be infinite? The fact that we hold money assets
for any period at all indicates that, although we do not want to use
these assets in any other way, their services do occupy a place on
our scale of preferences, just like the services of all the other capital
resources which we refrain from exchanging.
66
Cassel recognized that "an object in general demand" which de-
velops "spontaneously into a general medium of exchange ... nat-
urally acquires a new attraction, in virtue of its new property."
67
But he did not represent this "new attraction," or the "new prop-
erty," as a new and additional use (personal or business); and on
the next page he employed the words, "merely to be used later for
exchange with another commodity."
68
Robertson (Sir Denis H. ) , in spite of his highly independent and
original approach to the question, has never tom himself away from
the tradition which regards "idle money" as unproductive. The
following passage from the 1947 edition of his delightful textbook is
not one of the ''little bits of specially dead wood" which he cut out
of the 1928 version .
. . . The value of money is (within limits) a measure of the usefulness of any
one unit of money to its possessor, but not to society as a whole: while the
value of bread is also a measure (within limits) of the social usefulness of any
one loaf of bread. And the reason for this peculiarity about money is the fact
that nobody generally speaking wants it except for the sake of the control
which it gives over other things. 69
Again I ask, then why is the velocity of circulation not infinite?
Pigou, in The Veil of Money, refers to the damage which would
be inflicted on us if we lost the services of money. It would be just
84 Wicksteed, in Who Said "Bllff'en Metal?" op. cit., p. 108. (My italics.)
611 Wicksteed, The Common Sense of Political Economy, Vol. I, p. 136.
88 Because I insist upon the continuity of services or yield from money assets,
this does not mean that I deny the truism that such assets are demanded in order
to be "exchanged for something else" at the appropriate moment, i.e., when the
service8 rendered have fully fulfilled their purpose. But one eminent economist who
read the typescript of this article assumed that I was denying this!
67 Cassel, Theory of Social Economy, Vol. II, p. 350. (My italics.)
68 Ibid., p. 351.
611 D. H. Robertson, Money, p. 31.
208
as if roads and railways were destroyed.
70
But he similarly insists
that money is "only useful because it exchanges for other things,"
and he accepts the tradition that "a larger quantity does not, as with
other things, carry more satisfaction on its back than a smaller
quantity, but the same satisfaction." Nevertheless, he differs from
previous writers (with the exception of Greidanus and the possible
exception of Cannan)
71
because he makes it clear that by "quantity
of money" he means "the number of units of money embodied" in
the "instrument" or "institution" of money. ( Pigou's italics.) The
mere fact, however, that a particular economic good is capable of
being diluted is no proof that it is not useful or productive. Milk
does not cease to be useful because its adulteration does not in-
crease its gross usefulness.
72
Pigou has recourse also to a metaphor which previous writers
have used, namely, that of comparing money to the oil in a machine.
He refers to it as a "lubricant."
73
Now a lubricant is always con-
sumed, whereas money assets are economically durable. If we use
this metaphor, then, we must regard money assets as the resources
which supply a continuous flow of lubrication. The comparison then
succeeds in suggesting the continuous yield which money assets
offer. But it may still leave the wrong impression that the services
of money ~ o n s s t in "circulation."
74
Keynes adopted the Marshallian view of money being resources,
but barren resources (although Marshall seems to have been nearer
70 Pigou, The Veil of Money. The pertinent passages are all on pp. 24-27.
71 Greidanus (in his tract, The Development of Keynes' Economic Theories, p. 36),
has distinguished between the "nominal amount of money" and "the quantity of
money in terms of goods," for which I would use the terms "the number of money
units" and, "the amount of money in real terms." In his earlier work, The Value of
Money, p. 162, his exposition was less effective because he had not made this
distinction clearly enough.
The germ of the distinction is present also in Cannan's article "The Application
of the Theoretical Apparatus of Supply and Demand to Units of Currency," Economic
Journal, 1921, in which he explained that the demand for money can only be said
appropriately to have "increased" when more units of the same value would be de-
manded. At a lower value per unit there would have been, in my own terminology,
a demand for the same amount of "money in real terms" (measurable only in
abstract units of constant value but for more "actual money units," such units having
been "diluted").
72 I tee! that if Pigou had conceived of the total value of assets demanded for
and used for monetary purposes, being measured in "real terms," he would have
stressed the term "instrument" rather than the term "institution" as a description
of the aggregate collection of money assets. His comparison of this "institution" with
the laws of property and contract does not seem to me to be appropriate or helpful.
73 Pigou, op. cit., p. 25. (Compare Marshall, op. cit., p. 38; Robertson, op. cit.,
p. 10.)
74 See below, pp. 213-215.
than Keynes to a perception of the essential productiveness of
money assets). Yet the terminology of The General Theory sug-
gests, in itself, an awareness of the continuous services of money
assets; for it appears at first to be conferring a definite name upon
the yield which is expected to flow from an investment in such
assets, namely, "liquidity."
75
Certainly, liquidity is regarded as
(a) something valuable and (b) something continuously received
or enjoyed. This is implicit in the contention that we want a "re-
ward" for parting with it for any given length of time, and that we
shall be "rewarded" for so doing. "The power of disposal" over
money assets, said Keynes, although it offers "a potential convenience
or security," and although people are "ready to pay something"
(a "liquidity premium") for this advantage, brings forth, "so to
speak, nothing . . . in the shape of output."
76
But if the capital
value of my till is 100 and the average amount of cash in the
till is also 100, may they not be expected to make an equal
contribution to my output? However, Keynes contended that the
liquidity which is provided continuously by money held, and for
which people are prepared to pay a premium, represents a yield of
nil. The holders of money are envisaged as refusing to part with
this yield of nil unless they are paid the rate of interest.
77
Keynes built a heavy structure on this thesis that money assets
are absolutely sterile. So much is this so, that Greidanus actually
contrasts him with Marshall. Greidanus contends that Keynes' view
-first expressed in his Tract-that money has no utility apart from
its exchange value, although supported by quotations from Mar-
shall,
78
completely overlooked "the advantages of holding currency"
which Marshall stressed.
79
"The place Marshall would have assigned
to the 'advantages,' Keynes in his equation allots to the number of
75 The term "liquidity" had not, I think, previously been used in the sense which
Keynes gave it. It had been employed mainly in connection with the special case
of the reserves of banks, insurance societies, etc. Discussing banks, Cassel defined
"the liquidity of the assets as the ratio of the sum of the advances which falls due
for repayment daily to the sum of the advances made." ( Op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 403-4.)
76 Keynes, General Theory, p. 226.
77 Keynes' equation (General Theory, top of p. 228) to illustrate the fact that,
in equilibrium, "wealth owners" will have "nothing to choose in the way of ad-
vantage" between the holding or acquisition of houses, wheat and money, would,
if it had stood alone, have given the impression that he was about to say: "The
liquidity premium is, of course, simply another name for 'yield,' when we describe
the services of money." But in fact, he stressed the opposite, in deliberately con-
trasting the yield from a house with the absence of a yield from money.
78 Keynes quoted (in his Tract on Monetary Reform, pp. 78-9) some of the very
passages from Marshall which I have quoted above.
79 T. Greidanus, The Development of Keynes' Economic Theories, pp. 2-7.
210
consumption units we wish to buy in a certain period."
80
But the
fact that Keynes did not realize that his views about the services of
money diverged so fundamentally from those of his great teacher is
surely due to Marshall's own exposition reflecting some conceptual
confusion.
81
Keynes' acknowledged followers have, as far as I am aware, failed
to examine or test this crucial stone in his foundations. Apart from
the false impressions created through his having excluded the acqui-
sition of assets which provide liquidity from the concept of "invest-
ment," there remains this notion that money assets differ from other
assets in that they do not multiply. For instance, L. Tarshis, in a
1948 exposition of Keynesianism, contends that, against the advan-
tages of liquidity, "the holder of money must set the disadvantage
that it does not multiply, that his wealth held in that form does not
grow."
82
Of course, it does multiply in the sense that any agent of
production provides valuable services which may be embodied into
cumulable resources. The services of consumers' capital goods
(including cash balances) are always consumed; but those of pro-
ducers' goods (including cash balances) are incorporated into
wanted things with exchange value. That is why they are acquired
or retained.
Even Mises, who has so clearly perceived and emphasized the
essential homogeneity of the scarcity concept, has not yet rejected
the traditional view. Money, he says, is "an economic good,"
83
but
neither a producer's nor a consumer's good.
84
It is not acquired by
people "for employment in their own production activities,"
85
and
it is "not a part of capital; it produces no fruit."
86
Although "indis-
pensable in our economic order ... [money] is not a physical com-
ponent of the social distributive apparatus in the way that account
books, prisons, or fire-arms are."
87
Adam Smith said that money
was unproductive because it was like a highway.
88
But Mises would
8o Ibid., p. 6.
81
Marshall certainly failed to realize clearly enough that money assets, in providing
"advantages" or "benefits," were as productive as all other instrumental capital or
all other durable consumers' goods. Like several writers before him and after him,
he appears to have come very near to perceiving this truth, but for reasons which I
find puzzling, he never managed to make the final jump.
82 L. Tarshis, "A Consideration of the Economic and Monetary Theories of J. M.
Keynes," American Economic Review, May 1948, pp. 261-271.
83 Mises, Theory of Money and Credit, p. 85; Human Action, p. 415.
84 Mises, Theory of Money and Credit, p. 79.
85 Mises, Human Action, p. 398.
86 Mises, Theory of Money and Credit, p. 90.
87 Ibid., p. 85.
ss See above, p. 201.
211
insist that a highway is productive. Money, he says a little later,
does not derive its value from that of its products, like other prod-
ucts, "for no increase in the welfare of the members of a society can
result from the availability of an additional quantity of money."
89
Now it is true (as he puts it in his Human Action) that "the services
money renders can be neither improved nor impaired by changing
the supply of money,"
00
for he is here referring to the number of
money units. But it is not true that the aggregate stock of all com-
modities, securities or tokens which can serve the purposes of a
medium of exchange and which are demanded for that purpose,
does not contribute to "welfare" in proportion to its value. When
society decides to use assets to a greater extent for the monetary
services which they can perform, that does result in a preferred
use of all scarce resources and an increase in "welfare" in that sense.
Money assets held provide valuable services (utilities), and they
do derive their value from their power to render these services. The
fact that some assets held for medium of exchange purposes may
have value because they can be used for other purposes also (e.g.,
a gold coin) does not affect this truth.
It may be objected that, when the assets held are mere tokens, as
with currency notes and demand deposits, their value is derived,
not from the value of their services, but (a) from their market con-
vertibility into goods in general or (b) from their contractual or
legal convertibility into a monetary metal or other currencies. But
in the absence of faith in convertibility in some such sense, the
assets would be incapable of rendering a medium of exchange serv-
ices. They could not constitute money. It remains true, then, that
we part with non-money goods and services in order to acquire
money because we judge that money can render us services; and we
hold so much of it as renders services which we value more highly
than those rendered by non-money assets.
Far from denying the productiveness of money assets held, how-
ever, Mises constantly stresses their "services." And in a most lucid
passage he describes the nature of their productiveness
91
(although
without using this word). He insists that "what is called storing
money is a way of using wealth."
92
One's holdings of money do not
represent "an unintentional remainder," he says. Their amount "is
89 Ibid., p. 86.
90 Mises, Human Action, p. 418. (My italics.)
92 Mises, Theory of Money and Credit, p. 147. (My italics.)
determined by deliberate demand."
98
Money is "appraised on its
own merits, i.e., the services which each man expects from holding
cash."
94
And it does not perform its task by circulating, but by
being held. Thus, he says: "Money is an element of change, not
because it circulates but because it is kept in cash holdings."
95
In-
deed "there is no fraction of time in between in which the money is
not a part of an individual's or a firm's cash holding, but just in
'circulation'."
96
And although it is true that people are continuously
acquiring money in order continuously to part with it, they accumu-
late it in the first place "in order to be ready for the moment in
which a purchase may be accomplished."
97
For this reason, he
denies that there is a difference between money and vendible goods.
I get the impression therefore that, in his Human Action, Mises
is on the point of saying that it is merely the pecuniary yield which
is missing from the private holding of money assets.
H. S. Ellis, in an early work on German Monetary Theory ( 1934),
also comes remarkably near to stating the correct principle-so near,
indeed, that it looks almost as though, having prepared for combat,
he is unwilling actually to clash with the great weight of authority
against him. He certainly appears to be trying to escape the con-
clusions of his own analysis. Thus, he recognizes the "flow of utili-
ties" from money holdings and says that this flow "appears to the
producer indirectly as a plus in quantity of product ascribable to his
possessing a perfectly liquid asset and to the consumer as a plus in
satisfactions in the form of convenience .... "
98
Moreover, he real-
izes that the circulation of money "terminates the flow of serv-
ices. . .. "
99
On all these points, he is well ahead of most writers.
Yet at the same time he wants to "preserve the undeniably separate
character of monetary services,"
100
partly for reasons which I do
not follow, but partly because he feels that money assets as such,
although providing services or utilities, cannot be properly regarded
as part of the aggregate assets of the community. This is so, he
says, because it would be double counting, such as would result if
94 Ibid., pp. 414-5. (My italics. )
95 Ibid., p. 415. See also ibid., p. 396, where Mises questions the assumption of
the mathematical economists that services rendered by money "consist wholly or
essentially in its turnover, in its circulation."
97 Ibid., p. 400.
98 Ellis, German Monetary Theory, p. 109.
99Ibid., p. 109 (footnote).
too Ibid., p. 109.
213
one included mortgages or stocks and shares as well as the assets
they represent, as part of society's aggregate capital.
101
But to obtain the goods which money is said to "represent," one
must exchange money assets for non-money assets, whereas, if a
company is liquidated, the shareholders do not exchange assets, i.e.,
they do not buy the capital resources of the firm: they receive them
without any exchange taking place (in practice after the assets are
realized for money). Similarly, if a mortgage is foreclosed, there is
no exchange of assets. Money assets do not, then, "represent" in
the same sense the assets for which they can be exchanged. They
are themselves assets which are just as productive (although in a
different way) as those for which they are exchanged.
102
To appre-
ciate this, one must try for a moment to forget about the number
of units into which these assets are divided and to think of their
aggregate amount in real terms.
As far as I know, only one economist has come at all close to an
actual enunciation of what I regard as the true theory of the yield
of money assets, namely, Greidanus, who has significantly described
his theory, "the yield theory."
103
But his contributions on this sub-
ject appear to have had little influence upon other economists,
whilst his treatment has not brought out explicitly what I conceive
to be the full basic truth-the fact that money assets are not only
subject to the same laws of value as other scarce things, but are
equally productive in all intelligible senses.
Surely the reality is that, although money is always held (except
perhaps by misers) with a view to its being ultimately passed on to
others, the act of passing it on is merely the culmination of a service
(technical or speculative) which it has been rendering to the pos-
sessor. Indeed, the transfer itself occupies a mere moment whilst
the services which flow from the possession of money are continuous
over time. The essence of all these services is availability. In the
terminology which I suggested in my Theory of Idle Resources,
104
money assets are not unemployed or resting when they are in our
pockets, or in our tills, or in our banking accounts, but in pseudo-
Ioi Ibid., p. 110.
102 There is another argument used by Ellis to justify the separate classification
of money assets. He argues that "individuals hold money only because it has ex-
change value, whereas they would desire shoes even if shoes were free goods." (Ibid.,
p. 113). But the point at issue is the similarity of money assets and non-money
assets. Free goods would not be assets; and only assets can be used as media of
exchange.
103 Greidanus, The Value of Money.
104 See my TheonJ of Idle Resources, pp. 57-70, for the definition pseudo-idleness,
and pp. 146-173 for the definition of withheld capacity.
idleness, like a piano when it is not being played, or a fireman or
a fire engine when there are no fires. If it could be shown that there
exist various forms of wasteful idleness in money which could be
classed as withheld capacity, or which correspond, say, to a trader's
redundant stocks (which, through mismanagement, he fails to real-
ize), we could rightly talk of "idle money," but not otherwise. And
the fact that money units may be held speculatively does not mean
that they are not being used. Stocks of goods retained because their
sale now would, it is anticipated, realize less than their sale later on,
including all such goods in warehouses and shops, are normally
105
being used, in the course of the production of "time utilities." The
same applies to money units. When speculatively held, they repre-
sent money in use.
106
Hence money does not do its work by circulating. The common
analogies of "the circulation of the blood," or "the oil of a machine,"
are both bad analogies. Because money units are exchange media,
they just happen to change ownership more than other types of
assets. If we imagine that the work of money is circulation, then we
must conclude that money is always idle; for the transfer of money
must be regarded as instantaneous!
107
It has been suggested that,
if people generally were paid quarterly instead of weekly, the de-
mand for money would increase because more money would "be
kept idling about at any one time."
108
That is quite the wrong way
of putting it. There would be more work for money units to do/
09
more monetary services would be required, and more money would
therefore be required. Changes in the average interval between
purchases (i.e., changes in the velocity of circulation of money
units) do not mean changes in the average period of idleness of
those units, but changes in their average period of service to each
holder, which is a very different thing.
105 I use the word "normally" here because these stocks may represent not pseudo-
idleness but withheld capacity, i.e., goods which are being withheld, not specula-
tively, but with a view to maintaining or forcing up prices.
1
06 This passage must not be taken to imply that I regard the speculative holding
of money as part of a state of affairs which society can passively accept. My point
is simply that such money cannot be described as "wastefully idle."
107 Cannan made this point in a reference to the "disastrous confusions" which can
arise through the "common mistake" of dividing currency into that which is "actu-
ally circulating" and that which is "idle." (Modern Currency, p. 8.) The demand
for houses, he said, does not depend upon the number of transactions in them, but
comes from "those who want to hold houses: even the speculator wants to hold
for a time." (Money, 4th Edn., p. 72.)
10s D. H. Robertson, op. cit., p. 37.
109 No diseconomy would necessarily be involved. There might be less work for
other productive factors.
During an inflation there might appear to be an enormous de-
mand for money assets in the sense that people want them for pe-
riods of time which they intend to keep as short as possible. In such
circumstances, in spite of a multiplication of transactions, and in
spite of increased circulation, the amount of work actually needed
from money assets falls off. Each money unit becomes less produc-
tive because the real yield in convenience etc., is diminished by a
real loss. Certainly, people still want money units "for what they
will buy," but they value them less than ever.
110
It may be objected that the nature of money is such that it does
do all its work in instantaneous skips from buyer to seller, or from
debtor to creditor, or from giver to receiver. The objection may
be answered by means of a comparison with a climber's rope. Can
it be said that the rope on which the climber is belayed is of service
to him only when he actually loses his grip and dangles on it? Ob-
viously not, for without the security it provides, he would almost
certainly not have been attempting that particular climb.
111
Some may feel that I am stressing a point which is of verbal
rather than of substantial importance. But as Greidanus has pointed
out, in the minds of the Keynesians, the failure to recognize the real
but non-pecuniary yield enjoyed has led to material fallacies. Once
the productiveness of'money assets is recognized, the notion that
the rate of interest is determined by the demand for and supply of
money assets, or the demand for and supply of the services of money
assets ("liquidity"), ceases to have meaning. And the modifications
of that theory, like the various compromise revisions of Keynes'
theory of interest by his disciples, become equally untenable. For
if money assets are demanded, like all other assets, up to the point
no Cannan made this point in his Money, (4th Edn., p. 23). He said that "what
every one wants the money for . . . is to buy commodities and services in the hopes
of making a profit because 'things are going up.' "
111 An eminent "Keynesian" economist who read the typescript of this article
wrote: "You contrast the view that money has utility on its own account by perform-
ing a definite service with the view that money is valued only by reference to what
it will buy. You take these views to be contradictory to one another and criticize
some authors for holding both views simultaneously. You seem to feel that an author
who recognizes the inherent serviceability of money ought to shake off this other
view that money is wanted for what it would get. I suggest, on the contrary, there
is nothing mutually contradictory about these two views ... Thus, the two theories
are not mutually exclusive but support each other." I ought to make it clear that
I do not regard the truism (it is hardly a "theory") that "money is wanted for
what it would get" as conflicting in any way with the theory that money assets
are productive. Hence I do not criticize any authors for holding "both views
simultaneously," but for denying the productiveness of money assets, which they
usually do in simple, unambiguous language.
216
at which their marginal prospective yield has fallen to the rate of
interest, it becomes obvious that the demand for and supply of
merely one category of capital assets cannot be held to be the deter-
minants of the ratio between the value of the pure services of assets
in general and their capital value, which is the best way of conceiv-
ing of the rate of interest. If interest is envisaged (as Keynes re-
garded it) as the "reward" for not hoarding, it has to be accepted
equally as the "reward" for not investing in each and every other
productive field. Or, more generally, the "reward" for not investing
in any productive field (including that of money assets) is the
"average" or "general" return which can be expected from all other
fields of investment-allowance made for entrepreneurial remunera-
tion.112
It might be argued that there is one respect in which money
assets are different, namely, that their real volume or stock is not
determined by their being produced and consumed. That is, where-
as services may be embodied into non-money assets for replace-
ment or net accumulation purposes, this is impossible with money
(although the number of money units could be affected by the pro-
duction of any commodity into which such units are contractually
or legally convertible-e.g., gold, under the gold standard). The
truth is, however, that money is in exactly the same position as cer-
tain other non-money assets in this respect. Thus, consider the case
of land, in the sense of site. With the growth of population and
the expansion of the productive purposes to which land can be put,
its aggregate value in real terms will increase. Similarly (and ceteris
paribus) the real value of money assets will increase to the same
extent under such circumstances.
113
But the services of money assets
are produced and, like all other services, they are either consumed
or embodied into products.
In conclusion, I suggest that if we understand that the demand
for money assets is a demand for productive resources, we are in a
better position to grasp the nature of the difficult problems which
arise owing to (a) uncertainties about the future value of the money
unit (in practice, uncertainties about what governments or mone-
tary authorities will do) or (b) (less important and rather less diffi-
cult) realized changes in the va]ue of the money unit.
112 It is unnecessary to discuss here the qualifications which this assertion requires
when the value of the money unit is rising or falling.
113 On the determinants of this real value, see my article, The Notion of the
Volume of Money, op. cit.
XVI
The Accelerator and Say's Law
1
by WILLIAM H. PETERSON
EcoNOMISTS, like women, are not
immune to the dictates of fashion. One such dictate in vogue among
post-Keynesians is the accelerator, which enjoyed similar popularity
in the early Twenties. At least a partial reason for the renewed
popularity of the accelerator is that it forms an integral part of the
General Theory.
2
The acceleration doctrine holds that a temporary increase in con-
sumer demand sets in motion an accelerated "derived demand" for
capital goods. This action, according to adherents of the doctrine,
explains at least part of the causation of the business cycle. As
evidence supporting this theory, accelerationists point to boom-and-
bust, feast-and-famine conditions prevalent in capital goods indus-
tries.
A typical illustration of the acceleration principle follows. Assume
a "normal" annual demand for a certain consumer good at 500,000
units. Production is accomplished through 1000 durable units of
capital goods; capacity of each capital unit: 500 consumer units per
year; life of each unit: 10 years. Then assume a 10 per cent increase
in consumer demand. Thus:
Annual Consumer Demand
"normal year" 500,000
next yr. + ~ , 550,000
Srd yr.-new nor. 550,000
Capital Goods
1000
llOO
1100
Annual Captl. Gds.
Demand ("derived")
100 (replacements)
200 (replacements plus new)
100 (replacements)
1 This article is done at the inspiration of a series of lectures by Prof. W. H. Hutt
of the University of Capetown, at Buck Hill Falls, Pa., June 13-25, 1955.
2 See, e.g., J. M. Clark, "Business Acceleration and the Law of Demand," ]PE,
March 1917, pp. 217-235; T. N. Carver, Principles of National Economy, 1921, pp.
436-440; J. M. Keynes, General Theory, 1935; and R. F. Harrod, Trade Cycle, 1936.
217
Conclusion: 10% increase in consumer demand led to 100% in-
crease in capital demand in same year but to 50% decrease in capital
demand in following year.
The argument against the acceleration doctrine simply shows so
many unreal assumptions and a vital non sequitur as to nullify any
validity in the doctrine whatsoever. An analysis of these objections
follows:
1. Rigid specialization in capital goods industries. Acceleration-
ists pose their doctrine on the basis of a given capital goods industry
supplying equipment for a given consumer goods industry and no
other. Thus a decrease in consumer demand or even a falling-off
in its rate of growth immediately cuts off part of the capital goods
market, and the "famine" phase of the capital goods industry begins.
Yet where is the capital goods industry so rigidly specialized as
to preclude its serving other markets, with or without some conver-
sion of its facilities? Are we to presume that businessmen under the
pressure of overhead and profit maximization will twiddle their
thumbs waiting for their consumer demand to "reaccelerate"? It is
clear that accelerationists deny or ignore convertibility of facilities
and substitutability of markets.
Within many capital goods industries, trends of diversification
and complementarity are evident. Examples: A machine tool manu-
facturer which has undertaken lines of construction and textile
equipment; a basic chemical producer which has engaged in the
manufacture of home clotheswasher and dishwasher detergents.
These trends break clown the "industry" classifications, upon which
the accelerator is based.
2. No unutilized capacity in the consumer goods industry. Hold-
ers of the acceleration doctrine assume the consumer goods industry
is operating at the extensive margin of production and no intensive
possibilities for greater production exist.
But very few consumer goods industries, typically, operate at
constant peak capacity. To do so is generally to operate beyond
the point of optimum efficiency as well as beyond the point of
maximum profit. The usual case then, other than during wartime,
is that an industry operates with some unutilizecl capacity, some
"slack" Normally this unutilizecl capacity is to be found among the
marginal and sub-marginal producers, and it is these producers
which could and probably would absorb any increase in consumer
demand-without, of course, the purchase of new equipment.
Yet even the successful and efficient producer would likely con-
sider other means of absorbing higher consumer demand before
committing himself to more equipment and greater overhead For
example, he could expand the existing labor force, resort to over-
time, add one or two additional shifts, sub-contract work in over-
loaded departments, and so on. That such alternatives are feasible
without more equipment is evidenced by the experience of even
the most efficient Brms in the utilization of their capital equipment.
Examples: A West Coast airplane manufacturer found his gear-cut-
ting equipment in use only 16 per cent of the time; a New York
newspaper plant utilized its presses only 11 per cent of the time.
The concept of 100 per cent utilization of all capital equipment is
not tenable.
3. Automaton role for entrepreneurs. Accelerationists share the
danger common to all holistic and macro approaches to economic
problems-namely, the submergence of individual and entrepre-
neurial decision (human action) to a constant factor within a pat
formula. Such treatment implies on the part of entrepreneurs irra-
tionality or sheer impulsiveness. Boulding described this situation
thusly:
3
The picture of the firm on which much of our analysis is built is crude in the
extreme, and in spite of recent refinements there remains a vast gap between
the elegant curves of the economist and the daily problems of a flesh-and-blood
executive.
Accelerationists argue that a temporary rise in consumer demand
automatically calls into being additional capital goods. If this were
true, it follows that entrepreneurs in capital goods industries wit-
lessly expand their capacity and thereby commit themselves to
greater overhead without regard to future capital goods demand.
True, entrepreneurs can and do err in gauging future demand.
But the concept of automatic response to any rise in demand, on
the order of the conditioned reflex salivation of Pavlov's dogs, is not
warranted. Increased capacity is less of a calculated risk in response
to increased current demand than it is to anticipated future demand.
This anticipation, in tum, is likely to be based upon market research,
price comparison, population studies, cost analysis, political stabil-
ity, etc., rather than upon impulse.
4. Static technology. It is not surprising that the accelerator per-
haps reached the zenith of its popularity when professional journals
were replete with terms like "secular stagnation" and "technological
frontier." (Nowadays the term is "automation." Apparently we
3 K. E. Boulding, "The Theory of the Firm in the Last Ten Years," AER, Decem-
ber 1942, p. 801.
220 ON FREEDOM AND l ~ R E E ENTERPRISE
have moved from the one extreme of too little technology to the
opposite extreme of too much.) Such heavy-handed treatment of
technology does not coincide with experience. Science and inven-
tion do not hibernate during depressions. Du Pont introduced both
Nylon and Cellophane during the Thirties.
Adherents of the acceleration principle must either minimize or
ignore the impact of technology on rising productivity, for, after
all, a strict ratio of capital goods to consumer goods output must be
maintained to substantiate the action of the accelerator. Technol-
ogy, however, can and does obviate such ratios. Technological ad-
vances not only serve to increase the unit-volume of given capital
goods through superior technical design but also through the im-
provement of fuel, the refinement of raw materials, the use of time-
and-motion studies, the rearrangement of layout and production
flow, and so on.
While the growth of technology is somewhat irregular, there can
be no question of its progression. Progression tends to "accelerate"
the obsolescence component of depreciation and thereby crimps the
acceleration model, which, ceteris paribus, ignores the unpredict-
able dynamics of technology.
4
5. Arbitrary time periods. Accelerationists must use time as a
frame of reference for their doctrine. The most frequent time pe-
riod used is a year. Such a time period, however, implies an even
spread of the increase (or the decrease) of consumer demand in
the time period. Thus a spasmodic strengthening and weakening
of demand within the time period could distort the artificial taxo-
nomies of the accelerator.
For example, a January-December period may carry one peak de-
mand, whereas a July-June period may yield two peak demands. An
accelerationist may read the first period as having an 8 per cent
increase and the second as having a 10 per cent increase, which, in
the long run, may average out to 9 per cent or some other figure.
Moreover, within a time period, the accelerationist assumes a
fixed relationship between consumer goods and capital goods. Let
alone the problem of technological advances, were such a fixed rela-
tionship to exist it would necessarily mean that the cycles of pro-
duction for both sets of goods were perfectly synchronized. This,
however, is rarely the case. Consumer goods generally have a short
cycle; capital goods, a long cycle. Thus, current capital goods pro-
4 Cf. J. R. Hicks, The Theory of Wages, 1932, pp. 112-135. Even though it is
incidental to his distribution theory, Hicks formulates a theory of invention which
could profit the accelerationists.
duction may be based on orders originating in an earlier "period."
Two consecutive increases in consumer demand could conceivably
be followed by a decrease, which may well mean that the latest
order for capital goods would be cancelled. The flow of goods from
the capital pipeline is not irrevocable.
6. Implicit denial of Say's Law. Previous objections to the accel-
eration doctrine were of the "other-things-are-not-equal" variety. In
short, with so many independent variables ceteris paribus would not
hold.
This objection-the implicit denial of Say's Law of Markets-is
more fundamental. If it is valid, it would strike at the heart of the
acceleration principle and reduce it to a non sequitur.
According to Say's Law, the source of purchasing power lies
within production-i.e., supply creates its own demand-and there-
fore generalized overproduction or underconsumption is not possi-
ble. Barring external distortions to the economy, such as war or
drought, Say's Law is operative under two conditions-the flexibility
of prices and the neutrality of money. Thus it is not astonishing
that a major accelerationist like Keynes who shunned price flexibil-
ity and upheld inflation should attempt a refutation of Say's Law
and resurrect the dead body of underconsumption, rebaptized as
the "consumption function" or "the propensity to consume."
If it is true, as accelerationists claim, that a rise in consumer de-
mand will thereby create a demand for capital goods, then it must
be explained what causes the rise in consumer demand in the first
place. Should accelerationists concede that the rise is due to capital
-or as Bohm-Bawerk put it, "the technical superiority of round-
about production" -they would then be forced to admit, logically,
that they have put the cart before the horse, that the growth of
capital preceded the growth of demand.
Indeed, if demand could arise without prior production to give
it effectiveness, then we should witness the overnight industrializa-
tion of India, where such astronomical "consumer demand" exists
as to induce the full flowering of the accelerator.
Say's Law not only points to the fallacy of the accelerator but to
its corollary, "derived demand." There is a germ of truth in "derived
demand" -"primary" consumer demand does affect "secondary" cap-
ital demand. But the consecutive sequence should be reversed. The
effect of consumer demand upon capital is not demand for capital
per se. Capital is always in demand as long as time-preference
exists-as long as capital yields the reward of interest. Rather, the
effect of "derived demand" will be, if strong enough, merely to
222
change the form of capital goods, no more. If not otherwise im-
p e d ~ d capital will always flow to the most urgent of the least
satisfied demands. The point is that capital accumulation-saving
and investment-must come before "derived demand." So-called
derived demand merely shifts already existing productive resources
from present applications to alternative but more rewarding appli-
cations.
Insofar, as the acceleration explanation of the business cycle is
concerned, accelerationists view deceleration with equal alarm to
acceleration. The dilemma was stated by Samuelson:
5
It is easy to see that in the acceleration principle we have a powerful factor
for economic instability. We have all heard of situations where people have to
keep running in order to stand still. In the economic world, matters may be
worse still: the system may have to be kept running at an ever faster pace just
in order to stand still.
To maintain such an argument, Samuelson and other acceleration-
ists must discount the fact that a cut in consumer demand in one
line releases consumer demand for other lines. Thus, the change
in the composition of consumer demand releases factors engaged in
certain suspended lines of capital goods production for new lines
of endeavor. That this would cause frictional unemployment of
factors is not denied, but frictional unemployment is far less of a
problem than generalized unemployment. The notion of ever-accel-
erating consumer demand to achieve stability within its related
capital goods industry thus loses sight of the interchangeability of
factors. The essence of capitalism, as in life, is change. While some
industries may be in decline, others will be in ascendancy. Capital
is not eternally fixed; it can be liquidated and "recirculated." Nor
does capital idly wait for consumer demand to "reaccelerate." Dis-
investment and reinvestment, business mortality and business birth,
industry expansion and industry contraction, constantly adjust the
supply and form of capital to the demand for consumer goods.
Samuelson overlooks the dynamics of capital in his essentially static,
timeless acceleration thesis.
Say's Law places production as the controlling factor over con-
sumption. The accelerator reverses this order. Thus accelerationist
Keynes sought to accelerate consumer demand by having the un-
employed uselessly dig holes or build pyramids, the important thing
being to put "purchasing power" in the hands of spenders. Produc-
tionless "purchasing power," according to Say's Law, is a contradic-
5 P. A. Samuelson, Economics, 2nd ed., 1951, p. 391.
tion in terms; it is nothing but inflation. In short, the false premise
of "derived demand" in the acceleration principle has led to other
false premises.
Conclusions. Four findings spring from this article. One, the
accelerator is groundless as a tool of economic analysis. Two, Say's
Law has yet to meet an effective refutation. Three, acceptance of
the acceleration doctrine leads to false conclusions in other areas
of economics. And four, accelerationists must look elsewhere for an
answer to the business cycle.
While there is evidence that capital goods industries do suffer
wide extremes of business activity during the course of the business
cycle, it is also true that consumer goods industries undergo much
the same cycle, even if their amplitudes are smaller. That there is
correlation between the two phenomena is not denied. But correla-
tion is not causation. This is the heart of the error in the accelerator.
XVII
Toward a Reconstruction o/
Utility and Welfare Economics
by MURRAy N. ROTHBARD
I. Introduction
INDIVIDUAL valuation is the key-
stone of economic theory. For, fundamentally, economics does not
deal with things or material objects. Economics analyzes the logical
attributes and consequences of the existence of individual valuations.
"Things" enter into the picture, of course, since there can be no
valuation without things to be valued. But the essence and the
driving force of human action, and therefore of the human market
economy, are the valuations of individuals. Action is the result of
choice among alternatives, and choice reflects values, i.e., individual
preferences among these alternatives.
Individual valuations are the direct subject matter of the theories
of utility and of welfare. Utility theory analyzes the laws of the
values and choices of an individual; welfare theory discusses the
relationship between the values of many individuals, and the conse-
quent possibilities of a scientific conclusion on the "social" desir-
ability of various alternatives.
Both theories have lately been foundering in stormy seas. Utility
theory is galloping off in many different directions at once; welfare
theory, after reaching the heights of popularity among economic
theorists, threatens to sink, sterile and abandoned, into oblivion.
The thesis of this paper is that both related branches of economic
theory can be salvaged and reconstructed, using as a guiding prin-
ciple of both fields the concept of "demonstrated preference."
224
II. Demonstrated Preference
a. A Statement of the Concept. Human action is the use of
means to arrive at preferred ends. Such action contrasts to the
observed behavior of stones and planets, for it implies purpose on
the part of the actor. Action implies choice among alternatives.
Man has means, or resources, which he uses to arrive at various
ends; these resources may be time, money, labor energy, land,
capital goods, etc. He uses these resources to attain his most pre-
ferred ends. From his action, we can deduce that he has acted so
as to satisfy his most highly valued desires or preferences.
The concept of demonstrated preference is simply this: that
actual choice reveals, or demonstrates, a man's preferences; i.e., that
his preferences are deducible from what he has chosen in action.
Thus, if a man chooses to spend an hour at a concert rather than
a movie, we deduce that the former was preferred, or ranked higher
on his value scale. Similarly, if a man spends five dollars on a shirt
we deduce that he preferred purchasing the shirt to any other uses
he could have found for the money. This concept of preference,
rooted in real choices, forms the keystone of the logical structure
of economic analysis, and particularly of utility and welfare analysis.
While a similar concept played a role in the writings of the early
utility economists, it had never received a name, and it therefore
remained largely undeveloped and unrecognized as a distinct con-
cept. It was generally discarded in the 1930's, before it had even
achieved recognition. This view of preference as derived from
choice was present in varying degree in the writings of the early
Austrian economists, as well as in the works of Jevons, Fisher, and
Fetter. Fetter was the only one who clearly employed the concept
in his analysis. The clearest and most thorough formulation of the
concept has been in the works of Professor Mises.
1
b. Positivism and the Charge of Tautology. Before developing
some of the applications of the demonstrated preference principle
to utility and welfare theory, we must consider the methodological
objections that have been levelled against it. Professor Alan
Sweezy, for example, seizes on a sentence of Irving Fisher's which
1 Cf. Alan R. Sweezy, "The Interpretation of Subjective Value Theory in the
Writings of the Austrian Economists," Review of Economic Studies, June 1934,
pp. 176-85, for an historical survey. Sweezy devotes a good part of the article to a
criticism of Mises as the leading exponent of the demonstrated preference approach.
For Mises' views, cf. Human Action (New Haven, 1949), pp. 94-96, 102-03; Theory
of Money and Credit (3rd Ed. New Haven, 1951), pp. 46ff. Also cf. Frank A.
Fetter, Economic Principles (New York, 1915), pp. 14-21.
very succinctly expressed the concept of demonstrated preference:
"Each individual acts as he desires." Sweezy is typical of the major-
ity of present-day economists in not being able to understand how
such a statement can be made with absolute validity. To Sweezy,
insofar as it is not an empirically testable proposition in psychology,
such a sentence must simply reduce to the meaningless tautology:
"each individual acts as he acts."
This criticism is rooted in a fundamental epistemological error
that pervades modern thought: the inability of modern methodol-
ogists to understand how economic science can yield substantive
truths by means of logical deduction (i.e., the method of "praxeol-
ogy"). For they have adopted the epistemology of positivism (now
dubbed "logical empiricism" or "scientific empiricism" by its practi-
tioners), which uncritically applies the procedures appropriate in
physics to the sciences of human action.
2
In physics, simple facts can be isolated in the laboratory. These
isolated facts are known directly, but the laws to explain these facts
are not. The laws may only be hypothecated. Their validity can
only be determined by logically deducing consequents from them
which can be verified by appeal to the laboratory facts. Even if the
laws explain the facts, however, and their inferences are consistent
with them, the laws of physics can never be absolutely established.
For some other law may prove more elegant or capable of explain-
ing a wider range of facts. In physics, therefore, postulated expla-
nations have to be hypothecated in such a way that they or their
consequents can be empirically tested. Even then, the laws are only
tentatively rather than absolutely valid.
In human action, however, the situation is reversed. There is
here no laboratory where "facts" can be isolated and broken down
into their simple elements. Instead, there are only historical "facts"
which are complex phenomena, resultants of many casual factors.
These phenomena must be explained, but they cannot be isolated or
used to verify or falsify any law. On the other hand, economics,
or praxeology, has full and complete knowledge of its original and
basic axioms. These are the axioms implicit in the very existence of
human action, and they are absolutely valid so long as human be-
ings exist. But if the axioms of praxeology are absolutely valid for
human existence, then so are the consequents which can logically
be deduced from them. Hence, economics, in contrast to physics,
can derive absolutely valid substantive truths about the real world
2 Cf. the methodological treatises of Kaufmann, Hutchison, Souter, Stonier, Myrdal,
Morgenstern, etc.
227
by deductive logic. The axioms of physics are only hypothecated
and hence subject to revision; the axioms of economics are already
known and hence absolutely true.
3
The irritation and bewilderment
of positivists over the "dogmatic" pronouncements of praxeology
stem, therefore, from their universal application of methods proper
only to the physical sciences.
4
The suggestion has been made that praxeology is not really scien-
tific, because its logical procedures are verbal ("literary") rather than
mathematical and symbolic.
5
But mathematical logic is uniquely
appropriate to physics, where the various logical steps along the
way are not in themselves meaningful, for the axioms and there-
fore the deductions of physics are in themselves meaningless, and
only take on meaning "operationally," insofar as they can explain
and predict given facts. In praxeology, on the contrary, the axioms
themselves are known as true and are therefore meaningful. As a
result, each step-by-step deduction is meaningful and true. Mean-
ings are far better expressed verbally than in meaningless formal
symbols. Moreover, simply to translate economic analysis from
words into symbols, and then to retranslate them so as to explain
the conclusions, makes little sense, and violates the great scientific
principle of Occam's Razor that there should be no unnecessary
multiplication of entities.
The crucial concept of the positivists, and the one that forms the
basis for their attack on demonstrated preference, is that of "opera-
tional meaning." Indeed, their favorite critical epithet is that such
and such a formulation or law is "operationally meaningless."
6
The
3 On the methodology of praxeology and physics, cf. Mises, Human Action, op.
cit., and F. A. Hayek, The Counter Revolution of Science (Glencoe, Ill., 1952),
Part I.
4 It is even dubious that positivists accurately interpret the proper methodology
of physics itself. On the widespread positivist misuse of the Heisenberg Uncertainty
Principle in physics as well as in other disciplines, cf. A. H. Hobbs, Social Problems
and Scientism (Harrisburg, Pa., 1953), pp. 220-32.
5 For a typical suggestion, cf. George J. Schuller, "Rejoinder," American Economic
Review, March 1951, p. 188. For a realization that mathematical logic is essentially
subsidiary to basic verbal logic, cf. the remarks of Andre Lalande and Rene Poirier,
on "Logique" and "Logistique," in (A. Lalande, ed.), Vocabulaire Technique et
Critique de la Philosophie (6th Ed., Paris, 1951), pp. 574, 579.
6 Paul Samuelson has added the weight of his authority to Sweezy's criticism of
Mises and demonstrated preference, and has couched his endorsement in terms of
"operational meaning." Samuelson explicitly rejects the idea of a true utility theory
in favor of one that is merely hypothetical. Cf. Paul A. Samuelson, "The Empirical
Implications of Utility Analysis," Econometrica, 1938, pp. 344 ff; and id., Founda-
tions of Economic Analysis (Cambridge, 1947), pp. 91-92.
The concept of operational meaning was originated by the physicist Percy W.
228
test of "operationally meaningful" is derived strictly from the pro-
cedures of physics as outlined above. An explanatory law must be
framed so that it can be tested and found empirically false. Any
law which claims to be absolutely true and not empirically capable
of being falsified is therefore "dogmatic" and operationally meaning-
less-hence, the positivist's view that if a statement or law is not
capable of being falsified empirically, it must simply be a tautol-
ogous definition. And consequently, Sweezy's attempted reduction
of Fisher's sentence to a meaningless identity.
7
Sweezy objects that Fisher's "each man acts as he desires" is
circular reasoning, because action implies desire, and yet desires
are not arrived at independently, but are only discoverable through
the action itself. Yet this is not circular. For desires exist by virtue
of the concept of human action, and of the existence of action. It
is precisely the characteristic of human action that it is motivated
by desires and ends, in contrast to the unmotivated bodies studied
by physics. Hence, we can say validly that action is motivated by
desires, and yet confine ourselves to deducing the specific desires
from the real actions.
c. Professor Samuelson and "Revealed Preference." "Revealed
preference" -preference revealed through choice-would have been
an apt term for our concept. It has, however been pre-empted by
Samuelson for a seemingly similar but actually quite different con-
. cept of his own. The critical difference is this: Samuelson assumes
the existence of an underlying preference scale that forms the
basis of a man's actions, and that remains constant in the course
of his actions over time. Samuelson then uses complex mathematical
procedures in an attempt to "map" the individual's preference scale
on the basis of his numerous actions.
The prime error here is the assumption that the preference scale
remains constant over time. There is no reason whatever for making
any such assumption. All we can say is that an action, at a specific
point of time, reveals part of a man's preference scale at that time.
Bridgman explicitly to explain the methodology of physics. Cf. Bridgman, The Logic
of Modern Physics (New York, 1927). Many founders of modern positivism, such
as Mach and Boltzmann, were also physicists.
7 The heroes of positivism, Rudolf Carnap and Ludwig Wittgenstein, disparaged
deductive inference as merely drawing out "tautologies" from the axioms. Yet all
reasoning is deductive, and this process is peculiarly vital to arriving at truth. For
a critique of Carnap and Wittgenstein, and a demonstration that inference is not
merely identity or "tautology," cf. A. Lalande, "Tautologie," in Vocabulaire, op. cit.,
pp. 1103-04.
229
There is no warrant for assuming that it remains constant from one
point of time to another.
8
The "revealed preference" theorists do not recognize that they
are assuming constancy; they believe that their assumption is simply
that of consistent behavior, which they identify with "rationality."
They will admit that people are not always "rational," but uphold
their theory as being a good first approximation or even as having
normative value. However, as Mises has pointed out, constancy
and consistency are two entirely different things. Consistency
means that a person maintains a transitive order of rank on his
preference-scale (if A is preferred to B and B is preferred to C,
then A is preferred to C). But the revealed preference procedure
does not rest on this assumption so much as on an assumption of
constancy-that an individual maintains the same value-scale over
time. While the former might be called irrational, there is certainly
nothing irrational about someone's value scales changing through
time. Hence, no valid theory can be built on a constancy assump-
tion.9
One of the most absurd procedures based on a constancy assump-
tion has been the attempt to arrive at a consumer's preference
scale not through observed real action, but through quizzing him by
questionnaries. In vacuo, a few consumers are questioned at length
on which abstract bundle of commodities they would prefer to
another abstract bundle, etc. Not only does this suffer from the
constancy error; no assurance can be attached to the mere question-
ing of people when they are not confronted with the choices in
actual practice. Not only will a person's valuation differ when
talking about them than when he is actually choosing, but there
is also no guarantee that he is telling the truth.
10
8 Samuelson's analysis suffers from other errors as well, such as the use of invalid
"index number" procedures. On the theoretical fallacies of index numbers, cf. Mises,
Theory of Money and Credit, op. cit., pp. 187-94.
9 Cf. Mises, Human Action, op. cit., pp. 102-03. Mises demonstrates that Wick-
steed and Robbins committed a similar error.
10 It is to Samuelson's credit that he rejects the questionnaire approach. Professors
Kennedy and Keckskemeti, for different reasons, defend the questionnaire method.
Kennedy simply says, rather illogically, that in vacuo procedures are being used
anyway, when the theorist states that more of a good is preferred to less. But this
is not in vacuo; it is a conclusion based on the praxeological knowledge that since
a good is any object of action, more must be preferred to less while it remains a
good. Kennedy is wrong, therefore, when he asserts that this is a circular argument,
for the fact that action exists is not ''circular."
Keckskemeti actually asserts that the questionnaire method is preferable to observ-
ing behavior in discovering preferences. The basis of his argument is a spurious
dichotomy between utility and ethical valuations. Ethical valuations may be con-
230
The bankruptcy of the revealed-preference approach has never
been better portrayed than by a prominent follower, Professor
Charles Kennedy. Says Kennedy: "In what respectable science
would the assumption of consistency (i.e., constancy) be accepted
for one moment?"
11
But he asserts it must be retained anyway,
else utility theory could not serve any useful purpose. The aban-
donment of truth for the sake of a spurious usefulness is a hallmark
of the positivist-pragmatist tradition. Except for certain auxiliary
constructions, it should be clear that the false cannot be useful in
constructing a true theory. This is particularly the case in eco-
nomics, which is explicitly built on true axioms.
12
d. Psychologizing and Behaviorism: Twin Pitfalls. The re-
vealed-preference doctrine is one example of what we may call the
fallacy of "psychologizing," the treatment of preference-scales as if
they existed as separate entities apart from real action. Psychologiz-
ing is a common error in utility analysis. It is based on the common
assumption that utility analysis is a kind of "psychology," and that,
therefore, economics must enter into psychological analysis in lay-
ing the foundations of its theoretical structure.
Praxeolqgy, the basis of economic theory, differs from psychology,
however. Psychology analyzes the how and the why of people form-
ing values. It treats the concrete content of ends and values. Eco-
nomics, on the other hand, rests simply on the assumption of the
existence of ends and then deduces its valid theory from such a
general assumption.
13
It therefore has nothing to do with the con-
sidered either as identical with, or a subset of, utility judgments, but they cannot
be separated.
Cf. Charles Kennedy, "The Common Sense of Indifference Curves," Oxford
Economic Papers, January 1950, pp. 123-31; Kenneth J. Arrow, "Review of Paul
Keckskemeti's Meaning, Communication, and Value," Econometrica, January 1955,
p. 103.
11 Kennedy, lac. cit. Kennedy's article furnishes the best brief explanation of the
revealed-preference approach.
12 This error again stems from physics, where such assumptions as absence of
friction are useful as first approximations-to known facts from unknown explanatory
laws! For a refreshing skepticism on the value of false axioms, cf. Martin Bronfen-
brenner, "Contemporary Economics Resurveyed," Journal of Political Economy,
April 1953.
13 The axiom of the existence of ends may be considered a proposition in
philosophical psychology. In that sense, praxeology is grounded in psychology, but
its development then completely diverges from psychology proper. On the question
of purpose, praxeology takes its stand squarely with Leibnizian of
philosophical psychology as opposed to the Lockean trad1t1on upheld by pos1tiv1sts,
behaviorists, and associationists. For an illuminating discussion of this issue, cf.
Gordon W. Allport, Becoming (New Haven, 1955), pp. 6-17.
tent of ends or with the internal operations of the mind of the act-
ing man.
14
If psychologizing is to be avoided, so is the opposite error of
behaviorism. The behaviorist wishes to expunge "subjectivism," i.e.,
motivated action, completely from economics, since he believes that
any trace of subjectivisim is unscientific. His ideal is the method of
physics in treating observed movements of unmotivated, inorganic
matter. In adopting this method, he throws away the subjective
knowledge of action upon which economic science is founded; in-
deed, he is making any scientific investigation of human beings
impossible. The behaviorist approach in economics began with
Cassel, and its most prominent modern practitioner is Professor
Little. Little rejects the demonstrated preference theory because
it assumes the existence of preference. He glories in the fact that,
in his analysis, the maximizing individual "at last disappears" which
means, of course, that economics disappears as well.
15
The errors of psychologizing and of behaviorism have in common
a desire by their practitioners to endow their concepts and proce-
dures with "operational meaning," either in the areas of observed
behavior or in mental operations. Vilfredo Pareto, perhaps the
founder of an explicitly positivist approach in economics, cham-
pioned both errors. Discarding a demonstrated preference approach
as "tautologous," Pareto, on the one hand, sought to eliminate sub-
jective preferences from economics, and on the other, to investigate
and measure preference-scales apart from real action. Pareto was,
in more ways than one, the spiritual ancestor of most current utility
theorists.
16

17
14 Thus, the law of diminishing marginal utility does not at all rest on some
postulated psychological law of satiety of wants, but on the praxeological truth that
the first units of a good will be allocated to the most valuable uses, the next units
to the next-most valuable uses, etc.
15 I. M. D. Little, "A Reformation of the Theory of Consumers' Behavior," Oxford
Economic Papers, January 1949, pp. 90-99.
16 Vilfredo Pareto, "On the Economic Phenomenon," International Economic
Papers, No.3, (London, 1953), pp. 188-94. For an excellent rebuttal, cf. Benedetto
Croce, "On the Economic Principle, Parts I and II," ibid., pp. 175-76, 201. The
famous Croce-Pareto debate is an illuminating example of early debate between
praxeologic and positivist views in economics.
17 V. C. Walsh is an interesting current example of the combinations of both types
of error. On the one hand, he is an extreme behaviorist, who refuses to recognize
that any preferences are relevant to, or can be demonstrated by, action. On the
other hand, he also takes the extreme psychologizing view that psychological states
per se can be directly observed. For this, he falls back on "common sense." But
this position fails because Walsh's psychological "observations" are ideal types and
not analytic categories. Thus, Walsh says that: "saying that someone is a smoker
is different from saying that he is smoking now," upholding the former type of
e. A Note on Professor Armstrong's Criticism. Professor Arm-
strong has delivered a criticism of the revealed-preference approach
which he would undoubtedly apply to demonstrated preference as
well. He asserts that when more than one commodity is being
ranked, individual preference-scales cannot be unitary, and we can-
not postulate the ranking of the commodities on one scale.
18
On the
contrary, it is precisely the characteristic of a deduced preference-
scale that it is unitary. Only if a man ranks two alternatives as
more and less valuable on one scale can he choose between them.
Any of his means will be allocated to his more preferred use. Real
choice therefore always demonstrates relevant preferences ranked
on a unitary scale.
III. Utility Theory
Utility theory, over the last generation, has been split into two
warring camps: ( l) those who cling to the old concept of cardinal,
measurable utility, and ( 2) those who have thrown over the cardi-
nal concept, but have dispensed with the utility concept as well
and have substituted an analysis based on indifference-curves.
In its pristine form, the cardinalist approach has been abandoned
by all but a rearguard. On demonstrated preference grounds, cardi-
nality must be eliminated. Psychological magnitudes cannot be
measured since there is no objectively extensive unit-a necessary
requisite of measurement. Further, actual choice obviously cannot
demonstrate any form of measurable utility; it can only demon-
strate one alternative being preferred to another.
19
a. Ordinal Marginal Utility and "Total Utility." The ordinalist
rebels, led by Hicks and Allen in the early 1930's, felt it necessary
to overthrow the very concept of marginal utility along with meas-
urability. In doing so, they threw out the Utility baby together
with the Cardinal bathwater. They reasoned that marginal utility
statement for economics. But such statements are historical ideal types, relevant to
history and psychology, but not to economic analysis. Cf. V. C. Walsh, "On Descrip-
tions of Consumers' Behavior," Economica, August 1954, pp. 244-52. On ideal types
and relation to praxeology, cf. Mises, Human Action, op. cit., pp. 59-64.
1
8 W. E. Armstrong, "A Note on the Theory of Consumers' Behavior," Oxford
Economic Papers, January 1950, pp. 119 ff. On this point, cf. Little's rebuttal, in
I. M. D. Little, "The Theory of Consumers' Behavior-A Comment" ibid., pp. 132-35.
19 Mises' priority in establishing this conclusion is acknowledged by Professor
Robbins; cf. Lionel Robbins, "Robertson on Utility and Scope," Economica, May
1953, pp. 99-111; Mises, Theory of Money and Credit, op. cit., pp. 38-47 and
passim. Mises' role in forging an ordinal marginal utility theory has suffered almost
total neglect.
itself implies measurability. Why? Their notion rested on the -im-
plicit neo-classical assumption that the "marginal" in marginal
utility is equivalent to the "marginal" of the differential calculus.
Since, in mathematics, a total "something" is the integral of mar-
ginal "somethings," economists early assumed that "total utility" was
the mathematical integral of a series of "marginal utilities."
20
Per-
haps, too, they realized that this assumption was essential to a
mathematical representation of utility. As a result, they assumed,
for example, that the marginal utility of a good with a supply of
six units is equal to the "total utility" of six units minus the "total
utility" of five units. If utilities can be subjected to the arithmeti-
cal operation of subtraction, and can be differentiated and inte-
grated, then obviously the concept of marginal utility must imply
cardinally measurable utilities.
21
The mathematical representation of the calculus rests on the
assumption of continuity, i.e., infinitely small steps. In human ac-
tion, however, there can be no infinitely small steps. Human action
and the facts on which it is based must be in observable and discrete
steps and not infinitely small ones. Representation of utility in the
manner of the calculus is therefore illegitimate.
22
There is, however, no reason why marginal utility must be con-
ceived in calculus terms. In human action, "marginal" refers not
to an infinitely small unit, but to the relevant unit. Any unit rele-
vant to a particular action is marginal. For example, if we are deal-
ing in a specific situation with single eggs, then each egg is the
unit; if we are dealing in terms of six-egg cartons, then each six-egg
carton is the unit. In either case, we can speak of a marginal
utility. In the former case, we deal with the "marginal utility of
an egg" with various supplies of eggs; in the latter, with the "mar-
ginal utility of the cartons" whatever the supply of cartons of eggs.
20 The error began perhaps with Jevons. Cf. W. Stanley Jevons, Theory of Political
Economy (London, 1888), pp. 49 ff.
2
1
That this reasoning lay at the base of the ordinalists' rejection of marginal utility
may be seen in John R. Hicks, Value and Capital (2nd Ed., Oxford, 1946), p. 19.
That many ordinalists regret the loss of marginal utility may be seen in the statement
by Arrow that: "The older discussion of diminishing marginal utility as aiming for
the satisfaction of more intense wants first makes more sense" than the current
"indifference-curve" analysis, but that, unfortunately it is "bound up with the
untenable notion of measurable utility." Quoted in D. H. Robertson, "Utility and
All What?" Economic journal, December 1954, p. 667.
2
2
Hicks concedes the falsity of the continuity assumption but blindly pins his
faith on the hope that all will be well when individual actions are aggregated.
Hicks, op. cit., p. 11.
234
Both utilities are marginal. In no sense is one utility a "total" of
the other.
To clarify the relationship between marginal utility and what has
been misnamed "total utility," but actually refers to a marginal
utility of a larger-sized unit, let us hypothetically construct a typical
value-scale for eggs:
Ranks in
Value
-- 5 eggs
-- 4 eggs
-- 3 eggs
-- 2 eggs
-- 1 egg
--2nd egg
-- 3rd egg
--4th egg
--5th egg.
This is a man's ordinal value, or preference, scale for eggs. The
higher the ranking, the higher the value. At the center is one egg,
the first egg in his possession. By the Law of Diminishing Marginal
. Utility (ordinal), the second, third, fourth eggs, etc., rank below
the first egg on his value-scale, and in that order. Now, since eggs
are goods and therefore objects of desire, it follows that a man will
value two eggs more than he will one, three more than he will two,
etc. Instead of calling this "total utility," we will say that the mar-
ginal utility of a unit of a good is always higher than the marginal
utility of a unit of smaller size. A bundle of 5 eggs will be ranked
higher than a bundle of 4 eggs, etc. It should be clear that the only
arithmetic or mathematical relationship between these marginal
utilities is a simple ordinal one. On the one hand, given a certain
sized unit, the marginal utility of that unit declines as the supply
of units increases. This is the familiar Law of Diminishing Marginal
Utility. On the other hand, the marginal utility of a larger-sized
unit is greater than the marginal utility of a smaller-sized unit. This
is the law just underlined. And there is no mathematical relation-
ship between, say, the marginal utility of 4 eggs and the marginal
utility of the 4th egg except that the former is greater than the
latter.
We must conclude then that there is no such thing as total utility;
all utilities are marginal. In those cases where the supply of a good
totals only one unit, then the "total utility" of that whole supply is
simply the marginal utility of a unit the size of which equals the
whole supply. The key concept is the variable size of the marginal
unit, depending on the situation.
23
A typical error on the concept of marginal utility is a recent state-
ment by Professor Kennedy that "the word 'marginal' presupposes
increments of utility" and hence measurability. But the word "mar-
ginal" presupposes not increments of utility, but the utility of
increments of goods, and this need have nothing to do with measur-
ability.24
b. Professor Robbins' Problem. Professor Lionel Robbins, in the
course of a recent defense of ordinalism, raised a problem which he
left unanswered. Accepted doctrine, he declared, states that if
differences between utility rankings can be judged by the individ-
ual, as well as the rankings themselves, then the utility scale can in
some way be measured. Yet, Robbins says, he can judge differences.
For example, among three paintings, he can say that he prefers a
Rembrandt to a Holbein far less than he prefers a Holbein to a
Munnings. How, then, can ordinalism be saved?
25
Is he not con-
ceding measurability? Yet Robbins's dilemma had already been
answered twenty years earlier in a famous article by Oskar Lange.
26
Lange pointed out that in terms of what we would call demon-
strated preference, only pure rankings are revealed by acts of choice.
"Differences" in rank are not so revealed, and are therefore mere
psychologizing, which, however interesting, are irrelevant to eco-
nomics. To this, we need only add that differences of rank can be
23 This analysis of total utility was first put forward by Mises, in Theory of Money
and Credit, op. cit., pp. 38-47. It was continued by Harro F. Bemardelli, especially
in his "The End of the Marginal Utility Theory?", Economica, May 1938, p. 206.
Bernardelli's treatment, however, is marred by laborious attempts to find some form
of legitimate mathematical representation. On the failure of mathematical economists
to understand this treatment of marginal and total, cf. the criticism of Bernardelli by
Paul A. Samuelson, "The End of Marginal Utility: A Note on Dr. Bernardelli s
Article," Economica, February 1939, pp. 86-87; and Kelvin Lancaster, "A Refutation
of Mr. Bernardelli," ibid., August 1953, pp. 259-62. For rebuttals cf. Bernardelli,
"A Reply to Mr. Samuelson's Note," ibid., February 1939, pp. 88-89; and id., "Com-
ment on Mr. Lancaster's Refutation," ibid., August 1954, pp. 240-42.
24 Cf. Charles Kennedy, "Concerning Utility," Economica, February 1954, p. 13.
Kennedy's article, incidentally, is an attempt to rehabilitate a type of cardinalism by
making distinctions between "quantity" and "Magnitude," and using the Bertrand
Russell concept of "relational addition." Surely, this sort of approach falls with one
slash of Occam's Razor-the great scientific principle that entities not be multiplied
unnecessarily. For a criticism, cf. D. H. Robertson, Zoe. cit. pp. 668-69.
25 Robbins, loc. cit., p. 104.
26 Oskar Lange, "The Determinateness of the Utility Function," Review of Eco-
nomic Studies, June 1934, pp. 224 ff. Unfortunately, Lange balked at the implica-
tions of his own analysis and adopted an assumption of cardinality, solely because
of his anxious desire to reach certain cherished "welfare" conclusions.
revealed through real choice, whenever the goods can be obtained
by money. We need only realize that money units (which are char-
acteristically highly divisible) can be lumped in the same value-
scale as commodities. For example, suppose someone is willing to
pay $10,000 for a Rembrandt, $8000 for a Holbein and only $20 for
a Munnings. Then, his value-scale will have the following descend-
ing order: Rembrandt, $10,000; Holbein, $9000, $8000, $7000,
$6000 ... ; Munnings, $20. We may observe these ranks, and no
question of the measurability of utilities need arise.
That money and units of various goods can be ranked on one
value-scale is the consequence of Mises' money-regression theorem,
which makes possible the application of marginal utility analysis
to money.
27
It is characteristic of Professor Samuelson's approach
that he scoffs at the whole problem of circularity which money-
regression had solved. He falls back on Leon Walras, who devel-
oped the idea of "general equilibrium in which all magnitudes are
simultaneously determined by efficacious interdependent relations,"
which he contrasts to the "fears of literary writers" about circular
reasoning.
28
This is one example of the pernicious influence of the
mathematical method in economics. The idea of mutual determina-
tion is appropriate in physics, which tries to explain the unmoti-
vated motions of physical matter. But in praxeology, the cause is
known: individual purpose. In economics, therefore, the proper
method is to proceed from the causing action to its consequent
effects.
c. The Fallacy of Indifference. The Hicksian Revolutionaries re-
placed the cardinal utility concept with the concept of indifference-
classes, and for the last twenty years, the economic journals have
27 Cf. Mises, Theory of Money and Credit, op. cit., pp. 97-123. Mises replied to
critics in Human Action, op. cit., pp. 405 ff. The only further criticism has been that
of Gilbert, who asserts that the theorem does not explain how a paper money can be
introduced after the monetary system has broken down. Presumably he refers to
such cases as the German Rentenmark. The answer, of course, is that such paper
was not introduced de novo; gold and foreign exchange existed previously, and the
Rentenmark could exchange in terms of these previously existing moneys. Cf. J. C.
Gilbert, "The Demand for Money: the Development of an Economic Concept,"
journal of Political Economy, April 1953, p. 149.
28 Samuelson, Foundations, op. cit., pp. 117-18. For similar attacks on earlier Aus-
trian economists, cf. Frank H. Knight, "Introduction" in Carl Menger, Principles of
Economics (Glencoe, Ill., 1950), p. 23; George J. Stigler, Production and Distribu-
tion Theories (New York, 1946), p. 181. Stigler criticizes Bohm-Bawerk for spurn-
ing "mutual determination" for "the older concept of cause and effect" and explains
this by saying that Bohm was untrained in mathematics. For Menger's attack on the
mutual determination concept, cf. T. W. Hutchison, A Review of Economic Doc-
trines, 1870-1929 (Oxford, 1953), p. 147.
been rife with a maze of two- and three-dimensional indifference
curves, tangencies, "budget lines," etc. The consequence of an
adoption of the demonstrated preference approach is that the entire
indifference-class concept, along with the complicated superstruc-
ture erected upon it, must fall to the ground.
Indifference can never be demonstrated by action. Quite the
contrary. Every action necessarily signifies a choice, and every
choice signifies a definite preference. Action specifically implies the
contrary of indifference. The indifference-concept is a particularly
unfortunate example of the psychologizing error. Indifference-
classes are assumed to exist somewhere underlying and apart from
action. This assumption is particularly exhibited in those discus-
sions that try to "map" indifference curves empirically by the use
of elaborate questionnaires.
If a person is really indifferent between two alternatives, then
he cannot and will not choose between them.
29
Indifference is
therefore never relevant for action and cannot be demonstrated in
action. If a man, for example, is indifferent between the use of 5.1
ounces and 5.2 ounces of butter because of the minuteness of the
unit, then there will be no occasion for him to act on these alter-
natives. He will use butter in larger-sized units, where varying
amounts are not indifferent to him.
The concept of "indifference" may be important for psychology,
but not for economics. In psychology, we are interested in finding
out intensities of value, possible indifference, etc. In economics,
however, we are only interested in values revealed through choices.
It is immaterial to economics whether a man chooses alternative A
to alternative B because he strongly prefers A, or because he tossed
a coin. The fact of ranking is what matters for economics, not the
reasons for the individual's arriving at that rank.
In recent years, the indifference concept has been subjected to
severe criticism. Professor Armstrong pointed out that under Hicks'
curious formulation of "indifference," it is possible for an individual
to be "indifferent" between two alternatives and yet choose one
over the other.
30
Little has some good criticisms of the indifference
concept, but his analysis is vitiated by his eagerness to use faulty
theorems in order to arrive at welfare conclusions, and by his radi-
29 The "indifference theorists" also err in assuming infinitely small steps, essential
for their geometric representation, but erroneous for an analysis of human action.
30 W. E. Armstrong, "The Determinateness of the Utility Function," Economic
journal, 1939, pp. 453-67. Armstrong's point that indifference is not a transitive
relation, (as Hicks assumed), only applies to different-sized units of one commodity.
Also cf. Armstrong, "A Note on the Theory of Consumers' Behavior," loc. cit.
cally behaviorist methodology.'
11
A very interesting attack on the
indifference concept from the point of view of psychology has been
levelled by Professor Macfie.
32
The indifference theorists have two basic defenses of the role of
indifference in real action. One is to cite the famous fable of Bud-
den's Ass. This is the "perfectly rational" ass who demonstrates
indifference by standing, hungry, equidistant from two equally at-
tractive bales of hay.
33
Since the two bales are equally attractive
in every way, the ass can choose neither one, and starves therefore.
This example is supposed to indicate how indifference can be re-
vealed in action. It is, of course, difficult to conceive of an ass, or a
person, who could be less rational. Actually, he is not confronted
with two choices but with three, the third being to starve where
he is. Even on the indifference theorists' own grounds, this third
choice will be ranked lower than the other two on the individual's
value-scale. He will not choose starvation.
If both bundles of hay are equally attractive, then the ass or man,
who must choose one or the other, will allow pure chance, such as
the flip of a coin, to decide on either one. But then indifference is
still not revealed by his choice, for the flip of a coin has enabled
him to establish a preference!
34
The other attempt to demonstrate indifference classes rests on the
consistency-constancy fallacy, which we have analyzed above. Thus,
Kennedy and Walsh claim that a man can reveal indifference if,
when asked to repeat his choices between A and B over time, he
chooses each alternative 50 per cent of the time.
35
If the concept of the individual indifference-curve is completely
fallacious, it is quite obvious that Baumol's concept of the "com-
munity indifference curve," which he purports to build up from
individual curves, deserves the shortest possible shrit.
36
d. The Neo-Cardinalists: the von Neumann-Morgenstern Ap-
proach. In recent years, the world of economics has been taken by
31 Little, "Reformulation" and "Theory," locs. cit. It is another defect of Samuel-
son's revealed-preference approach that he attempts to "reveal" indifference-curves
as well.
32 Alec L. Macfie, "Choice in Psychology and as Economic Assumption," Economic
journal, June 1953, pp. 352-67.
33 Thus, cf. Joseph A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (New York,
1954), pp. 94 n., 1064.
34 Also cf. Croce's warning about using animal illustrations in analyses of human
action. Croce, "Economic Principle I," Zoe. cit., p. 175.
35 Kennedy, "Common Sense," and Walsh, lacs. cit.
36 Cf. William J. Baumol, Welfare Economics and the Theory of the State (Cam-
bridge, 1952), pp. 47 ff.
storm by a neo-cardinalist, quasi-measurement theory of utility. This
approach, which has the psychological advantage of being garbed
in a mathematical form more advanced than economics had yet
known, was founded by von Neumann and Morgenstern in their
celebrated work.
37
Their theory had the further advantage of being
grounded on the most recent and fashionable (though incorrect)
developments in the philosophy of measurement and the philosophy
of probability. The Neumann-Morgenstern thesis was adopted by
the leading mathematical economists and has gone almost unchal-
lenged to this day. The chief consolation of the ordinalists has been
the assurance by the neo-cardinalists that their doctrine applies
only to utility under conditions of uncertainty, and therefore does
not shake the ordinalist doctrine too drastically.
38
But this consola-
tion is really quite limited, considering that some uncertainty enters
into every action.
The Neumann-Morgenstern theory is briefly as follows: an indi-
vidual can compare not only certain events, but also combinations
of events with definite numerical probabilities for each event. Then,
according to the authors, if an individual prefers alternative A to B,
and B to C, he is able to decide whether he prefers B or a 50-50
probability combination of C and A. If he prefers B, then his pref-
erence of B over C is deduced as being greater than his preference
of A over B. In a similar fashion, various combinations of prob-
abilities are selected. A quasi-measurable numerical utility is as-
signed to his utility scale in accordance with the indifference of
utilities of B as compared with various probability combinations of
A or C. The result is a numerical scale given when arbitrary num-
bers are assigned to the utilities of two of the events.
The errors of this theory are numerous and grave:
( 1) None of the axioms can be validated on demonstrated pref-
erence grounds, since admittedly all of the axioms can be violated
by the individual actors.
37 John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic
Behavior (2nd ed., 1947), pp. 8, 15-32, 617-32.
38 Thus cf. the excellent expository article by Armen A. Alchian, "The Meaning
of Utility Measurement," American Economic Review, March 1953, pp. 26-50. Also
cf. Robert Strotz, "Cardinal Utility," ibid., May 1953, pp. 384-97. The leading ad-
herents of the Neumann-Morgenstern approach are Marschak, Friedman, Savage, and
Samuelson.
Claims of the theory, even at its best, to measure utility in any way have been
nicely exploded by Ellsberg, who also demolishes Marschak's attempt to make the
theory normative. Ellsberg's critique suffers considerably, however, from being based
on the "operational meaning" concept. Cf. D. Ellsberg, "Classic and Current No-
tions of Measurable Utility," Economic Journal, September 1954, pp. 528-56.
( 2) The theory leans heavily on a constancy assumption so that
utilities can be revealed by action over time.
( 3) The theory relies heavily on the invalid concept of indiffer-
ence of utilities in establishing the numerical scale.
( 4) The theory rests fundamentally on the fallacious application
of a theory of numerical probability to an area where it cannot
apply. Richard von Mises has shown conclusively that numerical
probability can be assigned only to situations where there is a class
of entities, such that nothing is known about the members except
they are members of this class, and where successive trials reveal an
asymptotic tendency toward a stable proportion, or frequency of
occurrence, of a certain event in that class. There can be no nu-
merical probability applied to specific individual events.
39
Yet, in human action, precisely the opposite is true. Here, there
are no classes of homogeneous members. Each event is a unique
event and is different from other unique events. These unique
events are not repeatable. Therefore, there is no sense in applying
numerical probability theory to such events.
40
It is no coincidence
that, invariably, the application of the neo-cardinalists has always
been to lotteries and gambling. It is precisely and only in lotteries
that probability theory can be applied. The theorists beg the entire
question of its applicability to general human action by confining
their discussion to lottery cases. For the purchaser of a lottery ticket
knows only that the individual lottery ticket is a member of a cer-
tain-sized class of tickets. The entrepreneur, in making his deci-
sions, is on the contrary confronted with unique cases about which
he has some knowledge and which have only limited parallelism to
other cases.
39 Richard von Mises, Probability, Statistics, and Truth (London, 1939). Also cf.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, op. cit., pp. 106-17. The currently fashionable
probability theories of Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach have failed to shake
the validity of R. von Mises' approach. Mises refutes them in the third German edi-
tion of his work, unfortunately unavailable in English. Cf. Richard von Mises,
Wahrscheinlichkeit, Statistik, und W ahrheit ( 3rd ed. Vienna, 1951 ) . The only
plausible critique of R. Mises has been that of W. Kneale, who pointed out that the
numerical assignment of probability depends on an infinite sequence, whereas in no
human action can there be an infinite sequence. This, however, weakens the appli-
cation of numerical probability even to cases such as lotteries, rather than enabling
it to expand into other areas. Cf. Little, "Theory," Zoe. cit.
40 Cf. Frank Knight's basic distinction between the narrow cases of actuarial "risk"
and the more widespread, non-actuarial "uncertainty." Frank H. Knight, Risk, Un-
certainty, and Profit (2nd ed. London, 1940). G. L. S. Schackle has also levelled
excellent criticism at the r,robability approach to economics, especially that of Mar-
schak. His own "surprise' theory, however, is open to similar objections; cf. C. F.
Carter, "Expectations in Economics," Economic journal, March 1950, pp. 92-105;
G. L. S. Schackle, Expectations in Economics (Cambridge, 1949), pp. 109-23.
( 5) The neo-cardinalists admit that their theory is not even
applicable to gambling if the individual has either a like or a dislike
for gambling itself. Since the fact that a man gambles demonstrates
that he likes to gamble, it is clear that the N eumann-Morgenstern
utility doctrine fails even in this tailor-made case.
41
( 6) A curious new conception of measurement. The new philos-
ophy of measurement discards concepts of "cardinal" and "ordinal"
in favor of such labored constructions as "measurable up to a multi-
plicative constant" (cardinal); "measurable up to a monotonic trans-
form" (ordinal); "measurable up to a linear transform" (the new
quasi-measurement, of which the Neumann-Morgenstern proposed
utility index is an example). This terminology, apart from its un-
due complexity (under the influence of mathematics), implies that
everything, including ordinality, is somehow "measurable." The
man who proposes a new definition for an important word must
prove his case; the new definition of measurement has hardly done
so. Measurement, on any sensible definition, implies the possibility
of a unique assignment of numbers which can be meaningfully sub-
jected to all the operations of arithmetic. To accomplish this, it is
necessary to define a fixed unit. In order to define such a unit, the
property to be measured must be extensive in space, so that the
unit can be objectively agreed upon by all. Therefore, subjective
states, being intensive rather than objectively extensive, cannot be
measured and subjected to arithmetical operations. And utility
refers to intensive states. Measurement becomes even more implau-
sible when we realize that utility is a praxeologic, rather than a
directly psychologic, concept.
A favorite rebuttal is that subjective states have been measured;
thus, the old, unscientific subjective feeling of heat has given way
to the objective science of thermometry.
42
But this rebuttal is
erroneous; thermometry does not measure the intensive subjective
feelings themselves. It assumes an approximate correlation be-
tween the intensive property and an objective extensive event-
such as the physical expansion of gas or mercury. And thermometry
can certainly lay no claim to precise measurement of subjective
states: we all know that some people, for various reasons, feel
warmer or colder at different times even if the external temperature
41 It is curious how economists have been tempted to discuss gambling by first
assuming that the participant doesn't like to gamble. It is on this assumption that
Alfred Marshall based his famous "proof' that gambling (because of each individual's
diminishing utility of money) is "irrational."
42 Thus, cf. von Neumann and Morgenstern, op. cit., pp. 16-17.
remains the same.
43
Certainly no correlation whatever can be found
for demonstrated preference scales in relation to physical lengths.
For preferences have no direct physical basis, as do feelings of heat.
No arithmetical operations whatever can be performed on ordi-
nal numbers; therefore, to use the term "measurable" in any way
for ordinal numbers is hopelessly to confuse the meaning of the
term. Perhaps the best remedy for possible confusion is to avoid
using any numbers for ordinal rank; the rank concept can just as
well be expressed in letters (A,B,C ... ), using a convention that
A, for example, expresses higher rank.
As to the new type of quasi-measurability, no one has yet proved
it capable of existence. The burden of proof rests on the proponents.
If an object is extensive, then it is at least theoretically capable of
being measured, for an objective fixed unit can, in principle, be
defined. If it is intensive, then no such fixed unit can apply, and
any assignment of number would have to be ordinal. There is no
room for an intermediate case. The favorite example of quasi-
measurability that is always offered is, again, temperature. In
thermometry, centigrade and Fahrenheit scales are supposed to be
convertible into each other not at a multiplicative constant ( cardi-
nality) but by multiplying and then adding a constant (a "linear
transform"). More careful analysis, however, reveals that both
scales are simply derivations from one scale based on an absolute
zero point. All we need to demonstrate the cardinality of tempera-
ture is to transform both centigrade and Fahrenheit scales into
scales where "absolute zero" is zero, and then each will be convert-
ible into the other by a multiplicative constant. Furthermore, the
actual measurement in temperature is a measurement of length
(say, of the mercury column) so that temperature is really a derived
measure based on the cardinally measurable magnitude of length.
44
Jacob Marschak, one of the leading members of the Neumann-
Morgenstem school, has conceded that the temperature case is
43Cf. Morris R. Cohen, A Preface to Logic (New York, 1944), p. 151.
44 On measurement, cf. Norman Campbell, What Is Science? (New York, 1952),
pp. 109-34; id., An Account of the Principles of Measurement and Calculation (Lon-
don, 1928). Although the above view of measurement is not currently fashionable,
it is backed by the weighty authority of Mr. Campbell. A .description of the contro-
versy between Campbell and S. S. Stevens on the issue of measurement of intensive
magnitudes was included in the unpublished draft of Carl C. Hempel's Concept
Formation, but was unfortunately omitted from Hempel's published Fundamentals
of Concept Formation in Empirical Science (Chicago, 1952). Campbell's critique
can be found in A. Ferguson, et. al. Interim Report (British Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science, 1938), pp. 277 -334; and in id. (Final Report, 1940), pp.
331-349.
inappropriate for the establishment of quasi-measurability, because
it is derived from the fundamental, cardinal, measurement of dis-
tance. Yet, astonishingly, he offers altitude in its place. But if "tem-
perature readings are nothing but distance," what else is altitude,
which is solely and purely distance and length?
45
IV. Welfare Economics: A Critique
a. Economics and Ethics. It is now generally accepted among
economists, at least pro forma, that economics per se cannot estab-
lish ethical judgments. It is not sufficiently recognized that to accept
this need not imply acceptance of the Max Weber position that
ethics can never be scientifically or rationally established. Whether
we accept the Max Weber position, or we adhere to the older view
of Plato and Aristotle that a rational ethics is possible, it should be
clear that economics by itself cannot establish an ethical position.
If an ethical science is possible, it must be built up out of data sup-
plied by truths established by all of the other sciences.
Medicine can establish the fact that a certain drug can cure a
certain disease, while leaving to other disciplines the problem
whether the disease should be cured. Similarly, economics can es-
tablish that Policy A leads to the advancement of life, prosperity,
and peace; while Policy B leads to death, poverty, and war. Both
medicine and economics can establish these consequences scientif-
ically, and without introducing ethical judgments into the analysis.
It might be protested that doctors would not inquire into possible
cures for a disease if they did not want a cure, or economists would
not investigate causes of prosperity if they did not want the result.
There are two answers to this point: (1) that this is undoubtedly
true in almost all cases, but not necessarily so-some doctors or
economists may care only about the discovery of truth, and ( 2) this
only establishes the psychologic motivation of the scientists; it does
not establish that the discipline itself arrives at values. On the con-
trary, it bolsters the thesis that ethics is arrived at apart from the
specific sciences of medicine or economics.
Thus, whether we hold the view that ethics is a matter of non-
rational emotions or taste, or whether we believe in a rational ethic,
we must agree that economic science per se cannot establish ethical
statements. As a political policy judgment is a branch of ethics, the
same conclusion applies to politics. If prosperity vs. poverty, for
45 Cf. Jacob Marschak, "Rational Behavior, Uncertain Prospects, and Measur-
ability," Econometrica, April 1950, p. 131.
example, are political alternatives, economic science cannot decide
between them; it simply presents the truth about the consequences
of each alternative political decision. As citizens, we take these
truths into account when we make our politico-ethical decisions.
b. The Problem of the New Welfare Economics: The Unanimity
Rule. The problem of "welfare economics" has always been to find
some way to circumvent this restriction on economics, and to make
ethical, and particularly political, statements directly. Since eco-
nomics discusses individuals' aiming to maximize their utility or
happiness or welfare, the problem may be translated into the fol-
lowing terms: When can economics say that "society is better off"
as a result of a certain change? Or alternatively, when can we say
that "social utility" has been increased or "maximized"?
Neo-classical economists, led by Professor Pigou, found a simple
answer. Economics can establish that a man's marginal utility of
money diminishes as his money-income increases. Therefore, they
concluded, the marginal utility of a dollar is less to a rich man than
to a poor man. Other things being equal, social utility is maximized
by a progressive income tax which takes from the rich and gives to
the poor. This was the favorite demonstration of the "old welfare
economics," grounded on Benthamite utilitarian ethics, and brought
to fruition by Edgeworth and Pigou.
Economists continued blithely along this path until they were
brought up short by Professor Robbins. Robbins showed that this
demonstration rested on interpersonal comparisons of utility, and
since utility is not a cardinal magnitude, such comparisons involve
ethical judgments.
46
What Robbins actually accomplished was to
reintroduce Pareto's Unanimity Rule into economics, and establish
it as the iron gate where welfare economics must test its creden-
tials.47 This Rule runs as follows: We can only say that "social wel-
fare" (or better, "social utility") has increased due to a change, if
no individual is worse off because of the change (and at least one
is better off). If one individual is worse off, the fact that interper-
sonal utilities cannot be added or subtracted prevents economics
from saying anything about social utility. Any statement about so-
cial utility would, in the absence of unanimity, imply an ethical
interpersonal comparison between the gainers and the losers from
46 Cf. Lionel Robbins, "Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility," Economic Journal,
December 1938, pp. 635-41; and id., An Essay on the Nature and Significance of
Economic Science (2nd ed., London, 1935), pp. 138-41.
47 Cf. Vilfredo Pareto, Manuel d'Economie Politique (2nd Ed., Paris, 1927),
p. 617.
a change. If X number of individuals gain, andY number lose, from
a change, any weighting to sum up in a "social" conclusion would
necessarily imply an ethical judgment on the relative importance
of the two groups.
48
The Pareto-Robbins Unanimity Rule conquered economics and
liquidated the old Pigovian welfare economics almost completely.
Since then, an enormous literature known as the "new welfare eco-
nomics" has flourished, devoting itself to a series of attempts to
square the circle: to assert certain political judgments as scientific
economics, while still retaining the unanimity rule.
c. Professor Robbins' Escape Route. Robbins' own formulation of
the Unanimity Rule far undervalues the scope of its restrictive
power over the assertions of economists. Robbins stated that only
one ethical assertion would be necessary for economists to make
interpersonal comparisons: namely, that every man has an "equal
capacity for satisfaction" in similar circumstances. To be sure, Rob-
bins grants that this ethical assumption cannot be established by
economics; but he implies that since all good democrats are bound
to make this egalitarian assumption, we can all pretty well act as if
interpersonal comparisons of utility can be made, and go on to
make ethical judgments.
In the first place, it is difficult, upon analysis, to make sense of
the phrase "equal capacity for satisfaction." Robbins, as we have
seen, admits that we cannot scientifically compare utilities or satis-
factions between individuals. But since there is no unit of satis-
factions by which we can make comparisons, there is no meaning
to any assumption that different men's satisfactions will be "equal"
in any circumstances. "Equal" in what way, and in what units? We
are not at liberty to make any ethical assumption we please, be-
cause even an ethical assumption must be framed meaningfully, and
its terms must be definable in a meaningful manner. Since there
is no meaning to the term "equality" without some sort of definable
unit, and since there is no unit of satisfaction or utility, it follows
that there can be no ethical assumption of "equal capacity for satis-
faction," and that this cannot provide a shortcut to permit the
economist to make conclusions about public policy.
The Robbins' position, moreover, embodies a highly oversimplified
48 Kempt tries to alter the Unanimity Rule to read that social utility is only increased
if everyone is better off, none being worse ofl: or indifferent. But, as we have seen,
indifference cannot be demonstrated in action, and therefore this alteration is invalid.
Cf. Murray C. Kemp, "Welfare Economics: A Stocktaking," Economic Record,
November 1954, p. 245.
view of ethics and its relation to politico-economic affairs. The
problem of interpersonal comparisons of utility is only one of the
very many ethical problems which must at least be discussed before
any policy conclusions can rationally be framed. Suppose, for ex-
ample, that two social changes take place, each of which causes
99% of the people to gain in utility and 1% to lose. Surely no as-
sumption about the interpersonal comparison of utility can suffice
to establish an ethical judgment, divorced from the content of the
change itself. If, for example, one change was the enslavement of
the 1% by the 99%, and the other was the removal of a governmental
subsidy to the 1%, there is apt to be a great deal of difference in
our ethical pronouncements on the two cases, even if the assumed
"social utility" in the two cases is approximately the same.
d. The Compensation Principle. A particularly notable attempt
to make policy conclusions within the framework of the Unanimity
Rule was the Kaldor-Hicks "compensation principle," which stated
that "social utility" may scientifically be said to increase, if the win-
ners may be able to compensate the losers and still remain winners.
49
There are many fatal errors in this approach. In the first place,
since the compensation principle is supposed to help economists
form policy judgments, it is evident that we must be able to com-
pare, at least in principle, actual social states. We are therefore
always concerned with actual, and not potential, winners and losers
from any change. Whether or not the winners may compensate the
losers is therefore irrelevant; the important question is whether the
compensation does, in fact, take place. Only if the compensation is
actually carried out so that not a single person remains a loser, can
we still assert a gain in social utility. But can this compensation
ever be carried out? In order to do so, everybody's utility scale
would have to be investigated by the compensators. But from the
very nature of utility scales this is an impossibility. Who knows
what has happened to anyone's utility scale? The compensation
principle is necessarily divorced from demonstrated preference, and
once this occurs, it is impossible to find out what has happened to
49 On the compensation principle, cf. Nicholas Kaldor, "Welfare Propositions in
Economics," Economic Journal, September 1939, p. 549; John R. Hicks, "The Founda-
tions of Welfare Economics," ibid., December 1939, p. 706. For a criticism, cf.
William J. Baumol, "Community Indifference," Review of Economic Studies, 1946-47,
pp. 44-48; Baumol, Welfare Economics and the Theory of the State, op. cit., pp.
12 ff; Kemp, loc. cit., pp. 246-50. For a summary of the discussion, cf. D. H. Robert-
son, Utility and All That (London, 1952), pp. 29-35. The weakness in Robbins'
accession to the Unanimity Rule is demonstrated by his endorsement of the com-
pensation principle. Cf. Robbins, "Robertson on Utility and Scope," loc. cit.
anyone's utility. The reason for the divorce is that the act of com-
pensation is, necessarily, a unilateral gift to a person rather than an
act of that person, and therefore it is impossible to estimate how
much his utility has increased as compared to its decrease in some
other situation. Only if a person is actually confronted with a choice
between two alternatives can we say that he prefers one to the
other.
Certainly, the compensators could not rely on questionnaires in
a situation where everyone need only say that he has lost utility in
order to receive compensation. And suppose someone proclaims
that his sensibilities are so hurt by a certain change that no mone-
tary reward could ever compensate him? The existence of one
such person would null any compensation attempt. But these prob-
lems necessarily occur when we leave the realm of demonstrated
preference.
e. The Social Welfare Function. Under the impact of criticisms
far less thoroughgoing than the above, the compensation principle
has been abandoned by most economists. There have been recent
attempts to substitute another device-the "Social Welfare Func-
tion." But after a flurry of activity, this concept, originated by Pro-
fessors Bergson and Samuelson, quickly struck rocky waters, and
virtually sank under the impact of various criticisms. It came to be
regarded as an empty and therefore meaningless concept. Even its
founders have given up the struggle and concede that economists
must import ethical judgments from outside economics in order to
make policy conclusions.
50
Professor Rothenberg has made a des-
perate attempt to salvage the social welfare function by radically
changing its nature, i.e., by identifying it with an existing "social
decision-making precess." To uphold this shift, Rothenberg must
make the false assumption that "society" exists apart from indi-
viduals and makes "its" own valuation. Furthermore, as Bergson
has pointed out, this procedure abolishes welfare economics, since
the function of the economist would be to observe empirically the
social decision-making process at work, and to pronounce its deci-
sions as gains in "social utility."
50 Cf. Abram Bergson, "On the Concept of Social Welfare," Quarterly Journal of
Economics, May 1954, p. 249; Paul A. Samuelson, "Welfare Economics; Comment,"
in (B. F. Haley, ed.), A Survey of Contemporary Economics, Vol. II (Homewood,
Ill., 1952 ), p. 37. Also cf. Jerome Rothenberg, "Conditions for a Social Welfare
Function," Journal of Political Economy, October 1953, p. 397; Sidney Schoeffler,
"Note on Modern Welfare Economics," American Economic Review, December 1952,
p. 881; I. M. D. Little, "Social Choice and Individual Values," Journal of Political
Economy, October 1952, pp. 422-32.
f. The Economist As Adviser. Failing the establishment of policy
conclusions through the compensation principle or the social wel-
fare function, there is another very popular route to enable the
economist to participate in policy formation while still remaining an
ethically neutral scientist. This view holds that someone else may
set the ends, while the economist is justified in telling that person
(and to be hired by that person) the correct means for attaining
these desired ends. Since the economist takes someone else's hier-
archy of ends as given, and only points out the means to attain them,
he is alleged to remain ethically neutral and strictly scientific. This
viewpoint, however, is a misleading and fallacious one. Let us take
an example suggested by a passage in Professor Philbrook's seminal
article; a monetary economist advising the Federal Reserve Sys-
tem.51 Can this economist simply take the ends set by the heads of
this System, and advise on the most efficient means to attain them?
Not unless the economist affirms these ends as being positively good,
i.e., not unless he makes an ethical judgment. For suppose that the
economist is convinced that the entire Federal Reserve System is
pernicious. In that case, his best course may well be to advise that
policy which would make the System highly inefficient in the pursuit
of its ends. The economist employed by the System cannot, there-
fore, give any advice whatever without abandoning ethical neutral-
ity. If he advises the System on the best way to achieve its ends,
it must be logically inferred that he supports these ends. His advice
involves no less an ethical judgment on his part if he chooses to
"tacitly accept the decisions of the community (sic) as expressed
through the political machinery."
52
g. The End of Welfare Economics? After twenty years of florid
growth, welfare economics is once more confined to an even tighter
Unanimity Rule. Its attempts to say anything about political affairs
within the confines of this rule have been in vain.
The death of the New Welfare Economics has begun to be re-
luctantly recognized by all of its supporters, and each has taken
turns in pronouncing its demise.
53
If the strictures advanced in this
51 Clarence Philbrook, " 'Realism' in Policy Espousal," American Economic Review,
December 1953, pp. 846-59. The entire article is of fundamental importance in the
study of economics and its relation to public policy.
52 E. J. Mishan, "The Principle of Compensation Reconsidered," Journal of Politi-
cal Economy, August 1952, p. 312. Cf. especially the excellent note of I. M. D.
Little, "The Scientist and the State," Review of Economic Studies, 1949-50, pp. 75-76.
53 Thus, see the rather mournful discussion in the American Economic Association's
second volume of the Survey of Contemporary Economics, op. cit.: Kenneth E. Bould-
ing, "Welfare Economics," pp. 1-34; Melvin W. Reder, "Comment," pp. 34-36; and
paper are conceded, the burial rites will be accelerated, and the
corpse decently interred. Many New Welfare Economists under-
standably continue to grope for some way of salvaging something
out of the wreckage. Thus, Reder suggests that economics make
specific, piecemeal policy recommendations anyway. But surely this
is only a despairing refusal to take the fundamental problems into
account. Rothenberg tries to inaugurate a constancy assumption
based on psychologizing about underlying basic personalities.
54
Aside from the fact that "basic" changes can take place at any time,
economics deals with marginal changes, and a change is no less a
change for being marginal. In fact, whether changes are marginal
or basic is a problem for psychology, not praxeology. Bergson tries
the mystical route of denying demonstrated preference, and claim-
ing it to be possible that people's values "really differed" from
what they chose in action. He does this by adopting the "consist-
ency" -constancy fallacy.
Does the Unanimity Rule then spell the end of all possible wel-
fare economics, as well as the "old" and the "new" versions? Super-
ficially, it would seem so. For if all changes must injure nobody,
i.e., if no people must feel worse off as a result of a change, what
changes could pass muster as socially useful within the Unanimity
Rule? As Reder laments: "Consideration of the welfare implications
of envy, for example, make it impossible even to say that welfare
will be increased by everyone having more of every commodity."
55
V. Welfare Economics: A Reconstruction
a. Derrwnstrated Preference and the Free Market. It is the con-
tention of this paper that the wake for all welfare economics is
premature, and that welfare economics can be reconstructed with
the aid of the concept of demonstrated preference. This reconstruc-
tion, however, will have no resemblance to either of the "old" or
"new" edifices that preceded it. In fact, if Reder's thesis is correct,
our proposed resurrection of the patient may be considered by many
as more unfortunate than his demise.
56
Samuelson, loc. cit. Also cf. the articles by Schoeffler, Bergson, and Kemp cited
above.
54 Jerome Rothenberg, "Welfare Comparisons and Changes in Tastes," American
Economic Review, December 1953, pp. 885-90.
55 Reder, lac. cit., p. 35.
56 "To a considerable extent, welfare (and related) theorizing of the 1930's and
'40's was an attempt to show the variety and importance of the circumstances under
which laissez-faire was inappropriate." Ibid.
250
Demonstrated preference, as we remember, eliminates hypotheti-
cal imaginings about individual value-scales. Welfare economics
has until now always considered values as hypothetical valuations
of hypothetical "social states." But demonstrated preference only
treats values as revealed through chosen action.
Let us now consider exchanges on the free market. Such an ex-
change is voluntarily undertaken by both parties. Therefore, the
very fact that an exchange takes place demonstrates that both par-
ties benefit (or more strictly, expect to benefit) from the exchange.
The fact that both parties chose the exchange demonstrates that
they both benefit. The free market is the name for the array of all
the voluntary exchanges that take place in the world. Since every
exchange demonstrates a unanimity of benefit for both parties con-
cerned, we must conclude that the free market benefits all its partic-
ipants. In other words, welfare economics can make the statement
that the free market increases social utility, while still keeping to
the framework of the Unanimity Rule.
57
But what about Reder's bogey: the envious man who hates the
benefits of others? To the extent that he himself has participated in
the market, to that extent he reveals that he likes and benefits from
the market. And we are not interested in his opinions about the
exchanges made by others, since his preferences are not demon-
strated through action and are therefore irrelevant. How do we
know that this hypothetical envious one loses in utility because of
the exchanges of others? Consulting his verbal opinions does not
suffice, for his proclaimed envy might be a joke or a literary game
or a deliberate lie.
We are led inexorably, then, to the conclusion that the processes
of the free market always lead to a gain in social utility. And we
can say this with absolute validity as economists, without engaging
in ethical judgments.
b. The Free Market and the "Problem of Distribution." Econom-
ics, in general, and welfare economics, in particular, have been
plagued with the "problem of distribution." It has been maintained,
for example, that assertions of increased social utility on the free
market are all very well, but only within the confines of assuming
57 Haavelmo criticizes the thesis that the free market maximizes social utility on
the grounds that this "assumes" that the individuals "somehow get together" to make
an optimal decision. But the free market is precisely the method by which the "get
together" takes place! Cf. Trygve Haavelmo, "The Notion of Involuntary Economic
Decision," Econometrica, January 1950, p. 8.
a given distribution of income.
58
Since changes in the distribution
of income seemingly injure one person and benefit another, no state-
ments, it is alleged, can be made about social utility with respect to
changes in distribution. And income distribution is always changing.
On the free market, however, there is no such thing as a separate
"distribution." A man's monetary assets have been acquired pre-
cisely because his or his ancestors' services have been purchased by
others on the free market. There is no distributional process apart
from the production and exchange processes of the market; hence
the very concept of "distribution" becomes meaningless on the free
market. Since "distribution" is simply the result of the free exchange
process, and since this process benefits all participants on the market
and increases social utility, it follows directly that the "distribu-
tional" results of the free market also increase social utility.
The strictures of the critics do apply, however, to cases of State
action. When the State takes from Peter and gives to Paul it is
effecting a separate distribution process. Here, there does exist a
process separate from production and exchange, and hence the con-
cept becomes meaningful. Moreover, such State action obviously
and demonstrably benefits one group and injures another, thus vio-
lating the Unanimity Rule.
c. The Role of the State. Until quite recently, welfare economics
has never analyzed the role of the State. Indeed, economics in gen-
eral has never devoted much attention to this fundamental problem.
Specific problems, such as public finance, or price controls, have
been investigated, but the State itself has been a shadowy figure in
the economic literature. Usually, it has vaguely been considered
as representing "society" or "the public" in some way. "Society,"
however, is not a real entity; it is only a convenient short-hand term
for an array of all existing individuals.
59
The largely unexplored
area of the State and State actions, however, can be analyzed with
the powedul tools of Demonstrated Preference and the Unanimity
Rule.
The State is distinguished from all other institutions in society
in two ways: ( l) it and it alone can intedere by the use of violence
with actual or potential market exchanges of other people; and ( 2) it
and it alone obtains its revenues by a compulsory levy, backed by
violence. No other individual or group can legally act in these
58
It would be more correct to say given distribution of money assets.
59
On this fallacy of methodological collectivism, and the broader fallacy of
conceptual realism, cf. the excellent discussion in Hayek, Counter Revolution of
Science, op. cit., pp. 53 ff.
252
ways.
60
Now what happens when the State, or a criminal, uses vio-
lence to interfere with exchanges on the market? Suppose that the
government prohibits A and B from making an exchange they are
willing to make. It is clear that the utilities of both A and B have
been lowered, for they are prevented by threat of violence from
making an exchange that they otherwise would have made. On the
other hand, there has been a gain in utility (or at least an antici-
pated gain) for the government officials imposing this restriction,
otherwise they would not have done so. As economists, we can
therefore say nothing about social utility in this case, since some
individuals have demonstrably gained, and some demonstrably lost
in utility, from the governmental action.
The same conclusion follows in those cases where the government
forces C and D to make an exchange which they otherwise would
not have made. Once again, the utilities of the government officials
gain. And at least one of the two participants ( C or D) lose in
utility, because at least one would not have wanted to make the
exchange in the absence of governmental coercion. Again, eco-
nomics can say nothing about social utility in this case.
61
We conclude therefore that no government interference with ex-
changes can ever increase social utility. But we can say more than
that. It is the essence of government that it alone obtains its revenue
by the compulsory levy of taxation. All of its subsequent acts and
expenditures, whatever their nature, rest on this taxing power. We
have just seen that whenever government forces anyone to make an
exchange which he would not have made, this person loses in utility
as a result of the coercion. But taxation is just such a coerced ex-
change. If everyone would have paid just as much to the govern-
ment under a system of voluntary payment, then there would be no
need for the compulsion of taxes. The fact that coercion is used for
taxes demonstrates that less would have been contributed under a
completely voluntary arrangement. Since some lose by the existence
of taxes, therefore, and since all government actions rest on its tax-
ing power, we deduce that: no act of government whatever can
increase social utility.
Economics, therefore, without engaging in any ethical judgment
whatever, and following the scientific principles of the Unanimity
Rule and Demonstrated Preference, concludes: ( 1) that the free
60
Criminals also act in these ways, but they cannot do so legally. For the purpose
oi praxeologic rather than legal analysis, the same conclusions apply to both groups.
61
We cannot discuss here the praxeological analysis of general economics which
shows that, in the long run, for many acts of coercive interference, the coercer him-
self loses in utility.
market always increases social utility; and ( 2) that no act of gov-
ernment can ever increase social utility. These two propositions are
the pillars of the reconstructed welfare economics.
Exchanges between persons can take place either voluntarily or
under the coercion of violence. There is no third way. If, therefore,
free market exchanges always increase social utility, while no co-
erced exchange or interference can increase social utility, we may
conclude that the maintenance of a free and voluntary market "max-
imizes" social utility (provided we do not interpret "maximize" in
a cardinal sense ) .
Generally, even the most rigorously Wertfrei economists have
been willing to allow themselves one ethical judgment: they feel
free to recommend any change or process that increases social
utility under the Unanimity Rule. Any economist who pursues this
method would have to (a) uphold the free market as always benefi-
cial, and (b) refrain from advocating any governmental action.
In other words, he would have to become an advocate of "ultra"
laissez-faire.
d. Laissez-faire Reconsidered. It has been quite common to scoff at
the French "optimist" laissez-faire school of the nineteenth century.
Usually, their "welfare economic" analysis has been dismissed as
naive prejudice. Actually, however, their writings reveal that their
laissez-faire conclusions were post-judices-were judgments based
on their analysis, rather than preconceptions of their analysis.
62
It
was the discovery of the general social benefit from free exchange
that led to the rhapsodies over the free exchange process in the
works of such men as Frederic Bastiat, Edmond About, Gustave de
Molinari, and the American, Arthur Latham Perry. Their analyses
of State action were far more rudimentary (except in the case of
Molinari), but their analyses generally needed only the ethical pre-
sumption in favor of social utility to lead them to a pure laissez-faire
position.
63
Their treatment of exchange may be seen in this passage
from the completely neglected Edmond About:
62 Lionel Robbins' The Theory of Political Economy (London, 1952) is devoted
to the thesis that the English classical economists were really "scientific" because
they did not uphold laissez-faire, while the French optimists were dogmatic and
"metaphysical" because they did. To uphold this, Robbins abandons his praxeologi-
cal approach of twenty years before, and adopts positivism: "The final test whether
a statement is metaphysical (sic) or scientific is ... whether it argues dogmatically
a priori or by way of appeal to experience." Naturally, Robbins cites examples from
the physical sciences to bolster this fallacious dichotomy. Ibid., pp. 23-24.
63 Bastiat's writings are well known, but his "welfare" analysis was generally
inferior to that of About or Molinari. For a brilliant analysis of State action, cf.
Gustave de Molinari, The Society of Tomorrow (New York, 1904), pp. 19 :II., 65-96.
Now what is admirable in exchange is that it benefits the two contracting
parties. . . . Each of the two, by giving what he has for that which he has not,
makes a good bargain. . . . This occurs at every free and straightforward ex-
change. . . . In fact, whether you sell, whether you buy, you perform an act
of preference. No one constrains you to give over any of your things for the
things of another.64
The analysis of free exchange underlying the laissez-faire posi-
tion has suffered general neglect in economics. When it is consid-
ered, it is usually dismissed as "simple." Thus, Hutchison calls the
idea of exchange as mutual benefit "simple"; Samuelson calls it
"unsophisticated." Simple it perhaps is, but simplicity per se is
hardly a liability in science. The important consideration is whether
the doctrine is correct; if it is correct, then Occam's Razor tells us
that the simpler it is, the better.
65
The rejection of the simple seems to have its root in the positivist
methodology. In physics (the model of positivism), the task of
science is to go beyond common-sense observation, building a com-
plex structure of explanation of the common-sense facts. Praxeology,
however, begins with common-sense truths as its axioms. The laws
of physics need complicated empirical testing; the axioms of praxi-
ology are known as obvious to all upon reflection. As a result, posi-
tivists are uncomfortable in the presence of universal truth. Instead
of rejoicing in the ability to ground knowledge on universally ac-
cepted truth, the positivist rejects it as simple, vague, or "naive."
66
Samuelson's only attempt to refute the laissez-faire position was
to refer briefly to the allegedly classic refutation by Wicksell.
67
Wicksell, however, also dismissed the approach of the French "har-
mony economists" without argument, and went on to criticize at
length the far weaker formulation of Leon Walras. Walras tried to
prove "maximum utility" from free trade in the sense of an inter-
personally cardinal utility, and thus left himself wide open to refu-
tation.
Furthermore, it should be stressed that the theorem of maximum
64 Edmond About, Handbook of Social Economy (London, 1872), p. 104. Also
cf. ibid., pp. 101-12; and Arthur Latham Perry, Political Economy (21st Ed., New
York, 1892), p. 180.
6
5
Cf. T. W. Hutchison, op. cit., p. 282; Samuelson, Foundations, op. cit., p. 204.
66 For an example of this attitude, cf. the critique of Hayek's Counter-Revolution
of Science by May Brodbeck, in "On the Philosophy of the Social Sciences," Philos-
ophy of Science, April 1954. Brodbeck complains that the praxeologic axioms are
not "surprising"; if she pursued the analysis, however, she might find the conclusions
surprising enough.
67 Cf. Knut Wicksell, Lectures on Political Economy, Vol. I (London, 1934)
pp. 72ff.
social utility applies not to any type of "perfect" or "pure" competi-
tion, or even to "competition" as against "monopoly." It applies
simply to any voluntary exchange. It might be objected that a vol-
untary cartel's action in raising prices makes many consumers worse
oH, and therefore that assertion of the benefits of voluntary exchange
would have to exclude cartels. It is not possible, however, for an
observer scientifically to compare the social utilities of results on the
free market from one period of time to the next. As we have seen
above, we cannot determine a man's value-scales over a period of
time. How much more impossible for all individuals! Since we can-
not discover people's utilities over time, we must conclude that
whatever the institutional conditions of exchange, however large or
small the number of participants on the market, the free market at
any time will maximize social utility. For all the exchanges are ex-
changes effected voluntarily by all parties. Thus, in Period 1 the
free market will maximize social utility. Then, suppose some pro-
ducers voluntarily form a cartel in an industry. This cartel makes
its exchanges in Period 2. Social utility is again maximized, for
again no one's exchanges are being altered by coercion. If, in Period
2, the government should intervene to prohibit the cartel, it could
not increase social utility since the prohibition demonstrably injures
the producers.
68
e. The State As a Voluntary Institution; A Critique. In the devel-
opment of economic thought, far more attention has been paid to
analysis of free exchange than to State action. Generally as we have
indicated, the State has simply been assumed to be a voluntary
institution. The most common assumption is that the State is volun-
tary because all government must rest on majority consent. If we
adhere to the Unanimity Rule, however, it is obvious that a majority
is not unanimity, and that therefore economics cannot consider the
State as voluntary on this ground. The same comment applies to the
majority voting procedures of democracy. The man who votes for
the losing candidate, and even more the man who abstains from
voting, can hardly be said voluntarily to approve of the action of
the government.
69
68 It is also possible to argue, on general economic, rather than welfare-economic,
grounds, that a voluntary cartel action, if profitable, will benefit consumers. In that
case, consumers as well as producers would be injured by governmental outlawry
of the cartel. As we have indicated above, welfare economics demonstrates that no
governmental action can increase social utility. General economics demonstrates that,
in many instances of governmental action, even those who immediately benefit lose
in the long run.
69 Schumpeter is properly scornful when he says: "The theory which construes
taxes on the analogy of club dues or of purchase of services of. say, a doctor only
In the last few years, a few economists have begun to realize
that the nature of the State needs careful analysis. In particular,
they have realized that welfare economics must prove the State to
be in some sense voluntary before it can advocate any State action
whatever. The most ambitious attempt to designate the State as
a "voluntary" institution is the work of Professor Baumol.
70
Bau-
mol's "external economy" thesis may be put succinctly as follows:
certain wants are by their nature ''collective" rather than "individ-
ual.,.. In these cases, every individual will rank the following alter-
natives on his value scale: (A) he would most prefer that everyone
but himself be coerced to pay for the satisfaction of the group want
(e.g., military protection, public parks, dams, etc.). But since this
is not practicable, he must choose between alternatives B and C. In
(B) no one is forced to pay for the service, in which case the service
will probably not be provided since each man will tend to shirk his
share; in (C) everyone, including the particular individual himself,
is forced to pay for the service. Baumol concludes that people will
pick C; hence the State's activities in providing these services are
"really voluntary." Everyone cheerfully chooses that he be coerced.
This subtle argument can be considered on many levels. In the
first place, it is absurd to hold that "voluntary coercion" can be a
demonstrated preference. If the decision were truly voluntary, no
tax coercion would be necessary-people would voluntarily and pub-
licly agree to pay their share of contributions to the common project.
Since they are all supposed to prefer getting the project to not pay-
ing for it and not getting it, they are then really willing to pay the
tax-price to obtain the project. Therefore, the tax coercion apparatus
is not necessary, and all people would bravely, if a bit reluctantly,
pay what they are "supposed to" without any coercive tax system.
Secondly, Baumol's thesis undoubtedly is true for the ma;ority,
since the majority, passively or eagerly, must support a government
if it is to survive any length of time. But even if the majority are
willing to coerce themselves in order to coerce others (and perhaps
tip the balance of coercion against the others), this proves nothing
for welfare economics, which must rest its conclusions on unanimity,
not majority, rule. Will Baumol contend that everyone has this
proves how far removed this part of the social sciences is from scientific habits of
mind." Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York
1942), p. 198. For a realistic analysis cf. Molinari, op. cit., pp. 87-95.
70 Cf. William J. Baumol, "Economic Theory and the Political Scientist," World
Politics, January 1954, pp. 275-77; and Baumol, Welfare Economics and the Theory
of the State, op. cit.
value ordering? Isn't there one person in the society who prefers
freedom for all to coercion over all? If one such person exists,
Baumol can no longer call the State a voluntary institution. On
what grounds, a priori or empirical, can anyone contend that no
such individual exists?
71
But Baumol's thesis deserves more detailed consideration. For
even though he cannot establish the existence of a voluntary coer-
cion, if it is really true that certain services simply cannot be ob-
tained on the free market, then this would reveal a serious weakness
in the free-market "mechanism." Do cases exist where only coercion
can yield desired services? At first glance, Baumol's "external econ-
omy" grounds for an affirmative answer seem plausible. Such serv-
ices as military protection, dams, highways, etc., are important.
People desire that they be supplied. Yet wouldn't each person tend
to slacken his payment, hoping that the others would pay? But to
employ this as a rationale for State provision of such services is a
question-begging example of circular reasoning. For this peculiar
condition holds only and precisely because the State, not the market,
provides these services! The fact that the State provides a service
means that, unlike the market, its provision of the service is com-
pletely separated from its collection of payment. Since the service
is generally provided free and more or less indiscriminately to the
citizens, it naturally follows that every individual-assured of the
service-will try to shirk his taxes. For, unlike the market, his indi-
vidual tax payment brings him nothing directly. And this condition
cannot be a justification for the State action; for it is only the con-
sequence of the existence of the State action itself.
But perhaps the State must satisfy some wants because these
wants are "collective" rather than "individual"? This is Baumol's
second line of attack. In the first place, Molinari has shown that
the existence of collective wants does not necessarily imply State
action. But, furthermore, the very concept of "collective" wants is
a dubious one. For this concept must imply the existence of some
existent collective entity who does the wanting! Baumol struggles
against conceding this, but he struggles in vain. The necessity for
assuming such an entity is made clear in Haavelmo's discussion of
"collective action," cited favorably by Baumol. Thus, Haavelmo
grants that deciding on collective action "requires a way of thinking
"l1 Galbraith, in effect, does make such an assumption, but obviously without
adequate basis. Cf. John K. Galbraith, Economics and the Art of Controversy (Cam-
bridge, 1954), pp. 77-78.
258
and a power to act which are outside the functional sphere of any
individual group as such."
72
Baumol attempts to deny the necessity for assuming a collective
entity by stating that some services can be financed only "jointly,"
and will serve many people jointly. Therefore, he argues that indi-
viduals on the market cannot provide these services. This is a curi-
ous position indeed. For all large-scale businesses are "jointly"
financed with huge aggregations of capital, and they also serve
many consumers, often jointly. No one maintains that private enter-
prise cannot supply steel or automobiles or insurance because they
are .. jointly" financed. As for joint consumption, in one sense no
consumption can be joint, for only individuals exist and can satisfy
their wants, and therefore everyone must consume separately. In
another sense, almost all consumption is .. joint." Baumol, for exam-
ple, asserts that parks are an example of "collective wants" jointly
consumed, since many individuals must consume them. Therefore,
the government must supply this service. But going to a theater
is even more joint, for all must go at the same time. Must all theaters
therefore be nationalized and run by the government? Furthermore,
in a broad view, all modern consumption depends on mass produc-
tion methods for a wide market. There are no grounds by which
Baumol can separate certain services and dub them "examples of
interdependence" or "external economies." What individuals could
buy steel or automobiles or frozen foods, or almost anything else, if
enough other individuals did not exist to demand them and make
their mass-production methods worth while? Baumollian interde-
pendencies are all around us, and there is no rational way to isolate
a few services and call them "collective."
A common argument related to, though more plausible than,
Baumol' s thesis is that certain services are so vital to the very exist-
ence of the market that they must be supplied collectively outside
the market. These services (protection, transportation, etc.) are so
basic, it is alleged, that they permeate market affairs and are a prior
necessary condition for its existence. But this argument proves far
too much. It was the fallacy of the classical economists that they
considered goods in terms of large classes, rather than in terms of
marginal units. All actions on the market are marginal, and this is
precisely the reason that valuation, and imputation of value-pro-
72 Haavelmo, loc. cit. Yves Simon, cited favorably by Rothenberg, is even more
explicit, postulating a "public reason" and a "public will," as contrasted to individual
reasonings and wills. Cf. Yves Simon, Philosophy of Democratic G01)ernment
(Chicago, 1951); Rothenberg, "Conditions," loc. cit., pp. 402-03.
ductivity to factors, can be effected. If we start dealing with whole
classes rather than marginal units, we can discover all sorts of activi-
ties which are necessary prerequisites of, and vital to, all market
activity; land room, food, clothing, shelter, power, etc.-and even
paper! Must all of these be supplied by the State and the State
only?
Stripped of its many fallacies, the whole "collective wants" thesis
boils down to this: certain people on the market will receive benefits
from the action of others without paying for them.
73
This is the
long and short of the criticism of the market, and this is the only
relevant "external economy" problem.
74
A and B decide to pay for
the building of a dam for their uses; C benefits though he did not
pay. A and B educate themselves at their expense and C benefits
by being able to deal with educated people, etc. This is the problem
of the Free Rider. Yet it is difficult to understand what the hulla-
baloo is all about. Am I to be specially taxed because I enjoy the
sight of my neighbor's garden without paying for it? A's and B's
purchase of a good reveals that they are willing to pay for it; if it
indirectly benefits C as well, no one is the loser. If C feels that he
would be deprived of the benefit if only A and B paid, then he is
free to contribute too. In any case, all the individuals consult their
own preferences in the matter.
In fact, we are all free riders on the investment, and the techno-
logical development, of our ancestors. Must we wear sackcloth and
ashes, or submit ourselves to State dictation, because of this happy
fact?
Baumol and others who agree with him are highly inconsistent.
On the one hand, action cannot be left up to voluntary individual
choice because the wicked free rider might shirk and obtain benefits
without payment. On the other hand, individuals are often de-
nounced because people will not do enough to benefit free riders.
Thus, Baumol criticizes investors for not violating their own time-
preferences and investing more generously. Surely, the sensible
course is neither to penalize the free rider nor to grant him special
73 Cf. the critique of a similar position of Spencer's by "S.R.", "Spencer As His
Own Critic," Liberty, June 1904.
74 The famous "external diseconomy" prol)lems (noise, smoke nuisance, fishing,
etc.) are really in an entirely different category, as Mises has shown. These "prob-
lems" are due to insufficient defense of private property against invasion. Rather
than a defect of the free market, therefore, they are the results of invasions of
property, invasions which are ruled out of the free market by definition. Cf. Mises,
Human Action, op. cit., pp. 650-56.
privilege. This would also be the only solution consistent with the
unanimity rule and demonstrated preference.
75
Insofar as the "collective want" thesis is not the problem of the
Free Rider, it is simply an ethical attack on individual valuations,
and a desire by the economist (stepping into the role of an ethicist)
to substitute his valuations for those of other individuals in deciding
the latter's actions. This becomes clear in the assertion by Suranyi-
Unger; "he (an individual) may be led by a niggardly or thoughtless
or frivolous evaluation of utility and disutility and by a correspond-
ingly low degree or complete absence of group responsibility."
76
Tibor Scitovsky, while engaging in an analysis similar to Baumol's,
also advances another objection to the free market based on what
he calls "pecuniary external economies."
77
Briefly, this conception
suffers from the common error of confusing the general (and unat-
tainable!) equilibrium of the evenly rotating economy with an ethical
"ideal," and therefore belaboring such ever-present phenomena as
the existence of profits as departures from such an ideal.
Finally, we must mention the very recent attempts of Professor
Buchanan to designate the State as a voluntary institution.
78
Buchan-
an's thesis is based on the curious dialectic that majority rule in a
democracy is really unanimity because majorities can and do always
shift! The resulting pulling and hauling of the political process,
because obviously not irreversible, are therefore supposed to yield
a social unanimity. The doctrine that endless political conflict and
stalemate really amount to a mysterious social unanimity must be
set down as a lapse into a type of Hegelian mysticism.
79
7
5
In a good, though limited, criticism of Baumol, Reder points out that Baumol
completely neglects voluntary social organizations formed by individuals, for he
assumes the State to be the only social organization. This error may stem partly
from Baumol's peculiar definition of "individualistic" as meaning a situation where
no one considers the effects of his actions on anyone else. Cf. Melvin W. Reder,
"Review of Baumol's Welfare Economics and the Theory of the State," journal of
Political Economy, December 1953, p. 539.
76
Theo Suranyi-Unger, "Individual and Collective Wants," ]oumal of Political
Economy, February 1948, pp. 1-22. Suranyi-Unger also employs such meaningless
concepts as the "aggregate utility" of the "collectivized want satisfaction."
77 Tibor Scitovsky, "Two Concepts of External Economies," Journal of Political
Economy, April 1954, pp. 144-51.
78 Cf. James M. Buchanan, "Social Choice, Democracy, and Free Markets,"
]oumal of Political Economy, April 1954, pp. 114-23; and id., "Individual Choice in
Voting and the Market," ibid., August 1954, pp. 334-43. In many other respects,
Buchanan's articles are quite good.
79 How flimsy this "unanimity" is, even for Buchanan, is illustrated by the follow-
ing very sensible passage: "a dollar vote is never overruled; the individual is never
placed in the position of being a member of dissenting minority" -as he is in the
voting process. Buchanan, "Individual Choice," loc. cit., p. 339. Buchanan's ap-
VI. Conclusion
In his brilliant survey of contemporary economics, Professor Bron-
fenbrenner described the present state of economic science in the
gloomiest possible terms.
80
"Wilderness" and "hash" were typical
epithets, and Bronfenbrenner ended his article in despair by quot-
ing the famous poem Ozymandias. Applied to currently fashionable
theory, his attitude is justified. The 1930's was a period of eager
activity and seemingly pathbreaking advances in economic thought.
Yet one by one, reaction and attenuation have set in, and in the
mid-1950's the high hopes of twenty years ago are either dying or
fighting desperate rearguard action. None of the formerly new ap-
proaches any longer inspire fresh theoretical contributions. Bron-
fenbrenner specifically mentions in this connection the imperfect
competition and the Keynesian theories, and justly so. He could
also have mentioned utility and welfare theory. For the mid-1930's
saw the development of the Hicks-Allen indifference curve analysis,
and the New Welfare Economics. Both of these theoretical revolu-
tions have been enormously popular in the upper reaches of eco-
nomic theory; and both are now crumbling.
The contention of this paper is that while the formerly revolu-
tionary and later orthodox theories of utility and welfare deserve
an even speedier burial then they have been receiving, they need
not be followed by a theoretical vacuum. The tool of Demonstrated
Preference, in which economics deals only with preference as dem-
onstrated by real action, combined with a strict Unanimity Rule
for assertions of social utility, can serve to effect a thoroughgoing
reconstruction of utility and welfare economics. Utility theory
can finally be established as a theory of ordinal marginal utility.
And welfare economics can become a vital corpus again, even
though its new personality might not attract its previous creators.
It must not be thought that we have, in our discussion of welfare
economics, been attempting to set forth any ethical or political pro-
gram. On the contrary, the proposed welfare economics has been
put forward without inserting ethical judgments. Economics by
itself and standing alone cannot establish an ethical system, and we
must grant this regardless of what philosophy of ethics we hold.
The fact that the free market maximizes social utility, or that State
action cannot be considered voluntary, or that the laissez-faire
proach leads him so far as to make a positive virtue out of inconsistency and indeci-
sion in political choices.
so Bronfenbrenner, Zoe. cit.
economists were better welfare analysts than they are given credit
for, in itself implies no plea for laissez-faire or for any other social
system. What welfare economics does is to present these conclu-
sions to the framer of ethical judgments as part of the data for his
ethical system. To the person who scorns social utility or admires
coercion, our analysis might furnish powerful arguments for a policy
of thoroughgoing Statism.
PART FIVE
The Hampered Market Economy
Progressive Taxation
Reconsidered
by F. A. HAYEK
XVIII
AMONG the measures of economic
policy which are gradually transforming our society and producing
far-reaching results which few people yet clearly grasp, few are as
firmly established and as widely accepted as the redistribution of
income by progressive taxation. Though it is a comparatively recent
feature and one which only in the course of the last generation has
assumed the proportion of a major factor in social change, there has
been until quite recently very little re-examination of its effects. It
is accepted as right and desirable even by most people who are
anxious to preserve a free market economy, and to most of them
it indeed appears as the main hope of establishing within such a
system the greater degree of economic justice or equality for which
they yearn. So firmly has the opinion that progressive taxation is
both innocuous and desirable been established that even those who
were alarmed by some of its visible effects seem to feel that any
critical examination of the principle as such would be a futile waste
of effort and that anyone who undertook it would thereby mark
himseH as an unpractical doctrinaire. Quite lately, however, a
change in this attitude is noticeable. After a long period in which
there was practically no questioning of the principle as such and
the discussions on the whole merely repeated the old arguments,
there is a new critical attitude noticeable in the occasional refer-
ences to the problem; and there have already appeared some notable
major contributions to the discussion.
1
There is, however, still much
1
See especially: Walter J. Blum and Harry Kalven, Jr., The Unea.sy Case for
Progressive Taxation, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, lll. Compare also
A Tax Program for Economic Growth, issued by the National Association of Manu-
facturers, New York, January 1955.
265
need for a systematic re-examination of the whole complex of prob-
lems raised by progressive taxation of the kind which is now actually
practiced. This can not be attempted in a single article and what
the following paragraphs will undertake is merely to sketch a few
considerations which do not yet seem to have received the attention
which they deserve.
The main reason why the whole subject requires reconsideration
is that the gradual increase in the rates of taxation over the past fifty
years has, in its cumulative effect, made the problem different in
kind and not merely in degree. With scales of progression approach-
ing and even exceeding ninety per cent of income their significance
is of an altogether different nature from what it was when the upper
limits were in the region of ten or at most fifteen per cent. This
seemed to be the extreme figures which had to be seriously con-
sidered when, around the beginning of this century, the whole issue
was for the last time thoroughly discussed. It was then still possible
to treat the whole issue as if it were a problem of allocating a given
tax burden among the various classes of society; and though it did
raise important issues of principle if the comparatively wealthy
were made to contribute a few per cent more of their income, no
important economic effects were expected from this. To suggest at
that time that progression might ever be carried to the figures it
has now reached would have been treated by its advocates as a
malicious travesty of the principle showing a disreputable contempt
for the wisdom of democracy.
With the change in scale has come a general recognition of the
fact that the only ground on which progressive taxation could be
rationally justified was a desire to change the distribution of in-
comes
2
and that this could not be based on any scientific argument
but had to be recognized as frankly a political decision, an attempt
to impose upon society a pattern of distribution determined by
political choice. All the ingenious theories of just taxation which had
been developed in the early days of the discussion and which can
still be found in the textbooks on public finance
3
have lost their
relevance in view of the no longer disputed fact that present policy
is guided almost exclusively by the desire to produce an all-round
reduction of income inequalities.
2 See Henry C. Simons, Personal Income Taxation, The University of Chicago
Press, 1938.
3 For a survey of the more recent discussions see Ehner D. Fagan, "Recent and
Contemporary Theories of Progressive Taxation," Journal of Political Economy,
46/4, August 1938.
THE HAMPERED MARKET ECONOMY 267
There is only one among these older theories which needs some
brief consideration because it is still often asserted that it provides
something like a scientific foundation for policy. This is the use of
the conception of decreasing marginal utility in support of a pro-
portionally greater taxation of the larger incomes. In spite of its
abstract character it has had great influence in making scientifically
respectable what originally had been frankly based on arbitrary
postulates. How important it seemed at the time may be gauged
by such statements as that of the late Lord Stamp who in 1929
wrote that "it was not until the marginal theory was thoroughly
worked out on its psychological side that progressive taxation ob-
tained a really secure basis in principle."
4
Yet I do not believe it is
overstating the case to say that modem developments within the
realm of utility analysis itself have left no justification whatever for
this use of marginal utility. Not only does it fall with the abandon-
ment of interpersonal comparisons of utility-a conclusion which
seems to me inescapable notwithstanding the ever-recurring objec-
tion that individually most of us have definite views about whether
a particular need of A is greater than a certain need of B. But the
fact that we may have views about this, of course, does not prove
that if these views differ there is any objective basis for deciding
between them; and this is the question which has been at issue and
which must undoubtedly be answered in the negative. But what is
more, it is exceedingly doubtful whether even the conception of
decreasing marginal utility as such, applied to income as a whole,
has any clear meaning if we count as income all the benefits derived
by a person from his disposal over his resources. The recognition
that utility has definite meaning only as a relative concept, i.e., that
we can say only that a given object is more, equally, or less useful
than some particular other object, and that it is meaningless to
speak of the utility of a thing in isolation, implies that in order that
we should be able to speak of the utility, or the marginal utility,
of income we have to define income so as to leave out of it some-
thing which can serve as a standard of comparison. We can mean-
ingfully speak of the utility of income in terms of effort or of some
other such magnitude, say, leisure. But if we were seriously to fol-
low up the consequences of the contention that the utility of income
in terms of effort is decreasing, this would lead to very curious re-
sults in our context: it would in effect mean that as a person's in-
come grows, the incentive in terms of additional income required
to induce the same marginal effort would increase. This might lead
4 Josiah Stamp, The Fundamental Principles of Taxation, London, 1929, p. 40.
to an argument in favor of degressive taxation but certainly not to
one for progressive taxation. It is scarcely worth while to follow
this line of thought further. In retrospect we must probably say
that the whole episode of introducing utility analysis into this dis-
cussion was a regrettable mistake (in which some of the most dis-
tinguished economists of the time shared) and that the sooner we
can undo the effects produced by the quasi-scientific sanction which
economic theory gave to a dangerous instrument of policy, the bet-
ter it will be.
For what follows we shall take it for granted that today the only
grounds on which progressive taxation can be defended is the desire
for a more equal distribution of income. This it attempts to achieve
mainly by flattening the top of the income pyramid. It differs from
other measures of more specific controls of income distribution in
that it does not directly manipulate the income of specific groups
but, as it were, alters the scale of incomes which can be earned.
How far it succeeds in this, i.e., how far its effects are not counter-
acted by an adjustment of gross incomes and the burden thus par-
tially shifted, is a question we will not consider here. It has recently
been attempted to show, by an ingenious argument of the "Keynes-
ian"
5
type, that so far as the aggregate amount of profits is con-
cerned, the attempt to reduce them by taxation cannot succeed.
This argument is based on rather special assumptions (especially
the assumption that the volume of investment can, for the purpose
of this argument, be treated as fixed) and I doubt whether under
actually existing conditions there is any validity in the contention.
At any rate, there seems to me little doubt possible that in actual
fact progressive taxation does succeed in greatly reducing the net
incomes in the higher brackets compared with what they would
otherwise be, and the further discussion will proceed on the as-
sumption that this is the case.
Progressive taxation is, of course, not the only method by which
a redistribution of incomes can be brought about. It would be pos-
sible to effect a considerable amount of redistribution under a sys-
tem of proportional taxation. To achieve this it would merely be
necessary to devote a substantial part of tax revenue to finance
services which benefit mainly the relatively poor-or to subsidize
5
Carl Fiihl, "Kritik der progressiven Einkommensbesteuerung," Finanzarchiv 14/1,
1953, pp. 88-109. The author had developed his general approach which has certain
similarities to that of Lord Keynes independently of and before the work of the
latter. A similar argument is also to be found in H. J. Riistow, Theorie der Voll-
beschiiftigung, 1951.
them directly. Yet there are several limitations to the extent to
which this could be carried. Not only is it doubtful how far the
people in the lower income classes would be willing to have their
freely spendable income reduced by taxation in return for services
offered free. It is also particularly difficult to conceive how in this
manner the differentials in the higher income classes could be sub-
stantially altered. There might well be brought about in this man-
ner a considerable transfer of incomes from the rich as a class to the
poor as a class; but it would not bring about that flattening of the
top of the income pyramid which is the characteristic effect of
progressive taxation. For the comparatively well-to-do it would pre-
sumably mean that they would all be taxed proportionately on their
whole incomes and that the differences in the services they received
would be negligible. It is in this class, however, that the changes
in the income structure resulting from progressive taxation are most
significant. The consequences for progress, for the allocation of
resources, the effect on incentives, on social mobility, and on in-
vestment, operate mainly through the effect on this group (which,
in the most advanced countries today includes, of course, many of
the highly skilled manual workers). Whatever may be the possible
developments in the future, for the present at any rate it seems be-
yond question that progressive taxation is the main tool available
for effecting a redistribution of income and that without it the scope
of such a policy would be very limited.
A distinction must, of course, be drawn between the progressive
character of a particular tax, such as the income tax, and the pro-
gressive character of the burden which the tax system as a whole
imposes upon incomes. It is well-known that the heavier incidence
of indirect taxation on the lower incomes may make the effect of the
tax system as a whole regressive in the lower brackets, even though
the income tax is progressive, and that, on the other hand, a progres-
sive income tax may be used to make the tax burden as a whole
proportional to incomes by compensating for the degressive effects
of indirect taxation. The argument for a progressive income tax
which does no more than this is probably very strong and it seems
to us the only valid argument in favor of a progressive tax, but, be
it noted, only in favor of progressive scales for one particular tax,
and not in favor of a progressive character of the tax system as a
whole. The signincance of this argument is today, however, some-
what diminished because it seems probable that the regressive
character of taxation in the lowest income brackets is largely com-
pensated for by the redistributive effects of government expendi-
ture.
It is, however, still worth while to look a little more closely at the
information we have on the distribution of the tax burden between
the different income classes, since it throws an interesting light on
the alleged inevitability of relieving the lowest incomes from the
burden of taxation. The most detailed investigation of this kind
known to me concerns the situation in Great Britain,
6
but similar
studies for other countries, especially the United States,
7
suggest
that the main results of the British investigation reveal a situation
which also prevails elsewhere. It will be useful to reproduce here
some of the results of that investigation. According to it the total
burden of taxation on different fully "earned" incomes of a family
with two children were as follows during the last pre-war year
( 1937/38) for which these figures were worked out:
8
Income

Per cent taken
in taxation
100 ................ 18
150 ................ 16
200 ................ 15
250 ................ 14
300 ............... 12
350 ................ 11
500 ................ 14
Income

Per cent taken
in taxation
1,000 ............... 19
2,000 ................ 24
2,500 ................ 25
5,000 ................ 33
10,000 ............... 41
20,000 ................ 50
50,000 ............. 58
It will be noticed that the lowest rate of taxation occurs at an in-
come of 350; other data given in the same work suggest that it
may actually have been as high as 500 and that this situation had
prevailed during the preceding twenty years, while during the first
two decades of the century the income with the lowest taxation
had gradually risen from 150 and was again somewhat reduced
by the severe taxation of the Second World War.
In our immediate context these figures are significant in two re-
spects. In the first instance they show that the argument that pro-
6 G. Findlay Shirras and L. Rostas, The Burden of British Taxation, Cambridge,
at the University Press, 1943. See also the earlier discussion in the Report of the
Committee on National Debt and Taxation, London, His Majesty's Stationary Office,
Cmd 2800, 1927; data from France are available in Hubert Brochier, Finances
Publiques et Redistribution des Revenues, Paris, 1950.
7 G. Colm and H. Tarasov, Who Pays the Taxes? Monograph No. 3 of the
Temporary National Economic Committee, U. S. Government Printing Office, Wash-
ington, 1941. Compare also: H. Adler, "The Fiscal System. The Distribution of
Income and Public Welfare" in Fiscal Policies and the American Economy, ed. by
Kenyon E. Poole, New York, 1951, pp. 359-409.
s Shirras and Rostas, loc. cit., p. 56.
gressive taxation is inevitable because the poorest must be relieved
from bearing a proportional share of the tax burden is, so far as the
eff-ects of the tax system as a whole is concerned, just humbug. It
may be questioned whether any tax system has been ever able to
dispense with the individually small but so very numerous contribu-
tions from the smallest incomes. At any rate, this has not been the
situation since progressive taxation has become an important feature
and is not the position today.. We have already conceded that the
regressive character of indirect taxatioo. may be a valid argument
for compensating for it by making the income tax progressive. But
in view of the actual practice of democratic countries in modern
times the necessi:ty of exempting the poorest from the tax burden
can hardly be advanced as an argument for making the tax structure
as a whole progressive. ( 5moe this argument has usually been cou-
pled with the contention that the prohibitive costs of a direct taxa-
tion of small incomes made the exemption a practical necessity and
in consequence also a progressive structure of the income tax in-
evitable, it may be mentioned that the techniques for levying small
contributions developed in connection with social insurance, etc.,
have deprived also this argument of most of its validity.)
The second interesting point arises if one compares these figures
about the relative tax burden in the different income classes with
the proportional numbers of taxpayers in each class, or, what
amounts to much the same thing, their relative strength in the
electorate. If the figures given above were plotted in a diagram
together with a curve representing the relative frequency of the
taxpayers in each class, it would be found that the two curves were
approximately mirror images: this means that it was not the poorest
but the most numerous and therefore politically most powerful
classes which were left off relatively lightly, while not only those
above them but also those below them were burdened more heavily
-approximately in proportion to their smaller political strength.
I am not suggesting, of course, that this is the deliberate result of a
diabollc policy; it seems to be rather the unforeseen but almost in-
evitable result of the democratic process when it is not guided by
at least the desire to apply the same uniform principle to all. Once
it is admitted that a majority has a right to impose upon minorities
burdens of a kind which the majority does not bear itseH, there is
hl:tle reason that this will be used only for discrimination against
the rich.
There is one more consideration which ought to be kept in mind
in this connection. There is clearly little justification for specially
favoring those lower middle incomes which we have seen to be
the actual gainers under the prevailing tax structures. But if we
consider only that part of the scale of progression where it again
exceeds the tax burden imposed on the very lowest incomes, it be-
comes clear that the part of revenue which depends on the progres-
sive character of the tax system as a whole is negligible. If we
remember that, e.g., in Great Britain, according to the latest infor-
mation, "only about ~ per cent of the total income over 155 a
year lies in the slice above 1000"
9
while in the United States
the sum of all incomes of $10,000 and more amounted in 1952 to
only 17 per cent of the total of "adjusted gross income,"
10
it be-
comes clear how relatively small the financial yield from the
progressive taxation of these incomes is. It is almost certainly con-
siderably smaller than the additional revenue which would be ob-
tained if the lower middle groups just mentioned were taxed as
heavily as the poorest.
This is important because it in effect disposes of the supposed
fiscal necessity of making the tax system as a whole progressive.
It just is not the case that the sums actually raised could not be
raised without resort to progression; they could in fact, probably,
be raised without increasing the burden on the very poorest at all
and by merely bringing up the proportional burden on those lower
middle groups to that actually borne by the poorest.
It seems that the conclusion we must draw from this is that
rates of taxation in the upper part of the progressive scale have very
little to do with the benefit the resulting redistribution of income
confers on the lower income classes or the relief in the tax burden
they actually obtain. They must be regarded as purely punitive
rates, as an expression of the dislike of the majority of the idea that
anybody should enjoy the command of such large incomes. It is in
this region, however, where marginal tax rates rise in Great Britain
and the United States more or less rapidly from the neighborhood
9 Second Report af the Royal Commission on the Taxation of Profits and Income,
London, Her Majesty's Stationary Office, Cmd 9105, 1954, paragraph 140. This
important and characteristic document has come into my hands too late for the
full use and comment which it deserves.
10 Statistics of Income for 1952, Preliminary Report, issued by the U. S. Treasury
Department, Internal Revenue Service, Part I, Washington, D.C., April 1955.
According to the corresponding complete report for 1951, total adjusted gross in-
comes of $10,000 and more, amounting to 17.3 per cent of the total, contributed
39 per cent of total income tax liability. If, instead of an average of about 27 per
cent, at which these incomes were taxed, they had been taxed at the rate at which
income between $10,000 and $11,000 were taxed, namely, approximately 15.5 per
cent, total income tax revenue would have been reduced by only 17 per cent.
of 20 per cent (for a married couple with two children) to 90 per
cent or over, that the effect of progressive taxation is so very impor-
tant. The percentage of the population directly affected by it is
comparatively small; but it is probably the section of the population
which in a free society predominantly decides on how efficiently
the resources will be used. It will be for this reason that in what
follows we shall be concerned mainly with the effect of progressive
taxation on this group.
Before we go on to examine some of the specific effects of this
kind of taxation we will pause for a moment to consider how it has
come about that we have arrived at a scale of progression leading
up to rates which a generation ago would have been regarded as
thoroughly unreasonable. We have already been able to eliminate
real financial necessity as an explanation-though this does not ex-
clude the possibility that mistaken beliefs about the extent to which
the burden might be shifted to the rich may not have had a deter-
mining influence. Indeed, it seems more than likely that the illusion
that by means of progressive taxation the cost of additional expendi-
ture can be raised from the rich has made such expenditure much
more attractive and that as a result even the poor now have to
give up a larger proportion of their income than they would have
consented to do.
Another factor which has operated in a similar direction was, of
course, inflation. It is now well understood how a generar rise in
money incomes tends to lift everybody into a higher tax bracket
even though his real income may have remained the same. In this
manner many members of the majority must have found themselves
unexpectedly the victims of discriminatory rates for which they had
readily voted in the belief that it would never affect them. This
particular effect of progressive taxation is often represented as a
special merit of the system because it tends to make inflation (and
deflation) produced by unbalanced budgets to some extent self-
correcting. If the source of inflation is a budget deficit, the tax
revenue will tend to rise proportionately more than incomes and
thus to close the gap; and if a budget surplus has produced defla-
tion the resulting fall of incomes will soon bring an even greater
reduction of revenue and wipe out the surplus. I doubt, however,
whether with the ever-present bias in favor of inflation which at this
time seems particularly strong, this is really an advantage. Even
without this consideration the needs of government finance have
been in the past the main source of recurrent inflations and only
the knowledge that an inflation, once started, was difficult to stop
has acted in some measure as a deterrent. With a tax system under
which inflation produces a more than proportional increase in
revenue by way of a disguised increase in taxes which needs no
vote of the legislature, this device may become almost irresistibly
tempting.
These special factors, however, had done no more than speed up
further a process which is practically inevitable once the principle
of progressive taxation has been accepted. From the very beginning
it has been one of the main arguments against it that once the prin-
ciple is adopted there is no stopping on the road to steeper and
steeper scales. As early as the sixteenth century, as Professor Selig-
man pointed out, Guicciardini had argued that "it lies in the nature
of things that the beginnings are slight, but unless great care is
taken, the rates will multiply rapidly and finally reach a point that
no one could have foreseen."
11
The nineteenth century literature,
particularly in its discussions of democracy, is full of such warnings.
The best-known statement of the fears is probably that of J. R. Mc-
Culloch: "The reasons that made the step taken in the first instance,
backed as they are sure to be by agitation and clamor, will impel
you forwards. Having once given way, having said that a man with
500 a year shall pay 5 per cent, another with 1000 10 per cent,
and another with 2000 20 per cent, on what pretence or principle
can you stop in your ascending scale? Why not take 50 per cent
from the man of 2000 a year, and confiscate all the higher classes
of income before you tax the lower? In such matters the maxim of
obsta principiis should be firmly adhered to by every prudent and
honest statesman. Graduation is not an evil to be paltered with.
Adopt it and you will effectually paralyze industry and check ac-
cumulation; . . . The moment you abandon ... the cardinal prin-
ciple of exacting from all individuals alike the same proportion of
their income of their property, you are at sea without rudder or
compass, and there is no amount of injustice or folly you may not
commit."
12
The question why these pessimistic prognostications of the oppo-
nents of progressive taxation have come to be confirmed and not the
confidence of its supporters that it would be used in moderation
raises a problem of much wider application than merely in our field.
11 F. Guicciardini, Opere Inedite, 1867, Vol. X, p. 337, translation quoted from
E. R. A. Seligman, Progressive Taxation in Theory and Practice, Second edition,
1908, p. 295.
12 J. R. McCulloch, Taxation and the Funding System, London, 1845, p. 142.
THE HAMPERED MARKET ECONOMY
275
It is the problem why it is apparently necessary, in social no less
than in private action, to abstain altogether from certain kinds of
measures if we want to avoid consequences which would follow if
we applied the principle underlying them as a general rule. The
problem is very similar to that why in individual ethics, when a
kind of action is held to be bad because bad consequences fre-
quently spring from it, it is still held to be bad if in the particular
instance no such bad consequences seem to follow. Yet while, on
the whole, we still accept in private ethics the need of such hard
and fast rules which prohibit certain classes of actions irrespective
of whether we can see that they will have immediate bad effects,
similar rules applied to social action are generally regarded as super-
stitions which should not be allowed to interfere with our freedom
to experiment. Yet, if we want to avoid altogether undesired results
of what we are doing, strict adherence to general rules, even in
instances where their justification is not readily seen, is probably
even more important here than in individual behavior. This might
not be true if social organization was ever designed as a whole and
if in designing it we could judge each individual feature in relation
to all others. But a social structure is never really the result of de-
sign, not even in what is called a planned society. It rather results
from the application to particular and partial decisions of general
conceptions or ideals ruling that society. The arguments underlying
these principles of action cannot and are not re-examined in every
individual instance; the mere fact that a principle has been applied
in other instances becomes the main ground for it being applied
again. But the cumulative effect of it being applied separately in
many different instances or in many successive decisions will, of
course, be very different from what on any of these occasions has
been foreseen. Though as an isolated measure, and applied to a
limited degree, action of the kind may seem innocuous enough and
any possible harm that could follow from it negligible compared
with the importance of the immediate object, the joint effects of
many measures of this type may be exceedingly harmful.
To any one who views the social process realistically it can offer
little reassurance to be told that a principle which, if carried very
far, is admittedly dangerous, will have only beneficial effects if used
in moderation. It is, in fact, only the presumption against the prin-
ciple as such which protects us against its abuse. This is particularly
true where, as in the case of progressive taxation, every argument
which can be advanced in favor of some progression is equally valid
in favor of more progression. The idea merely points in a direction
276
in which it is thought desirable to deviate from a standard. What
at first limits it is no more than the unfamiliarity of it. But it always
justifies a little more of the same than before. The principle itself
indicates no halting point and the "good judgment"
13
of the people
to which its defenders are usually driven to resort as the ultimate
safeguard are merely the opinions shaped by past policy. In its
cumulative effects the successive decisions on what is just in the
light of the principle will always go far beyond what its initial spon-
sors thought desirable.
It is sometimes contended that taxation proportional to income is
as arbitrary a principle as progressive taxation and that it has
merely a greater apparent mathematical neatness but little else to
commend itself. There are, however, fairly strong arguments in its
favor. Not only is there still much in the old argument that, since
almost all economic activity benefits from the basic services of gov-
ernment, these services form a more or less constant ingredient of
all we consume and enjoy, and that, therefore, the more a person
can command of the resources of society, the greater will also be
his gain from what government has contributed to make these serv-
ices possible. But more important is the fact that proportional taxa-
tion leaves the relation between the net remunerations of different
kinds of work unchanged. This is not quite the same as the famous
old maxim that "no tax is a good tax unless it leaves individuals in
the same relative position as it finds them"
14
because it stresses
the effect not on the relation between individuals but on the relation
between the net remuneration for particular services performed,
which is the economically relevant factor. It also does not, as might
at first seem, beg the issue by simply postulating that the propor-
tional size of the different incomes should be left unchanged.
While there might be a difference of opinion on the question
whether the relation between two incomes is left unchanged if they
are both reduced by the same proportion or if they are reduced
by the same amount, there can be no difference on the question
whether the net remuneration received for two services, of which
the one was, before taxation, larger, equal or smaller than the sec-
ond, stands after taxation still in the same relation to the second.
This, however, is the crucial issue with regard to which the effects
of progressive taxation are fundamentally different from that of
13 Second Report of the Royal Commission on the Taxation of Profits etc., para-
graph 150.
14 F. A. Walker, Political Economy, 2nd edition, New York, 1887, p. 491.
proportional taxation. It is, of course, the reward received for the
use of particular resources which determines their allocation, and
what is important is that taxation should leave these relative re-
wards unchanged. Progressive taxation, however, alters them very
considerably by making the net reward received by the owner de-
pendent on what else he has earned during some arbitrary period,
such as a year. If, before taxation, a surgeon gets as much for an
operation as an architect for planning a house, or a salesman sell-
ing ten refrigerators as much as a photographer for making forty
portraits, this will still be true if equal proportional deductions are
made from these payments. But with progressive taxation of in-
comes this relation may be violently changed. Not only will services
which before taxation receive the same reward leave very different
net rewards to those who rendered them; a much larger payment
for one service may indeed leave less to him who rendered it than
a smaller payment to another person.
This means in the first instance that progressive taxation inevi-
tably offends against what seems to me the most basic principle
of economic justice, that of "equal pay for equal work." If what
two lawyers are allowed to retain from their fees for doing exactly
the same work, or two surgeons from their fees for performing the
same operations, depends on their other earning during the year,
they will in fact, probably, derive very different profits from their
efforts. The man who has worked very hard or who has for other
reasons been particularly successful during the year will receive a
much smaller remuneration for further effort than the one who has
been idle or unlucky. And, indeed, the more the consumers value a
man's services, the less worth while it is made for him to exert him-
self further.
The fact that the taxation of a given sum earned will vary with
the time rate at which such earnings accrue to the recipient is the
source of most of the injustices and the cause of the misdirection
of resources which present taxation produces. There is no need to
dwell here on the familiar and insoluble difficulties which, as a re-
sult of progressive taxation, arise in all instances where effort (or
outlay) and reward are not approximately synchronized but where
the former are expended in the expectation of a distant and uncer-
tain result-in short, in all instances where human efforts take the
form of long and risky investment. No practical scheme of averag-
ing incomes can really do justice to the problems of the author or
inventor, the artist or ador, who reap the reward of perhaps dec-
ades of effort in a few years. Nor will it be necessary to stress once
again the discouraging effects progressive taxation must have on
the willingness for the more risky type of capital investments. That
such taxation discriminates against the risky ventures which are
worth while only because in the case of success they will bring a
return big enough to compensate for the great probability of total
loss is so obvious that it should not need emphasis. But it may per-
haps be said that what little truth there is in the alleged exhaustion
of investment opportunities probably is very largely the result of a
fiscal policy which in this manner directly eliminates a wide range
of ventures from the field which can be undertaken by private
enterprise.
That this sort of taxation is so generally approved is closely con-
nected with the fact that our society has come to think of an appro-
priate income as the only legitimate and socially desirable form of
reward, and further, to think of this income not as related to the
value of the particular services rendered but as conferring what is
regarded as an appropriate status in society. This comes out very
clearly in such arguments, frequently used in support of progressive
taxation, as that no individual can be worth more to society than,
say, $20,000 a year.
15
That this contention lacks any foundation and
appeals solely to unreflecting emotion and prejudice would at once
become clear if it were stated in the form of saying that no act any
individual can perform in a year, or for that matter in an hour, can
be worth more to society than $20,000. Of course it can and some-
times will have many times that value. There is no necessary rela-
tion between the time an action takes and the benefit society may
derive from it.
The whole attitude which regards large gains as unnecessary and
socially undesirable springs from the psychology of people who are
used to sell their time for a fixed salary or fixed wages and have
come to think as a remuneration of so much per unit of time as the
normal thing. But, while this method of remuneration has become
the only practicable one in an increasing number of fields, it is rea-
sonable only where people sell their time to use it at another man's
direction. But it is senseless with respect to men whose task it is to
administer resources and whose main aim is to increase the re-
sources under their control from their earning. For them to control
resources is a condition for practicing their vocation just as much as
the acquisition of certain skills and knowledge is such a condition
in the professions. Profits and losses are a way of redistributing
capital among them more than merely a means of providing their
15 L. T. Hobhouse, Liberalism, Home University Press, pp. 199-207.
current sustenance. The conception that current net receipts are
normally intended for current consumption, though natural to the
salaried man, is alien to the thinking of one whose aim is to build
up a business. Even the conception of income is in his case largely
an abstraction forced on him by the income tax. It is no more than
an estimate of what, in view of his expectations and plans, he can
afford to spend, rather than an objective fact. I doubt whether a
society consisting mainly of "self-employed" individuals would ever
have come to take the income concept for granted as we do, or
would ever have thought of taxing differently a given amount
earned according to the time rate at which such earnings accrue.
It must appear somewhat doubtful, however, whether in a society
which will recognize no other rewards than what to its majority
appears a very ample income and do not admit the acquisition of a
fortune in a comparatively short time as a legitimate form of re-
muneration for certain kinds of services, it is possible in the long
run to preserve a system of private enterprise. Though there may
be no difficulty in widely dispersing the ownership in well estab-
lished enterprises among a large number of small capitalists, the
building up of a new enterprise still is and probably always will be
bound up with the control of large resources by a few individuals.
New developments will, as a rule, still have to be backed by a few
persons intimately acquainted with the field, and it is certainly not
to be wished that all further evolution should be dependent on the
existing financial and industrial corporations.
I do not wish here to enter into the much discussed question of
the effect of progressive taxation on the amount of new capital for-
mation-not because this seems to me unimportant but because
another in:Huence on capital formation seems to be equally impor-
tant and less generally appreciated. It is the effect on the locus of
capital formation. It is one of the advantages of a competitive sys-
tem that successful new ventures are likely for a short time to bring
very large profits with the result that new capital is being formed
in the hands of the very people who have the best opportunity of
employing it. The large gains of the successful innovator meant in
the past that the man who had shown the capacity of profitably
employing capital in new ventures would soon be able to back his
judgment with his own means. Much of the individual formation
of new capital, since it is offset by similar capital losses of others,
is in this connection more usefully regarded as part of a continuous
process of redistribution of the capital of society than as a profit
which constitutes part of the net income of society. The taxation of
such profits at more or less confiscatory rates amounts therefore in
effect to a heavy tax on this turnover of capital which is part of the
driving force of a progressive society.
One of the consequences of the discouragement of individual
capital formation at the points where there are temporary opportu-
nities for very large profits is a serious restriction of competition.
As the whole system tends to favor corporate as against individual
saving it strengthens the position of the established corporation
against newcomers and tends to create quasi-monopolistic positions.
By making the rise of new entrepreneurs more difficult it unques-
tionably assists, presumably against the intention of its advocates,
the concentration of industry.
An even more paradoxical and socially grave effect of progres-
sive taxation in this field is that this instrument, intended to de-
crease inequality, in effect helps to perpetuate existing inequalities
and eliminates one of the most important compensations for the
kind of inequality which is inevitable in a private enterprise society.
It does this by greatly reducing vertical mobility because it dimin-
ishes the chances of rising from one class to another.
16
That the rich
were not a closed group but that the successful man might in a
comparatively short time become the owner of large capital re-
sources used to be the redeeming features which did most to miti-
gate the psychological effects of inequality. The chances of rising
into the class of the wealthy are today, however, in some countries
such as Great Britain, probably already smaller than they have been
at any time since the rise of modern industrialism. One significant
effect of this is that the administration of more and more of the
world's capital is coming into the hands of men who, though they
enjoy very large incomes and all the facilities they can wish for,
have never on their own account and at their personal risk controlled
substantial property. Whether this is altogether an advantage to
society remains to be seen.
At the rates to which progressive taxation ascends in some coun-
tries it means in effect that greater equality is brought about by
setting a ceiling to the net income anybody may have available
for spending. (In Great Britain, during the war and immediate
post-war years, the largest net income anyone could earn was ap-
proximately 500, or $14,000-though this was partly mitigated by
the fact that capital gains were not treated as incomes.) We have
16 David McCord Wright, Democracy and Progress, New York, 1948, pp. 95-100.
seen that in view of the insignificant contribution which progression
in the higher brackets makes to revenue, this can be justified only
on the ground that it is regarded as in some sense socially undesir-
able that anyone should command such a high income. But what is
a large income in this sense depends, of course, on the views of the
particular community and thus in the last resort on its average
wealth. The consequence of this is that, on the whole, the poorer a
country is, the lower it tends to set the limits on permissible incomes
or the more difficult it will make it for any of its inhabitants to
reach the levels which in wealthier countries are still only moderate
incomes. Or, in other words, the poorer a country is, the more diffi-
cult it will make it for all its citizens to get rich. This fact stands out
very clearly in any international comparison of income tax rates on
different incomes expressed in a common unit, say, the dollar-
though Great Britain with her exceptionally severe progression
somewhat upsets the rule. A rough comparison of this sort shows,
for instance, that an average income tax rate of 25 per cent and 50
per cent respectively was reached by a family with three children
in the countries named at the following incomes (figures for 1951
or the year nearest to it for which they were available):
United States
Canada
France
United Kingdom
Austria
25 per cent
$36,000
20,000
8,800
4,300
1,840
50 per cent
$140,000
126,000
18,000
13,000
(scale approaches 50
per cent asymptotically)
One need merely to conceive of the same principle being applied
to the different regions ot any one country to appreciate its implica-
tions. It certainly throws a curious light both on the moral basis of
the belief that the view of the majority of a community should be
entitled to set a limit on what are to be regarded as "excessive" in-
comes, and on the wisdom of those who believe that in this manner
they will assist the increase of well-being of the masses. Can there
be much doubt that poor countries, by preventing individuals from
getting rich, will also slow down the general increase of wealth?
And does what applies to poor countries apply any less to the rich
ones?
Any discussion of the relation between rich and poor in our own
environment is so strongly charged with emotional attitudes that it
is generally useful to examine the principles involved with reference
to differences between national groups. If we do this, can there be
serious doubt that today the prospect of the relatively backward
people of raising their standard of life is very much better because
there exist more advanced people who have developed the tech-
niques they can apply; and that their prospects would be very much
poorer if progress of wealth in other parts of the world had, by
some kind of international taxation, been kept to a level not too
much ahead of their own? This is not the place to go into any sys-
tematic examination of the connections between inequality and
progress. But the point which must be briefly mentioned is that a
substantial part of the larger income of the more advanced people
is spent on financing the cost of experimentation and that the re-
sults then become available to the others without all the losses due
to the recurrent investment in blind alleys, etc. Is it not clear that
not only the advanced but also the more backward people would
be still at a much lower level if from the beginning the more suc-
cessful had not been allowed to pull ahead but if any incomes far
above the rest had at once been taxed away for redistribution
among the poor? And is the role of the rich within any given nation
in this respect really very different from that of the few wealthy
nations in the world as a whole?
In the last resort the whole problem of progressive taxation is,
of course, an ethical problem and the real question in a democracy
is whether the support it now receives would continue if people
fully understood how it acts. That in many respects it is based
on principles which these people would not approve if they were
put in the abstract is probably true. Neither that a majority should
be free to impose a discriminatory tax burden on a minority, nor
that as a result identical services are very differently remuner-
ated, nor that for a whole class, merely because its incomes are out
of line with those of the rest of the community, the normal incen-
tives are practically removed, are principles which can be defended
from the point of view of justice. If, in addition, one considers the
waste of energy and effort to which progressive taxation induces in
so many ways and only on a few of which we have here touched, it
should not seem impossible to convince reasonable people of its un-
desirability. Yet experience shows how rapidly habit blunts in these
fields the sense of justice and how the mere fact that a principle
has once been applied for some time makes it easy to carry it to
extremes.
It is indeed one of the strongest arguments against progressive
taxation that it is so difficult again to abandon once it has been
introduced. There would probably be no danger and no justified
objection if a majority decided to grant an economically weak minor-
ity some relief in the form of proportionally lower taxation and the
main principle at which one should probably aim is that the major-
ity which determines the burden of taxation should also bear it at
its maximum rate; because once it is admitted that it is right that
a majority impose a heavier proportional burden on a minority,
there seem to be no limits to the length to which this will be carried.
The problem of erecting a barrier which will stop this process of
drift is greatly complicated by the fact that, as we have seen, so far
as personal taxation only is concerned, some progression is probably
both legitimate and desirable. But is there any principle which we
can hope will be adopted and which will prevent that the opportu-
nity thus opened will be abused? It is hardly to be expected that
an attempt to limit the scale of progression to some particular maxi-
mum figure would, in this respect, be effective. Such a percentage
figure would be as arbitrary as the principle of progression itself
and would be as readily changed when there was need for addi-
tional revenue.
What would be needed is a principle which, while limiting the
maximum rate of direct taxation in relation to the total burden of
taxation, will keep the possible progression of total taxation within
narrow limits. The most reasonable limit of this kind would seem to
be that the maximum admissible (marginal) rate of direct taxation
be fixed at the proportion of the national income which the govern-
ment takes in taxation, so that, if the government took 30 per cent
of the national income, 30 per cent would also be the maximum
rate of direct taxation. If a national emergency raised this propor-
tion, the maximum tax rate would also be raised and similarly be
automatically reduced when the over-all tax burden was reduced.
The application of this principle would still leave some progression
of total taxation in existence, since those paying the maximum rate
would also pay some indirect taxes which would bring their total
taxation above the average for the community. The application of
this principle would have the not inconsiderable advantage that
every budget would have to be prefaced, as it were, by an estimate
of the percentage of the national income which the government
proposed to take in taxation. This percentage would provide a sort
of standard rate which for the lower income classes would be re-
duced in proportion as they were taxed directly. The net result
would probably be a slight over-all progression, in which the mar-
ginal taxation of the largest incomes could, however, never exceed
the rate at which incomes were taxed on the average by more than
the amount of indirect taxation and in fact (since the limit would
apply to the marginal rate of direct taxation) by considerably less.
XIX
Is Further Intervention a Cure
/or Prior Intervention?
A study of the so-called "Right-to-Work" laws as a remedy for the
current evils resulting from Union Shop practices in American
industry.
by PERCY L. GREAVES, JR.
All varieties of (government) interference with the market phenomena not
only fail to achieve the ends aimed at by their authors and supporters, .but
bring about a state of affairs which-from the point of view of the authors' and
advocates' valuations-is less desirable than the previous state of affairs which
they were designed to alter. If one wants to correct their manifest unsuitable-
ness and preposterousness by supplementing the first acts of intervention with
more and more of such acts, one must go farther and farther until the market
economy has been entirely destroyed and socialism has been substituted for it.
-LuDWIG voN MisEs, Human Action, Page 854.
THE mass myopia of our age has
been a reactionary reverence for government intervention. When
anything goes wrong, from a train wreck to a change in stock
market prices, the craven crowds always clamor for just one more
law. Throughout the world there is a spirit of egalitarianism and
trust in government omnipotence that blinds people to the in-
evitable and undesirable consequences of the very intervention
they currently advocate. There can be little question that the great
majority of our fellow men believe that governmental action is the
best answer to every economic problem of poverty or prosperity.
This general trend toward government intervention has been
spurred on by the thought that majorities can continue to take by
legal force from the rich and give to the poor to the perpetual bene-
285
fit of society as a whole. Government intervention is therefore con-
sidered a moral and economic weapon to be used for the welfare of
all the "have-nots." The crusade for creature comforts is no longer
considered to be a struggle against the niggardliness of nature. In-
stead, it is dreamily idealized as a campaign for the political allot-
ment of each group's "fair share" of the wealth produced by others.
The most astonishing phase of this development has been the
rapidity with which more and more of the despoiled "haves" are
joining the interventionists' cult, formed for the express purpose of
leveling down their supposedly unearned wealth. Every day new
groups of "haves" are joining the pressure groups who feel that
"there ought to be a law" to end their troubles by protecting them
from the operations of a free market. Seldom do they ask for a re-
peal of the laws which are so often the root of their troubles. In
accordance with the religion of the day, they ask for new legal re-
strictions which they think will protect them from the ills produced
by the interventionallaws already on the statute books.
In the United States, an example of this trend is clearly seen in
the demand arising from some employers and their associations for
the individual States to enact so-called "right-to-work" laws. The
proposed laws would outlaw all employment contracts which spec-
ify that all employees must pay dues to the union chosen by the
majority of an employer's employees in a government supervised
election. Such contracts, even though they represent the free and
voluntary wishes of the employers and the employees concerned,
would be declared to be against public policy and therefore illegal.
A growing number of employers believe that such laws will bring
about a better balance of the scales in the "class warfare" sup-
posedly going on between "labor" and management. This would
seem to indicate that many present-day employers have neither
faith in freedom nor an understanding of the economic principles
which reveal that a free market is the most efficient means that free,
peaceful, and intelligent men can use for the advancement of in-
dividual men as well as the general welfare.
Those who advocate a legal ban on union shops seldom realize
that they are sealing their own doom and placing their future fate
in the hands of legislators who are only too eager to assume control
of all economic activity. They fail to see that such laws are basically
a surrender of their rights to employ whomever they might choose
under free market conditions. They seem to believe that the inter-
vention they support is good intervention because, in their opinion,
it will strengthen their side against the common enemy "labor."
They believe it will increase their freedom and enchain their "oppo-
nents." Alas, employers, too, are victims of the current tendency
to think of wealth production in terms of "class warfare," rather
than in terms of social cooperation for mutual advantage in a free
and peaceful market.
These employers, commonly considered as "haves," are actually
advocating a program outlined by Karl Marx for the destruction of
the very capitalistic system which has provided them with their
present wealth and positions. They should know better. If they
will not read, study and digest the 881 pages of Human Action, they
should at least examine carefully the much shorter Communist
Manifesto pamphlet written by Marx and Engels in 1848.
The Communist Manifesto tells us that "The immediate aim of
the Communists is ... a conquest of political power by the prole-
tariat. . . . In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be
summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private prop-
erty .... Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism
of capital and wage-labor. . . . The proletariat will use its political
supremacy, to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie,
to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the
State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class ....
"Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by
means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the con-
ditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore,
which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which,
in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate
further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a
means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production."
This document, which represents the early thinking of Marx,
provides a blueprint for all government intervention. It is in line
with the Mises thesis that government intervention, that results in a
successful demand for more and more government intervention,
must finally lead to the elimination of the market economy and the
establishment of a socialist dictatorship.
There are, of course, many methods for destroying wealth and
setting up a dictatorship, but the original method of the Marxists, as
mentioned above, was to propose crippling intervention which
would be "economically insufficient and untenable." Then, when
this original intervention made matters worse, they could easily
create a demand for further "despotic inroads on the rights of
property" until finally all economic activity was directed by the
Socialist State as the sole owner or controller of the means of pro-
duction. Marx decreed that this program of government interven-
tion would eventually lead to the abolition of private property and
the establishment of the Socialist State. Mises agrees. It was a
series of such "despotic inroads" upon private property that even-
tually converted the German economy into a National Socialist
dictatorship. Such step-by-step intervention, if followed to its
logical conclusion, will produce the same results in any country,
even in the United States.
The major mistake in the thinking of those who advocate the
so-called "right-to-work" laws is their thought that these laws will
remedy some of the sins of the Federal Labor Laws that now grant
special privileges to labor unions. By the sagacious use of these
privileges, labor unions extort higher than free market incomes for
their members at the expense of the general welfare. This situation
results from popular blindness to the fact that in a moral society
the only way anyone, including unions and their members, can
honestly earn more wealth is to create it and not take it from
others.
The advocates of such laws accept the fallacious idea, found in
many classical economic textbooks, that wealth is distributed after
it is produced. While much wealth is distributed, in the sense of
being transported geographically, it is not distributed in the popular
sense that the entrepreneur distributes or divides the proceeds of a
contemplated or completed business venture into rent, wages, and
interest, with the remainder labelled as profit or loss. Few, all too
few, even among those called economists, seem to realize that in a
free market economy the owner of every factor of production re-
ceives the full market value of its contribution, as it is freely evalu-
ated at the time the owner of that factor agrees to participate in
the joint venture. This must be true, if we believe that free men
only make and sign contracts which provide each signer with what
he considers the best terms available to him at that time.
All free market contracts or agreements seek a share of the bene-
fits emanating from the increased division of labor and the result-
ing exchanges. In a free economy these exchanges take place at
prices set at the margin where supply and demand balance as the
result of the relative subjective values placed on all the offered
products by all t h o ~ participants who both contribute to and share
in such market exchanges. These prices will be arrived at by a
mental process wherein each participant arranges his satisfiable
desires according to a scale of values. Each participant then ex-
changes his contributions for a mutually acceptable medium of
exchange to the point where further quantities of that medium
would no longer, in his opinion, buy goods or services which the
participant values higher than the pleasures of rest ( disutility of
further labor) or those things which he has produced or can produce
without the cooperation of others.
Too many people fail to understand the underlying principles of
voluntary exchange in a free market. This ignorance of economic
principles leads many to believe that when labor unions use their
government-granted privileges to take by force (steal) that wealth
which belongs to others, they are registering "social gains" for all
workers. This is part and parcel of the Marxian class warfare doc-
trine that wealth production is a battle between capitalists and
workers and that any gain for some workers is a loss for capitalists
and therefore a gain for all workers. Unfortunately many people
tend to place themselves mentally in the position of those who get
these so-called "gains," obtained by the legal looting of society by
labor unions. The majority of people today do not realize that
they are often the very ones who must pay for these so-called
"social gains" in the form of higher prices, lower wages, and, all
too frequently, chronic unemployment. They are not co-gainers.
They are the losers. Popular acceptance of this fallacy permits labor
unions to go on their merry way of extortion with encouragement
from the very folks they are injuring.
Unless the popular thinking on this matter is corrected, these
immoral and uneconomic activities of labor unions will eventually
create a situation for which the popular solution may well be a so-
cialist dictatorship. If this possibility is to be averted, those who
are better informed must pierce the fog and show beyond any per-
adventure of doubt that the currently popular activities of labor
unions are injurious to the general welfare and result in relatively
lower living standards than would prevail in a free market economy.
The fact that many current labor union practices are injurious to
the general welfare does not mean that all actions of all labor
unions must of necessity be considered evil or uneconomic. There
are many truly economic functions that labor unions can perform.
In a free and moral society, unions would be solely voluntary groups
organized to help their members by helping them to increase their
production and thereby their contributions to society. Their chief
purpose would be to raise the standards of workmanship and pro-
duction. They would then be a force for the general economic good
of society as well as their members.
In the last half century, popular and professional opinion has
swept from one extreme to another. Fifty years ago, it was thought
that unions could do no good. Today, there is a strong tendency
to think that unions can do no wrong. Even their physical violence
is accepted with complacency. They are a law unto themselves,
free from legal liability for their lawlessness. It is both necessary
and important that we distinguish between the activities of unions
that are economically beneficial and those that are destructive of
life, property, and social cooperation.
Because of the recent activities of most labor unions, there is a
growing tendency for those who have some understanding of eco-
nomics to associate all union activities, and thus unions themselves,
with evil or uneconomic actions. We do not do this with those pro-
fessional organizations that now set high standards of ability and
performance for all their members and prospective members. At
another time and clime, it is entirely possible that groups called
unions might more closely resemble our best professional organiza-
tions in that they might set and maintain high standards of mem-
bership and performance. They might then attract all the better
workers and, if such were the case, employers might find that union
members were much better workers than non-union members. If
memberships in such unions were open to all qualified workers, they
would no longer represent a group that was seeking selfish privi-
leges at the expense of the general welfare. They would be groups
straining to increase the quantity and quality of production so that
all market participants would receive higher returns for their con-
tributions. If we can visualize such a situation, we will then be
better able to understand why employers should be free to sign
contracts to hire only such high type workers and why the so-called
"right-to-work" laws would interfere with the main objective of so-
cial cooperation-the increased satisfactions of all the individual
participants in the market.
What is the "right-to-work?"
Since the days of Adam and long before Adam Smith, man has
been vitally concerned with his right to live. God so created man
that he cannot live without continually refueling and refurbishing
his body. Men must work in order that men may live. Men thus
have an absolute need and, therefore, an inherent right to work.
This is an elementary fact which very few question.
This inherent right-to-work, like the allied right to the pursuit of
happiness, is God-given. If we assume that it is given equally to
every man, and to be consistent we must, we must also assume
that the rights of one man, properly understood, cannot conflict
with the rights of another. It must then follow that the inherent
right to work is merely the right of each individual man to use his
mind, physical abilities, and accumulated capital to produce those
things which he needs and wants in accordance with his own in-
dividual values, abilities, and moral desires. It does not include any
right for one man to impose his will on any other man. Nor does
it compel any man to employ any other man, union member or non-
union member.
Intelligent men know and understand the underlying economic
principle of the division of labor, whereby men by mutual coopera-
tion can increase their total production and thereby the satisfac-
tions of all who voluntarily participate in such social cooperation.
This system of cooperative specialized production and exchange,
known as the free market economy, permits each participant to
profit by his contribution to the increased satisfaction of other
participants. If, at any time, any participant did not consider his
market receipts more valuable to him than his contributions, he
need merely refrain from market participation.
In a free market economy, every human act of social cooperation
is undertaken with the expectation that the results will improve the
condition or satisfactions of each participant. If this were not so,
the individuals would not voluntarily participate. These principles
of mutual advantage apply to all market transactions, including
employment agreements freely negotiated between employers and
employees. Agreement as to terms can be reached only when all
parties thereto expect that the results will increase their satisfac-
tions over what they would be, if they did not so agree.
Unfortunately, few people understand these economic principles.
Confused by our modern complicated society, many people seem to
think that one party to an agreement is in a position to impose his
will upon the other. In the case of employment agreements, it is
erroneously assumed that, left alone, employers can force their
terms on employees. This fallacious belief leads to a demand that
the government should intervene to "protect" employees by passing
laws that limit and regulate the terms and conditions of private
as well as public employment.
Some such laws seek to give certain men, usually union members,
a legal "right-to-work" for employers who would prefer to hire
other men, usually non-union members, willing to work for terms
more satisfactory to the employers. Such coercive measures have
led some men to believe that new laws should be passed which
would give non-union men a legal "right-to-work" for employers
who have agreed to hire only union members. These man-made
legal "rights-to-work" for specified employers should not be con-
fused with our God-given inherent right-to-work for ourselves or
for others who voluntarily seek our services at terms that are mutu-
ally satisfactory. The one, government intervention, is a coercive
unequal right that forcefully limits the equal rights of others; the
other, God-given, is an equal right of free men that places no
burden on any man.
The so-called "right-to-work" laws would outlaw "union shop"
agreements, whereby employers contract to hire only those who
agree to join the majority selected union within a specified time
period. Proponents of such laws maintain that where union shops
are legal, unions can and do stop the employment of those who
will not join or pay tribute to the union. That, of course, is true.
Such proponents then argue that union shop contracts prevent non-
union men from earning a living in their chosen fields. This, they
hold, is a violation of the inherent right-to-work of men who refuse
to join or pay tribute to the union of the majority. Such logic
assumes that men have an inherent right-to-work for a particular
employer, whether he wants them or not.
Do men have such an inherent right? In this writer's opinion
they do not.
We should keep our minds on the chief objective of a free society.
This should always be the pursuit and maintenance of economic
freedom with its two basic corollaries: ( 1) The right to own and
enjoy all property rightfully earned or received; ( 2) the right to
make and sign contracts with others for the mutual advantage of the
participants, provided such contracts do not trespass on the prop-
erty or equal rights of other free and moral men. This right, to
make and sign contracts, includes the right of employers and em-
ployees to make and sign mutually agreeable contracts for moral
employment.
In a free economy, all such mutually satisfactory employment
agreements would be valid. On the other hand, all employment
relations maintained by compulsion would be invalid. No em-
ployer or prospective employer has any right to employ any person
who does not want such employment at the terms proffered. Like-
wise, no employee or prospective employee has any right to em-
ployment with any specific employer, if that employer does not
desire him as an employee at the terms for which that person is
willing to labor. In a free society, all employment must be mutually
advantageous in the long run to employers, employees, and con-
sumers. If, for any reason or lack of reason, either party to an
employment agreement finds the agreement unsatisfactory or dis-
advantageous in any manner, he should be free to terminate that
agreement and accept a more satisfactory one as soon as his con-
tractual obligations have been fulfilled. In a free economy, this right
to discontinue employment applies equally to employers and em-
ployees. In the absence of a prior voluntary agreement, no em-
ployer has any valid right to the services of any free man. Likewise,
in the absence of a prior voluntary agreement, no man has any valid
right to a job with any specific employer.
It is apparently difficult today for many people to understand that
while people do have a right to work, they do not have a right to
any specific job. When the late Calvin Coolidge was Governor of
Massachusetts, he met the issue squarely at the time some Boston
policemen went out on strike. He stated simply and clearly that
no one had the right to be a policeman. Failure to grasp this prin-
ciple is the crux of popular confusion about the Oppenheimer,
Ladejinsky, and many other cases in current headlines.
In the absence of prior agreements, people do not have a right
to a job with the government or any other specific employer. In a
free economy all employment is agreed upon at mutually satisfac-
tory terms. No employer has any right to employ an unwilling
worker. Likewise, no job applicant has an inherent right to em-
ployment with any employer who does not want his services. A
voluntarily signed union shop contract indicates that, under pre-
vailing conditions, the employer prefers not to hire non-union work-
ers. He has every right to sign such a contract and would only do
so if he thought it would be economically advantageous.
One of the most valuable attributes of freedom is the right of
free men to choose their associates, so long as that association is
mutually satisfactory and not in conflict with the equal rights of
others. This right of free association includes the right of men to
reject association with those whom they consider objectionable. If
these rights are exercised wisely and economically, individuals, and
thus society, will benefit. If they are misused, those responsible and,
to a lesser extent, all others will suffer.
In a free economy, men have a right to associate voluntarily in
labor unions. Likewise men have a right to refuse to join any such
unions. Unions, as organizations of free men, also have the right
to accept or reject applications for membership and suffer the con-
sequences. So long as all this is done voluntarily, without force or
coercion or the threat thereof, no free man need complain except
to point out the wisdom or lack of wisdom of any particular action.
In a free society, men will join unions and pay dues only when
they consider it is to their advantage to do so. If the laws did not
grant union members privileges over and above those of non-union
members, few men would join unions unless those unions, operating
in a free economy, could help them get and keep better paid posi-
tions. To do this, unions would have to help their members locate
and fill more productive jobs. This and this alone would entitle
union members to increased real wages. All union dues and fees
would then represent only a fraction of this increased wealth pro-
duction.
Thus, unions, if stripped of their special legal privileges, would
only exist where they contributed to the increased satisfactions of
society as well as of their members. No worker would voluntarily
contribute to a union treasury, unless he believed that the benefits
received, or expected to be received, would exceed the costs to him.
In a free society, employers also enjoy the right of free associa-
tion. They are entitled to employ any applicant they wish, pro-
vided the contemplated type of activity is acceptable in a free and
moral market society and the terms of employment are acceptable
to the applicant. Employers also have a right to reject any or all
applicants and suffer the consequences. They have a right to hire
only union members or only non-union members, if they can find
such applicants willing to accept their terms. If they refuse em-
ployment to the best available applicants because of personal antip-
athies, their economic losses may be considerable. If they seek
the greatest economic advantages or profits, they must select their
employees with economic efficiency and profits uppermost in their
minds. If they are to survive in a highly competitive market for
consumer dollars, they must employ only those who provide the
most efficient service desired for the wages paid. In a free market,
supply and demand will determine wage rates. If all men are em-
ployed at their market wage, that is the highest wage any employer
believes he can profitably recover from customers for the product
of that labor, then any employer or prospective employer, seeking a
new employee, must offer applicants better terms than those pre-
viously prevailing and these new and higher terms must be paid
to all doing similar work.
Both employers and labor unions have a right to sign and main-
tain any contract for moral employment, so long as the agreement
is reached voluntarily without the use or threat of any force, coer-
cion, or violence. Only the market compulsions of supply and de-
mand should prevail Once such a contract is signed, it becomes
the private property of the respective parties. It is then the function
of government to protect that private property from violence and
assist in the peaceful adjudication of any differences which may
arise.
Today there is an almost religious belief that the government
should do more than maintain peace and umpire differences of
opinion. Millions believe that government intervention can create
"social gains" by interfering in the free market so as to force one
group to grant another group certain terms, rights, or privileges that
they could not obtain in a free market. Taking advantage of this
popular lack of economic understanding, labor unions have sought
and obtained the sanction of laws which permit them to dictate the
terms under which their chosen branch of production is permitted
to function. If the entrepreneurs cannot or will not agree, produc-
tion ceases and accumulated capital lies idle, deteriorating without
satisfying any of the admitted desires of consumers. Even when
they permit industry to operate, unions have often acted so as to
prevent the use of the most efficient methods of production. They
utilize their legal right, to prevent others from taking the jobs they
want, to insist on "featherbedding," whereby consumers, acting
through employers, must pay for labors that are not needed or may
not be performed.
These and many other current activities of labor unions act as a
damper on production and the general welfare of all market partici-
pants. Such union activities also irk employers and all others who
understand economics and seek increased production for the greater
satisfaction of themselves and other consumers.
Many employers seem to feel that if they could only get State
governments to step into the employment picture on their side and
outlaw union shop contracts, such as they now sign largely under
duress, they could then increase production, profits, and the general
welfare without so much union interference. They fail to realize
that the power of unions to exact uneconomic benefits for minority
groups at the expense of society is the result of legal rights obtained
under Federal Law, whereby majority selected unions are entitled
to speak for all employees, whether or not they are members of the
union and whether or not the employer desires to hire or fire any
particular employee. This is the legal source of present-day un-
economic union power and until this legal right is withdrawn, the
unions will continue to be able to extort privileges for those they
represent at the expense of all others, including employers, con-
sumers, and non-organized workers.
If these practices should become general, the losses of union
members would exceed their gains. Those the unions represent
would then suffer as consumers in a market that offered fewer
consumer goods than would be found in a free market. If these de-
creases in production were not offset by increased capital accumula-
tion and operating efficiency, a real, as well as a relative, decline in
production would result. In such an event, the uneconomic effects
of union policies would become evident to more people than they
are today. Our continued increase in both capital accumulation and
business efficiency has tended to hide the losses resulting from the
depredations of unions. As a result, only a few people are now able
to visualize and realize that our increasing living standards could
be increased still further, if popular opinion would only oppose the
uneconomic actions of unions.
All members of society, who desire to enjoy the advantage of so-
cial cooperation, must be willing to pay the price for such advan-
tages. If we want to go to the opera, we must pay the price of
admission. If a man is a member of any private organization and
certain dues or fees are levied on its members, he must pay them
or withdraw. If a worker wants a certain job, he must meet the
terms acceptable to other applicants. If an employer wants an em-
ployee to report for work at seven o'clock in the morning and the
employee refuses to report for work that early, the employer should
be free to seek someone else willing to do so. No prior employee
should have any right to stop the employer from employing such a
willing applicant in his stead. No one questions the right of workers
to change their jobs, if they can find others they like better. Like-
wise no one should question an employer's right to change his
employees, if he can find new ones more suited to his needs or
personal likes.
The same principle applies to the union shop. The right to con-
tract is a basic part of economic freedom and private property. No
laws should prohibit or limit the free right of contract unless the
contemplated contract violates the equal rights of others. In a free
economy, employers and employees would be permitted to sign
union shop contracts. They would also be legally permitted to sign,
if both parties so desired, what have been called "yellow dog" con-
tracts (wherein employees voluntarily agree not to join a union).
In order to get union shop contracts, unions would then have to
offer employers something better t ~ n they could get from non-
union workers. In order to get "yellow dog" contracts, employers
would have to offer more attractive terms than unions could obtain
for their members. A man has no inherent right to any specific job.
The fact that an employer voluntarily signs a union shop contract
merely shows that, under the prevailing circumstances, he prefers
to hire union help. He does not violate the rights of any person,
unless such person is a party to a contrary valid employment agree-
ment that preceded the signing of the union shop contract.
Where the union shop contract is a voluntary agreement, it is
similar in principle to any other voluntary employment contract
signed for the purpose of increasing production. Employers should
be free to employ whatever applicants they can persuade to accept
their proffered terms. If they are foolish enough to want only work-
ers who demand higher than free market wages, without providing
higher than average output, either in quantity or quality, that is
their right. However, in a free economy few employers would be
that foolish. If they were, the consumers would not long allow them
to remain employers in a free market. They would take their trade
to those who could sell at lower prices because they paid lower
wages.
No businessman voluntarily signs any contract unless he is con-
vinced, at the time of signing, that its advantages outweigh its
disadvantages. Whenever an employer signs a contract with a
union, he expects that the net results will be lower business costs
than if he did not sign that contract. He would not sign a union
shop contract unless he thought that, all things considered, it would
bring him the best workers at the lowest wages. If he did not think
so, he would never voluntarily sign such a contract.
Under present laws and popular opinion, however, labor unions
can call a strike and prevent men from working. Under existing
circumstances, they can prevent not only the employment of their
own members but also the employment of all applicants for the
jobs they refuse to fill. Some of this power arises from popular
acceptance 'of the union picket line, but part of it arises from the
strength given unions by law, wherein employers are prevented
from negotiating with non-union members or non-strikers. The law
gives the union and its members a vested right in jobs once occu-
pied by them and curtails the right of employers to discharge
workers they no longer desire. Employers are often stopped from
finding other workers willing to work at terms that strikers refuse.
This, of course, is a violation of the free market principle of volun-
tary social cooperation.
Unions and their members frequently occupy key positions ena-
bling them to close down an entire plant or industry by interrupting
the flow of production at a vulnerable spot. They are thus able
to interfere with the work of many jobs other than their own. The
losses they can thus affiict on employers, fellow workers, and con-
sumers often exceed the cost of their immediate demands. By the
use of this form of coercion, they are often able to force employers
to sign contracts, including union shop contracts, which they would
not sign under free market conditions where the wishes of consum-
ers would prevail instead of the legal privileges granted unions and
their members.
In a free economy, men and groups of men would have the right
to compete for all jobs. They would have no right to prevent unem-
ployed or lower paid men from competing for their jobs, particularly
when they refuse to work at them themselves. As the law now
operates, unions and their members are able to force some employers
to pay higher than market wages. They can also force some con-
sumers to pay higher than market prices. This reduces consumer
purchases and satisfactions. In addition, unions are often able to
bar applicants from employment in their industry. This forces the
rejected men to compete and drive wages still lower in other jobs,
or else remain unemployed. This, in turn, has resulted in a demand
for so-called minimum wage laws and then a further demand for
unemployment insurance for those that unions and minimum wage
laws make unemployable.
Our problem is to correct popular opinion and remove from the
statute books all laws that are a result of the popular fallacy that
it is a "social gain" for labor unions to be granted privileges to hold
up production until they can extort whatever they want from the
hides of all other participants in the market. Once this is done,
unions will no longer be able to compel employers to sign union
shop contracts under duress or fear of uneconomic losses.
The difficulty before us can be seen by a comparison of current
newspaper stories with those of thirty-five or more years ago. To-
day, when union strikers threaten violence, injure peaceful citizens
and damage property, most Governors refuse to call out the na-
tional guard or militia to protect the menaced populace and private
property. Instead, they issue statements blaming both sides in the
"dispute." They seek to compel mediation. They refuse to protect
non-strikers who want to work. They thus permit small groups to
terrorize the community for weeks and months on end with great
losses of property and occasional loss of limbs and lives. Present-day
politicians fwn the power of the unions at the polls.
In 1919, when the police of Boston, Massachusetts, struck for
the right to join the American Federation of Labor, things were
different. Large numbers of policemen then went on a strike, hop-
ing they could compel the city to grant them more favorable terms
than they could obtain on a free market. The lives and property of
Bostonians were suddenly left without police protection. Governor
Calvin Coolidge immediately called out the State Guard and pro-
tected all those who desired to work as Boston policemen at the
terms the city offered. The Governor was warned that organized
labor would oppose him at any future election and thus prevent
his advancement in the political world. His laconic reply was "It
does not matter."
The important thing to note, however, is that the very next year
the Governor was nominated and elected as Vice President of the
United States. Five years later, he proved to be very popular at
the polls as a candidate to succeed himself in the Presidency.
Today, there is no way of knowing whether a political candidate
could be elected if he took such a stand in favor of a free market
in labor management relations. Few, if any, candidates for public
office will take such a stand because it is generally accepted that
most people now believe that the present uneconomic actions of
unions represent "social gains." The answer does not lie in enacting
into law similar "social gains" for employers whereby the States be-
come their champions in a "class warfare" with employees cham-
pioned by the national government. Transferring economic decisions,
from the economic dollar democracy of the market to the political
democracy of an electorate without economic understanding, would
not solve any problem. It would only create a demand for more
"economically insufficient and untenable" measures which would
further help to revolutionize "the mode of production," from a con-
sumer-run economy into a socialized political dictatorship that
would closely resemble the National Socialist regime of Hitler's
Germany.
The philosophy behind the agitation for the so-called right-to-
work laws is the philosophy that production is a form of "class war-
fare" between employers and employees. It then follows that if
government gives one group too much power, it must in justice give
the other group sufficient counter-balancing power. Government
then attempts to maintain a balance in the arena where these battles
are fought. Under such conditions, competition is maintained only
by bringing the most competent down to the level to which the
least competent can be boosted. \
The purpose of business is production for the economic satisfac-
tion of consumers. Success and profits are measured by the ability
of market suppliers to satisfy consumers. All production for market
exchange, based on the advantages obtained by the division of
labor, is a matter of social cooperation and not "social warfare."
Trying to equalize two groups by granting privileges now to one
and now to the other is like trying to make two opera singers equal,
by preventing each one from singing notes the other cannot dupli-
cate. The only way that such equality can possibly be attained
is by curtailing the satisfactions that each party can provide con-
sumers. It is a matter of pulling down, not building up. The fact
that unions have been given certain privileges destructive of social
cooperation is not sufficient reason for giving other destructive priv-
ileges to employers. The net result can only be less social coopera-
tion and a decrease in total production.
One of the great things that the agitators for "right-to-work" laws
forget is that the problem is basically one of getting the government
out of moral business transactions and not into them. If they now
seek State laws controlling employment contracts, they are inviting
State governments to participate in every employment situation. All
employment agreements and their terminations will then admittedly
become a function for political, rather than market, decision. It will
be a further delimiting of the free market area wherein individuals
and consumers remain free to register their wishes on economic
matters.
If these laws are enacted, they will tend to develop further a situ-
ation such as is now found in some states where labor-management
relations are supervised by Fair Employment Practices Commis-
sions. In those states employers no longer feel free to employ those
applicants whom they consider the most capable to perform the
tasks at hand. They fear the ruling of some bureaucrat and must
pay strict attention to the whims and wishes of those who have
full power to penalize them or injure their public relations by threat
of a court suit.
The evils of much uneconomic intervention of government is ap-
parent in the operation of the New York State FEPC law. This
writer was recently told of a situation concerning a girl who be-
longed to a particular religious sect. She desired a position in a
bank department which at that time was entirely composed of girls
belonging to the same particular religious sect. The bank wanted
to employ this applicant, but would not do so because it feared that
some bureaucrat might rule that such employment would be evi-
dence of bias in favor of that particular sect. The employer felt
that he must employ a member of another sect, or better yet a mem-
ber of a minority race, who might or might not fit into this particular
job as well as the rejected applicant.
Many New York employers no longer hire people solely on the
basis of their ability. Instead, they feel that their employment poli-
cies must be so conducted as to maintain the same racial and reli-
gious ratios that are found in the local population. The aptitudes
and predilections of any particular group or individual must be
forgotten. If they do not do so, they must waste time and energy
in defending their decisions before bureaucratic commissions and in
the public press.
Under "right-to-work" laws, non-union applicants would be given
a legal standing in court and the employer might well be told whom
he could employ and whom he could not employ, or be found guilty
of bias against trouble making non-union members. The bureaucrats
of the States would intervene more and more, telling employers how
many union and non-union members they could employ as well as
whom they could or could not fire, promote, or retire. The bu-
reaucrat would be present at every hiring, firing, and promotion.
Labor-management relations might well resemble those of Hitler's
Germany where a man once hired could not be fired except for a
crime against the State.
The problem is to stop the States from intervening in free market
personnel relations and not to seek such intervention. Two wrongs
never make a right. The economic answer is to repeal the bad inter-
vention and not try to counterbalance it with another bad inter-
vention. Such moves only provide the politicians with greater power
over the entire economy.
Unfortunately, many businessmen seem to think that the evils of
intervention began with the New Deal. Actually, the seeds were
sown far, far earlier. They were in the Interstate Commerce Act,
the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, and the Act creating the Labor De-
partment to help a politically favored group, the Income Tax
Amendment, and the Federal Reserve Act and many others of Pre-
New Deal days. These earlier acts bore the fruit that led to the
depression that started in 1929.
Each of these early laws was a government intervention which
interfered with and hampered the operation of free markets. Each
one granted privileges to one group at the expense of all others.
They were all a burden on consumers and the general welfare.
They all created vested interests that now resist the removal of
these privileges. They were the original "despotic inroads on the
rights of property . . . which appear economically insufficient and
untenable." The New Deal Acts were only the "further inroads
upon the old social order ... unavoidable as a means of entirely
revolutionizing the mode of production."
Actually, if we stop to think of it, it is ridiculous for the govern-
ment to grant counter-privileges to one group to offset the very
privileges it has granted to other groups. All such privileges are a
further obstruction to production and tend to reduce the satisfac-
tions obtained from participation in the market.
The best example is probably the monopoly situation. First, the
government grants monopoly privileges to certain firms or domestic
industries. Then these firms or industries utilize these privileges to
line their pockets at the expense of consumers. Isn't it then ridicu-
lous to point to the results and demand that the injured groups be
granted offsetting monopolies whereby they can recoup their losses?
The logical solution is to take away the original privileges which
caused the trouble in the first place.
The same solution is applicable to the labor-management situa-
tion. The cause of the present economic evils in labor-management
relations is the club that Federal laws have furnished labor unions
whereby they can bludgeon established employers with capital in
the form of fixed production facilities. Such employers must con-
tinually surrender to the unions or lose the entire value of their
established reputation and invested capital. They are not free to
employ the unemployed or lower paid workers who might be very
happy to work for them.
The unions should be stripped of this club, as most employers
have been stripped of the privileges they had legally obtained dur-
ing the latter part of the last century. Granting privileges to labor
unions is no better or no worse than granting privileges to employers
or groups of employers. A free market society requires that gov-
ernment be neutral, so far as it can be, and refuse to grant special
unearned privileges to any group, because, in the end, all such
privileges must be paid for in the sweat of all who labor and pro-
duce the wealth that consumers seek in the marketplace.
A perfect free market society is probably unattainable by fallible
men. Nevertheless it should ever be the goal of all moral and intelli-
gent men and particularly of those economists who try to educate
and influence their fellow men. As Mises has so ably demonstrated
in all his writings, "There is no other means to attain full employ-
ment, rising real wage rates and a high standard of living for the
common man than private initiative and free enterprise."
1
Every proposed measure should be weighed as to whether or not
it advances the economy toward "private initiative and free enter-
prise." Increased government intervention tends to direct the econ-
omy further away from a free market society.
Many call our economy a mixed economy. Actually it is, in the
terms of Mises, a ''hampered market economy." It is constantly in
movement as every economy must be. It must move either toward
freedom or toward Statism. The better economic understanding our
leaders and people have, the more likely it is that present uneco-
nomic measures will be repealed and that the trend will be toward
rising real wage rates and constantly higher living standards for all
participants in the market economy. Economists should, therefore,
oppose every proposed measure that moves in the other direction.
So long as American popular opinion approves of present-day union
shops and union activities, we are going to have them, but we shall
have to pay the price in terms of lower production and lower living
standards than a free economy would provide.
Everyone wants freedom, but probably no group wants it any
more than employers as a group. Unfortunately, too many employ-
ers have sought special privileges in the past. Actually, it was un-
doubtedly some of the early government-granted privileges for some
employers that produced the demand for the New and Fair Deal
intervention. Most such intervention was planned to help organized
"labor" and the other large groups that had suffered when em-
ployers were in the saddle and obtaining favorable intervention
for themselves.
So long as political groups can grant economic privileges, there
will always be attempts to buy their votes in one way or another.
The political problem is to so limit government that politicians
cannot grant economic privileges to any groups. We must remove
the temptations to greedy men who seek to gain their wealth at the
expense of others rather than through the economic principles of
voluntary social cooperation.
The aim of free people should always be a government that pro-
vides equal protection for all and favors for none. Men alone, or in
groups, should be permitted to choose their associates and that in-
cludes the right to choose those with whom they associate in their
1 Planning for Freedom, p. 17.
employment. The right to make contracts, one man with another
or a group, should be unlimited so long as other men have a similar
right. Employers and employees should be free to sign mutually
satisfactory employment contracts for closed shops, union shops,
open shops, or anti-union shops. The only limitation should be that
they are signed voluntarily.
The important thing is to work for basic principles whereby
peaceful persons can pursue their personal satisfactions through the
cooperation inherent in a free market. The place of government in
the market is that of a policeman who arrests marauders, not that
of a politician who bestows favors.
If the country is flooded with "right-to-work" laws, it will only
serve to temporize for a time the evils now inherent in Federal
Labor Laws. Such State laws will perhaps allay for a time the fears
that many people have concerning the dire consequences we are
now experiencing as a result of union activities. Actually, it might
be both better economics and better expediency to let present laws
go their limit, so that people might soon learn how bad they really
are.
This writer now hates to admit that, as an "expert" for the House
Committee on Education and Labor, he was one of the few who
helped to write the first draft of the Hartley bill. This was the bill
that was later amended and passed as the National Labor Manage-
ment Relations Act of 1947, more popularly known as the Taft-
Hartley Law. He is quick to add that he resigned from this
Committee before it reported the bill in a different form to the
House of Representatives. He has learned through personal experi-
ence that it does not pay to compromise either moral or economic
principles for illusory short-term advantages. His 1947 political
experience, as related below, substantiates his belief that even poli-
ticians, who place emphasis on winning the next election, would
do well to advocate freedom ideas consistently and not seek favors
for either employers or employees.
After the Republican Congressional victory in 1946, the late Sen-
ator Robert A. Taft, of Ohio, summoned this writer to his office to
discuss the top position on the Senate Labor Committee which was
then about to consider what later became the Taft-Hartley Law.
This writer wanted as much freedom in the law as Congress would
approve and was willing to make the financial sacrifice involved,
if he could work toward that goal. But the Senator outlined his
philosophy and stated that he wanted to change the law just to the
extent that it could be passed over the veto of the then Democratic
President, Harry Truman. The Senator sincerely believed that with
a Republican Presidential and Congressional victory in 1948, the
law could subsequently be changed to the form in which he really
desired it.
At that time, 1947, the country was thoroughly aroused against
the union abuses practiced under the protection of the Wagner Act.
The nation was ready for a change in its basic labor laws, but there
were only a very few people who had any understanding of the
specific changes that were needed to protect private initiative and
free enterprise. The Senator proposed that the law be ameliorated
toward freedom only so far as two-thirds of the Congress would
approve over a Presidential veto. The Senator and others thought
such an expedient move would improve the immediate situation and
help elect a Republican slate in the ensuing national elections.
This writer opposed this thinking on the basis that it would be
better not to have any new law at that time. His contention was
that a successful veto of a better law would result in a growing
public pressure for the repeal of the Wagner Act and the election of
the party that espoused such a move. The Senator was not willing
to go that far. He believed his policy was politically more realistic.
It was this writer's contention that, if the Senator's plan were suc-
cessful, the public would be persuaded that the then evident eco-
nomic distress flowing from union activity had been remedied and
the next tide of public opinion might well be in the other direction.
The Senator demurred and so this writer accepted employment with
the House, rather than the Senate, Committee.
The late great Senator from Ohio had his wish and skilHully
drafted an ameliorating measure which passed over the Presidential
veto. However, in the judgment of this writer, freedom and theRe-
publican Party lost. The Republicans failed to carry on their fight
to repeal the still obnoxious sections of our Federal Labor laws and
public opinion, which once seemed against government interven-
tion in labor-management relations, has apparently taken a turn
in the opposite direction. In fact, the amendments, more recently
proposed by the Republican leadership, have been in the direction
desired by union leaders. In the words of their sponsors, they are
"middle-of-the-road" in principle.
Somewhat the same situation is involved in the so-called "right-
to-work" laws. If they are passed in a large number of States, they
will temporarily relieve the present uneconomic evils that exist in
Federal Labor Laws. They will allay the fear among those people
who see and comprehend the dire results now flowing from present
union activities. The organized labor union minority can then more
easily organize its forces to lobby successfully for a Federal law
which would at one stroke outlaw all the so-called "right-to-work"
laws of the various States.
On occasion, this writer has watched with interest the actions of
John L. Lewis, President of the United Mine Workers Union. This
union leader has, more consistently than any other union leader,
followed the policy of getting his members all the privileges the law
permits them. He has obtained high wages for a few miners, while
greatly reducing the number of jobs in coal mining. Young men,
who might have become miners, are shut out and must compete
for lower-paid jobs by driving those wages still lower or remain
unemployed.
This is using the laws to the fullest extent. It also illustrates how
economically foolish they are. A privileged few gain at the expense
of the entire community and production is diverted into other lines
whose products are not the ones consumers want most.
Neither labor leaders nor their members can be blamed for using
privileges which the people have granted them by law. It has only
been the prudent temporizing of most unions that has permitted
their Marxian moves to become so generally accepted. Few people
understand the underlying fallacies on which they are based. Eco-
nomic education must be rescued from the political arena. The
burden placed on economists, who are not dependent on political
or public payrolls, is great and they have a public duty to speak out
against all those who would expand political controls at the expense
of a free people supported by the products of a free market.
We cannot blame those who take advantage of present uneco-
nomic laws. These laws are wrong. The blame must fall on those
who sanction them and permit them to continue on the statute
books. Actually, if the unions had been less temperate in pushing
their legal privileges to their ultimate and logical conclusion, they
might well have lost their privileges to hamper the free market at
will. It is by the very process of slow steps, each scarcely noticed,
that unions have been able to persuade unsuspecting millions that
the uneconomic gains of the legally privileged few are "social gains"
for all.
The American public, as well as the world public, must be alerted
to the dangers that flow from government economic intervention.
By a process of gradualism, a politically privileged few have fas-
tened on our economy this Marxian policy of ever-increasing "des-
potic inroads on the rights of property." H the New and Fair Deals
had been enacted in toto, they might well have brought the people
to their senses far quicker than our continued middle-of-the-road
compromising with moral and economic principles.
The so-called "right-to-work" laws are just that, a proposed mid-
dle-of-the-road compromise with free market principles for expe-
dient purposes, with the hope lurking in the back of the minds of
those who advocate them. that some day everything will clear up
without employers or consumers ever having to face the issue or the
price of meeting it. They for-get that the laws of economics are the
inexorable laws of cause and effect and that unsound actions will
never produce desirable results.
If men want to enjoy ever higher living standards, they must act
intelligently and oppose all man-made laws that limit the applica-
tion of such intelligence to economic matters. Every government
intervention is an interference with actions which would grant
greater satisfactions to consumers. The only way to increase human
satisfactions is to remove all such brakes on increased human happi-
ness and not place any new ones on the statute books of either State
or Federal governments.
Every legislative proposal should be weighed on the scales of
economic understanding. Does it tip the balance toward a free
economy or toward a socialist dictatorship with the politicians in
control of the means of production? The so-called "right-to-work"
laws are definitely a step in the direction toward Socialism. They
limit the right of free men to negotiate contracts for morally accept-
able purposes and attempt to substitute the decisions of politicians
for those that consumers would like to express in the market place.
PART SIX
On Socialism
XX
French Socialism
by Loms BAUDIN
(translated from the French by Stephen DiBari)
RoFESSOR voN MISES has defeated
socialism after placing it on scientific ground. This is one of his
titles to fame. And yet the name of socialism is still identified with
deluded hopes and with memories distorted by time. We therefore
propose to examine the so-called socialist doctrine that has survived
in France and now serves as the party banner to the "French Sec-
tion of the Workers' International." ( S.F.I.O.)
Economists concur in the belief that there are two characteristics
of socialism in its non-communist form: ( 1) its goal, i.e., the sociali-
zation of the means of production and redistribution according to
effective services rendered; ( 2) its means applied, i.e., reforms
attained through the manipulation of political forces. Communists,
however, advocate the total socialization of production, with the
distribution of goods according to need. They count upon the
evolution of productive forces to obtain this result. Those who hold
to the rst doctrine would modify capitalism with graftings of
statism, whereas the communists anticipate its spontaneous collapse.
In reality communism reveals a definite shape, whereas we have
but a fleeting vision of socialism. A large segment of public opinion
conceives the difference between the two doctrines to lie in the
submission of the one to the orders of the Kremlin and the main-
tenance of an independence from Moscow by the other. Undoubt-
edly, in Stalinist terms, the sole criterion of the non-capitalist world
is its conformity with society as organized in Russia-which in its
evolution must theoretically evolve through socialism to reach com-
munism. For this reason those socialists in France who refuse obe-
dience to Moscow call themselves "French Socialists." Thus our
311
French socialism assumes a character contrary to tradition-for in
the past it has always posed as a champion of internationalism-and
contrary to its name: Section of the International.
To reinforce their position the French socialists attempt to pro-
vide their party with historical foundations. They endeavor to re-
establish its connection with the predecessors of Marx. But they
have not been too happy in this undertaking. For one of their most
eminent spokesmen, the sociologist Bougle, in his book entitled,
Socialismes frangais,
1
reviews three nineteenth-century economists
whose identification as socialists is very dubious: Saint-Simon, the
industrialist who gave power to industrial managers; Fourier, the
advocate of cooperatives who generously remunerated capital;
Proudhon, the anarchist who reviled the socialists.
Bougie belongs to the large group of French socialist writers who
embrace a truly imperialist spirit: in tracing their socialist ancestry
they annex those economists who are not patently liberal and who
only may be called "socialists" if one defines the term very broadly
and vaguely or, as is often the case, if one abstains from classifying
them at all. For them, he who proclaims the supremacy of reason
and justice is a socialist. This is the opinion of Leon Blum, for exam-
ple.
2
But if this were the criterion, there would no longer be a
problem, for forty million Frenchmen would all be socialists!
The same thing may be said of present-day writers who apply
the term "socialist" to anyone who dedicates himself to the promo-
tion of the common good. These authors disdain the use of classical
definitions and even refrain from mentioning their hostility for
individual property, which after all is the most distinct character-
istic of socialism. Such is the case of Mr. A. Spire who in his In-
ventaire des socialismes frangais contemporains writes: "Socialism
assumes that the purpose of economic activity must be in harmony
with collective interests."
3
And thus socialism benefits from this
ambiguous definition uniting Christian socialists and syndicalists.
The confusion is complete!
Let us recognize that socialism in France has met with misfor-
tune. Whereas liberalism is presently experiencing a magnificent
revival through neo-liberalism, socialism has been arrested in its
doctrinal evolution by the failure of the neo-socialists: Deat, Mar-
l First edition, 1932; third edition, 1941.
2 Revue de Paris, 1 May 1924. Another socialist, M. L. Laurat, emphasizes reason
rather than justice, demanding a rationalization of the system of social organization.
(Economie dirigee et socialisation, Brussels, 1934; Le manifeste communiste de 1848
et le monde d'aujourd'hui, Paris, 1948.)
3 Paris, 1945.
ON SOCIALISM 313
quet, Frossard and some others. These leaders recognized correctly
that National Socialism indeed was socialism as its name indicates,
and that Hitler "had realized true socialism in Europe." But they
were mistaken in drawing from this the conclusion that they could
collaborate with the invader. The French socialists not only re-
proached them for their "treason" but also denied that Nazism had
been socialistic, which is so grave an error that one wonders whether
it was not deliberate. Indeed, it was better to be injurious to social-
ism than to recognize it as the doctrine of the occupant. The Ger-
man economy was certainly socialistic, but the followers of socialism
were not motivated by this fact to place themselves under orders of
the Nazi leaders.
Let us examine the two contemporary authors who are both
theorists and men of action. Both have studied extensively the
science of economics and have participated in contemporary pol-
itics: Messrs. Andre Philip and Jules Moch, both former cabinet
members.
In 1952, Andre Philip expounded his ideas in an address to the
Societe d' economie politique
4
and in an article published in the
Revue socialist e.
5
Indeed, he rejects the Marxian theories and rec-
ognizes that the doctrines of capitalist concentration and growing
pauperization of the masses are fallacious. He is cognizant of the
fact that the lot of the working class is improving, and that labor
and management sometimes cooperate in the exploitation of the
consumers. Thus he openly abandons Marx and finds another mas-
ter in Keynes-an unexpected but understandable affinity, for this
eminent British economist declared himself a defender of capitalism,
but expounded the theory of full employment. Andre Philip lays
little emphasis on doctrine, maintaining that those socialist coun-
tries which do not resort to any particular doctrine are better off
than those that do, because there are no rigid principles which may
hinder adaptation to changing conditions. According to Philip,
socialism must conform to certain developments, that is to say, those
developments concerning the working class. This is the key to
many socialistic notions in France: the precedence of the worker.
Everything must hinge upon him; he must be assured the maximum
well-being.
We find the same ideas by A. Spire. The general interest is
deliberately sacrificed to a collective interest, that of the laboring
class. Thus, after having renounced Marx, Andre Philip reaffirms
4 January 8, 1952.
5 April 1952, p. 346.
one of his principle doctrines and makes it the very core of his
system: the war of classes.
But in his entire presentation there is not a single attack against
private property, nor capital, nor profit. Socialism has become hazy
and elusive merely existing on its recognition of its servitude to one
segment of the population.
With Mr. Moch we get an entirely different perspective. The lat-
ter part of his large volume entitled Confrontations
6
interestingly
presents the plan of the future state. A central authority regulates
the economy with the help of statistics, distributes the factors of
production, manages investments, and redistributes the products
according to needs. In the case of a shortage, consumption is lim-
ited through rationing for the sake of production; at other times the
public officials set prices in order to modify demand. One trembles
in the thought that the planners vested with so much power are
human beings who may err and be led by their feelings and emo-
tions.
Naturally, interest from capital is abolished. It is difficult to un-
derstand why the author at first poses as the defender of small
savings, without further defining such savings, whereas he later con-
demns them severely. According to Mr. Mach, small savings must
disappear but the victims of this expropriation will be indemnified
with a lifetime annuity equal to the average income from the securi-
ties expropriated.
7
It can be seen that this promised land closely resembles the com-
munist paradise. Besides, the author revives the Marxian doctrine
through his tacit approval. But he never stops chanting a hymn in
praise of liberty, in spite of the authoritarian nature of the system
he recommends.
After reading these basic texts, we are at a loss for a proper defi-
nition of French socialism. The leeway between the two authors
whose works we have just examined is such that we could insert
between them all the doctrines that run the gamut from communism
to liberalism. Thus socialism is nothing more than a label affixed
to a flask whose contents vary according to the whim of the shop-
keeper.
How then can we explain the existence of such a socialism in
France? First of all, its greatest strength is its vagueness: everybody
6 Paris, 1952.
7 In 1945, in a common manifesto, both communists and socialists demanded that
the securities of those enterprises whose nationalization was recommended be trans-
formed into lifetime annuities. The conditions of this transformation are those cited
by Mr. Moch in his text.
ON SOCIALISM 315
believes what he wants to, adding to it some of his own ideals.
Politically speaking, this doctrinal adaptability lends itself to very
clever combinations. The problem consists of distributing the prom-
ises and benefits among the groups which compose the National
Assembly in such a way that enough are satisfied to assure a ma-
jority. For example, Mr. Pineau, who was invited to become Presi-
dent of the Council of Ministers but was defeated in February 1955,
presented an economic and social program that on many points
was not in accord with socialist ideals, as, f<X example, on the organ-
ization of agricultural markets. He even failed to propose all the
reforms demanded by the socialist party at the Congress of Suresnes
in 1954, notably, in fiscal matters.
Furthermore, socialism in France benefits from two major non-
economic characteristics: its sentimental flavor and its mystic nature.
Socialism poses as the defender of the weak and the poor. Its
spokesmen never fail to reiterate the sad conditions of the workers
and, above all, of women and children at the beginning of the nine-
teenth century, for which they blame present-day capitalism. This
sort of anachronism impresses the rank and file who are always
easily moved. "Men of heart are socialists," says Mr. Moch. There
is no doubt that capitalism, which serves as the whipping boy, is
presented as monopolistic, Malthusian, instigator of unemployment,
war, etc. Indeed one wonders how the readers or listeners can take
such a dubious, if not ridiculous, picture seriously.
In reality, it is a one-way sentimentalism. A great number of
socialists believe that only the workers are poor, which contradicts
actual fact. In France the "economically weak," the small investors,
pensioners and aged and sick, are all much more destitute than the
workers. Andre Philip, Jules Moch, and others believe in Jaures'
prediction that "Socialism will come into its own with the growth
of the proletariat."
Thus, the socialists are motivated by the interests of a single class
and not by the general interest. They candidly acknowledge that
governmental measures are accepted or rejected according to the
advantages they promise to the workers. Everything else is sacri-
ficed. This is why the socialists oppose any reform of nationalized
enterprises and of social security, in spite of the abuses denounced
by boards of enquiry. This is also the reason why they do not flinch
before the budgetary deficit, inflation
8
or devaluations of the cur-
8 The Socialist Congress at Suresnes demanded a general increase in the guar-
anteed minimum wage, without its counterpart in productivity, fully realizing they
courted the danger of a formidable inflation.
rency, as we have seen in 1936 and 1937. In order quickly to bring
about the hoped-for improvements, the socialists try to raise wages
and social costs instead of seeking ways to lower prices, even at the
risk of ruining other social classes. In other words, the socialists
are apostles of "redistribution of income" through fiscal means. To
sum up, we may say that they propose to combat misery-when they
are not creating it!
This characteristic class sentimentality has a strong attraction
for religious writers. In Catholic circles a campaign is being con-
ducted in favor of an "economy of needs." Their reasoning is as
follows: Present demand corresponds only to effective wants and
not to genuine wants. The economic price mechanism is inhuman.
Society must therefore renounce the play of the law of supply and
demand and substitute a system based on the satisfaction of wants.
According to these writers, these wants must correspond not only
to the vital necessities but also to the amenities of existence and to
the "higher values of civilization," which they call "needs of com-
fort" and of "elevation."
9
This school of thought benefits from the prestige inherent in the
word "humanism" which they make use of. Their opponents are
cast in the role of those deprived of any humane feeling. But this is
fallacious and confused. First of all, we may conclude from the
remarks of these imprudent reformers, that the purchasing power
which everybody possesses and which determines his demand, is
attributable to chance. In reality, in an unhampered liberal society
purchasing power is the outcome of an application of labor or sacri-
fice of saving. The price system is fair because it corresponds to
merit. Next, the "humanitarians" want to distribute the products
according to wants. They would thus destroy the tie between pro-
duction and consumption. An even graver error is their confusion
of needs with desires, thereby attributing to the latter the impor-
tance that should be reserved for the former. In a word, they arrive
at the communist solution without even realizing it!
As to the mystic nature of socialism, people in France call it
"leftist," which is a word without precise meaning but with popular
appeal. Mr. Moch expressly emphasizes that socialism "is almost a
secular religion." On such a ground logic is without force. The man
in the street "votes to the left" because his leader wants him to.
This reminds us of a parliamentary candidate of liberal leaning, who
at the time when a district system of election existed, asked a good
friend to run as a conservative-of course, without a chance of suc-
9 Economie et humanisme, 1954, p. 1.
ON SOCIALISM 317
cess. Now he could say at public rallies: ''I'm to the left of this
gentleman; he is the reactionary!" The words "right" and '1eft" are
among the most effective of all irrational gimmicks of French poli-
tics.
Has this sliding towards empiricism and this doctrinal disintegra-
tion of socialism brought at least more fortunate results in practice?
A poll by the French Institute of Public Opinion
10
has answered
this question: the "United Socialist Party" ( S.F.I.O.) in less than
six years has lost a third of its supporters who turned either com-
munist or moderate. They are growing old noticeably, for some 34
per cent of its voters have passed the fifty mark and, among their
loyal supporters, the men far exceed the women in number. It is
characteristic that this workers' party is supported at the polls by
large numbers of civil servants but relatively few workers who
mostly vote the communist ticket.
As the crowning disgrace, the socialist voters lack a militant
spirit. That is to say, they are little inclined to work for their party,
hardly try to convince their friends, and do not like to discuss poli-
tics nor to contribute money. Worse still, they lack full confidence
in the party leaders. "One voter in five has confidence in Mr. Guy
Mollet; one in ten in Mr. Moch."
The poll-taking concludes that the S.F.I.O. is a common meeting
ground for "often contradictory aspirations, for doubts and uncer-
tainties. It is not even a socialism which unites, but almost a group
of different socialisms which assemble without a single direction
designating the path which all may follow."
Recent events confirm these observations. In 1954-55 we were
witness of the revolt of the parliamentary socialists against the cen-
tral committee of the Party. The rebels went as far as to speak of
their individual mental reservations in order to justify their insubor-
dination at the time of the debates on the European Defense Com-
munity and the Paris Agreements. It is a party without a single
leader who is able to assert himself.
The socialists themselves, in their newspapers and magazines,
hardly fail to deplore the "decline," "defeat" and "dissipation" of
their party and doctrine.U A shrewd observer, who is sympathetic
towards socialism, already wrote in 1946: "The socialist idea has
foundered and that's a fact."
12
10 Published in the revue, Sondages, number 3 of 1952.
11 For numerous references see this author's work L'aube d'un nouveau liberalisme,
Paris, 1953, p. 125.
12 Fran<;ois Mauriac: "Le cnpuscule du socialisme," Le Figaro, 28 August 1946.
Some socialists find consolation in the fact that their party main-
tains a strong position wherever personal issues retain their impor-
tance, in regional and local affairs, in the general councils and in
municipalities. Or they find comfort in their central position in
Parliament between communists and moderates, which makes them
the arbitrators with opportunities to shift the balance of power.
Some good authors attempt to "rejuvenate the doctrine," as they
call it. But they are clever enough to circumvent classic socialism.
Such is the case of Professor Robert Mosse who writes: "Central
planning does not require the collectivization of all the means of
production; it is compatible with the existence of private property
in certain important areas." He rejects authoritarian central plan-
ning; he wants it to be flexible or as "strategic supervision of the
whole."
11
In order to avoid bureaucratic tyranny, he falls back on
the price mechanism as the yardstick of measurement, allowing
free choice to consumers and workers. And he explains that the
price alone permits comparison between costs and utilities and
allows economic calculation.
14
Oscar Lange suggested that socialists erect a statue to Ludwig
von Mises in gratitude for having made them elaborate their doc-
trine. Such elaboration seems to be a transformation. The proper
inscription of the base of the monument should announce the de-
struction of socialism rather than its perfection, for this alleged
elaboration of doctrine is nothing more than its substitution by
vague planning.
The hopes of these advocates of control are varied. Certain of
them cling to the conceptions of abundance, of technocracy or con-
trol over marginal prices. Their panacea is nationalization and re-
distribution of income through taxation. Others adhere to the ideas
of improving the lot of the workers and of economic democracy
through political or syndicalist action. Some latecomers are inspired
by the utopians and moralizers of the last century, but they are
rare in this age where morality is not held in high regard. A few
believe in the virtue of the movement for itself without wanting
to know the bank towards which the current is carrying them. In
all these tendencies and aspirations we fail to see a single socialist
contribution. The literature and particularly the Revue socialiste
are curiously empty.
15
13 "L'evolution doctrinale du socialisme," Revue de l'Institut de Sociologie de
Bruxelles, 1952, page 373.
14 Aux Ecoutes de la Finance, August 27, 1953.
15 The revue Reconstruction, organ of the French Confederation of Christian
Workers, makes a genuine effort to enter the sphere of doctrine.
ON SOCIALISM 319
We do not know whether our present socialism will still be in
vogue in the year 2000, as has been predicted by a reformer. We
believe that it will remain democratic, although also this expression
has become quite ambiguous since the birth of "people's democra-
cies."
16
But we deny that it would be a "true" socialism.
Let us conclude that so-called French socialism is today a "social-
ism without doctrine."
16 The word "democracy" vies with the word "socialism" for first place in the
realm of ambiguity. (J. Monnerot: "Sur le declin du socialisme," Liberte de resprit,
November 1950.) Mr. Moch considers Saint Thomas to be a democratic socialist!
It may be useful in this respect to recall that in the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno
(par. 44 to 50), socialism clearly distinguished from communism is condemned.
Index
(Contributed by Vernelia Crawford)
Ability, judgment of, 61
About, Edmond, 254n
Absurdity, genesis of, 46
Acceleration doctrine. By W. Peter-
son, 217-223
Action
collective, 256
ends and means of, 225
follows ideas, 13
government, 255n; see also Utility,
social
human, see Human action
market, 258
motivated, 228, 231
Adviser, economist as, 248
Aggregates and averages, 140-160
characteristics of, 142
multiplier, 155
statistical method of, 141
use of, 151
Agriculture
bread vs. seed grain, 103
tariff and, 33
Alchian, A. A. 239n
Allen, George, 54n
Allen,R.G.D., 143n, 147n,158n
Allport, G. W., 231n
Ambelin, Robert, 48n
Anarchism, 22
Anonymity and charity, 96, 100
Antoni, Carlo
biographical sketch of, 1
considerations of economic law,
135-139
Apriorism, 131, 253n
Archimedes, 15
Aristotle, 199n
Armstrong, W. E., 232, 237
Asceticism, 29
Assets
capital, 178
money, 196, 197n,205n,209,215n
Automaton, role for entrepreneurs,
219
Averages and aggregates, see Aggre-
gates and averages
Bacon, Francis, 199
Ballve, Faustino
biographical sketch of, 1-2
methodology in economics, 128-134
Banks, interventionism and, 27
Baudin, Louis
French socialism, 311-319
Baumol, William J., 238n, 246n, 256n,
258,260n
Behaviorism, 168, 171, 230-232
Benefits
civilization and, 29
creative energy and, 192
destroyed, 97
individual and collective, 256
see also Charity
Bentham, Jeremy, 199
Bergson, Abram, 247
Bernardelli, Harro F., 235n
321
322
Birge, R. T., 143n, 14911. 151n, 155n,
158n
Blum, Leon, 312
Blum, Walter, 265n
Bohm-Bawerk, Eugen, 35, 199n, 203,
236n
Bonar, 199n
Bonds and stocks, 183
Boswell, James, 10Sn
Boulding, K. E., 219n, 248n
Bread vs. seed grain, 103
Bridgman, Percy W., 164n, 228n
Brodbeck, May, 254n
Bronfenbrenner, 260
Buchanan, James M., 260
Bureaucracy, 66, 301
Buridan's Ass, fable of, 238
Business
cycle, 217, 222
purpose of, 299
Cairnes,John,202,203n
Campbell, Norman, 242n
Cannan, Edwin, 199, 206, 208n, 214n,
215n
Capital
accumulation, 26
assets, 178
consumer and producer, 58, 20Sn,
210
distribution, 175, 288
formation, 279
interest from, abolished, 314
ownership, 58, 178, 181, 217
productive,58,203n,210
resources, 179
see also Wealth
Capitalism
advocate of, 18, 36
British, 26
constitutions of, 55
defense of, 80
democracy and, 54
destruction of, 62, 285
entrepreneurship and, 181
imperialism and, 55
interventionism and, 7 4
Marxian view of, 53
ownership and, 58
socialism and, 74, 315
INDEX
war and, 23
see also Market economy
Cardinal measurable utility, 232
Carnap, Rudolf, 228n
Cartels, 255n
Carver, T. N., 217n
Cassel, Gustav, 84, 207, 231
Catallactics, 130
Catholicism, French, 315
Charity
anonymity and, 96, 100
common forms of, 98-99
communism and, 105-106
defined,95
economic. By F. Harper, 94-106
enslavement through, 97-98
incentive for, 104
nature of, 96
tools as form of, 99-100
Chemistry, complexity of, 49
Choice, indifference and, 238
Civilization, benefits of, 29
Clark, J. M., 217n
Class conflict, 56, 286, 299; see also
War
Class interest, 315
Coercion
majority rule and, 256
planning and, 61, 70
right-to-work and, 291
voluntary, 256
Cohen, L., 143n, 150n, 151n, 152n,
154n, 155n
Cohen, Morris R., 163n, 242n
Collectivism
individuals and, 256
market economy and, 114
plans of, 64
wants in, 256, 258
Communism
charity and, 105-106
danger to, 60
democratic, 53, 63
founders of, 53
labor and, 58
socialism and, 311
triumph of, 53
world planners and, 62
Communist Manifesto, 287
Compensation principle, 246-247
INDEX
Competition
interference with, 57
labor, 294, 298
see also Capitalism; Freedom; Mar-
ket economy
Comte, Auguste, 169n
Configurations and consequences, 41
Congress, U.S., investigations of, 89
Connolly, T. T., 141n, 147n, 150n,
151n, 152n, 155n, 158n, 159n,
160n
Consistency, 229
Constancy, 228
Constitutions
capitalist, 55
government, 71
Russian, 55
United States, 85
Consumers
capital goods of, 58, 203n, 210
demand, 217
influence of, 56, 296, 300
money, 204
preference, 229
production and, 190, 222, 300
taxation and, 72
Continuity, 233
Contracts
labor, 285-307
voluntary, 286
yellow dog, 296
Controls
income, 265
price, 24
state, 81
see also Government
Coolidge, Calvin, 292, 299
Cooperation, social, 290
Creative energy, 192, 194
Credit, function of, 203n
Criminals, 25n
Croce, 238n
Currency, see Money
Dante, Alighieri, 199
Datum, meaning of, 177
Davidson, Thomas, 98n
Deductive inference, 228n
Demand
consumer, 217
money, 208n, 215
supply and, 118
323
Deming, W. E., 143n, 149n, 151n,
155n, 158n
Democracy
capitalist, 54
communist, 53, 63
defense of, 80
essay. By H. Sennholz, 52-80
majority rule and, 69, 260
people's, 52-68,69
progressive, 71, 73, 78
proletarian, 54
Western, 54, 68-80
Demonstrated preference, 225-232,
249-251
Dictatorship
economic, 84
majority rule and, 50
needs of, 64
planned economy and, 84
proletariat, 63
Distribution
capital, 175, 288
income and, 175, 251
market economy and. By L. Lach-
man, 175-187
mode of, 177, 185
problem of, 250-251
Dogmatism, 128
Duhem, P., 142n, 205n
Economics
accomplishments of, 124
averages and aggregates in. By L.
Spadaro, 140-160
character of, 17, ll1, ll4
charity in. By F. Harper, 94-106
defined by Mises, 21
dictatorship and, 84
ethics and, 242-244
fulfillment of, 124
functions of, 18, 126
human action in, 129, 224
interpretation of, 132
labor unions in, 289
law of. By C. Antoni, 135-139; 226
market economy and. Part IV, 173-
262
324
mathematical, 122
methodology in. By F. Ballve, 128-
134
new, 121
planning in, 84, 141, 160
politico, 246
popularity of, increased, 112
quantitative, 124
sciences and. By W. Ropke, 111-
127,138,226
theory, 130,140-160,224
valuation and, 18, 21, 120
welfare, see Welfare economics
Eddy, Mary Baker, 95n, 150n
Ellis, H. S., 212, 213n
Ellsberg, D., 239n
Empiricism, 128, 141
Employment, see Labor
Engels, Friedrich, 53, 287
England, see Great Britain
Entrepreneurs, 57, 181, 219
Epistemology, 226
Equality, income, 265, 280
Equilibrium, 185, 209n, 236
Error and truth, 119
Ethics and economics, 242-244
Eucken, Walter, 126n
Euclid, 15
Exchange
market, 129, 250, 288
medium of, 196, 207
money, 213
voluntary, 189, 254
Exclusiveness, mutual, 153
Exhaustiveness, 153
Experimentomania, 170, 172
Exploitation, 56
External economy, 260
External diseconomy, 259n
Fagan, Elmer, 266n
Fair Employment Practices Commis-
sions, 300
Farming, see Agriculture
Federal Reserve System, 248
Fiduciary media, 28
Fisher, Irving, 204n, 225, 228
Fisher, R. A., 144n, 146n, 15ln, 153n,
155n, 159n
Fitting and tidying up, 44
Foreign policy, U.S., 87
France
Catholicism in, 315
executive power of, 90
labor position in, 315
Leftists in, 316
INDEX
socialism in. By L. Baudin, 311-319
Free market, see Market economy
Freedom
denial of, 82
economic, 296
four, 93
individual, 195
loss of, 70
threat to, 81
versus liberty, 93
Friedrich, Carl J ., 7 4n
Fritz, Machlup
inferiority complex of social sci-
ences, 161-172
Gaddum, J. H., 43n
Galbraith, John K., 257n
Gambling, 240
Gasset, Ortega y, 124, 127
Germany, social science in, 165n
Gilbert, J. C., 236n
Gold and silver, 201
Gordon, Robert A, 141n
Government
bonds, 184
bureaucratic, 66
constitutional, 71
control, 81
French, 311-319
interventionism, see Interventionism
majority rule, see Majority rule
man and. Part II, 39-107
planning, market economy and,
175-187
representative, 73
revenue, 265
social utility and, see Utility, social
spending, 83
strikes, 298
totalitarian, 81-93
see also Communism; Democracy;
Planning; Socialism
INDEX
Grato Animo Beneficiique M em ores,
Part I, 13-38
Great Britain
capitalism in, 26
tax investigation in, 270
Greaves, Percy L., Jr.
interventionism in labor, 285-307
Greidanus, T., 196, 202, 208n, 209,
213n
Guicciardini, F., 201n, 274n
Haavelemo, Trygve, 250n, 258n
Harper, F. A.
greatest economic charity, 94-106
Hart, A. G., 154n
Harwood, E. C., 160n
Hautecoeur, Louis, 48n
Hayek, F. A.
aggregates and averages, 140
mathematical use, 121
praxeology and physics, 227n
progressive tax reconsidered, 265-
284
social sciences and, 144n, 148n,
154n, 160n, 166n
state and, 251n
Hazlitt, Henry
reviews of:
Human Action by L. Mises, 37-38
Socialism by L. Mises, 34-37
road to totalitarianism, 81-93
Hermann,203n
Hicks, John R., 220n, 233n, 236, 246
Historians and historicist, 167, 171
History
method of, 132
social science and, 165n
Hobbs, A. H., 227n
Hobhouse, L. T., 278n
Hoel, P. G., 143n, 148n, 150n, 156n,
159n
Holding, currency, 205, 209
Holism, 168, 171
Homogeneity, 154
Human action
economics in, 129, 224
325
marginal utility, see Marginal utility
means to ends, 225
recommend (book), 20, 37-38
students of, 170
study of, 219
thesis of book by Mises, 13
see also Praxeology
Hutchison, T. W., 254
Hutt, W. H.
acceleration doctrine and, 217n
yield from money held, 196-216
Ideas, preface action, 13
Imperialism and capitalism, 55
Income
conception, 278
controlled, 265
distribution, 175, 251
equality and, 265, 280
land, 200
redistribution of, 268
taxation and, 71, 267
United States, 101
war, 24
see also Capital; Wealth
Independence and mathematics, 153
Indifference, fallacy of, 236-238
Individualism
state and, 57
valuation and, 195, 224, 256
Industrialism
American, 285-307
capital goods of, 217
process of, 27
Inequality, 280
Inflation
interest rate and, 184
money demand and, 215
taxation and, 24, 273
Institutionalism, 14, 167, 171
Intellectualism, 66
Interest
abolished,314
rate of, 184
theory of, 203, 215
International Studies, 165n
Internationalism, 91, 312
Interventionism
banking and, 27
326
capitalism and, 7 4
competition and, 57
labor and. By P. Greaves, Jr., 285-
307
majority rule and, 22, 70, 285
Mises' views on, 175, 285
money and, 27
policy of, 25
political causes and consequences,
83
results of, 57, 70
social utility and, 252
socialism and, 7 4
state opposition to, 18
taxation and, 71
threat to freedom, 81
trend toward, 81, 285
war and, 24
Investigations
British tax, 270
congressional, 89
Investments
accumulation,
defender of, 314
incentive for, 104
ownership and, 99, 104
result of, 281
yield from, 99, 198
see also Wealth
Janet, P., 98n
Jevons, Stanley, 233n
Johnson, Samuel, 103
J ouvenel, Bertrand de
order vs. organization, 41-51
Judge, case of, 47
Judgment
ability, 61
ethical, 242, 248
majority, 69
operational and sightseer, 45
value, 189, 225
see also Valuations
Kaldor, Nicholas, 246
Kalven, Harry, Jr., 265o
Kant, Immanuel, 128
Keckskemeti, 229n
Kelvin, W. T., 169n
INDEX
Kemp, M. C., 245n, 246n
Kendall, M. G., 142n, 143n, 151n,
152n, 155n, 158n, 160n
Kennedy, Charles, 229n, 230n, 235n,
238
Kenney,J.F., 144n, 151n, 160n
Keynes, John Maynard, 116, 121,
142n, 149n, 153n, 158n, 159n,
160n, 186, 208, 217n, 313
Knight, Frank H., 124, 236n, 240n
Koopmans, T. C., 146n, 154n, 159
Labor
bureaucracy and, 301
communism and, 58
competition, 294, 298
contracts, 285-307
division of, 57, 192, 288
French position of, 313
interventionism in. By P. Greaves,
Jr., 285-307
leaders, 304
legislation, 26, 304
morality, 292
political influence of, 298
strikes, 297
theory of value, 189
unions
economic functions of, 289
right-to-work laws in, 285
wages and, 27, 57
Lachman, L. M.
market economy and distribution of
wealth, 175-187
Laissez-faire
advocate of, 18, 22, 27
defense of, 25
reconsidered, 253-255
Land income, 200
Lange,Oskar,235n
Langlois, C. V., 144n
Laurat, M. L., 312n
Law
economic. By C. Antoni, 135-139;
226
Fair Employment Practices, 300
federal labor, 304
intervention by, 301
labor, 75, 285-307
INDEX
physics, 226
Say's, accelerator and, 217
Lazarsfeld, P., 141n, 15In, I55n
Leadership, 63
Leftists, French, 316
Leibnitz, Gottfried, Wilhelm, 15, 119
Lenin, W. 1., 54
Liberalism, advocates of, 18, 29, 36
Liberty, see Freedom
Library, arrangement of, 45
Lindahl, Erik, 186
Liquidity, 209
Little, I. M. D., 231, 232n, 238n,
247n,248n
Lobbying, 75
Location, mean as measure of, 148
Locke, John, 198, 199n,200,201
Macfie, Alec L., 238
Machlup, Fritz
social sciences, inferiority complex
of, 161-172
Maciver, R. M., 146n, 147n, 153n,
154n
Madge, John, 164n
Majority rule
coercion and, 256
democracies and, 69, 260
dictatorships and, 59
governmentand,22, 70,285
pressure groups and, 75, 91
Unanimity Rule and, 255
will of, 69
Malthus, Thomas Robert, 120
Man and government, nature of. Part
II, 39-107
Margenau, Henry, 164n
Marginal utility
human action and, 231n, 233
money and, 205n, 244
ownership and, 190
total utility and, 232-235
Market economy
advocate of, 18
attainable, 302
collectivism and, 114
consumer influence on, 56, 296, 300
demonstrated preference and, 249-
250
327
distribution
problem and, 250-251
wealth and. By L. Lachman, 175-
187
economics and. Part IV, 173-262
entrepreneurship and, 181
exchange and, 129, 250, 288
hampered. Part V, 263-318
interventionism and, 74, 175-187,
285
planning and, 175-187
prices in, 288
social results of, 180
social utility and, 250n, 253
socialism substituted for, 285
valuation and, 25
wages in, 56, 294
war and, 23, 24
see also Capitalism; Freedom
Maroney, M. J., 144n, 152n, 155n,
159n
Marschak, Jacob, 141n, 144n, 150n,
153n, 155n, 239n, 242, 243n
Marshall, Alfred, 154n, 205, 210n,
241n
Marx, Karl, 53, 102, 160n, 190, 287,
313
Mathematics
implications of, 141
independence and, 153
measurement in, I 44n, 148, 238,
241,242
multiplier and, !55
use of, 121
Mathematosis, 169, 172
McCulloch, J. R., 27 4
Mean, measure of location, 148
Measurement, 144n, 148, 238, 241,
242
Median, 149
Medium of exchange, see Exchange;
Money
Menger, Carl, 236n
Mental constructs, 144
Mercantilism, 202
Metaphysics, 128
Methodology
in economics. By F. Ballve, 128-134
institutionalist, 171
planning and, 141
328
positivist, 254
scientific, 108-172
Metromania, 169, 171
Military training, orderliness in, 48
Mill, John Stuart, 65n, 7ln, 202
Mises, Ludwig
biographical sketch of, ix
charity and, 94
contribution to economics, 129
demonstrated preference of, 225
economics, defined, 21
Human Action, reviewed by H.
Hazlitt, 37-38
interventionism and, 175, 285
intransigence of. By J. Rueff, 13-16
money
economic good, 210
regression theorem, 236
theory, 196
reading. By W. Rappard, 17-33
science,defined,21
Socialism, reviewed by H. Hazlitt,
34-37
total utility theory of, 235n
writings of, xiii-xiv, 34-38, 140n-
160n
Mises, Richard, 240n
Mishan, E. J., 248n
Moch, Jules, 313, 314
Molinari, Gustave de, 253n, 257
Money
assets, 196, 197n, 205n, 209, 215n
circulation, 212
consumption, 204
defined, 197n
demand, 208n, 215
exchange and, 213
function of, 200
held, yield from. By W. Hutt, 196-
216
idle, 214
interventionism and, 27
marginal utility and, 205n, 244
metallic, 202
need of, 204n
policy, 120
productivity, 201, 215
regression theorem, 236
services of, 196, 205, 207n, 211
theory, 196,210,236
INDEX
use,l98,201,203,204n,207
value, 196-216
Mont-Pelerin Society, 18
Morgenstern, Oskar, ll8n, 238-243
Morality
consequences of, 67
economic law and, 138
economic science and, 122
labor and, 292
Multiplier, 155
Nazism, 313
Needs, implications of, 61
Neo-cardinalists, 238-243
Neo-classics, 244
Neuman-Morgenstern theory, 238-243
New York, Fair Employment Practice
law in, 300
Northrup, F. S. C., 141n, 144n, 146n,
151n, 152n, 159n
Operationism, 45, 168, 171, 227, 231
Orchard, problem of, 41
Order
military training and, 48
threat of, 51
versus organization. By B. de Jou-
venel, 41-51
Ordinalism, 41, 232-235
Organization, vs. order. By B. de
Jouvenel, 41-51
Ownership
abolition of, 287
American, 59
capital, 58, 178, 181, 217
inventive factor of, 104
investments and, 99, 104
marginal utility and, 190
stocks and bonds, 183
tools and, 100-102, 104
transfer of, 96
Pareto, Vilfredo, 231, 244
Pascal triangle, 156
Paulding, Linus, 49n
Peace, durable, 23
Pearson, K., 146n
Pecuniary yield, 198
Perry, Arthur, 254n
INDEX
Peterson, William
accelerator and Say's law, 217-223
Philbrook, Clarence, 248
Philip, Andre, 313
Philosophy
characteristics of, 17, ll1, ll4
right-to-work, 285, 299
Talmudical, 95
Physics
law of, 226
theoretical, 116
Pigou, Arthur Cecil, 207, 208n, 244
Planning
central, 60
coercion and, 70, 71
dictatorship and, 84
economic, 84, 141, 160
market economy and, 175-187
methodology and, 141
production, 58, 60
progressive, 78
world communistic, 62
Plutarch, 97
Poincare, H., 151n, 152n, 155n, 159n
Politics
economics and, 246
institutions of, 69
labor's influence on, 298
parties, promises of, 30
Positivism, 225-228, 253n, 254
Power
centralized, 85
congressional investigations and, 89
Constitutional, 85
consumer, see Consumers
domestic, U.S. President and, 88
French executive and, 90
Presidential, 85
purchasing, 222
tools, productive, 99, 100
treaty-making, 88
war,89
Praxeology, 129, 230, 236, 254; see
also Human action
Predictionism, 169, 172
Preference
consumer, 229
329
demonstrated, 225-232, 249-251
revealed, 228-230, 232
Prescriptionism, 169, 172
President, U. S.
domestic power of, 88
foreign policy of, 87
power centralized in, 85
Pressure groups, 75, 91
Prices
control of, 24
determination of, ll8
market, 288
Probability theory, 151, 153, 240n
Production
acceleration doctrine and, 218
capital goods of, 58, 203n, 210
class warfare and, 299
consumption and, 190, 222, 300
farm, 33
limited, 287
means of, 58, 62, 74
money, 201, 215
planning, 58, 60
restricted, 26
technology and, 220
tools of, 99, 100
war and, 24
Profits, 279
Progressing economy, 31, 78
Proletariat, 53, 59, 63, 287
Property
abolition of, 287
invasion of, 259n
see also Ownership
Protectionism, 33
Psychologizing and behaviorism, 168,
171, 230-232
Purchasing power, 222
Quasi-measurement, 238, 242
Questionnaires, 229
Rappard, William E.
Mises, on reading, 17-33
Rationality, 44
Rationing, 25
Read, Leonard E.
unearned riches, 188-195
Reason, 14, 15
330
Reder, Melvin, 249, 250, 260n
Redistribution, 268
Referendum, legislative, 76
Regimentation, 48, 67
Regression, 236
Religion, influence of, 30
Rent, 200
Representatives, government, 73
Resources
capital, 179
holding, 205
wealth and, 178
Revealed preference
Armstrong's criticism of, 232
Samuelson and, 228-230
Revolution, proletarian, 55, 59
Ricardo, David, 120, 202
Riches, unearned. By L. Read, 188-
195
Rights
equal, 55
employment, 285-307
Risk, 240; see also Entrepreneurs; In-
vestments
Robbins, Lionel, 144n, 229n, 232n,
235-236, 244, 245-246, 253n
Robertson, Denis H., 207n, 214n,
246n
Robinson, Joan, 186n
Romier, Lucien, 126n
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 92
Ri:ipke, Wilhelm
place of economics among sciences,
111-127
Rothbard, Murray N.
reconstruction of utility and wel-
fare economics, 224-262
Rothenberg, Jerome, 247, 249n, 258n
Rueff, Jacques
intransigence of L. Mises, 13-16
Russia, constitution of, 55; see also
Communism
Samuelson, Paul
business cycle and, 222
exchange and, 254
objections of, 227n, 236
INDEX
revealed preference and, 228-230
social welfare function and, 247
views of, 141n, 146n, 147n, 151n,
154n, 159n, 160n
Santayana, George, 92
Satisfaction, 245
Savings, see Investments
Say's law, accelerator and. By W. Pet-
erson, 217-223
Schuetz, Alfred, 17ln
Schuller, George J., 227n
Schumpeter, Joseph A., 146n, 238n,
255n
Science
averages and aggregates in. By L.
Spadaro, 140-160
definition of, 21
economics and. By W. Ri:ipke, 11-
127; 138,226
methodology and, 108-172
natural, social science and, 170
physics, law of, 226
social
definition of, 163
German, 165n
history and, 165n
inferiority complex of. By F.
Machlup, 161-172
natural sciences and, 170
subjects regarded as, 165
Scientific method. Part III, 108-172
Scitovsky, Tibor, 260
Security, see Benefits
Seignobosc, C., 144n
Self-reliance, 95, 98
Seligman, E. R. A., 27 4n
Semantics, 31
Senior, 199n, 202
Sennholz, Hans F.
on democracy, 52-80
Services
monetary, l96,205,207n,211
state, 256, 258
Shakespeare, William, 199
Shiras, G. F., 270n
Simons, Henry, 266n
Slavery and charity, 97-98
Sluckin, W., 141n, 147n, 150n, 151n,
152n, 155n, 158n, 159n, 160n
INDEX
Smith, Adam, 190, 198, 201
Social gains, 289, 295, 298
Social organization, 13
Social sciences, see Science, social
Social utility, see Utility, social
Social welfare function, 247
Socialism, Part VI, 308-319
capitalism and, 74, 315
communism and, 311
economic law and, 138
French. By L. Baudin, 311-319
interference and, 7 4, 285
market economy and, 285
Socialism by L. Mises, reviewed by H.
Hazlitt, 34-37
Society
slavery in, 98
state and, 22, 53, 66
Sociology, 165n
Solomon, 119
Spadaro, Louis M.
averages and aggregates in econom-
ics, 140-160
Specialization, 218
Speculation, 204; see also Investments
Spending and totalitarianism, 83
Spire, A., 312n
Stalin, Joseph, 14n, 55
Stammler, Rudolf, 130
Standen, A., l44n, 147n
Standard deviation, 143n, 147n
Standard of living, 281
State
control, see Government
duty of, 25
individual and, 57
role of, 251-253
services, 256, 258
society and, 22, 53, 66
voluntary institution, 255-260
world, pressure for, 62, 91
Statistics, theory of, 141, 219
Statolatry, 21, 23
Steel plants, seizure of, 89
Stigler, George J., 123n, 144n, 236n
Stocks and bonds, 183
Strikes, labor, 297
Subjectivism, 189, 228, 231
Subsidies, 75
Supply and demand, 118
Suranyi-Unger, Theo, 260n
Surplus value theory, 102-103
Sweezy, Alan R., 225,228
Switzerland, protectionism in, 33
Taft-Hartley Law, 304
Talmudical philosopher, 95
Tariff, farm products and, 33
Tarish, L., 210
Tautology, 225-228
Taxation
British investigation in, 270
consumers and, 72
income and, 71, 267
inflation and, 24, 273
interventionism, 71
progressive
effects of, 27 4
331
favorable argument for, 268
reconsidered. By F. Hayek, 265-
284
proportional, 276
Technology, 219
Tenth Amendment, 85
Theory
defined, 130
economic, 130, 224
interest, 203, 215
labor, 189
monetary, 196
Neuman-Morgenstern, 238-243
probability, 151, 153,240n
quasi-measurement, 238
statistical, 141
subjective, 189, 228, 231; see also
Marginal utility
surplus value, 102-103
total utility, 232-235
use, see Use theory
utility, 224, 232-243
welfare, 224
yield, 196, 207n, 213
Thomas, Ivor, 74n
Thompson, D'Arcy, 44n
Tidying up and fitting, 44
Time periods, 220
Tooke, Thomas, 202
332
Tools
investment in, 99
ownership of, 100-102, 104
productive power of, 99, 100
Totalitarianism, road to. By H. Haz-
litt, 81-93
Trade, see Exchange
Treaty-making power, 88
Truman, Harry S., 86n
Truth and error, 119
Unanimity Rule, 244-245, 246, 248,
251,255
Unions, labor, see Labor, unions
United States
Congress
decreased importance of, 86
investigations in, 89
constitutional, 85
foreign policy of, 87
income in, 101
labor practices in, 285-307
ownership in, 59
President, power centralized in, 85
threat to freedom, 81
war production and, 24
Usetheory,198,201,203,204n,207
Utility
cardinal measurable, 232
marginal, see Marginal utility
ordinal marginal, 232-235
quasi-measurement and, 238
social
compensation principle, 246
distribution problem and, 251
free market and, 250n, 253
government action and, 251, 255n
theory of, 224, 232-243
total, 232-235
welfare economics and reconstruc-
tion of. By M. Rothbard, 224-
262
Valery, Paul, 16
Valuations
absolute, 19
economic, 21, 120, 188
individual, 195, 224, 256
judgment of, 25, 189, 225
labor theory of, 189
INDEX
market and, 258
money. By W. Hutt, 196-216
subjective, 189; see also, Marginal
utility
surplus theory, 102-103
Variables institutions, 151
Voluntary institutions
state as, 255-260
see also, Capitalism, Freedom; Mar-
ket economy
Wages
determination of, 190
labor and, 27, 57
market, 56, 294
Walker, F. A., 276n
Walsh, V. C., 231n, 236, 238,254
War
capitalism and, 23
incomes, 24
market economy and, 23, 24
powers, 89
production and, 24
proletarian, 55, 59
Wealth
capital assets and, 178
distribution of, 175, 288
economy and. By L. Lachmann,
175-187
limited, 285
ownership, 178
problematical nature of, 181
redistribution of, 177, 185
resources and, 178
unearned. By L. Read, 188-195
see also Capital; Income; Invest-
ments
Weatherburn, C. E., 144n, 15In,
152n, 153n, 158n
Weber, M., 141n, 144n, 146n, 159n
Welfare economics
critique, 242-249
end of, 248-249
new, Unanimity Rule and, 244-245
reconstruction and, 249-261
social, 247
utility and, reconstruction of. By
M. Rothbard, 224-262
INDEX
Whitehead, A. N., 160n
Wicksell, Knut, 196n, 204n, 205n,
254
Wicksteed, Philip Henry, 199, 206,
207n,229n
Wiener, P. P., 142n, 15ln, 152n
Wieser, 204
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 228n
Wootton {Miss), 14ln, 147n
World state, pressure for, 62, 91
Wright, David McCord, 280n
Yellow dog contracts, 296
333
Yield theory, 196, 207n, 213
Yule, 142n, 143n, 15ln, 155n, 158n,
160n
Zipf, Gerald K., 45n

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