Chapter V: Part 5

Autobiographical account of how the author became a communist, worked hard for many years in the British Communist Party, and then left the party and became a convert to Catholicism. “This book is one of the most interesting and revealing of the score or so of confessions by ex-Communists.”--Freda Utley, in the _Chicago Sunday Tribune_.

JEFFERSON, THOMAS. _The Declaration of Independence._ 1776. 1 p.

This is the most famous short statement in existence of the principles of political liberty (with the possible exception of Magna Charta [1215], if the two can be compared). Certainly, nothing bearing on those principles is more often quoted than the second paragraph of the Declaration, beginning: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Although Jefferson drew up the Declaration, it was slightly amended by Adams and Franklin.

JEFFERSON, THOMAS. _The Life and Selected Writings of._ Many editions. (Modern Library. 1944. 756 pp.)

Every student of human liberty should know something of the philosophy and writings of Jefferson (in addition to the Declaration of Independence, here listed separately). There are several collections and many selections. The volume listed above gives the _Notes on Virginia_ and the _Autobiography_ virtually complete, and allots the greatest amount of space to the letters. Jefferson was a staunch champion of limited government and the diffusion and decentralization of powers. He favored (p. 323) “a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

JEVONS, W. STANLEY. _The Theory of Political Economy._ 1871. Numerous editions.

A work of epoch-making importance. John Maynard Keynes writes of it: “Jevons’s _Theory_ is the first treatise to present in a finished form the theory of value based on subjective valuations, the marginal principle and the now familiar technique of the algebra and diagrams of the subject. The first modern book on economics, it has proved singularly attractive to all bright minds newly attacking the subject;--simple, lucid, unfaltering, chiselled in stone where Marshall knits in wool.”

JEVONS, W. STANLEY. _The State in Relation to Labor._ 1882. Macmillan. 174 pp.

In this book Jevons takes a cautious, intermediate position regarding state intervention: “The all-important point,” he explains in the preface, “is to explain if possible why, in general, we uphold the rule of _laisser-faire_, and yet in large classes of cases invoke the interference of local or central authorities.... The outcome of the inquiry is that we can lay down no hard-and-fast rules, but must treat every case in detail upon its merits.” But in his _Primer on Political Economy_, published in 1878, he wrote, for example: “There is no reason whatever to think that trades unions have had any permanent effect in raising wages in the majority of trades.”

JEVONS, W. STANLEY. _The Coal Question._ 1865. Macmillan. 383 pp.

This bears the subtitle: “An enquiry concerning the progress of the nation, and the probable exhaustion of our coal mines.” It is significant as foreseeing far in advance a physical condition which, when it developed, was attributed to the wastefulness of private competition and led to Britain’s futile nationalization of the coal mines.

JEWKES, JOHN. _Ordeal by Planning._ Macmillan. 1948. 248 pp.

The most forthright and powerful attack on government economic planning that has appeared in England since Hayek’s _Road to Serfdom_. While it lacks some of the philosophic penetration and depth of Hayek’s book, it is more explicit and concrete. Its style is lively, sparkling, and witty. Professor Jewkes was a wartime member of the British bureaucracy and has seen central economic planning from the inside. “The planned economy,” he concludes, “must finally destroy the very instruments of free speech.... This is no accident.... It is due to the logical incompatibility of a planned economy and freedom for the individual.... There is no end to this process of seeking to cure the evils of planning by more planning except a totalitarian economy of the Russian type.”

JOSEPH, H. W. B. _The Labor Theory of Value in Karl Marx._ Oxford University Press. 1923. 176 pp.

Professor Joseph holds that the theory which finds an objective measure of value for things in the labor embodied in them is fundamentally false. The author is well known as a logician. The late L. Susan Stebbing called his _Introduction to Logic_ “by far the best systematic exposition of the traditional logic.” James Bonar wrote of the present book in _The Economic Journal_: “It is not censure but commendation that in showing [that Marx’s theory is false] Mr. Joseph follows the lines of many predecessors, especially Böhm-Bawerk, that model of conscientious thoroughness.... The book is sane and helpful. Its discussions give good training in Applied Logic.”

JOUVENEL, BERTRAND DE. _The Ethics of Redistribution._ Cambridge University Press. 1951. 91 pp.

Deliberately putting aside the argument that current government efforts to redistribute incomes reduce or destroy incentives, Baron de Jouvenel seeks to deal with the subject on purely ethical grounds. Would total equalization of incomes, he asks, even if it did not reduce production, be good or desirable? Or does justice demand individual rewards proportionate to the value of individual services? In an acute and original discussion, de Jouvenel shows not only how disappointing (in Great Britain, for example) the results of a further redistribution of incomes would be, but how redistribution has turned out to mean in effect “far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, as we imagined, than a redistribution of power from the individual to the State.”

JOUVENEL, BERTRAND DE. _On Power._ Viking Press. 1949. 421 pp.

“M. de Jouvenel, a French journalist and historian, who finished this book in exile during the war, maintains that all power is corrupt, no matter what political philosophy it is dedicated to. Even revolutions, which break up special privilege in the name of the common good, are the products of a desire for power, he believes, and the iniquities of power cannot be prevented by putting philosophers, scientists, and ‘men of good will’ in high office, for as soon as they are on top, they become politicians.... The book is not a tract, but a fully considered line of thinking, and has caused a great deal of comment in Europe. An important book, brilliantly written.”--_New Yorker._

KALME, ALBERT. _Total Terror._ Appleton-Century-Crofts. 1951. 310 pp.

An account of the fate of the three Baltic countries--Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania--under the Nazis and the Russian communist regime.

KANTOROWICZ, HERMANN U. _The Spirit of British Policy, and the Myth of the Encirclement of Germany._ Oxford University Press. 1931. 541 pp.

The primary purpose of this scholarly and thorough book by an eminent German jurist is to disprove the notion of the “encirclement” of Germany through the operations of British diplomacy as a cause of World War I.

KAPLAN, A. D. H. _Big Enterprise in the Competitive System._ Brookings Institution. 1953. 269 pp.

A careful statistical study which throws a brilliant light on the question of bigness, monopoly, “oligopoly” and competition in American industry. Dr. Kaplan shows, for example, that of the 100 largest industrial firms in the United States in 1909 only 36 stayed in the list of the 100 largest for 1948. “The top is a slippery place,” and no safeguard against the hazards of competition. Dr. Kaplan points out that the attitude of the American public toward “big business” is oddly inconsistent. Individually, as investors, employees, and consumers, the people support and promote the growth of big business enterprises. But collectively they regard “big business” with distrust.

KASENKINA, OKSANA. _Leap to Freedom._ Lippincott. 1949. 295 pp.

Autobiography of the Russian teacher, Oksana Kasenkina. “Her story of the first faint glimmering of the idea of breaking away from the soul-crushing tyranny which surrounded her, of the slow growth of her hope and determination, of her first abortive attempt to pull free and of her final desperate plunge from a window of the Soviet Consulate into the courtyard below, and into the welcoming arms of America, make up the best part of the book. Even though you know that she did escape, the suspense at the end is terrific.”--Oriana Atkinson, in _The New York Times_.

KEETON, G. W. _The Passing of Parliament._ London: Ernest Benn. 1952. 208 pp.

G. W. Keeton is dean of the Faculty of Laws at University College, London. During the past seventy years, he points out, the British Parliament, although still nominally supreme, has conferred on government departments and agencies increasingly wide powers of lawmaking. The jurisdiction of the courts and the legislative powers of the House of Lords have been seriously curtailed. Party discipline has intensified, so that a government may rely upon a firm majority in the House of Commons to give legal force to almost any measure it proposes. The Rule of Law has been gravely undermined. It is Professor Keeton’s thesis that, in consequence of these developments, the sovereignty of Parliament is in danger of becoming a fiction, and that all the necessary machinery for Cabinet dictatorship already exists. This scholarly and cogent book is a worthy successor to _The New Despotism_ written by Lord Hewart (q.v.) more than twenty years ago.

KEEZER, DEXTER MERRIAM, and associates. _Making Capitalism Work._ McGraw-Hill. 1950. 316 pp.

A program for preserving freedom and stabilizing prosperity. The volume is the joint product of several members of the economics department of the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company. Its own declaration of purpose is: “This book is written from a definite point of view and with a clear-cut purpose. The point of view is that capitalism is the best way to economic life for the United States of America. The purpose is to explain that point of view and present a series of steps which, in the view of the authors, must be taken to give capitalism the promise of a prosperous future in the United States.”

KELLER, THE REV. EDWARD A. _Christianity and American Capitalism._ Chicago: Heritage Foundation. 1954. 92 pp.

Father Keller examines socialism, capitalism, big government and big labor, and restates the case for the American economic system.

KELSEN, HANS. _The Political Theory of Bolshevism._ University of California Press. 1948. 60 pp.

A critical analysis of the political theory of bolshevism. “The purpose of this study is to show the paradoxical contradiction which exists within bolshevism between anarchism in theory and totalitarianism in practice, and to defend the true idea of democracy.”--From the Introduction.

KELSEN, HANS. _The Communist Theory of Law._ Frederick A. Praeger. 1955. 203 pp.

“Hans Kelsen is one of the world’s leading authorities on legal theory and international law.... He begins with an analysis of the Marx-Engels theory of state and law that is positively brilliant.... Kelsen’s analysis of the logical contradictions in historical materialism and its application to state and law has, so far as I know, no equal.”--Bertram D. Wolfe, in _The New York Times_.

KEMMERER, E. W. _The A B C of Inflation._ Whittlesey House. 1942. 174 pp.

An excellent little book on the causes and consequences of monetary inflation, although the threat of inflation to liberty was not as clear when this book was written as it has since become.

KIEKHOFER, WILLIAM H. _Economic Principles, Problems and Policies._ Appleton-Century-Crofts. 1951.

A standard college textbook.

KING, WILLFORD I. _The Keys to Prosperity._ Constitution and Free Enterprise Foundation. 1948. 242 pp.

Dr. King believes that most of the keys that unlock the gates to prosperity were found by Adam Smith in _The Wealth of Nations_. Additional “keys” have been discovered since that time. Yet “a great tangle of misconceptions and fallacies” has buried many of them “so deeply that it has required a trained eye to detect them.” Dr. King attempts here to disentangle the fallacies from the economic truths in order that the reader may find the “keys to prosperity.” He writes with lucidity and statistical authority.

KINTNER, WILLIAM R. _The Front Is Everywhere._ University of Oklahoma Press. 1950. 274 pp.

“The author, now at Fort Leavenworth, started research for this book while doing graduate work at Georgetown University. He believes that an overruling military purpose shapes every aspect of Communist organization. Kintner endeavors to prove his point by examining the history of the Marxist movement from origins to era of Lenin and Stalin. The volume contains some significant observations, based on wide acquaintance with Communist literature.”--_Library Journal._

KIRK, RUSSELL. _The Conservative Mind._ Regnery. 1953. 458 pp.

In my Introduction to this bibliography I call attention to the compatibility of an intelligent conservatism with a vigorous defense of freedom. Russell Kirk recognizes this. “Political liberalism before the middle of the nineteenth century,” he writes, “was conservatism of a sort: it intended to conserve liberty.” The present book analyzes the conservative spirit and philosophy as exemplified in a series of writers from Edmund Burke to George Santayana. “The author of _The Conservative Mind_ is as relentless as his enemies, Karl Marx and Harold Laski, considerably more temperate and scholarly, and in passages of this very readable book, brilliant and even eloquent.... Against the Hegel-Marx-Laski axis he analyzes and describes the affirmative tradition of Burke, de Tocqueville and Irving Babbitt.”--G. K. Chalmers, in _The New York Times_.

KNIGHT, FRANK H. _Risk, Uncertainty and Profit._ Houghton Mifflin. 1921. 381 pp.

In his preface, Professor Knight declares: “The particular technical contribution to the theory of free enterprise which this essay purports to make is a fuller and more careful examination of the role of the _entrepreneur_ or enterpriser, the recognized ‘central figure’ of the system, and of the forces which fix the remuneration of his special function.”

“The outstanding fact about Professor Knight’s book is that the author has made a contribution to the theory of profit that no student of the subject can afford to neglect.”--G. P. Watkins, in the _Quarterly Journal of Economics_.

KNIGHT, FRANK H. _The Ethics of Competition, and Other Essays._ Harper. 1935. 363 pp.

A collection of eleven important essays by Professor Knight, brought together by a group of his former students. It includes a bibliography of his writings from 1915 to 1935. “Professor Knight ... manages in the course of this volume to throw original and arresting light on almost every corner of the contemporary economic problem. One page after another in his book is filled not merely with great wisdom and subtlety, but with constant aphoristic sentences that strike the reader at once with their pertinence and truth.... It is ... because Professor Knight is an economic theorist of the first rank and a believer in personal and political liberty, that his criticism of the existing economic system is so extremely valuable. He also has the great merit of seeing the philosophical background clearly, and not falling back, like some economists, on philosophical solecisms while professing to eschew philosophy altogether.”--London _Times Literary Supplement_.

KNIGHT, FRANK H. _Freedom and Reform._ Harper. 1947. 409 pp.

Essays in economic and social philosophy. “Knight’s personal influence, through his teaching, exceeds even the influence of his writings. It is hardly an exaggeration to state that nearly all the younger American economists who really understand and advocate a competitive economic system, have at one time been Knight’s students.”--F. A. Hayek.

KNOWLES, LILIAN C. A. _Industrial and Commercial Revolutions in Great Britain during the Nineteenth Century._ Dutton. 1921. 420 pp.

“The best general economic history of England in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On the question of the interpretation of State intervention during this period, its attitude may be described as ‘neutral.’”--PI.

KOESTLER, ARTHUR. _Darkness at Noon._ Macmillan. 1941. 267 pp. (Also Modern Library. 1946.)

A powerful novel based on the famous Moscow trials. It centers about a former People’s Commissar who has followed certain practices for a cause that seemed of supreme importance, and now finds himself victim of his own methods. In portraying the psychology of a loyal communist, the novel illuminates not only Russia but the conflict between the individual and the State.

KOESTLER, ARTHUR. _The Yogi and the Commissar._ Macmillan. 1945. 247 pp.

A collection of sixteen essays. These essays contain the shrewd and sometimes brilliant insights of a former communist--and the confusions of one who still remains a socialist.

KORNER, EMIL. _The Law of Freedom as the Remedy for War and Poverty._ London: Williams & Norgate. 1951. 2 vols. 562 pp. 663 pp.

This work, translated from the original German, contains much that seems to me confused and crotchety, but also much that is illuminating. “Korner offers stimulating viewpoints to those who adhere to L. Mises’, F. A. Hayek’s and L. Robbins’ doctrines of economic freedom or to H. C. Simons’ _Positive Program of Laissez-faire_ and reject Marxism as well as Keynesian economics.”--Theo Surányi-Unger, in _The American Economic Review_.

KRAVCHENKO, VICTOR. _I Chose Freedom._ Scribner’s. 1946. 496 pp.

“About two months before D-Day on the beaches of Normandy, a frightened member of the Soviet Purchasing Commission deserted his post in Washington and placed himself under the protection of the people of the United States. He was Victor Kravchenko, long a member of the Communist party, an engineer, a factory director and for a time an official in the Council of Peoples Commissars of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, by far the largest of the republics constituting the U.S.S.R. Kravchenko was not frightened of shell-fire but of the long arm of Soviet law dealing with a renegade. He escaped, however, and in _I Chose Freedom_ he and his translator have described his life in the Soviet Union, his views of the Soviet régime and the events that prompted him to desert.”--_Weekly Book Review._ “It is, I believe, the most remarkable and most revelatory report to have come out of the Soviet Union from any source whatsoever.”--Dorothy Thompson, in the _Saturday Review of Literature_.

KRAVCHENKO, VICTOR. _I Chose Justice._ Scribner’s. 1950. 458 pp.

“A sequel to _I Chose Freedom_. The author describes his successful libel suit against _Les Lettres Françaises_, a Parisian Communist magazine which had called his book a fake.”--_The New York Times._ “The world is indebted to the author for material which should settle once for all every honest doubt as to the Kremlin’s determination to destroy human liberties.”--_Catholic World._

KROPOTKIN, PRINCE. _Mutual Aid._ London: Heinemann. 1904. 348 pp.

“The Anarchists are Individualists of a somewhat perverse kind. So extreme an Individualist as Auberon Herbert was very careful to disclaim any connection with Anarchy. Kropotkin--who was considerably influenced by the farm-loving Fourier--advocated the extreme Individualism which threw off all restraint, and arrived, through Anarchy, at Communism. But the goal is ‘free Communism untrammelled by the State.’ In economics a good time is coming.... In social life and politics there is to be the enjoyment for all of the same liberty. All contracts--above all, marriage--are void unless ‘voluntarily and frequently renewed.’ With almost incredible optimism, the Anarchists held that sovereign Reason coupled with the inherited instinct of solidarity impelling men towards mutual aid (this seems to have been Kropotkin’s own and comparatively commonsense contribution) would be sufficient to control human passions. Government would be quite unnecessary. There is a myth that the philosopher Empedocles, to prove some philosophical principle, threw himself into Etna and perished. Much the same fate befell poor Kropotkin. Believing that his principles had triumphed in Russia, he hurried to his native land in the expectation of seeing the world’s great age begin anew. He soon discovered that, as the Jacobins were said to have no need of chemists, so the Leninites had no use for philosophers, and he died in poverty that almost amounted to starvation.”--PI.

KRUTCH, JOSEPH WOOD. _The Measure of Man._ Bobbs-Merrill. 1954. 261 pp.

This is a well-written and closely reasoned book. It is a significant and hopeful sign that Joseph Wood Krutch, whose background has been mainly that of a literary and dramatic critic, and who has no special knowledge of economics and politics, should have arrived by an independent route at much the same conclusions as those of F. A. Hayek in _The Counter-Revolution of Science_ (q.v.). Although the two writers show no knowledge of each other’s work, Krutch, like Hayek, has become profoundly critical of the mechanistic, “conditioning” and “engineering” point of view toward man and society: he answers the arguments of the mechanists not on emotional or mystical, but on scientific and rational, grounds. Historically he shows how nineteenth century thought, under the influence of Darwin, Marx, Freud, and their followers, left us the heritage of materialism, mechanism and determinism that has played into the hands of the totalitarians. Krutch contends that man is capable of making independent choices and value judgments and of freely choosing what he will do.

KÜHNELT-LEDDIHN, ERIK MARIA VON. _Liberty or Equality._ Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers. 1952. 395 pp.

“The book is an exploration of certain interconnected hypotheses, of varying generality, about contemporary politics. The first set of propositions to be examined is: That the impulse of ‘democracy’ (popular government) is the pursuit of equality, and that this leads unavoidably (and has in fact led) to collectivism and on to oppressive totalitarianism; and that ‘liberalism’ is the pursuit of liberty and is an incompatible mate for ‘democracy.’... The second proposition: That ‘monarchy’ is a more serviceable manner of government than ‘democracy’ and likely to be more ‘liberal.’... The third: That the political temper of Catholic nations is more ‘liberal’ than that of Protestant nations.”--_Spectator._ “The book is uneven--sometimes naive, sometimes poorly thought out, and sometimes exasperatingly repetitious. But its genuine insights make it worth reading, despite its weaknesses.”--W. P. Clancy, in _Commonweal_.

LACOUR-GAYET, JACQUES, and LACOUR-GAYET, ROBERT. _De Platon à la Terreur._ Paris: Éditions SPID. 1948. 268 pp.

This is a short history of the philosophy and practice of State economic planning and price controls “from Plato to the Terror.” It contains chapters on Plato and the planned economy, the price-fixing edicts of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, reflections on the “just price” of medieval theory, the search for economic liberty in France from 1789 to 1791, the enormous inflation of the French currency, and its culmination in the dreadful Law of the Maximum (price control), which made the situation far worse and abolished liberty.

LACOUR-GAYET, JACQUES (ed.). _Vingt Ans de Capitalisme D’État._ Paris: Éditions SPID. 1951. 302 pp.

A critical examination by nine writers of “twenty years of State capitalism” in France. The authors show the deleterious consequences of the nationalization of various industries in the period from 1930 to 1950. The contributors are: André Armengaud, Louis Baudin, Jacques Chastenet, Pierre Fromont, Emile Mireaux, Marcel Pellenc, André Thiers, Daniel Villey and Jacques Lacour-Gayet.

LACOUR-GAYET, JACQUES (ed.). _Monnaie d’Hier et de Demain._ Paris: Éditions SPID. 1952. 226 pp.

Essays by five distinguished French economists on the vicissitudes of French money in recent years and on the necessity for returning to an international gold standard. Charles Rist writes on the experience of 1926 and the franc of today. Jacques Rueff writes on the reasons for returning to a gold standard. Alfred Pose writes on monetary stability and gold money. And Edmond Giscard d’Estaing writes on commerce and the need for an international money.

LACY, MARY G. _Food Control During Forty Centuries._ _Scientific Monthly_, June, 1923. 14 pp.

Mary G. Lacy was librarian of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This paper on the results of government efforts to control food prices through the centuries was reissued in pamphlet form by Swift & Co. in 1933. Although compact, it is remarkably comprehensive and carefully documented, and deserves to be far better known. Mary Lacy also compiled in 1926 (with Annie M. Hannay and Emily L. Day), _Price-fixing by Governments, 424_ B.C. _to 1926_ A.D.

LANE, ARTHUR BLISS. _I Saw Poland Betrayed._ Bobbs-Merrill. 1948. 344 pp.

The author was appointed United States ambassador to Poland in July 1944 and took up his duties while the Potsdam conference was still in session, July 1945. He retired in 1947, after nearly two years of frustration, to “tell the story as I had seen it.” “For the sake of the American share in the history of the post-war years, one is sorry that the analysis of Soviet plans, the pattern for ideological conquest, were not presented to the public during the last days of the war. But since Lane was a career diplomat, that was impossible. He has done his best. It is very good.”--Drew Middleton, in _The New York Times_.

LANE, ROSE WILDER. _The Discovery of Freedom._ John Day. 1943. 262 pp.

A discussion of man’s struggle against authority. Mrs. Lane argues (1) that progress depends on a minimum of governmental control; and (2) that the only true control is individual and that individual control is in accord with religious faith. The book is eloquent and stimulating and covers a wide range of subjects.

LANE, ROSE WILDER. _Give Me Liberty._ Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers. 1945. 56 pp.

An expansion of an article that originally appeared in _The Saturday Evening Post_. Mrs. Lane vividly describes her friendliness with communists in New York, her encounters with socialist bureaucracies in Europe, and her observations and discussions with simple villagers and primitive communists in Russia during the early years of the Soviet regime. She tells how she came to understand the rarity and the supremely precious values of personal freedom.

LE BON, GUSTAVE. _The Psychology of Socialism._ London: Unwin. 1909. 489 pp.

“This brilliant work by a convinced opponent of Socialism is based on the view that the best way to fight it and expose it is to make a scientific examination of it.... ‘Hitherto psychologists has disdained to study it.’... The book abounds in epigrammatic apothegms.... ‘All that has gone to make the greatness of civilization [he insists]: sciences, arts, philosophies, religions, military power, etc., has been the work of individuals, not of aggregates.... The peoples among whom Individualism is most highly developed are by this fact alone at the head of civilization, and today dominate the world.’... The theories of Socialism and its history are subjected to a penetrating analysis. Le Bon seems to fear that it will be victorious, and thus, he thinks, bring about the destruction of modern civilization.... Le Bon’s other works are _The World in Revolt_, 1921; and _The Crowd_, 16th impression, 1926.”--PI.

LECKY, W. E. H. _Democracy and Liberty._ Longmans, Green. 1896. 2 vols. 1169 pp.

“Of all English publicists Lecky was the most fit to take the place vacated by John Stuart Mill. He differed from Mill in most of his political and philosophical views, but he has the same candor and delight in learning. This discursive treatise is not one of his best works, but it has many wise comments on modern democracy, and the chapters on Socialism and Labor Questions should be studied. There is no systematic attack upon Socialism, but Lecky’s intellectual attitude is Individualistic. He observes that ‘Socialism is essentially opposed to Free Trade and international commerce.’ As democracy is hasty and impatient, it may make changes in a collectivist direction. ‘But proposed changes which conflict with the fundamental laws and elements of human nature can never, in the long run, succeed. The sense of right and wrong, which is the basis of the respect for property and for the obligation of contract; the feeling of family affection, on which the continuity of society depends, and out of which the system of heredity grows; the essential difference of men in aptitudes, capacities, and character, are things that never can be changed, and all schemes and policies that ignore them are doomed to ultimate failure.’”--PI.

LEVINE, ISAAC DON. _Stalin._ Cosmopolitan Book. 1931. 421 pp.

The first clear and complete account of the life of Stalin to appear in English, published when the Russian dictator was still an enigmatic figure to the Western world. The author’s thesis is that “if it was Lenin who conceived the Communist party as a military order ... it is to Stalin that is due the lion’s share of the credit or onus of forging this order into an army of steel.” The book gives a portrait of Stalin that is “vivid, graphic, intelligent and convincing.... Moreover, it portrays Bolshevism infinitely better than most of the books on Russia do.”--Alexander Nazaroff, in _The New York Times_.

LHOSTE-LACHAUME, PIERRE. _Réhabilitation du Libéralisme._ 1950. Paris: Éditions SÉDIF. 320 pp.

The liberalism that this French economist wants to see restored is the traditional kind which demanded that the state should not encroach on “liberty of thought, of speech and of the press, private ownership of the means of production and a free market.” Felix Morley writes: “The epic struggle of today, as M. Lhoste-Lachaume sees it, is between true liberalism and communism. The parliamentary socialists, among whom he includes many Americans who would resent the description, will in the long run be taken over by communism. When people get the habit of living on subsidies, and expecting ‘social security’ from government, they tacitly become the fellow-travelers of the communists.” The book is the first of a contemplated trilogy, and has not yet been translated into English.

LHOSTE-LACHAUME, PIERRE. _The Keystone of Liberty._ Paris: Éditions SÉDIF. 1954. 79 pp.

The French title of this book is _La Clef de Voute de la Liberté_. It presents the English text on each left-hand page, and the French on each right-hand page, of an article that appeared originally in the British quarterly, _The Owl_, in September 1953. The book discusses the liberal era of the nineteenth century, the gradual giving up of traditional liberal principles, and the necessity of a “liberal renovation” which would recognize the beneficial effects of the free market and avoid “the blind alley of democratic socialism.” The author believes that the world’s present choice is between either a “spiritualist liberalism” or a totalitarian materialism. There is an eight-page appendix presenting an extensive bibliography of recent books in French, German, Italian, Dutch, and English which support a free society and a free economy.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS LEGISLATIVE REFERENCE SERVICE. _Communism in Action._ U. S. Government Printing Office. 1946. 141 pp.

A documented study and analysis of communism in operation in the Soviet Union. House Document No. 754. There is a foreword by Congressman Everett M. Dirksen.

LINDBLOM, CHARLES E. _Unions and Capitalism._ Yale University Press. 1949. 267 pp.

This is a strange book, written by an associate professor of economics at Yale University, a declared “liberal” (in the recent American sense, as opposed to “conservative”), yet which states the menace of present-day big unionism with far more power and clarity than most conservative economists have dared to state it. Professor Lindblom’s thesis, in his own words, “is that unionism and the private enterprise economy are incompatible.... Unionism is destroying the competitive price system.... The strike ... paralyzes production, and it is dramatic. But the real labor problem is its aftermath.... For if wage disputes call a halt to production temporarily, their settlement may disorganize it permanently. Unionism will destroy the price system by what it wins rather than by the struggle to win it. It sabotages the competitive order, not because the economy cannot weather the disturbance of work stoppages but because it cannot produce high output and employment at union wage rates.” His grim conclusion is, in sum, that “union monopoly destroys the price system because it produces ... waste, unemployment, inflation, or all combined ... to a degree which the economy cannot survive.”

LINK, HENRY C. _The Rediscovery of Morals._ Dutton. 1947. 223 pp.

A discussion of what is wrong with the world of today and its people, and what can be done about it. Problems of race and class conflict are given special attention. The author takes our educational system to task for its lack of emphasis on morals, and advocates a return to Christian morality.

LIPPER, ELINOR. _Eleven Years in Soviet Prison Camps._ Regnery. 1951. 310 pp.

“A gently nurtured Dutch girl studying medicine in Berlin in 1931 was deeply touched by the miseries of the German unemployed, and at Hitler’s ascendancy transferred her loyalties to the Soviet Union. From 1937-1948 she was a political prisoner held without trial for the bulk of her hideous, subhuman imprisonment at Kolyma in Siberia.”--_Library Journal._

LIPPMANN, WALTER. _The Good Society._ Little, Brown. 1937. 402 pp.

Reviewing this book in _The New York Times_ of Sept. 26, 1937, I wrote: “No more powerful and thorough indictment” of the fallacies of collectivism and of a managed economy “has been written in America.” The latter part of the book is marred by an inconsistent support of an apparently Keynesian type of “monetary management.” But the first half is as penetrating as it is eloquent. Mr. Lippmann contends that it is governmental coercion that is creating the very chaos it purports to conquer. He insists that a managed economy must mean a censored and managed opinion. He concludes that the consequences of collectivism must be regimentation, censorship, militarism, war, despotism, impoverishment, and barbarism, and that the only hope of mankind lies in the restoration of liberal doctrine.

LOCKE, JOHN. _Two Treatises of Civil Government._ 1690. Many editions. (Everyman’s Library. 1924.) 242 pp.

The historical importance of these two works in the history of individualism is enormous. (For a discussion, see the introductory essay to this list, “Individualism in Politics and Economics.”)

LOCKE, JOHN. _An Essay Concerning Human Understanding._ 1690. Many editions.

“This work, which is a landmark in the history of philosophy, does not bear directly upon Individualism; but some of the earlier chapters at least should be carefully studied, in order that the reader may grasp Locke’s general principles, which guided politics in England and the United States for some 200 years. It bases all knowledge and practice on experience.... As Sir James Mackintosh said: ‘Few books have contributed more to rectify prejudice--to diffuse a just mode of thinking--to excite a fearless spirit of inquiry--and yet to contain it within the boundaries which nature has prescribed to the human understanding.’ This ‘fearless spirit of inquiry’ was subversive of the faith in established laws and governments and was a necessary equipment for those who, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, began their attack upon obsolete institutions. It was thus a preliminary to Individualism, to voluntary instead of compulsory co-operation--to use the phraseology of Herbert Spencer.”--PI.

LOCKE, JOHN. _Considerations on the Lowering of Interest._ 1691. Several editions. 138 pp.

“Here Locke anticipated many of the arguments of the better-known work _On Usury_ by Bentham, i.e., his position was _laissez-faire_.”--PI.

LUTZ, HARLEY L. _Guideposts to a Free Economy._ McGraw-Hill. 1945. 206 pp.

A series of essays on federal fiscal policy, taxation, and public expenditures that give a rounded understanding of our journey along two divergent roads of fiscal policy--one leading to a controlled economy and the other to the strengthening of the enterprise system and individual freedom in a free economy. “Professor Lutz has written such a book as will give true liberals no end of satisfaction and cause the national planners acute anguish.”--G. R. E., in the _Christian Science Monitor_.

LUTZ, HARLEY L. _A Platform for the American Way._ Appleton-Century-Crofts. 1952. 114 pp.

The author, who was Professor of Public Finance at Princeton for nearly twenty years, is distinguished for his clarity and logic and his vigorous defense of the free enterprise system. His thesis in this book is that “we are both drifting and being steered into some form of the national socialist state.” He regards the Right to Own as a basic human right, and he here offers “a program and a way of life to all who believe in freedom and who want to remain free here in America.”

LUTZ, HARLEY L. _Public Finance._ Appleton-Century. 1936. 940 pp.

A solidly reasoned textbook pointing to the dangers in deficit financing and reaffirming the case for balanced budgets and other “orthodox” fiscal practices.

LYONS, EUGENE. _Assignment in Utopia._ Harcourt, Brace. 1937. 658 pp.

The author writes of his years of growing disillusionment in Russia, where he served as an American newspaper correspondent from 1928 to 1934. He describes among other things the famine of 1932-1933, and some of the causes of it. “An important book--vivid, sincere and full of factual and of psychological interest.”--London _Times Literary Supplement_.

LYONS, EUGENE. _The Red Decade._ Bobbs-Merrill. 1941. 423 pp.

A study of the activities of communists and fellow-travelers in the United States during the decade from 1930 to 1940. “The facts are fabulous, and Lyons relates them with a gusto that rises at times almost to hilarity. He has a gift of slashing satire, and no fear of calling foolish acts and famous people by their exact names. But besides that, and somewhat surprisingly combined with it, he possesses sympathetic understanding.”--Max Eastman, in _The New York Times_.

MACAULAY, LORD. _Selections from Writings and Speeches._ 1853. Many editions.

“Among Macaulay’s Essays the most notable for our purposes is on Southey’s _Colloquies on Society_. Among the speeches should be read that on the Ten Hours Bill (1846), in which he takes the modern view that in some cases it may be the duty of the State to protect labor. That on the Corn Laws (1845) is a vigorous statement of the Free Trade position. Another noteworthy speech is on the People’s Charter in 1842. To Macaulay the Chartists appeared as the Communists appear to most people today. He was convinced that their object was the nationalization of the land and the abolition of private property. He says: “The doctrine of the Chartist philosophers is that it is the business of the government to support the people. It is supposed by many that our rulers possess, somewhere or other, an inexhaustible storehouse of all the necessaries and conveniences of life, and, from mere hard-heartedness, refuse to distribute the contents of this magazine among the people.... Is it possible to believe that the millions who have been so long and loudly told that the land is their estate and is wrongfully kept from them, should not, when they have supreme power, use that power to enforce what they think their rights? What could follow but one vast spoliation?’”--PI.

MCCARRAN, SISTER M. MARGARET PATRICIA. _Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain._ Chicago: Heritage Foundation. (Catholic University of America Press.) 1952. 612 pp.

The Fabian Society, which later, through the membership of Bernard Shaw, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, H. G. Wells and others, came to exercise an enormous intellectual influence for socialism out of all proportion to its numbers, was originally founded in 1883 by a few obscure young people in London with the object of “reconstructing society in accordance with the highest moral possibilities.” This is a highly critical but encyclopedic reference work on the history of the society and its activities.

MACCUN, JOHN. _Six Radical Thinkers._ London: Arnold. 1907. 268 pp.

“The articles on Bentham and Cobden are worth notice.”--PI.

MACEOIN, GARY AND ZOMBORY, AKOS. _The Communist War on Religion._ Devin-Adair. 1951. 264 pp.

“Today few Americans are complacent about the threat Communism constitutes to the things they hold dear.... But we are still hazy about the essence of the Communist threat. The essential threat is to truth and freedom: that is, the freedom of men to be men, free to choose, free to move, to speak, to think--free to worship God. Wherever the Communists have seized power, they have destroyed these freedoms, wading through seas of human blood.... This book tells that story as illustrated in the persecution of religion in every Communist-controlled country.”--From the Introduction.

MACINNES, HELEN. _Neither Five Nor Three._ Harcourt, Brace. 1951. 340 pp.

“A group of attractive, intelligent, well-intentioned New Yorkers who create, edit and publish an influential popular magazine called ‘Trend’ suddenly wake up to the fact that their magazine has been infiltrated, quietly and with devilish cleverness, that its columns are now being used subtly to disparage and undermine faith in everything American.”--_New York Herald Tribune._ “It is good, exciting reading.”--Edmund Fuller, in the _Saturday Review of Literature_.

MACKIEWICZ, JOSEPH. _The Katyn Wood Murders._ London: Hollis & Carter. 1951. 252 pp.

A former member of the Polish underground, who went to Katyn while the Polish Red Cross was investigating the discovery of the mass graves, describes his experiences and his beliefs about the crime. “The book is as fascinating as a detective story and deserves the widest possible audience as a final, conclusive exposure of Soviet responsibility for an atrocious butchery. This responsibility was hushed up far too long because of the supposed necessity of appeasing Stalin during the war years.”--W. H. Chamberlin, in the _Chicago Sunday Tribune_.

MADISON, JAMES. _Reports of Debates in the Federal Convention._ 1787. Several editions. 3 vols.

The basic source book on the actual framing of the American Constitution.

MAINE, SIR HENRY SUMNER. _Popular Government._ Holt. 1886. 261 pp.

“Including the famous essay on the ‘Constitution of the United States.’ The careful student will also familiarize himself with Maine’s _Ancient Law_.”--Felix Morley.

MALLOCK, W. H. _A Critical Examination of Socialism._ Harper. 1907. 303 pp.

“Mallock was a brilliant critic. This book in substance consists of lectures delivered in the United States in 1907. It is an able attack upon Socialism. He rightly begins with Marx, pointing out the main error of his theory of labor--the leaving out of consideration _directive ability_.”--PI.

MALLOCK, W. H. _Social Reform as Related to Realities and Delusions._ Dutton. 1915. 391 pp.

“The primary purpose of this book is to illustrate the ‘mischievous delusions’ by which popular opinion is vitiated in questions of social reform owing to the general lack of knowledge and understanding of the structure and functioning of the social system.... The immense material advance which the nineteenth century has witnessed is constantly emphasized. Strangely enough, most of the specific delusions to which Mallock drew attention in 1914 still seem to persist almost as much as they did when the book was published.”--PI (in 1927).

MALLOCK, W. H. _Democracy._ 1924. 213 pp.

“A ruthless exposure of the fallacies lurking in the term ‘democracy.’ The present edition is an abridgment of an earlier and very much larger work entitled _The Limits of Pure Democracy_. [London: Chapman & Hall. 1918. 397 pp.]”--PI.

MALLOCK, W. H. _Property and Progress._ Putnam. 1884. 248 pp.

“A criticism of Henry George’s _Progress and Poverty_ (1882). Also somewhat out of date, even as George is out of date. But the Georgian theory of land is historically important and still has its influence on a certain type of Radical.”--PI.

MALTHUS, THE REV. THOMAS R. _An Essay on Population._ 1798, etc. Many editions. (Everyman’s Library. 2 vols. 315 pp. 285 pp.)

This book has perhaps been “refuted” more often, and denounced and ridiculed more often, than any other. Yet it is one of the world’s great seminal works. In the scientific field it helped to inspire Darwin’s theory of evolution. And in the economic field, if its influence has been unfortunately less than it should have been, it has given birth to an enormous body of controversial literature. The form in which Malthus stated his theory in his first edition was certainly extreme and erroneous. Yet he was the first to seize and document a great and sobering truth. This is that, unless restrained, population tends to increase up to the limits of the means of subsistence. Because he overlooked many technical and scientific possibilities, Malthus’s personal pessimism has not been justified by events. But it does not follow that his proposition, in its most general form, has been disproved by events, as it has been so often fashionable to believe. The rising standard of living in the Western world has been at least partly the result of deliberate population restraint (even if in the form of birth control rather than of the sexual “continence” that Malthus advocated). Where this population restraint still does not exist, as in India, China, and other parts of the Orient, the lesson of Malthus is only too plain today. An important corollary of his theory is that schemes of social reform and “redistribution of wealth” are not only futile but pernicious when they neglect the effect upon population growth.

MANDEVILLE, BERNARD. _The Fable of the Bees._ 1705. (Ed. by F. B. Kaye. Oxford. 1924.)

“The decisive importance of Mandeville in the history of economics, long overlooked or appreciated only by a few authors (particularly Edwin Cannan and Albert Schatz) is now beginning to be recognized, mainly thanks to the magnificent edition of the _Fable of the Bees_ which we owe to the late F. B. Kaye. Although the fundamental ideas of Mandeville’s work are already implied in the original poem of 1705, the decisive elaboration and especially his full account of the origin of the division of labor, of money, and of language occur only in Part II of the _Fable_ which was published in 1728.”--F. A. Hayek.

MANION, CLARENCE. _The Key to Peace._ Chicago: Heritage Foundation. 1950. 121 pp.

This bears the subtitle: “A Formula for the Perpetuation of Real Americanism.” The author, dean of the law school of Notre Dame University, believes that the only possible formula for peace was discovered by the Founding Fathers when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and framed the American Constitutional system. The basic American principle, he declares, is “an uncompromising and uncompromised demand for the freedom and independence of the individual man.”

MARKHAM, REUBEN HENRY. _Rumania Under the Soviet Yoke._ Meador. 1949. 601 pp.

“There is no better informed or more responsible writer on Balkan affairs than Mr. Markham. He was a European correspondent for the _Christian Science Monitor_ for twenty years, and for _The Christian Century_ for a shorter period, and during the war he served as deputy director of the Office of War Information. He knows the people, the languages, the history and (so far as anyone can) the present conditions in the Balkan states. In the 600 pages of this volume he surveys Rumania before and during the Hitler regime and recites in detail the course of events since the beginning of Soviet domination.”--_The Christian Century._ “Mr. Markham’s book is one of the strongest and best documented indictments of the system of political communism flourishing under the ever-lengthening shadow of Moscow.”--_Christian Science Monitor._

MARSHALL, ALFRED. _The Principles of Economics._ 1890. Often reprinted. Macmillan. Eighth edition, 1920. 871 pp.

“This book has had an immense influence and will remain a standard work for many years to come. It shows a pronounced reaction from the severe Individualism of most of the early economists, and, whilst no one would belittle its value in focussing and clarifying earlier thought, one may doubt whether the ultimate verdict of economists will regard the reaction that it heralded as entirely good.”--PI.

MARTIN, EVERETT DEAN. _Liberty._ Norton. 1930. 307 pp.

The author seeks to arrive at the meaning of liberty partly through the method of historical survey. He discusses the Grecian conception, the contributions of Christianity and the Renaissance, of Rousseau, Voltaire, and others. In reviewing this book in _The Nation_ of June 18, 1930, I wrote: “It is with misgivings that one approaches Everett Dean Martin’s _Liberty_. These misgivings soon dissolve, however, before the flow of Mr. Martin’s eloquence, his gift for felicitous and forcible statement, his attractive historical summaries, his broad, humane culture, his shrewd analysis and unfailing clarity. His _Liberty_ is not perhaps a profound book or a remarkably original one, but it is none the less admirable. For in spite of the great existing classics, and of the fact that much of his argument is necessarily repetition, Mr. Martin has done a task that greatly needed to be done.”

MENGER, KARL. _Principles of Economics._ Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press. 1950. 328 pp.

This epoch-making book, “one of the great landmarks in the development of economic thought,” as Frank H. Knight calls it, had to wait seventy-nine years before it appeared in the present (or any other) English translation. The “Austrian School,” of which Menger was the founder, was a fountainhead of classical liberalism on the European continent. F. A. Hayek, who calls Menger’s _Principles_ “the best introduction to the understanding of the theory of value which we possess,” has also pointed out that Menger was “among the first in modern times consciously to revive the methodical individualism of Adam Smith and his school.”

MIKOLAJCZYK, STANISLAW. _The Rape of Poland._ Whittlesey. 1948. 309 pp.

“The author, formerly Premier of Poland and head of the now suppressed Peasants’ Party, witnessed what he calls the betrayal of his country from every political level, starting as a common soldier during the war in Poland.... After the war, he was helpless, even as a leader of one of the great parties, to avert the violent destruction of his country’s democratic processes and finally had to flee in disguise. He believes that the Soviets were resolved from the first to annihilate Poland and says flatly that they killed fifteen thousand Polish officers in the woods around Katyn, near Smolensk, and that they purposely delayed giving help to General Bor during the Warsaw uprising until it was too late.... This book, heavily documented and written without fireworks, is a pretty powerful indictment.”--_New Yorker._

MILL, JOHN STUART. _Utilitarianism._ 1861. _On Liberty._ 1859. _Representative Government._ 1861. Many editions. (Dutton. 1950.) 532 pp.

“Three short but vital works. The first is outside our immediate purpose, being ethical, but it should be read; it reveals the mind of Mill perhaps better than any other of his works.

“_On Liberty_ may be called the Individualist’s textbook. It is a plea for allowing scope to individual character and action--even eccentricity is better than convention. Its whole argument should be carefully studied. There is also a concise and useful statement towards the end: ‘The objections to government interference, when it is not such as to involve infringement of liberty, may be of three kinds. The first is when the thing to be done is likely to be better done by individuals than by the government.... The second ... in many cases, though individuals may not do the particular thing so well, on the average, as the officers of government, it is nevertheless desirable that it should be done by them, rather than by the government, as a means to their own mental education.

“(Thus juries, ‘free and popular local and municipal institutions,’ and ‘the conduct of industrial and philanthropical enterprises by voluntary associations,’ are valuable on this principle as well as in themselves.)

“‘The third and most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.’ Gladstone, with most of our Victorian statesmen, disliked increasing the functions and expenditure of the State. He came to regard with dismay the vigorous growth of the Income Tax, his own child, which he had adopted from Peel, its actual father. He sometimes likens it to a sword of excessive sharpness which is a dangerous weapon to entrust to a minister. He writes to Cobden in 1864 (Morley’s _Gladstone_, Book V, Chapter iv): ‘I seriously doubt whether it [the spirit of expenditure] will ever give place to the old spirit of economy, as long as we have the income tax.’ The income tax was then sevenpence in the pound, and within fifteen months was to fall to fourpence, and a little later to twopence!

“Mill’s book _On Liberty_ gives the pure doctrine of Individualism. His excellent _Representative Government_ does not bear so closely upon our subject. The present Master of Balliol (Mr. A. D. Lindsay) remarks: ‘It reflects strikingly Mill’s curious political position, combining as it does, an enthusiastic belief in democratic government with most pessimistic apprehensions as to what the democracy was likely to do.’ This is due to Mill’s Individualism, for he saw that individual freedom might incur great danger from majority rule in a Democracy. It led him to attach much importance to such schemes as Hare’s Proportional Representation, which he hoped would protect minorities against tyrannical ignorance.”--PI.

MILL, JOHN STUART. _Autobiography._ 1873. Many editions. (Columbia University Press. 1944. 240 pp.)

“All who study Individualism or any kind of economic or political science must devote much careful consideration to Mill. This autobiographical masterpiece is too well known to require much comment. It shows the influences to which Mill was subjected, his reactions, and his invincible candor. It is pardonable to repeat that Mill’s great object was not to found a sect but to discover truth, as far as it is discoverable.”--PI. (See also PACKE, MICHAEL ST. JOHN.)

MILL, JOHN STUART. _Principles of Political Economy._ 1848. Many editions. 1013 pp.

“Mill wrote this work at a time when Individualism had reached its zenith, and its triumph was largely due to the efforts of his spiritual and actual fathers, Bentham and James Mill. Thus this most important work is, in the main, an exposition of Individualism. But J. S. Mill here aims at stating his opponents’ case, and so has given Socialists the opportunity of citing him in their favor. In I, I, sec. 3, he makes an amazing observation: ‘If, therefore, the choice were to be made between Communism [Socialism] with all its chances, and the present state of society with all its sufferings and injustices; if the institution of private property necessarily carried with it as a consequence, that the produce of labor should be apportioned as we now see it, almost in an inverse ratio to the labor--the largest portions to those who have never worked at all, the next largest to those whose work is almost nominal, and so in a descending scale, the remuneration dwindling as the work grows harder and more disagreeable, until the most fatiguing and exhausting bodily labor cannot count with certainty on being able to earn even the necessaries of life; if this, or Communism, were the alternatives, all the difficulties, great or small, would be but as dust in the balance.’