Chapter II: Part 2

In _Civil Government_ Locke expounds the Individualistic view of private property, and again lays down the quintessence of Individualism: “The great and chief end, therefore, of men’s uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property.” He qualifies his theory of a Social Contract, Compact, or Covenant, by pointing out that “men when they enter into society give up ... liberty” of a kind; “yet it being only with an intention in every one the better to preserve himself, his liberty and property,” the power conferred “can never be supposed to extend farther than the common good, but is obliged to secure everyone’s property,” etc., etc. This artful qualification of the _common good_, serves as a complete defence of the “Glorious Revolution,” which gave us effective parliamentary government.

As Locke is of capital importance in our subject, those who wish to study it thoroughly should at least read his monumental essay. Some critics may object that we have over-valued Locke, seeing that he was anticipated in many respects by Hobbes as well as by Milton and other Republican writers. It is true that Hobbes, like Locke, was in a sense Individualist. But his influence, for various reasons, was much smaller. Besides, though Hobbes and Locke adopted many of the same premises, they drew from them quite different conclusions. Locke argued in favor of a free commonwealth, while Hobbes pointed to an absolute monarchy.

Locke’s victory over all opposing schools of thought was so complete that Emancipation and Liberty became for more than a century after his death the keynotes of English political philosophy. Under the early Georges individual liberty was not only the admiration of all intelligent foreigners, but it had gone quite as far as public opinion approved. With the American revolution democratic reformers came to the front. But all progress was stopped by the French Revolution.

One of the few able men who wrote in nominal opposition to Locke’s point of view was Bolingbroke, whose brilliant _Patriot King_ (published in 1749) is probably more admired today than it was at the time of his death. But Bolingbroke, though he had a more extended view of the functions of Government than Locke, did not write in strong opposition to his principles. His ideal, “a patriot king at the head of a united people,” was capable of a more or less “democratic” interpretation.

The policy of Walpole, and indeed his successors, was _Quieta non movere_, “Let sleeping dogs lie.” A politician might have said, “We are all individualists now.” Tory Dr. Johnson and non-party Goldsmith joined in composing the couplet:

“How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which kings or laws can cause or cure!”

In the same year that the _Patriot King_ was published appeared the far more important _L’Esprit des Lois_ of Montesquieu, a revolutionary book because it introduced the historical method. It helped to confirm the prevalent mode of thought, because it held up the British Constitution to the admiration of mankind.

We may then take it for granted that among thinkers and writers there was little effective opposition to Individualism in the eighteenth century.

In the economic sphere Hume, Tucker and Burke were all advocates of free trade and industrial emancipation from red tape regulations. But Adam Smith was the great architect. Individualism, already firmly rooted in England, was made impregnable in economics for generations by his _Wealth of Nations_, which appeared in 1776. At second hand or otherwise this work is so well known that it would be waste of time to dilate upon it. Until Adam Smith came into the field the Individualistic practice in politics had not, as a rule, extended to trade in spite of Walpole’s experiments in that direction. But within seventy years the triumph of _laissez faire_ in economics was complete. Pitt, the first great modern Tory statesman, absorbed Adam Smith’s teaching and educated his party. This was a decisive factor; till then the one check upon Individualism had been Tory hostility to the Whigs--the political heirs of Locke. Henceforward the Tories, though as a body inclined to Protection and State control of trade, could be persuaded by leaders like Huskisson or Peel (however unwillingly) to remove restrictions from commerce and industry; indeed, in late Victorian days their leader, Lord Salisbury, and the bulk of his Parliamentary followers remained Free Traders. Free Trade means the absence of a Protective Tariff. Freedom of Trade means freedom not only from tariffs but from restrictions and regulations of all kinds, including those imposed by Trade Unions or combinations of employers, as well as those imposed by Government. This robust growth of economic Individualism was largely due to the seed sown by the _Wealth of Nations_ and to the popular arguments of Cobden and the Manchester School.

It is impossible here to do more than glance at the important developments of _laissez faire_ in France and the United States. In France the movement for economic emancipation was led by the Physiocrats, who by their contemporaries were called “Economistes.” Many of their members, as Quesnay and Turgot, were great and beneficent figures in the history of France. The zeal they displayed for industrial and commercial liberty was natural in reflective men contemplating the feudal servitude of the French people, who were, like Rousseau’s Man, everywhere in chains. They rightly attributed the poverty and misery of France to the obsolete regulations which everywhere sterilized effort and enterprise. Writing in the _Encyclopédie_, Turgot condemns “le malheureux principe qui a si longtemps infecté l’administration du commerce, je veux dire la manie de tout régler, et de ne jamais s’en rapporter aux hommes sur leur propre intérêt.” The Physiocrats detected the fallacies of the Mercantile Theory and the Balance of Trade. Adam Smith owed much to them; but his judicious mind rejected their “crank” doctrine--that land is the sole source of wealth. Unhappily for France, Turgot fell, and instead of his wise reforms came revolutionary violence and the wars that made Napoleon the military despot of France. Napoleon created a new bureaucratic state, more efficient than the old monarchy but hardly less subversive of freedom. Nevertheless Individualism revived in France after Waterloo and found a brilliant protagonist in Frédéric Bastiat, whose writings are a most lively exposure of the fallacies of Socialism, Protectionism and Militarism.

When we turn to the United States, we find there in Thomas Jefferson the master Individualist--for ability and consistency he has few if any rivals in the practice of that political creed. Having received the pure doctrine of Locke, he found during his residence in France a kind of laboratory in which he watched the French experiments in government. In the end he was able to establish in the United States a form of political thought which dominated it from the first decade of the nineteenth century and still prevails.[8] This may be called a triumph in observation and experiment, extremely rare in practical politics. The American tariff, indeed, is contrary to Jefferson’s philosophy. But it must be remembered that the United States constitutes the largest and richest free trade area in the world with forty-eight states enjoying complete liberty of exchange for all their products and a maximum of freedom from economic restrictions.

We must now turn to England and the Industrial Revolution which will engage our attention more closely than its twin French sister. This vast change, which lasted roughly from 1760-1846, is now described in all text-books. England passed from home industries to factory industries. The Individualist régime, which then prevailed, enabled her to effect the change with comparative ease, and a period of wonderful expansion followed. For the second half of the nineteenth century Great Britain led the world in manufactures, commerce and shipping. Capital accumulated. Wages rose steadily. All classes prospered. The eighteenth century had been the age of optimists, and Adam Smith was one of them. He believed that Heaven would help those who helped themselves, and his anticipation of the prosperity which would follow commercial freedom was realized in Victorian England. One of his doctrines was that, if the individual trader were left to himself, the study of his own advantage would lead him to a course of action which would also be advantageous to society. Let him pursue his own interest, and he would be “led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.”

In the literature of Individualism after Locke, Bentham is perhaps the leading figure; he was to the nineteenth century what Locke was to the eighteenth, and he showed how an Individualistic conception of society might be made the basis of wonderful improvements in public administration. He was a strong advocate of public economy, and was careful to insist that the functions of central and local authorities should be limited to police, public health and other services which do not lend themselves to voluntary effort. His small _Manual of Political Economy_, published in 1798, puts the economic case in a nutshell: “With the view of causing an increase to take place in the mass of national wealth, or with a view to increase the means either of subsistence or enjoyment, without some special reason, the general rule is, that nothing ought to be done or attempted by government. The motto, or watchword of government on these occasions, ought to be--_Be quiet_;... The request which agriculture, manufacturers, and commerce present to governments, is modest and reasonable as that which Diogenes made to Alexander: ‘_Stand out of my sunshine._’ We have no need of favour--we require only a secure and open path.”

That Utilitarianism, Individualism, and Political Economy enjoyed so long a reign, and even held sway at the Universities, was largely due to the philosophy of John Stuart Mill, a very great man, who to all his other gifts added a candour, rare in controversy, which secures the confidence of the reader and makes him feel that he is not reading propaganda but accompanying the author on a journey in search of truth. Mill’s lucidity of thought and style helped to extend his influence, and he soon took the place of Bentham as the leading exponent of utilitarian Individualism. His virtues and unselfish public spirit won him the title of “the Saint of Rationalism.” Among Mill’s books _Political Economy_, _Representative Government_, and above all, _On Liberty_, are the most important for our subject. They influenced, and still influence, the views of intellectuals on the critical problem of what should be the relationship under democratic institutions between the people and their government. Mill’s analysis of the whole subject provides a most valuable contribution to political and economic science. There is a fine moral elevation of tone which lifts his arguments and conclusions far above the level of mere party controversy or the narrow and selfish interests of classes. The argument for free speech and complete toleration, and for individual liberty in general, has never been developed with such persuasive force as in Mill’s brief but masterly treatise _On Liberty_. Among Mill’s contemporaries the most brilliant of the writers who took part in this controversy was Macaulay. There is no more crushing exposure in our literature of the fallacies of State Socialism and of the theory that a government ought to be extravagant and meddlesome than Macaulay’s essay on Southey’s _Colloquies of Society_. It is worthy to be printed alongside Bastiat’s unmasking of the French experiments in Communism.

The most powerful political force on the side of Individualism in the middle years of the nineteenth century was, of course, the Manchester School under the leadership of Cobden and Bright, supported by economists like Henry Fawcett and Thorold Rogers. It was equally opposed to Protectionism, Militarism and Socialism. With its support Gladstone introduced a severe economy into all departments of State and instituted the financial control of an efficient Treasury Department on the principles already laid down by Sir Robert Peel.

Among the apostles of Individualism after the death of Cobden and Mill were Herbert Spencer and his disciple Auberon Herbert. Herbert Spencer’s _The Man versus the State_ is an effective pamphlet against the Socialistic tendencies which began to permeate both the Liberal and Conservative Parties in the ’Eighties and the ’Nineties of last century. Among the politicians who aided this movement the most conspicuous was Joseph Chamberlain. His Radical Programme was issued in 1885, and when he passed over to the Conservative Party he took with him some of its items, including free education, which was carried by Lord Salisbury’s Government.

Meanwhile, a Socialist Party was being gradually formed under such leaders as Hyndman, Morris and Keir Hardie. In 1889 there appeared the _Fabian Essays_, which won many converts to a moderate and progressive type of Socialism. Its most brilliant exponent was Mr. Bernard Shaw; but it owed even more to the researchful industry and incessant activity of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb. A little later appeared Blatchford’s _Merrie England_, which caught the popular fancy and helped to turn many working class Radicals into Socialists. But it was not until the Great War, with all the terrible suffering and economic loss which accompanied and followed it, that British industry and capital were at last confronted with a strong Labour Party and threatened by an active group of Communists who aimed at the expropriation of property and at the Marxian ideal known as the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat.” Since then Socialist propaganda has been very active among the working classes, and a considerable section of the British Press has been inclined to compromise with its proposals rather than to meet them and counter them by the principles and arguments of Individualism, opposing free competition and enterprise to monopolistic combinations and bureaucratic red tape.

THE FREE MAN’S LIBRARY

ACTON, LORD. _Essays on Freedom and Power._ Beacon Press. 1948. 452 pp.

Lord Acton (1834-1902) is chiefly remembered today through a single quotation: “All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But he was one of the most deeply learned men of his time, and recognized as few have ever done the true nature and value of liberty. It is, he declared, “not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.”

His lifelong object was to write a great “History of Liberty,” but he immersed himself so deeply in reading and research that he never lived to complete it. Only two essays resulted from all this laborious preparation: “The History of Freedom in Antiquity” and “The History of Freedom in Christianity.” Both are included in this collection selected by Gertrude Himmelfarb, who contributes an excellent introduction. In the opinion of F. A. Hayek, the tradition of true individualism is most perfectly represented in the nineteenth century in the work of Alexis de Tocqueville in France and Lord Acton in England.

ACTON, LORD. _The History of Freedom and Other Essays._ Macmillan. 1907. 638 pp.

An earlier collection of Acton’s essays.

ADAMS, JOHN. _The Political Writings of John Adams._ Edited by George A. Peek, Jr. Liberal Arts Press. 1955. 223 pp.

John Adams’ enduring title to fame was his grasp of the principles of republican conservatism. He “vindicated with vigor and consistency such basic ideas of the American Constitution as the balanced and limited powers of the government, the right of the minority to protection against the tyranny of the majority and the inseparable connection between liberty and property.... The heart of the second President’s political philosophy is summed up in one brief sentence in his _Defense of the American Constitution_. ‘Power is always abused when unlimited and unbalanced.’”--William Henry Chamberlin, in _The Freeman_.

ALLEN, C. K. _Law and Orders._ London: Stevens. 1946. 385 pp.

An inquiry into the nature and scope of delegated legislation and executive powers in England. “In this scholarly study Dr. Allen, who holds to the liberal view of the state, wrestles with the problem of how a proper balance between the legislative and executive powers in Britain’s government can be restored and maintained.”--_Foreign Affairs._ The book is valuable for Americans because this problem of balance has become even more serious for us than for Britain.

ALLEN, C. K. _Bureaucracy Triumphant._ Oxford University Press. 1931. 156 pp.

“This little collection of essays is highly instructive to both the lawyer and legislator and while its references are solely to the situation as it exists in England, its lesson is one that might well be heard in the United States.”--S. H. Hofstadter, in _Columbia Law Review_.

ANDERSON, BENJAMIN M. _Economics and the Public Welfare._ Van Nostrand. 1949. 602 pp.

An economic and financial history of the United States from 1913 to a little beyond the end of World War II. I take the liberty of quoting from my own foreword to the book: “[Anderson’s] _The Value of Money_ [1917] is one of the classics of American economic writing.... The present work is destined to take a similar rank among American economic and financial histories. It is already the outstanding economic and financial history for the period it covers.... Few economic histories have ever interlaced theory and interpretation so completely and successfully with the record of the facts.... Its sense of drama, its unfailing lucidity, its emphasis on basic economic principles, its recognition of the crucial roles played by outstanding individuals, its realistic detailed description of the disastrous consequences of flouting moral principles or of trying to prevent the forces of the market from operating, combine to give this book a sustained readability seldom found in serious economic writing.”

ANDREWS, MATTHEW PAGE. _Social Planning by Frontier Thinkers._ Richard R. Smith. 1944. 94 pp.

A satire on social planning and planners by an historical scholar. It consists in large part of quotations from recent writings by so-called “advanced thinkers.”

ANGELL, NORMAN. _The Great Illusion._ Putnam. 1911.

Several years before the outbreak of World War I, Norman Angell challenged the then almost universally accepted theory that military and political power give a nation commercial and social advantages. He contended that the wealth of our modern world is founded upon credit and commercial contract which vanishes before an invading host and leaves nothing to reward the conqueror, but involves him in its collapse. His theme, in brief, was that nobody wins a modern war. “It may be doubted whether, within it entire range, the peace literature of the Anglo-Saxon world has ever produced a more fascinating or significant study.”--A. S. Hershey, in _American Political Science Review_, 1911.

ANGELL, SIR NORMAN. _After All: The Autobiography of Norman Angell._ Farrar, Straus and Young. 1952. 370 pp.

“Although Sir Norman is wholly unconscious of this, the picture is of a rarely elevated and noble life. Besides the record of that life, this book is enriched by Sir Norman’s reflections--veritable little essays in some cases--on a wide variety of topics ... [including] The Incredible Gullibility of Believers in Freedom under Socialism.”--Max Eastman, in _The Freeman_.

ANGELL, NORMAN. _The Public Mind._ Dutton. 1927. 232 pp.

“A stimulating book.... Its importance to Individualists lies in the emphasis it indirectly gives to the desirability of restricting State action to spheres in which popular passion and prejudice, and the ability of politicians to exploit them can have least effect.”--PI.

ANSHEN, RUTH NANDA (ed.). _Freedom: Its Meaning._ Harcourt. 1940. 686 pp.

A symposium in which forty-one contributors have expressed their views on what freedom means to them. The volume runs to over a quarter of a million words. The contributions reflect little consistency with each other in viewpoint or philosophy.

ARENDT, HANNAH. _Origins of Totalitarianism._ Harcourt. 1951. 477 pp.

A search by a German-born author and scholar for the deeper roots of anti-semitism, imperialism, and totalitarianism. Virginia Kirkus called it “a highly serious and commanding study.” One reviewer objected to it on the ground that “too much of her interpretation is taken from the particular experience of Germany”; and another reviewer on the ground that: “She attempts to give scholarly support to the increasingly widely held dictum that Soviet Communism is nothing but Red fascism.”

ARISTOTLE. _Politics._ 330 B.C. Many editions. 337 pp.

In his introduction to the 1920 Oxford edition (translated by Benjamin Jowett), H. W. C. Davis reminds us that this classic embodies “theories of perennial value, and refutations of fallacies which are always re-emerging.” There is a brilliant answer to Plato’s proposals to abolish private property and to communize wives and children.

ASHTON, E. B. _The Fascist: His State and Mind._ Putnam. 1937. 320 pp.

“Helps one to understand the system of ideas ruling our enemies and the differences which separate their minds from ours.”--F. A. Hayek.

ASHTON, T. S. _The Industrial Revolution._ Oxford University Press. 1948. 167 pp.

For at least a century (in part under the influence of Karl Marx) most of the economic historians have portrayed the Industrial Revolution as a catastrophe which caused the working class untold misery and brought about a sort of economic and spiritual Age of Darkness. In this remarkable little book Dr. Ashton, professor of economic history at the University of London, with more careful scholarship presents the Industrial Revolution as what it was--an achievement which, through the application of science to industry and the increased use of capital, led not only to a rapid growth of population but to a rise in the real incomes of a considerable section of the working class. Dr. Ashton stresses the intellectual and economic as well as the technical aspects of the movement. (See also his contribution to _Capitalism and the Historians_, listed under F. A. Hayek.)

AUSTIN, BERTRAM H., AND LLOYD, W. F. _The Secret of High Wages._ Dodd. 1926. 124 pp.

In 1925, at a time of great industrial depression in Britain, the authors, two English engineers, came to the United States in an effort to discover the secret of our unprecedented prosperity. Their inquiry was mainly concerned with the causes of high wages in industry combined with low cost of production. The book was originally a confidential report, but was published following a suggestion from the City Editor of the London _Times_.

BACKMAN, JULES. _Wages and Prices._ Irvington, N. Y.: Foundation for Economic Education. 1947. 88 pp.

An excellent statistical reference work on the levels and relationships of wages, prices, costs and profits in recent years. The author points out how these facts are ignored or misread by those who are trying to fix or change wages and prices by force. The evils of price-control, labor monopolies and currency inflation are dealt with incidentally.

BAGEHOT, WALTER. _Physics and Politics._ 1869. Several editions. (Knopf. 1948.) 230 pp.

An original and penetrating study of the impact of science and invention on politics, and of political institutions on knowledge. Bagehot shows how in the early history of mankind blind obedience to usage and custom seemed necessary to social cohesion and survival, but after the transition from the principle of status to that of contract was finally achieved, it was liberty that ensured the greatest social strength and progress. “As soon as governments by discussion have become strong enough to secure a stable existence, and as soon as they have broken the fixed rule of old custom, and have awakened the dormant inventiveness of men, then, for the first time, almost every part of human nature begins to spring forward.... And this is the true reason of all those panegyrics on liberty which are often so measured in expression but are in essence so true to life and nature. Liberty is the strengthening and developing power.”

BAGEHOT, WALTER. _The English Constitution._ 1867. Oxford University Press. 1933. 312 pp.

This classic work was the first to make clear the real nature of the British constitution in its modern development. That constitution is not based, as Montesquieu thought, on the “separation of powers,” but, on the contrary, on “the close union, the nearly complete fusion, of the executive and legislative powers.” In this respect Bagehot contrasted the British and American constitutions to the disadvantage of the latter. As the preservation of ordered liberty depends upon the existence of a sound political system, Bagehot’s book deserves the close study of Americans as well as Englishmen. He was a brilliant stylist as well as a brilliant thinker.

BAGEHOT, WALTER. _Economic Studies._ 1880. Stanford, Calif.: Academic Reports. 1953. 236 pp.

The essays in this book mainly elaborate classical English _laissez-faire_ economics. They deal with Adam Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, “the late Mr. Mill,” and such subjects as “The Postulates of English Political Economy” and “The Growth of Capital.” “Bagehot, Editor of _The Economist_, was one of the finest thinkers and writers of his time. He was always an advocate of individual and commercial freedom. His best known books are on the _English Constitution_ and _Lombard Street_.”--PI.

BAILWARD, W. A. _The Slippery Slope and Other Papers._ London: Murray. 1920. 236 pp.

“A collection of essays and articles written over a period of twenty years during which the author was engaged in Poor Law and charitable administration. By ‘the slippery slope’ is meant the path of least resistance in dealing with social problems, that is, the path of pauperism and Socialism.”--PI.

BAILWARD, W. A., AND LOCH, C. S. _Old Age Pensions._ 1903.

“A well-argued case against old age pensions. Its interest is chiefly historical, but it might well be read by students interested in the history of ideas.”--PI.

BAKER, JOHN R. _Science and the Planned State._ Macmillan. 1945. 120 pp.

Dr. Baker, a lecturer in zoology at Oxford University, contends that central planning and direction of scientific research do more to inhibit than to promote the growth of true scientific knowledge and discovery.

BARBER, THOMAS H. _Where We Are At._ Scribner’s. 1950. 255 pp.

The author, who has been a lawyer, city official, and cowpuncher, describes his book as “a guide for enlightened conservatives.” He urges removal of all price-fixing, subsidies and special group privileges and return to a free market economy.

BASTABLE, C. F. _The Theory of International Trade._ 1897, etc. Macmillan. 197 pp.

This short book, which first appeared in 1897, long held the field as the standard exposition of the “classical” theory of foreign trade and policy. It is balanced, vigorous and lucid, and uncompromisingly defends freedom of trade. Bastable’s “principal conclusion as to conduct” is that “Governments in their dealings with foreign trade should be guided by the much-vilified maxim of _laissez faire_. To avoid misinterpretation, let it be remembered that the precept rests on no theory of abstract right, or vague sentiment of cosmopolitanism, but on the well-founded belief that national interests are thereby advanced, and that even if we benefit others by an enlightened policy, we are ourselves richly rewarded.”

BASTER, A. S. J. _The Little Less._ London: Methuen. 1947. 161 pp.

A witty and well-informed little book on “the political economy of restrictionism.” It consists mainly of a satiric history of the “lunatic years” in Great Britain between 1919 and 1939, when various ingenious devices were introduced by which everybody expected to get a little more for producing a little less. The story is told under the separate chapter headings of Producing Less, Growing Less, Working Less, Transporting Less, and Trading Less. There are also chapters on The Politics of Restrictionism and The Political Economy of Freedom.

BASTIAT, FRÉDÉRIC. _Economic Sophisms._ 1843-1850. Many editions. 2 vols. 548 pp. 564 pp.

“Bastiat, a friend of Cobden, was opposed to all descriptions of public waste and government interference. Both by his writings and by his action as a politician, he waged unceasing war against Bureaucracy, Protection and Socialism. The book cited above gained a great reputation; it is very witty and written in an attractive style. The Petition of the Candlemakers against the sun, which interfered with their industry, is well known. Each short study attacks some economic error, or pleads for the removal of some restrictions. The truth to be brought out is often enforced by dialogue or some other lively method. Bastiat was an optimist. His view was that the various human impulses and activities would, under free competition and an honest and peaceful government, result in steady progress and increasing prosperity and happiness. This was the theme of his _Harmonies Économiques_, of which only the first volume appeared owing to his untimely death.

“His complete works with introductory biography were published in France in 1855 shortly after his death. They include many brilliant pamphlets and articles against the fallacies of State Socialism and Communism, which were rampart in Paris in the last years of Bastiat’s life.”--PI.

“In _Sophismes Économiques_ we have the completest and most effective, the wisest and wittiest exposure of protectionism and its principles, reasonings, consequences which exists in any language. Bastiat was the opponent of socialism. In this respect also he had no equal among the economists of France.”--_Encyclopedia Americana._

BASTIAT, FRÉDÉRIC. _The Law._ 1850. Irvington, N. Y.: Foundation for Economic Education. 1950. 75 pp.

A separate publication of a new translation (by Dean Russell) of one of Bastiat’s most famous pamphlets. “Law,” Bastiat maintains, “is solely the organization of the individual right of self-defense which existed before law was formalized. Law is justice.” But the law has been perverted, and applied to annihilating the justice it was supposed to maintain. Protectionism, socialism and communism are all forms of legal plunder.

BAUDIN, LOUIS. _L’Aube d’un Nouveau Libéralisme._ Paris: Librairie de Médicis. 1953. 220 pp.

An acute, scholarly, documented, but extremely readable account of “the dawn of a new liberalism”--a liberalism resting economically on faith in the free market and politically on individual freedom within a proper framework of law and morals. On pages 144 to 150 the author presents a useful survey of the literature of “neo-liberalism” and mentions several French-language works not included in the present bibliography.

BAUDIN, LOUIS. _Les Incas du Pérou._ Paris: Librairie de Médicis. 1947. 188 pp.

A shorter study of the same subject that Professor Baudin covered so thoroughly in his _L’Empire Socialist des Incas_, in 1928. When the Spaniards overcame the Incas of Peru they found that a socialist society had existed there in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries more totalitarian than perhaps any other known to history. Baudin analyzes this society and shows the consequences of that total socialization, many of which have remained with the native Indian population to the present day--the complete suppression of family sentiment, the immobilization of the individual, the disappearance of initiative and foresight, the complete petrifaction of life, the creation of a slave mentality. The book is written with great lucidity and vigor. Professor Baudin has a final chapter discussing the lessons of the empire of the Incas for our own time.

BEAULIEU, P. LEROY. _Collectivism._ London: Murray. 1908. 343 pp.

“An important analysis and criticism of Collectivism. That progress has always followed the substitution of individual ownership for collective ownership is clearly brought out. The relatively simple example of collective ownership in land is first dealt with and industrial collectivism is then examined. Schäffle’s _Quintessence of Socialism_ is taken as the only available source of information on the _practical application_ of Collectivism, and yet Leroy Beaulieu succeeds in proving its inherent incapability of performing its duties mainly by quotations from the book itself.”--PI.

BECK, JAMES MONTGOMERY. _Our Wonderland of Bureaucracy._ Macmillan. 1933. 290 pp.

A study, by a former Solicitor General of the United States, of the growth of bureaucracy in the federal government, and its destructive effect upon the Constitution.

BENDA, JULIEN. _The Treason of the Intellectuals._ Morrow. 1928. 244 pp.

This celebrated book first appeared in France under the title _La Trahison des clercs_. “That the intellectuals of the world have sold out to utilitarianism, leaving their proper devotion to truth and humanity, is the theme of Julien Benda’s scorching analysis of the current leaders of thought. By taking on political passions, the intellectuals have played the game of the state, espoused war and conflict and lost that universalism which is their true reason for existence.”--_World Tomorrow._

Greatly needed today is a study with a title and theme similar to Benda’s, which would not only cover developments in the twenty-five years since his book appeared, and describe the intellectual and sometimes quite literal treachery of some present-day physical scientists, but would cover the whole drift of our litterateurs and other intellectual leaders over the last three-quarters of a century into a sentimental socialism--including Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and the Webbs in England, Anatole France in France, and the corresponding figures in Germany and America. It would be important to analyze not merely individual figures but the mob psychology of our modern intellectuals and the ease with which they were blown about by the fashionable winds of doctrine.

BENHAM, FREDERIC, AND BODDY, F. M. _Principles of Economics._ Pitman. 1947.

A textbook intended for an introductory course, to provide “the simple tools of modern economic analysis.” Considerable attention is also given to the effects of government intervention upon a capitalistic system.

BENN, SIR ERNEST. _Confessions of a Capitalist._ London: Hutchinson. 1925. 287 pp.

“A telling defense of individual initiative.”--_London Financial News._ “A book which is unique in economic literature. Sir Ernest’s pen is as vivid as his mind is fearless and independent.... He tells us the most intimate details of his business.... The whole is accompanied by a running line of argument on the fundamental problems of economics, which is set out so skillfully as to be as entertaining and arresting as the autobiographical details.”--Lionel Robbins.

BENN, SIR ERNEST. _The Return to Laisser Faire._ London: Ernest Benn. 1928. 221 pp.

An argument against the extension of governmental activity and interference in England and a plea for a return to individualism. Public aid to housing and the growing burden of bureaucracy are special targets. Even reviewers hostile to the author’s thesis paid tribute to “the entertaining style, the caustic wit, the arresting illustration.”

BENN, SIR ERNEST. _The State the Enemy._ London: Ernest Benn. 1953. 175 pp.

The author reviews the British experiment in state intervention and socialism all the way from Lloyd George, who inherited a budget of £100 million, to Attlee, who left it at £4,000 million, and sums up the record of failure: “Nationalization has not brought the expected smile to the face of the worker, full employment has not encouraged production, the management of money has not improved its quality; in fact, all the anticipations of the original Fabian Essays, the bases of modern Socialism, have proved disappointing, if not entirely fallacious.” The style is lively, witty and aphoristic.

BENTHAM, JEREMY. _Works._ Edited by John Bowring. 1838-1843. Edinburgh: Tait. 11 vols.

“A considerable amount of Bentham is still worthy of study. He may be considered as the philosophic founder of modern British democracy. He held that the State exists to promote the individual happiness of the citizens who compose it and that ministers are the servants of the electors. For our purposes, the more important works are: (1) _A Fragment on Government_ (1776), (2) _Defense of Usury_ (1787), (3) _An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation_ (1789). As a Utilitarian, an Individualist, and a reformer of laws and institutions, he deserves more attention than he now receives. Bentham is, like Locke, influential, but known chiefly through the work of his pupils and disciples.”--PI.

BENTHAM, JEREMY. _Defense of Usury._ 1787. Many editions. 232 pp.

Jeremy Bentham, whose reputation has hitherto been that of a moralist, a founder of Utilitarianism, a logician, a great political and legal philosopher and reformer, was also, it is now being discovered, an outstanding economist. Until very recent years, by far the greater part of Bentham’s economic work was completely unknown--locked up in chaotic and illegible manuscripts. The Royal Economic Society commissioned Dr. W. Stark to make a closer scrutiny of this material, which in 1952 was published in three volumes under the title _Jeremy Bentham’s Economic Writings_ (London: Allen and Unwin).

The _Defense of Usury_, however, which is included in these volumes, was published in 1787 and acquired immediate celebrity. Bentham was a great admirer of Adam Smith, whom he called “the father of political economy” and “a writer of consummate genius.” But he was not an uncritical admirer, and in the _Defense of Usury_, which he published eleven years after the appearance of _The Wealth of Nations_, he ventured to take the master to task for his inconsistency in approving so-called anti-usury laws while opposing government price-fixing in practically every other field.

“The liberty of bargaining in money matters,” wrote Bentham, is “a species of liberty which has never yet found an advocate.” Yet “fixing the rate of interest, being a coercive measure, and an exception to the general rule in favor of the enforcement of contracts, it lies upon the advocates of the measure to produce reasons for it.” Examining the reasons that had been offered, Bentham rejected them as invalid, and proceeded to explain the positive “mischiefs” done by the anti-usury laws. He concluded that there is “no more reason for fixing the price of the use of money than the price of goods.”

BENTLEY, ELIZABETH. _Out of Bondage._ Devin-Adair. 1951. 311 pp.

In this autobiographical account Miss Bentley, an American college girl, describes how she entered the Communist party, took part in its secret underground for ten years, and later collaborated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation after she left the party. Although her story on its appearance was ridiculed by some reviewers as “school-girlish” and “phoney,” many of her most startling charges have been confirmed by later investigation.

BERGER-PERRIN, RENÉ. _Vitalité Libérale._ Paris: Éditions SÉDIF. 1953. 93 pp.

M. Berger-Perrin is Secretary General of _L’Association de l’Enterprise à Capital Personnel_. “After a quarter of a century of the predominance of authoritarian and collectivist ideas,” he writes, “liberal thought today is reappearing with increased force and profundity.” To prove this he has put together a little anthology of excerpts from more than fifty writers--French, English, American, German, Norwegian, Swiss, Dutch, Mexican, etc. These include not only economists, but sociologists, historians, journalists, and businessmen.

BERLIN, ISAIAH. _Historical Inevitability._ Oxford University Press. 1954. 79 pp.

The main purpose of this lecture is to consider a tendency which has, in the West, been growing since the eighteenth century, to regard human history as the product of impersonal “forces” obeying “inexorable” laws; with the implied consequence that individual human beings are seldom responsible for bringing about situations for which they are commonly praised or blamed, since the real culprit is “the historical process” itself--which individuals can do little to influence. “A magnificent assertion of the reality of human freedom, of the role of free choice in history.”--London _Economist_.

BLUM, WALTER, AND KALVEN, HARRY, JR. _The Uneasy Case for Progressive Taxation._ University of Chicago Press. 1953. 107 pp.

“Progressive-tax theory has been due for an overhauling, and the authors do a highly competent job.... The work is distinguished by penetrating analysis, comprehensive coverage of sources, and excellent documentation.... Rates high honors in the field.”--_Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science._

BÖHM-BAWERK, EUGEN VON. _Karl Marx and the Close of His System._ 1896, etc. London: Unwin. 221 pp.

Until the appearance of _Socialism_ by Ludwig von Mises (q.v.), this was by far the best criticism of the economics of Karl Marx. For the points that it covers--chiefly the fallacies of the Marxian labor theory of value--it is still superb, unanswerable, and irreplaceable.

BÖHM-BAWERK, EUGEN VON. _The Positive Theory of Capital._ 1888. (Macmillan. 1891.) 428 pp.

One of the most brilliant and original contributions--if not the most brilliant and original--ever made to the theory of capital and interest. Böhm-Bawerk, declares the _Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences_, “was at a very early age one of the first to accept the teaching of Karl Menger, giving all his powers to the development and the defense of the subjective theory of value: it is to him that both the success and the formulation of the theory are largely due.” According to Frank W. Taussig, _The Positive Theory of Capital_ “is a landmark in the development of thought. As an intellectual performance, there are few books on economics in any language that can be ranked with it. One may not agree with all that is said, but the book bears the unmistakable impression of a great mind.”

BOWLEY, A. L. _The Division of the Product of Industry. The Change in the Distribution of the National Income, 1880-1913._ Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1919. 1920. 60 pp. 27 pp.

“The Socialist case obtains support primarily through the existence of a widespread idea that wealth is so unfairly distributed that a large and permanent improvement in the material condition of the working classes could be obtained merely by means of a redistribution.... These two works attempt to determine, by a careful examination of all the existing relevant data, what the true position is. The following quotations, although not fairly indicating the nature of Professor Bowley’s conclusions, show the immense importance of these essays to those who believe that social amelioration is to be sought along the lines of redistribution.

“Discussing the problem of an advance in the scale of wages, he says: ‘In the majority [of industries] no such increase as would make possible the standards of living now urgently desired, and promised in the election addresses of all the political parties, could have been obtained without wrecking the industry.’

“As regards the change in distribution over the thirty-three year period analyzed, he says: ‘The constancy of so many of the proportions and rates of movement found in the investigation seems to point to a fixed system of causation and has an appearance of inevitableness.’--_The Change in the Distribution of the National Income, 1880-1913._”--PI.

BOWLEY, A. L., AND STAMP, SIR JOSIAH. _The National Income._ Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1924. 1927. 59 pp.

“The general conclusion of this book is that comparing the years 1911 and 1924, the real Social Income of [Britain] was very nearly the same at the two dates, and that although real income per head had fallen a little, distribution had altered slightly in favor of the manual worker. After allowing for taxation, there was definitely less real income available in the hands of the rich for saving or expenditure, and whilst luxurious expenditure by the rich had diminished, a good deal of income was available for cheaper amusements. The standard of living of the employed working classes had clearly risen.”--PI.

BOWLEY, A. L. _Wages and Income in the United Kingdom Since 1860._ Macmillan. 1938. 151 pp.

“Professor Bowley is to be congratulated on publishing this short résumé of a lifetime’s research into wages and incomes.... A comprehensive and systematic guide.”--London _Economist_. “The best reference on wage and employment indices is to the outstanding work of A. L. Bowley.”--Joseph A. Schumpeter.

BRADFORD, GOV. WILLIAM. _Of Plymouth Plantation._ 1622. (Knopf. 1952.) 448 pp.

When the Pilgrim Fathers landed on the shores of Massachusetts they established a communist system of land holding and cultivation, and were soon brought to a state of famine. The governor of the colony, in his contemporary account, describes how they finally decided that they “should set corne every man for his owne perticuler ... and so assigned to every family a parcell of land.” The result was an immediate transformation in their habits of industry; and at the next harvest, “instead of famine, now God gave them plentie ... so as any generall wante or famine hath not been amongest them since to this day.”

BRANDT, KARL. _Reconstruction of World Agriculture._ Norton. 1945. 416 pp.

An exiled German scholar, now professor of agricultural economics at the Food Research Institute of Stanford University, surveys the history of world agriculture and food supply from the beginning of the first European war to the present, and offers suggestions and programs for libertarian agricultural policies in the postwar world. “This book, by one of the world’s foremost agricultural economists, should be required reading for all post-war planners.”--E. deS. Brunner, in the _Political Science Quarterly_.

BRANT, IRVING. _Life of James Madison._ Bobbs-Merrill. 1941. 1950. 4 vols.

“A very comprehensive biography; thoroughly reliable as well as readable.”--Felix Morley. “The third volume of Brant’s _Madison_ is a magnificent study of one of our greatest statesmen at the climax of his career ... and a startlingly original account of that much-discussed document, the Constitution of the United States.”--Douglass Adair, in the _New York Herald Tribune_.

BRESCIANI-TURRONI, CONSTANTINO. _The Economics of Inflation._ 1931. London: Unwin. 1937. 464 pp.

Inflation not only wipes out the purchasing power of savings but always constitutes a threat to economic liberty. This is the most comprehensive and authoritative account of the great German inflation from 1914 to 1923. As Lionel Robbins writes in his foreword: “It was the most colossal thing of its kind in history: and, next probably to the Great War itself, it must bear responsibility for many of the political and economic difficulties of our generation. It destroyed the wealth of the more solid elements in German society: and it left behind a moral and economic disequilibrium, apt breeding ground for the disasters which have followed. Hitler is the foster-child of the inflation.”

BRIGHT, JOHN. _Speeches on Questions of Public Policy._ Macmillan. 1878.

“Eloquent expositions of public policy on many subjects. The principles are Individualistic, favoring peace, free trade and public economy on the lines of his friend Richard Cobden.”--PI.

BROMFIELD, LOUIS. _The Farm._ Harper. 1933. 346 pp.

A novel, probably in part autobiographical, dealing with the fortunes of four generations of a family living on a farm in northern Ohio. It begins in 1815 and ends a century later. “Surpasses many sociological treatises in insight.”--Wilhelm Röpke.

BROMFIELD, LOUIS. _Pleasant Valley._ Harper. 1945. 302 pp.

Partly autobiographical reminiscence, and partly an exposition of the author’s theories of farming and farm life. He relates how, after many years spent abroad, he returned to his native Ohio and there built up a new home and a new way of life founded on the old ways of the pioneer American farmer. Mr. Bromfield puts great stress on the virtue of self-reliance in a climate of economic liberty.

BROMFIELD, LOUIS. _A New Pattern for a Tired World._ Harper. 1953. 314 pp.

“Vigorously written by an obviously sincere and devoted American, who is neither isolationist nor suspected on any other score, but who profoundly believes that the key to our future existence and our future happiness lies in improving our economic status and the economic status of our neighbors by achieving the ultimate in free trade.”--C. W. Weinberger, in _San Francisco Chronicle_.

BROOKINGS, R. S. _Industrial Ownership._ Macmillan. 1925. 107 pp.

“The Economic Emancipation of Labor” is suggested by the author as an alternative title for this book. It deals principally with the remarkable tendency toward diffusion in the ownership of property taking place in the United States, a movement that Professor Carver regarded as “an economic revolution.”

BROOKINGS INSTITUTION. _Economics and Public Policy._ Washington, D. C. 1955. 157 pp.

These are the Brookings Lectures for 1954 as delivered by four American economists, Arthur Smithies, Joseph J. Spengler, Frank H. Knight and Jacob Viner, and by two British economists, John Jewkes and Lionel Robbins. Two of the lectures bear especially on the subject of the present bibliography. Professor Knight’s lecture on “Economic Objectives in a Changing World” is instructive, but rather for the questions it raises than for those it answers. Professor Robbins’ lecture on “Freedom and Order” is lucid and illuminating.

BRUTZKUS, BORIS. _Economic Planning in Soviet Russia._ London: Routledge. 1935. 234 pp.

An acute discussion, by an exiled Russian economist, of the difficulties and problems of central economic planning. It is especially valuable because the author combines theoretical insight with a wide factual knowledge of Russian conditions. He explains, for example, why the great Dnieprostroy dam and hydroelectric plant, the prewar pride of Soviet Russia, was not justified economically.

BRYCE, JAMES. _The American Commonwealth._ Macmillan. 1888, etc. 2 vols. 743 pp. 963 pp.

A classic work on the American political and social system, written half a century after de Tocqueville’s _Democracy in America_ and surpassed only by that work insofar as their fields overlap. Viscount Bryce declared that his purpose, unlike de Tocqueville’s, was less to discuss the merits of “democracy” than “to paint the institutions and people of America as they are.” In this he succeeded far beyond any native observer of the time. His interpretations are made from the standpoint of the liberal tradition.

BRYNES, ASHER. _Government Against the People._ Dodd, Mead. 1946. 265 pp.

“A scholarly and well written study of the growth and development of the police systems in Russia, Great Britain and the United States as illustrative of a basic factor making for war or peace in the modern world.”--F. R. Dulles. The author contends that where people are free, the police force is decentralized, limited in scope, and nonpolitical.

BUBER, MARGARETE. _Under Two Dictators._ Dodd, Mead. 1951. 331 pp.

In 1925 the author and her husband, Heinz Neumann, deposed leader of the German Communist party, went to Moscow to translate for the Comintern. In 1937 her husband was arrested and she never saw him again. She herself was arrested the next year. Her book is the account of her sufferings in the Soviet slave camp of Karaganda, and in the Nazi concentration camp at Ravensbruck, where she spent five years. In 1945 she was liberated by the American Army. “This book can destroy the last outposts of the Soviet apologists in the West. It should be read by all the fellow-travelers, the Stalinoids, the double-standard ‘liberals’ and the phoney ‘progressives’ who have acted as Stalin’s stooges when humanity needed every decent man and woman to defend itself against the onslaughts of those who thirst for concentrated power.”--Peter Blake, in _The New York Times_.

BUCKLEY, WILLIAM F., JR. _God and Man at Yale._ Regnery. 1951. 240 pp.

A recent Yale graduate examines and criticizes the teaching of religion and economics at his university. As John Chamberlain sums up in his Introduction, Mr. Buckley concludes that the values inculcated at Yale “are agnostic as to religion, ‘interventionist’ and Keynesian as to economics, and collectivist as applied to the relation of the individual to society and government.” Of the five chapters in the book, the most important for the purposes of this bibliography is the second, “Individualism at Yale,” in which the author takes telling quotations from the leading textbooks used in Yale undergraduate economics courses to prove his case that the teaching is dominantly collectivist. What broadens the significance of this chapter is the probability that a like case could be made out against the economics teaching in many other leading American universities today.

BUDENZ, LOUIS F. _The Techniques of Communism._ Regnery. 1954. 342 pp.

“The present book,” declares the author in his Introduction, “is an analytical and critical study of Communism. It deals with Communist ideology, strategy, and ‘movement’ as presented by the Marxist-Leninist classics themselves and by current Communist documents and directives.... It analyzes Communist activities as the Communist is instructed to carry them out.”

Various chapters deal with the communist philosophy and apparatus; communist phraseology (“Aesopian language,” involved “scientific” argumentation, double-talk, definitions turned on their heads, and the Big Lie technique); the strategy and tactics of communism; the training of communists; the role of the communist press; and various other methods of affecting public opinion and infiltrating unions, the schools, minority groups, and government agencies. There is a final chapter on “How to Fight Communism.” The book is vigorous, clear and carefully documented. Every Congressman, high government official, and newspaper editor ought to master the lessons it contains.

BUDENZ, LOUIS F. _This Is My Story._ Whittlesey. 1947. 379 pp.

The former managing editor of _The Daily Worker_, the American organ of the Communist party, describes how he joined the party in 1935, served in various editorial capacities, became for six of his ten years with the party a member of the Communist National Committee, broke and was converted to Catholicism in 1945.

BUDENZ, LOUIS F. _Men Without Faces._ Harper. 1950. 305 pp.

Here the former high-ranking communist, who returned to the Roman Catholic Church in 1945, discusses the operations of the Communist party in the United States, describes in detail the methods it employed, and accuses it of forming a fifth column directly under the control of Soviet Russia. In a chapter on “The Capture of the Innocents” he explains how “some of our best minds are moved around by the Communists like pawns.” “The master key to the Soviet conquest of the United States,” he concludes, “might well be our own complacency.”

BUDENZ, LOUIS F. _The Cry Is Peace._ Regnery. 1952. 242 pp.

An exposure of the Soviet “crusade for peace” and a criticism of American “appeasement” policies. “This is by all odds one of the best available books on the important subject of the Communist conspiracy against the United States.”--W. H. Chamberlin.

BUER, MABEL C. _Health, Wealth and Population: 1760-1815._ London: Routledge. 1926. 290 pp.

“A critical contribution to the study of economic history. Its importance is wider than the ... title would suggest, and it is a book with which all students of social history should be acquainted. Miss Buer holds that the Industrial Revolution has become the ‘villain of the drama of economic history’ through the habit of ‘writing history backwards’; she shows that the positive assertion at the end of the period by Francis Place that the habits and conditions of the working classes showed a great improvement on their condition half a century previously, was amply justified.... The period was one of enterprise and experiment in social betterment in many spheres, and one in which philanthropy and benevolence ‘were never more assiduously preached’ and practiced. This attitude is contrasted with the extreme callousness on the part of the governing classes in the previous century.”--PI.

BURCKHARDT, JAKOB. _Force and Freedom: Reflections on History._ Pantheon Books. 1943.