Chapter VI: Part 6

“Again, Mill was so dominated by the Malthusian theory, that he was ready to adopt stringent Government measures to check overpopulation, e.g., by ‘a great national measure of colonization.’ (II, XIII, sec. 4.)

“Again we have his celebrated apology for occasional Protection when duties ‘are imposed temporarily (especially in a young and rising nation) in hopes of naturalizing a foreign industry, in itself perfectly suitable to the circumstances of the country.’ (V, X, sec. 1.)

“But the general spirit of the book is very strongly _laissez-faire_. The foregoing passages are exceptional. The following sentence is representative: ‘The grounds of this truth are expressed with tolerable exactness in the popular dictum, that people understand their own business and their own interests better, and care for them more, than the government does, or can be expected to do.’ (V, XI, sec. 5.) Throughout his life Mill believed, as he tersely expresses the truth in _Liberty_, that everyone ought to be allowed to do as he likes, provided that he does not make himself a nuisance to his neighbor. His candid mind brought forward numerous exceptions, but he steadily maintained his rule.”--PI.

MILLAR, FREDERICK. _Socialism: Its Fallacies and Dangers._ London: Watts. 1907. 1923. 96 pp.

“This little shilling work was written to warn the public of the dangers of Socialism. It has chapters to show that it means material and national decay, the abolition of family life, its impossibility, etc. The writer has a healthy dislike of all kinds of Government interference. ‘To attack wealth, to menace the free accumulation of private property, is like cutting open the bellows to see where the wind comes from. In this matter of wealth it comes from self-interest, and, therefore, the more you seek politically to prevent the free, unfraudulent, and unaggressive expression of self-interest, the less wind you will have to blow your fire, and consequently the worse off you will be.”--PI.

MILTON, JOHN. _Areopagitica._ 1644. Many editions.

This written oration against censorship is the noblest of Milton’s tracts, and one of the great documents on liberty. It is rich in magnificent sentences: “As good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself.”... “Who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?” John Morley, in an article in the _Fortnightly Review_ (August, 1873) wrote: “[John Stuart] Mill’s memorable plea for social liberty was little more than an enlargement, though a very important enlargement, of the principles of the still more famous speech for liberty of unlicensed printing with which Milton enobled English literature two centuries before.”

MISES, LUDWIG VON. _Human Action._ Yale University Press. 1949. 889 pp.

Reviewing this book in _Newsweek_ of Sept. 19, 1949, I wrote: “_Human Action_ is, in short, at once the most uncompromising and the most rigorously reasoned statement of the case for capitalism that has yet appeared. If any single book can turn the ideological tide that has been running in recent years so heavily toward statism, socialism and totalitarianism, _Human Action_ is that book. It should become the leading text of everyone who believes in freedom, in individualism, and in the ability of a free-market economy not only to outdistance any government-planned system in the production of goods and services for the masses, but to promote and safeguard, as no collectivist tyranny can ever do, those intellectual, cultural, and moral values upon which all civilization ultimately rests.”

MISES, LUDWIG VON. _Socialism._ 1936. Yale University Press. 1951. 599 pp.

Reviewing this book in _The New York Times_ of Jan. 9, 1938, I wrote: “This book must rank as the most devastating analysis of socialism yet penned. Doubtless even some anti-socialist readers will feel that he occasionally overstates his case. On the other hand, even confirmed socialists will not be able to withhold admiration from the masterly fashion in which he conducts his argument. He has written an economic classic in our time.”

MISES, LUDWIG VON. _The Theory of Money and Credit._ 1935. Yale University Press. 1953. 493 pp.

“In continental circles it has long been regarded as the standard textbook on the subject.... I know few works which convey a more profound impression of the logical unity and the power of modern economic analysis.”--Lionel Robbins.

It may seem strange to include any work on money and credit in a bibliography concerned primarily with individual liberty. But Professor Mises shows here as elsewhere how mistaken monetary policies lead to the destruction of liberty. As F. A. Hayek has written, Mises “has been working since the early twenties on the reconstruction of a solid edifice of liberal thought in a more determined, systematic and successful way than anyone else.”

MISES, LUDWIG VON. _Omnipotent Government._ Yale University Press. 1944. 291 pp.

In this book Professor von Mises provides an economic explanation of the international conflicts which caused both World Wars. He shows that economic nationalism and the trend toward economic self-sufficiency are the necessary outcome of present-day policies of government intervention in the private enterprises of citizens. He supports his analysis with an interpretation of the historical facts which both gave rise to Nazism and prevented Germany and the rest of the world from stopping until it was too late to do so without a frightful cost in blood and terror.

MISES, LUDWIG VON. _Bureaucracy._ Yale University Press. 1944. 125 pp.

Reviewing this book in _The New York Times_ of Oct. 1, 1944, I wrote: “The main thesis of Professor von Mises is that bureaucracy is merely a symptom of the real disease with which we have to deal. That disease is excessive State domination and control. If the State seeks excessive control over the economic or other activities of the individual it is bound to need a bureaucracy to do it, and this bureaucracy is bound to function in a certain way.... Professor von Mises’ penetrating analysis is closely reasoned.... Published on the day after F. A. Hayek’s _The Road to Serfdom_, [it] once more calls attention to the ironic fact that the most eminent and uncompromising defenders of English liberty, and of the system of free enterprise which reached its highest development in America, should now be two Austrian exiles.”

MISES, LUDWIG VON. _Planning for Freedom._ South Holland, Ill.: Libertarian Press. 1952. 174 pp.

This is a collection of twelve addresses and essays which supplement and present in simpler and shorter form the analyses of Professor von Mises in his great works on _Human Action_ and _Socialism_. Readers without a special background in economic theory will find these essays not only rewarding in themselves but an excellent introduction to von Mises’ work. The essays are: Planning for Freedom; Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads to Socialism; Laissez-Faire or Dictatorship; Stones Into Bread, the Keynesian Miracle; Lord Keynes and Say’s Law; Inflation and Price Control; Economic Aspects of the Pension Problem; Benjamin M. Anderson Challenges the Philosophy of the Pseudo-Progressives; Profit and Loss; Economic Teaching at the Universities; Trends Can Change; and The Political Chances of Genuine Liberalism.

MISES, LUDWIG VON. _Liberalismus._ Jena: Gustav Fischer. 1927. 175 pp.

This is a discussion of Liberalism (in the traditional sense of the term), of the political basis, economic policy and foreign policy appropriate to it, and of its probable future. There is an appendix on the literature of liberalism.

MISES, LUDWIG VON. _Kritik des Interventionismus._ Jena: Gustav Fischer. 1929. 136 pp.

Five collected essays discussing interventionism, restrictionism, price control, and the economic theories behind these policies.

MOLEY, RAYMOND. _How to Keep Our Liberty._ Knopf. 1952. 339 pp.

Raymond Moley, contributing editor of _Newsweek_ magazine and professor of public law at Columbia University, created and headed the famous Brains Trust of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first campaign for the Presidency and later was a major architect of the early New Deal. His opposition to later developments in national policy culminated in this lucid and vigorous, but admirably organized and carefully thought-out, “conservative manifesto.” “Today the people of this nation,” he writes, “are presented with a choice between two forms of political and economic life. One form is that of our traditions, in which individual liberty prevails and is guarded by ‘the long, still grasp of law.’ The other is the dominance of the state in human affairs. My purpose here has been to present a plan for political action for those who do not wish to go down the road to socialism.” Mr. Moley’s book combines rich scholarship with the readability of first-rate journalism.

MONTESQUIEU, BARON DE. _The Spirit of Laws._ 1748. Many English and French editions. 2 vols.

The Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) published his famous _L’Esprit des Lois_ in 1748. The _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ declares that it “may be almost certainly ranked as the greatest book of the French Eighteenth Century.” The political writer George Catlin thinks it “dull and prolix.” To Montesquieu, however, is due the classical formulation of the doctrine of checks and balances, and of the division of powers.

Lytton Strachey writes of it in his _Landmarks in French Literature_: “It is enough to say that here all Montesquieu’s qualities--his power of generalization, his freedom from prejudices, his rationalism, his love of liberty and hatred of fanaticism, his pointed, epigrammatic style--appear in their most characteristic form. Perhaps the chief fault of the book is that it is too brilliant.... Montesquieu’s generalizations are always bold, always original, always fine; unfortunately, they are too often unsound into the bargain.... He believed he had found in [the English constitution] a signal instance of his favorite theory of the beneficial effects produced by the separation of the three powers of government--the judicial, the legislative, and the executive; but he was wrong. In England, as a matter of fact, the powers of the legislative and the executive were intertwined. This particular error has had a curious history. Montesquieu’s great reputation led to his view of the constitution of England being widely accepted as the true one; as such it was adopted by the American leaders after the War of Independence; and its influence is plainly visible in the present constitution of the United States. Such is the strange power of good writing over the affairs of men!”

MONTGOMERY, GEORGE S., JR. _The Return of Adam Smith._ Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers. 1949. 160 pp.

“This book is intended to serve as a little prayer for the awakening or--symbolically--for the return of Adam Smith.” And it speculates upon how Adam Smith would probably feel and think about our present institutions. Mr. Montgomery discusses the merits and demerits of government-run business and re-evaluates such terms as “reactionary,” “laissez faire,” and “robber baron.” He also points out vigorously the socialist and collectivist implications in many present-day textbooks, and particularly in some articles in the fifteen-volume _Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences_.

MORGAN, CHARLES. _Liberties of the Mind._ Macmillan. 1951. 252 pp.

A collection of essays and addresses, some previously published elsewhere, several in the London _Times Literary Supplement_. The theme of the essays is what the author sees as the imminent danger of the loss of freedom of mind and moral choice, of individuality and identity, by the majority of mankind. “There can be scarcely a more important task than that which this book attempts, and perhaps no more encouraging and hopeful sign than that one of the greatest contemporary masters of English prose should be impelled to undertake it.... All that the mere student of these problems can do is to testify to the importance of the book and to acknowledge that here certainly the artist sees much to which the expert tends to be blind.”--F. A. Hayek.

MORLEY, FELIX. _The Power in the People._ Van Nostrand. 1949. 293 pp.

In this scholarly, thoughtful and often brilliant book, Mr. Morley attempts to present a unified study of the origin of the political ideas on which our nation was founded, and how they have developed. “This is a remarkable book, nobly written and profoundly thought out. It is also, at least to this reviewer, sui generis, an account of the founding and development and significance of the American Republic which is unique as far as my acquaintance with the literature on the subject goes.... There is a fire in it which no survey of the past as the past could kindle. _The Power in the People_ is a Tract for the Times, concerned with what is of paramount importance for us today, at this precise moment in our history.”--Edith Hamilton, in _The Saturday Review of Literature_.

MORLEY, JOHN (VISCOUNT). _The Life of Richard Cobden._ 1881. London: Unwin. 1903. 985 pp.

The outstanding biography of the great Free Trader and leader of the Manchester School.

MORLEY, JOHN (VISCOUNT). _The Life of William Ewart Gladstone._ Macmillan. 1911. 3 vols.

A masterly biography of the great nineteenth century liberal statesman.

MORLEY, JOHN (VISCOUNT). _Voltaire._ Macmillan. 1872. 365 pp.

“Morley’s _Voltaire_ fully appreciates the influence of Locke and English Individualism upon Voltaire.”--PI.

MOSCA, GAETANO. _The Ruling Class._ McGraw-Hill. 1939. 514 pp.

This is an English translation, with some reorganization of the material, from the 1923 edition of the work of the eminent Italian political philosopher first published in 1895. The Italian title is _Elementi di Scienza Politico_. It contains an illuminating chapter on the political character of collectivism. “This work, already a classic in Europe, deserves the widest attention in America.”--_Foreign Affairs._ “The picture Mosca gives of the ruling class, of politics and of political behavior is one which students in these fields cannot afford to neglect.”--A. T. Mason, in the _Survey Graphic_.

MUSSATTI, JAMES. _The Constitution of the United States._ Van Nostrand. 1956. 173 pp.

A short, simple and admirably organized statement of the basic principles of the American Constitution. Its intent is to explain to the layman the philosophies, motives, and actions of the framers of that great document. It is accompanied by full bibliographic references, and a study guide prepared by Thomas J. Shelly.

MUTHESIUS, VOLKMAR. _Müssen wir arm bleiben?_ Frankfurt a. M., Germany. 1952.

A discussion by a courageous and outspoken German liberal, who is devoted to the principles of the free market, of the postwar problems of his country.

NEWBURY, FRANK D. _The American Economic System._ McGraw-Hill. 1950.

Designed as a textbook on the basic institutions and principles of the American economic system. Among those institutions and principles the author stresses private property; individual freedom of choice and action; individual responsibility for success or failure; free and active competition; and the principle of economic rewards proportional to economic contribution.

NEWCOMB, SIMON. _Principles of Political Economy._ Harper. 1886.

Schumpeter says of Simon Newcomb: “He was an eminent astronomer who also taught, and wrote on, economics but not enough to acquire the influence he deserved. His _Principles of Political Economy_ is the outstanding performance of American general economics in the pre-Clark-Fisher-Taussig epoch. His presentation was masterly and highly suggestive, also original in several points.”

His rugged individualism and his vivid illustrations are often reminiscent of Bastiat. He emphasizes the “let-alone principle” and the “keep-out principle”: “The one claims that the government should not stop the citizen from acting; the other that it should keep out of certain fields of action.”

NICHOLSON, J. S. _The Revival of Marxism._ Dutton. 1921. 145 pp.

“A ruthless criticism and exposure of Marxism. Marx’s writings are shown to have contributed nothing of tangible value to the world’s knowledge. Insofar as they are original they are false.”--PI.

NOCK, ALBERT J. _Our Enemy, the State._ 1935. (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers. 1946.) 209 pp.

The author develops the theme that the State is founded on conquest and confiscation and tends to devour civilization. He foresaw “ever-increasing corruption, inefficiency and prodigality” under State domination which will lead us to impoverishment and “a system of forced labor.” Some of Nock’s ideas were extreme and tended toward anarchism. But his style combined urbanity with vigor.

NORTH, SIR DUDLEY. _Discourses upon Trade._ London. 1691.

“He exposes the fallacies of the Mercantile Theory and is an advocate--one of the earliest--of Free Trade.... ‘A nation in the world, as to trade, is in all respects like a citizen in a kingdom, or a family in a city.’ Therefore trade between nations ought to be left free and not loaded with restrictions, as is the present practice of rulers. The following sentence might have been written by Fawcett or any of his fellow economists: ‘There can be no trade unprofitable to the public, for if any prove so, men leave it off, and whenever traders thrive, the public, of which they are a part, thrive also.”--PI.

NORTON, THOMAS J. _The Constitution of the United States._ 1922. (New York: America’s Future. 1951.) 319 pp.

An elementary reference work, designed not for the legal profession but “to make accessible to the citizen ... such a knowledge of the Constitution of the United States as will serve in emergency as a ‘first line of defense.’” The text of the Constitution is printed in bold-face type, followed by a note to every line or clause “that has a historical story or drama back of it” or that otherwise calls for interpretation in the light of court decisions. The book has been kept up-to-date by numerous printings. “I know of no book which so completely and coherently explains our form of government.”--James M. Beck, former Solicitor General of the United States.

NORTON, THOMAS J. _Undermining the Constitution._ Devin-Adair. 1950. 351 pp.

“The author, who in the twenties published a standard commentary on the constitution, calls his new commentary a ‘history of lawless government’ and cites case after case to support his charge that ‘clever, irresponsible men’ have been doing their best to demolish the Constitution and popular government along with it. As examples of how the intent of the writers of the Constitution has been ‘demolished,’ Mr. Norton discusses such matters as the TVA, the agricultural adjustment act, the national labor relations act, the child labor law, the assumption by Washington of much police power originally held by the several states, the influence of the Supreme Court in creating new laws, and the loss of congressional power to the executive.”--_Springfield Republican._

NUTTER, G. WARREN. _The Extent of Enterprise Monopoly in the United States, 1899-1939._ University of Chicago Press. 1951. 169 pp.

A careful and detailed statistical study. Professor Nutter concludes that there is no basis for the impression that there has been a significant increase in monopoly in the United States since about 1900.

NYARADI, NICHOLAS. _My Ringside Seat in Moscow._ Crowell. 1952. 307 pp.

“A report on a most melancholy mission to Moscow, written by the last non-Communist Finance Minister of Hungary. Mr. Nyaradi went to Russia in 1947 to negotiate with the Kremlin a two-hundred-million-dollar Russian claim against his government.... He got it reduced, but it took him seven months to do so, and by that time the Communists had infested his government and the claim had become academic.”--_New Yorker._ “From one point of view this book can be read as a rollicking account of Moscow life, with its strange contrasts between the abysmal poverty of the many and the sybaritic life of the rulers.... More important, however, Nyaradi gives us a glimpse of some key figures in the Politburo and near Politburo levels of Soviet life.”--Harry Schwartz, in _The New York Times_.

ONEAL, JAMES, AND WERNER, G. A. _American Communism._ Dutton. 1947. 416 pp.

“A revision and extension of Oneal’s same title published in 1927 by the Rand School. To the original thirteen chapters now slightly revised, Werner adds nine, covering events since original publication.... The original sections are careful and judicious, the latter, somewhat less so; but the documented whole adds up to a clear picture of the development of Communism in the United States which the authors insist is not a political party in our sense but an agency of the Russian Dictatorship.”--_Library Journal._

OPPENHEIMER, FRANZ. _The State._ Huebsch. 1922. 302 pp.

“This brilliant political study is simultaneously readable, brief and profound.”--_Felix Morley._

ORME, ALEXANDREA. _Comes the Comrade._ Morrow. 1950. 376 pp.

Beginning with Dec. 22, 1944, this diary of a Polish woman, “Lida,” married to a Hungarian aristocrat, covers the days to March 28, 1945. During that time the Russians were supposed to have “liberated” that section of Hungary. At first Lida had welcomed the Russians, but as it became apparent that their ideas of liberation were very crude, she devoted all her time and intelligence to the task of keeping one step ahead of them. “If one can imagine a group of Roman patricians caught by an invading flood of Goths and Vandals one can appreciate the situation which Mrs. Orme describes with courage, wit and vivacity.... There could hardly be a better close-up view of the Soviet overrunning of Eastern Europe.”--W. H. Chamberlin, in the _Chicago Sunday Tribune_.

ORTON, WILLIAM AYLOTT. _The Liberal Tradition._ Yale University Press. 1945. 317 pp.

This bears the subtitle: “A Study of the Social and Spiritual Conditions of Freedom.” “In an era that speaks so glibly and so hopelessly of the inevitability of collectivization, Professor Orton casts a favorite-son vote for freedom.”--H. T. Maguire, in _Commonweal_.

ORTON, WILLIAM AYLOTT. _The Economic Role of the State._ University of Chicago Press. 1950. 192 pp.

A discussion of the basis and limitations of government action. John Chamberlain writes: “Orton’s view is that the best society is the one in which people put their reliance on the voluntary action of autonomous non-state social groups. He brings us back to the central lack of modern man, which is philosophy. He himself is evidently in accord with the Catholic philosophy of economics and government. But he is so persistently oblique in his phraseology that he often leaves the reader in doubt as to how he would apply Catholic philosophy in given instances.”

ORWELL, GEORGE. _Nineteen Eighty-Four._ Harcourt, Brace. 1949. 314 pp.

A satirical novel about a future time when men and women living in a collectivist society are constantly spied upon through “telescreens,” and drilled by a Thought Police into thinking that war is peace, that ignorance is strength, and that freedom is slavery. Orwell was the foremost satirist of our time. _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ portrays with classic power and finality the intellectual paralysis and spiritual depravity that a totalitarian regime imposes. But except for its vivid picture of the dreadful end-results for consumers, it leaves the determining _economic_ aspect of such a totalitarian society virtually blank.

Orwell in an earlier book (_The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius_; Secker & Warburg: 1941) had argued for a special “English socialism.” With his increasing disillusionment he ceased to be a communist sympathizer, and, in the end (some time after writing _Animal Farm_), even to be a socialist. In _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ he ridiculed his own former ideas by his sarcastic references to “Ingsoc” (the short name in his collectivist society for English socialism). But so bitter and complete had been Orwell’s previous hatred of “capitalism” that he never came to understand the real nature and effects of free private enterprise. This, I think, is why _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ could only end on a note of utter despair. Yet the book presents an unforgettable picture of what collectivism leads to.

ORWELL, GEORGE. _Animal Farm._ Harcourt, Brace. 1946. 118 pp.

The animals on Mr. Jones’s farm stage a successful revolution and take the place over. The revolution begins to go wrong--yet ingenious excuses are always forthcoming for each perversion of the original doctrine. This fable is the vehicle for a brilliant satire on the actual course of the Russian communist revolution up to the time when _Animal Farm_ appeared. Unfortunately, much in this satire implies the familiar socialist view that the Russian revolution was perhaps a necessary method of putting a great ideal into effect, but that the revolution was “betrayed” by Stalin through selfishness and abuse of power and a return to capitalist ideals. These implications spoil the satire for individualists and believers in free enterprise. In _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ Orwell was to become far more disillusioned with socialism than he is here.

PACKE, MICHAEL ST. JOHN. _The Life of John Stuart Mill._ Macmillan. 1954. 567 pp.

An admirable biography of the great nineteenth century liberal economist and philosopher. It carries the reader along like a first-rate novel, yet Mr. Packe never invents conversations or inner thoughts, but supplies documentation for all his statements. Readers of Mill’s _Autobiography_ will find Mr. Packe’s book an almost indispensable supplement; it throws entirely new light on Mill’s life and character, and supplements the material in the _Autobiography_ at a hundred points, while repeating surprisingly little. “For eighty years after his death,” writes F. A. Hayek in a preface, “no satisfactory biography of Mill has been available. In many ways, the unique value of his own description of his intellectual development has increased rather than diminished the need for a more comprehensive account of the setting against which it ought to be seen. Until recently, the material on which such a picture could be based was not available.... There may still be details to be filled in here and there; but on the whole I feel that Mr. Packe has given us the definitive biography of Mill for which we have so long been waiting.”

PAINE, THOMAS. _Common Sense._ 1776. Many editions. 129 pp. ----. _The Rights of Man_, 1791. Many editions. 389 pp.

“Paine’s _Common Sense_ helped to inspire the Declaration of Independence, while _The Rights of Man_ raised a great outcry among the admirers of the British Constitution. He was a bold champion of individual as well as of national independence.”--PI.

PAINE, THOMAS. _The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine._ Edited by Philip S. Foner. New York: The Citadel Press. 1945. 2 vols.

These two volumes contain, among other writings, both _Common Sense_ and _The Rights of Man_. “At once the fullest, the most inexpensive, and the most usable edition of Paine that has yet been published.”--Allan Nevins, in _The New York Times_.

PALGRAVE, R. H. INGLIS (ed.). _Dictionary of Political Economy._ Macmillan. 1918. 3 vols. 2,525 pp.

“An indispensable work of reference. The article on Individualism should be studied.”--PI.

PALMER, CECIL. _The British Socialist Ill-fare State._ Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers. 1952. 656 pp.

A study of the shortcomings of the British welfare state, which examines the State’s challenge to individual liberties, nationalized medicine, and the nationalization of industries and utilities. The author was a former British publisher and lecturer, and was the organizer of the Society of Individualists. He died in January 1952.

PALYI, MELCHIOR. _The Dollar Dilemma._ Regnery. 1954. 208 pp.

In this vigorous, well-informed and penetrating book, the author argues that American dollar aid to Europe and elsewhere has done more harm than good. He contends that it has financed socialism, planned and directed economies, excessive social security and wealth distribution systems, the destruction of incentives and the promotion of inefficiency. Dr. Palyi was born in Hungary but since 1933 has lived in America, where he has been active as a research economist.

PALYI, MELCHIOR. _Compulsory Medical Care and the Welfare State._ Chicago: National Institution of Professional Services. 1949. 156 pp.

An analysis based on a special study of governmentalized medical care systems on the continent of Europe and in England.

PARKES, HENRY BAMFORD. _Marxism: An Autopsy._ Houghton Mifflin. 1939. 300 pp.

Reviewing this book in _The New York Times_ of April 7, 1940, I wrote: “Mr. Parkes’s autopsy ... cannot compare in depth, penetration and rigor of thought with von Mises’ masterly refutation of socialism, to the extent that the two volumes cover similar ground. But it is an important volume and one of the ablest direct replies to Marxism ever to appear in America.... In his attempt to formulate a constructive program Mr. Parkes is less happy.”

PATERSON, ISABEL. _The God of the Machine._ Putnam. 1943. 292 pp.

The author argues that only free men, in a free economy of private property, can maintain “the long circuit of energy” that makes civilization work. Collectivism, she contends, does not and cannot work. The book is acute, pungent, epigrammatic, full of original insights and sometimes powerfully eloquent. (The chapter “The Humanitarian with the Guillotine” is an outstanding example.) But much of the thinking and style of the work are marred by a persistent and obsessive effort to write of man’s economic, political and moral problems on the analogy and in the vocabulary of the flow of electrical energy.

PATON, WILLIAM A. _Shirtsleeve Economics._ Appleton-Century-Crofts. 1952. 460 pp.

A highly successful effort, by an eminent accountant and professor of economics at the University of Michigan, to present “a common sense survey” of economics in easily understandable terms. “The central proposition of this book,” declares the author, “is very simple: We can’t consume any more than we produce and only through increased production is a higher standard of living possible. This has an important corollary: We must be everlastingly on our guard to check those influences and developments that tend to limit and discourage production. Among such is ‘social legislation’ which emphasizes diversion only, without regard to what happens to output.”

PERCY OF NEWCASTLE, LORD. _The Heresy of Democracy._ Regnery. 1955.

The author, a British statesman and scholar, shows how democracy, in the sense of a temporary majority sentiment, may be corrupted and frozen into totalitarian forms. His book deals with such basic questions as the growth of state power, the relation of the individual to the state, and the dangers of demagogic mass manipulation. “It is possible,” he warns, “for multiplied legislation, whether by Act of Parliament or dictatorial decree, to destroy the very conception of law.... Under the best laws much governed men are less free than lightly governed men. For, whenever the law converts (as it often must) an obligation to a fellow-citizen into an obligation to the state it substitutes a claim to obedience for the give-and-take of mutual rights and duties between individuals.”

PETROV, VLADIMIR. _Soviet Gold._ Farrar, Straus & Young. 1949. 426 pp.

“A sixteen-year-old boy writes his political thoughts into a diary. Three years later a lady friend turns against him and plants anti-Soviet books in his room. The young fellow is caught in the net of the vast purges of the mid-1930’s. Terror-stricken ex-friends denounce him. It all adds up to a fat NKVD dossier, a six-year sentence to heavy labor, and an odyssey that leads through the prisons of Leningrad to the labor camps and gold mines of Siberia. That’s what happened to Vladimir Petrov. That is the story he tells.”--_Saturday Review of Literature._

PETROV, VLADIMIR. _My Retreat from Russia._ Yale University Press. 1950. 357 pp.

In his earlier book, _Soviet Gold_, the author gave an account of his six years in the forced labor camps in Siberia. In the present volume he describes his activities after his release at the time of the outbreak of the war. He worked his way back to his home in Russia proper, where he discovered that as an ex-prisoner he was no longer considered a trusted citizen. Thence he fled through Central Europe into American-occupied Italy.

PETTENGILL, S. B. _Jefferson, the Forgotten Man._ America’s Future, Inc. 1938. 249 pp.

“Mr. Pettengill is a member of Congress from Indiana and one of those Democrats who, enthusiastic in their support of the first New Deal, looked with misgiving on the second; his attitude toward the third New Deal is one of dismay. In a vigorous style, with ample reference to Jefferson’s principles and precepts and to those of other eminent mentors, including the President himself, he explains this.”--W. M. Houghton, in _Books_.

PETTY, SIR WILLIAM. _A Treatise on Taxes._ 1662. Many editions. 75 pp.

“This and Petty’s other works are of much historical interest. Like North, later in the century, Petty anticipated Adam Smith in his exposition of Free Trade.”--PI.

PHILBRICK, HERBERT A. _I Led Three Lives._ McGraw-Hill. 1952. 323 pp.

“The now-it-can-be-told story of Herbert Philbrick, ‘Citizen, Communist, Counterspy,’ who testified before Judge Medina against The Eleven after nine years of conspiracy, uncertainty, and deliberate penetration into the Communist Party.”--Virginia Kirkus. “The real significance lies in the clarification it brings to Communist purposes and achievements through indirect infiltration.”--E. B. Canham, in the _New York Herald Tribune_.

PICK, FRANZ. _Black Market Yearbook._ 1951, etc. Pick’s World Currency Report. 160 pp.

Since 1951 Dr. Franz Pick has published a yearbook on world blackmarket prices and trading in currencies and gold. His book is dedicated “to the more than 2,000,000,000 victims of inflation, who, for obeying the law, have been punished by the law.” He declares in his foreword: “Distrust of every system of planned economy, fictional official values of gold, currency, and government bonds cannot be wiped out. People cannot and will not accept arbitrary confiscation through inflation, as practiced by every government in the world today.” In his 1954 edition he points out: “At the beginning of 1954, nine-tenths of the world’s population were legally denied freedom to transfer their assets into less diseased monies.”

PILAT, OLIVER RAMSEY. _The Atom Spies._ Putnam. 1952. 312 pp.

“An exhaustive account of how the Communist spy network succeeded, with disturbing ease, in relieving the United States of the biggest military secret in history. It is a complicated story, dealing not only with the machinations of the spies but also with their motives.... Mr. Pilat focusses attention on this ideological aspect of the case, and on the clear and continuing danger of having among us an amorphous group of people who can be persuaded at any time to betray their country for what they are told are super-patriotic reasons.”--_New Yorker._

POIROT, PAUL LEWIS. _The Pension Idea._ Irvington, N. Y.: Foundation for Economic Education. 1950.

The author points out that there is not nearly enough total capital or savings in any nation to support in retirement all citizens over 65, and hence there cannot be a fully funded pension plan covering everybody. The unfunded “social security” promises can only mean either further inflation, taxes upon private savings, or further attempts to tax the earnings of future citizens.

POLANYI, MICHAEL. _The Contempt of Freedom._ London: Watts. 1940. 116 pp.

Essays about the Russian experiment and its consequences. It includes: _The Rights and Duties of Science_ (1939); _Collectivist Planning_ (1940); _Soviet Economics--Fact and Theory_ (1935); _Truth and Propaganda_ (1936).

POPPER, K. R. _The Open Society and Its Enemies._ Vol. I: _The Spell of Plato_. Vol. II: _The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx and the Aftermath_. London: Routledge. 1945. 2 vols. 268 pp. 352 pp. (Princeton University Press. 1950. 744 pp.)

The author, Reader in Logic and Scientific Method in the University of London, demonstrates that Plato, Hegel, and Marx formulated ideas in political philosophy inimical to the “Open Society,” i.e., to a society based on reason and not on myth. The encomiums with which this book was greeted on its British publication in 1945 were for the most part fully deserved. Certainly we can agree with Sir Ernest Barker that “There is an abundance of riches in the book--classical scholarship, scientific acumen, logical subtlety, philosophic sweep.” Bertrand Russell thought it: “A work of first class importance ... which ought to be widely read for its masterly criticism of the ... enemies of democracy, ancient and modern.... His attack on Plato, while unorthodox, is in my opinion thoroughly justified.... His analysis of Hegel is deadly.... Marx is dissected with equal acumen.”

The book is weak, however, on the economic side. Dr. Popper gives Marx undeserved credit for his alleged services to “social justice.” He is himself capable of saying that Marx was “right in asserting that increasing misery tends to be the result of _laissez-faire_ capitalism.” This is because Dr. Popper has in his own mind a mere caricature called “_laissez-faire_ capitalism,” as Marx had. In spite of this weakness there are so many merits in the book that we must set it down as powerful and important.

POSSONY, STEFAN THOMAS. _Century of Conflict._ Regnery. 1953. 439 pp.

“The author, Professor of International Politics at Georgetown University, traces the Communist techniques in revolution from 1848. Beginning with Marx, he depicts the story of Communist efforts in Western Europe, the Russian Revolution, Communist tactics between the wars, and Communist internal and external aggression since the war. He outlines the methods, both from without and from within, by which he believes the Communists hope to win a war with the United States.”--_Current History._ “An invaluable storehouse of first-hand information.”--W. H. Chamberlin, in the _Chicago Sunday Tribune_.

POUND, ROSCOE. _The Rise of the Service State and Its Consequences._ New Wilmington, Pa.: The Economic and Business Foundation. 1949. 34 pp.

This is a devastating analysis, by the former dean of the Harvard Law School and one of the world’s great authorities on jurisprudence, of “the service state, the state which, instead of preserving peace and order and employing itself with maintaining the general security, takes the whole domain of human welfare for its province and would solve all economic and social ills through its administrative activities.”

Dean Pound’s pamphlet is included in this list, in violation of my announced general rule against including pamphlets, in the hope that some publisher may be inspired to publish it in book form, together with a score of the same author’s other pamphlets and articles on kindred topics, now scattered in the files of a dozen legal journals. These would include such articles as _The Disappearance of Law_, _Dangers in Administrative Absolutism_, and _Administrative Agencies and the Law_.

POUND, ROSCOE. _Justice According to Law._ Yale University Press. 1951. 98 pp.

This small book consists of three lectures by Roscoe Pound, dean emeritus of the Harvard Law School, on What Is Justice?, What Is Law?, and Judicial Justice. The book is a wise, scholarly and compact survey of the philosophy of law, a plea for the rule of law rather than for widened administrative discretion, and a defense of the justice of the courts as against that of administrative or other substitute agencies. Dean Pound defends the rule of law also as the guardian of individual liberty. “The real foe of [governmental] absolutism is law. It presupposes a life measured by reason, a legal order measured by reason, and a judicial process carried on by applying a reasoned technique to experience developed by reason and reason tested by experience.”

POUND, ROSCOE. _Administrative Law._ University of Pittsburgh Press. 1942. 138 pp.

“To the growing attacks on current developments in administrative justice, Roscoe Pound adds the weight of history and philosophy in a volume that is one of the more succinct and reasoned analyses of the shortcomings of administrative justice unrestrained by the traditions and processes of the common law as administered by regularly constituted courts. Proceeding from the assumption that the common law is a taught tradition of the supremacy of law, of individual rights, and of adjudication instead of administration, Dean Pound denies the idea that ‘whatever is done officially is law.’ Administrative law, so-called, is, therefore, but a species of justice without law, lacking the restraints of judicial procedure and the techniques of decision inherent in that ‘artificial reason’ of the law.”--_American Political Science Review._

POUND, ROSCOE. _New Paths of The Law._ University of Nebraska Press. 1950. 69 pp.

Three lectures delivered at the University of Nebraska in 1950, which marked the opening of a lectureship established in honor of Roscoe Pound. The lectures discuss, respectively, “The Path of Liberty,” “The Humanitarian Path,” and “The Authoritarian Path.”

PROTHERO, MICHAEL. _Political Economy._ London: George Bell. 1895. 266 pp.

“This is meant for beginners, who will find it most useful. Two chapters, ‘Alternative Schemes to Private Property,’ and, especially, ‘Theoretic Ideas about Economic Facts,’ give more serviceable information than perhaps will be found, in a concise form, in any other book.”--PI.

QUEENY, EDGAR M. _The Spirit of Enterprise._ Scribner’s. 1943. 267 pp.

It is the spirit of enterprise exercised by individuals and voluntary groups, according to the author, who is chairman of the board of the Monsanto Chemical Company, that has made America grow. The kind of social planning advocated by New Dealers, he contends, can lead only to a lower standard of living and a loss of liberty. “This book is a magnificent indication that business is finding its voice. In the public debate over what kind of social and economic system the U. S. should have, the professional theorists on the left have done most of the talking during the past decade. Now comes a businessman with a fluent pen and a vigorous set of convictions to take up the cudgels for free enterprise.”--Claude Robinson.

QUESNAY, FRANÇOIS. _Tableau économique._ 1758. 216 pp.

“A man of great importance among French Physiocrats; he was physician to Louis XV, and a man of noble character; he had much influence on Turgot, the wise minister of Louis XVI. Accounts of him and his school are given in all economic histories. His doctrine, which was carefully studied by Adam Smith, is briefly: Let entire freedom of commerce be maintained; for the regulation of commerce, both internal and external, the most sure, the most exact, the most profitable to the nation, and to the State, consists in entire freedom of competition.”--PI.

RAE, JOHN. _Contemporary Socialism._ 1884. Scribner’s. 1905. 555 pp.

“A very useful and fairly full history of modern Socialism beginning with Lassalle and Marx. The point of view is strongly Individualistic, but the writer sees the necessity of constructive action. He remarks: “Free institutions run continual risk of shipwreck when power is in the possession of the many, but property--from whatever cause--the enjoyment of the few. With the advance of democracy a diffusion of wealth becomes almost a necessity of State.”--PI.

RAND, AYN. _Anthem._ 1938. (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Press. 1946.) 105 pp.

This book, first published in England in 1938, is a striking predecessor of Orwell’s _Nineteen Eighty-Four_. “_Anthem_ records the life of a rebel against the totalitarian order, a man named Equality 7-2521, who rejects the collectivist Utopia. He dwells in a society which, by deliberately destroying independence of mind, has laid waste all the achievement of earlier civilizations--a world which has banned as criminal the singular pronoun and all talk of ‘The Unmentionable Times.’ The Council of Vocations ... proclaims him a street-sweeper. Secretly working underground in the shafts of former days, he rediscovers electricity. He defies the world of State-planned eugenics and State-directed mating and discovers a personal love. Among a people which exists to serve a soulless State, he discovers that the pursuit of his own happiness conjointly advances the happiness of his fellows. He is denounced, imprisoned and tortured, but his spirit cannot be conquered. _Anthem_ is at once an exaltation of liberty and an exhortation to the counter-attack.”--Deryck Abel.

RAND, AYN. _The Fountainhead._ Bobbs-Merrill. 1943. 754 pp.

This novel about an uncompromising architect is based on a belief in “the importance of selfishness.” Its theme is that man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress. Many will think the author’s intransigent type of individualism extreme, but the novel is exciting and impressive.

RANDALL, CLARENCE B. _A Creed for Free Enterprise._ Little, Brown. 1952. 177 pp.

An admirable book on American business and businessmen by the president of the Inland Steel Company. “Should do much in counteracting the untruthful and insidious propaganda of the socialists against free enterprise.”--The Rev. A. Keller, in _The Freeman_.

RANDALL, CLARENCE B. _A Foreign Economic Policy for the United States._ University of Chicago Press. 1954. 83 pp.

A plea for the removal of barriers and the liberalization of international trade by a distinguished businessman who is also a vigorous thinker and writer.

RAPPARD, WILLIAM E. _The Secret of American Prosperity._ Greenberg. 1955. 124 pp.

This book originally appeared in French as an attempt by an eminent Swiss economist to explain the secret of American prosperity to other Europeans. In my foreword to the American edition I wrote: “Among the qualities that make it remarkable ... are not only the generosity with which it acknowledges and insists upon the economic superiority of the United States, but the still rarer generosity with which it attributes this superiority not merely to good luck--such as great natural resources or escape from the direct destruction of the two world wars (the usual European explanation)--but primarily to the character and the free economic institutions of the American people, to our greater efficiency and to our greater competitive spirit.” The book is lucid and admirably organized. It may serve as an indirect reminder to Americans that their own economic achievement has been the result, above all, of a free, dynamic, private, competitive economy, and can be preserved only by preserving this type of economy.

RAPPARD, WILLIAM E. _The Crisis of Democracy._ University of Chicago Press. 1938. 288 pp.

An analysis of democracy: its definition, sources, and probable longevity. While he “does not despair of modern democracy, [the author] rather questions the solidity and the longevity of modern dictatorships.”--From the Foreword.

RAVINES, EUDOCIO. _The Yenan Way._ Scribner’s. 1951. 319 pp.

“A sort of _mea culpa_ by a man who was until recently one of the top Communist organizers in South America. Mr. Ravines, a Peruvian, studied his peculiar art in the same Comintern schools in Moscow that Klement Gottwald and Mao Tse-tung attended. He was one of the major figures in the South American Bureau of the Comintern and was very active in the Spanish Civil War. It was while he was on Comintern duty in Spain that he began to lose faith in the world revolution and in revolutionists, and began to see Stalin for what he is, rather than as the workers’ messiah. Altogether, an important, instructive, and astonishingly specific book.”--_New Yorker._

READ, LEONARD E. _Government--An Ideal Concept._ Irvington, N. Y.: Foundation for Economic Education. 1954. 149 pp.

Leonard Read argues that the purpose of government is to use “defensive force” to neutralize “aggressive force”; and that government can have no legitimate function beyond that. He applies this principle to such subjects as socialism, taxation, conscription, world government, efforts to increase trade or prevent depressions, money, public housing, foreign aid, education and religion.

READ, LEONARD E. _Outlook for Freedom._ Irvington, N. Y.: Foundation for Economic Education. 1951.

This small volume contains an allegorical report of the ideas and experiences, failures and successes, of many associates and friends of the author during the last two decades, and relates it to the concept of individual liberty. “The substance for a thorough-going, twentieth century intellectual revolution,” he writes, “is in the making, and is showing a vitality that can be accounted for only by the inextinguishable spirit of individualism--the insistence of man to complete his own creation. That this spirit at present is evident among only a minority need not necessarily deject the devotee of liberty. Everything begins with a minority of one, extends to a few, and then to many.”

RICARDO, DAVID. _Principles of Political Economy and Taxation._ 1817. Many editions. 538 pp.

The work of this brilliant deductive thinker has been used to draw such corollaries as extreme _laissez faire_, the single tax, and Marxism! In 1952 _The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo_ were published in nine volumes under the careful and scholarly editorship of Piero Sraffa with the collaboration of M. H. Dobb. “Ricardo is more the father of Victorian Political Economy (hated by Ruskin and Carlyle) than either Adam Smith or John Stuart Mill.”--PI.

RICHTER, EUGENE. _Pictures of the Socialistic Future._ 1893. London: Jarrolds. 1925. 134 pp.

“A satirical account of an imaginary Socialist regime by an eminent German. It is very interesting when read in conjunction with the earlier works of Robert Blatchford. Sir Ernest Benn writes in the introduction: ‘The really extraordinary thing about this book is that it was written and first published more than thirty years ago, in 1893. It is not, however, published afresh now on account of its interest as a piece of prophecy, but rather because of the remarkable way in which it fits in every detail the problem of Socialism as it presents itself to us in 1925.’”--PI.

RIST, CHARLES. _Défense de l’Or._ Paris: Recueil Sirey. 1953. 120 pp.

A collection of articles appearing over eight years in favor of a return to the international gold standard in place of present “managed” paper money systems.

ROBBINS, LIONEL. _The Great Depression._ Macmillan. 1934. 238 pp.

In reviewing this book in _The New York Times_ of Nov. 18, 1934, I wrote: “If Mr. Robbins’s economic philosophy is ‘discredited’ and ‘outmoded,’ it is not because he is a bleary old man with an ossified brain. He is, to be sure, a professor, and his acquaintance with the work of the classical economists has no doubt poisoned his mind, but he is still only 35, and writes with as much clarity and vigor as J. M. Keynes or John Strachey. What he himself is sometimes pleased to call his ‘orthodox’ economics, indeed, will seem very unorthodox to those who are fairly well acquainted with contemporary British economic thought.”

ROBBINS, LIONEL. _Economic Planning and International Order._ Macmillan. 1937. 330 pp.

Reviewing this volume in _The New York Times_ of Aug. 1, 1937, I wrote: “Altogether, Mr. Robbins’s short volume is one of the ablest and most vigorous statements in recent years of the orthodox liberal position, as it is one of the most uncompromising and damaging analyses of the whole philosophy of planning. Professor Robbins is deeply grounded; he uses the tools of classical economic analysis like a fine surgeon; he moves deliberately from step to step with relentless logic; and he writes a lucid and compact prose.”

ROBBINS, LIONEL. _The Theory of Economic Policy in English Classical Political Economy._ Macmillan. 1952. 217 pp.

Professor Robbins here presents in broad outline the theory of economic policy held by the leading English classical economists--notably Hume, Adam Smith, Bentham, Malthus, Ricardo, Senior, Torrens, McCulloch and the two Mills. It is the author’s conviction that the views of the classical economists on economic policy have been gravely misrepresented in contemporary discussion, on the one hand by presenting them as being callous to or neglectful of humane considerations, such as the problems of unemployment and poverty, on the other hand as carrying the doctrine of _laissez faire_ further than they actually did. But Dr. Robbins does emphasize their general adherence to “the System of Economic Freedom.” This “was not just a detached recommendation not to interfere,” but “an urgent demand that ... hampering and anti-social impediments should be removed and that the immense potential of free pioneering individual initiative should be released.” Dr. Robbins’s book is written with great lucidity and charm, out of a rich and accurate scholarship. It contains an excellent index.

ROBBINS, LIONEL. _The Economic Basis of Class Conflict._ Macmillan. 1939. 277 pp.

A collection of essays united by a common theme--an analysis of the way in which forms of organization facilitating group exclusiveness may be the cause of social disharmony. The author contends that the real modern tendency of the West is not so much “collectivism” as syndicalism or corporativism. The book also discusses the causes of increased protectionism, the consequences of agricultural planning, and the general vices of restrictionism. In reviewing it in _The New York Times_ of Oct. 22, 1939, I wrote: “Readers of Professor Robbins will find here, as in his previous volumes, vigor of style, rigor of thought and an uncompromising liberalism.”

ROBBINS, LIONEL. _The Economic Causes of War._ London: Cape. 1939. 124 pp.

“The chief British exponent of neo-classical economics writes in his usual lucid and suave way about war. He carries on his long standing feud with Marxian theory, and rejects any basic connection between war and capitalist imperialism.”--_The New Republic._ “A masterpiece of sound analysis and clear exposition by a professor of economics at the University of London.”--_Foreign Affairs._

ROBBINS, LIONEL. _Wages._ London: Jarrolds. 1925. 94 pp.

“A modest but valuable essay. It is a lucid discussion of the economics of wage determination. Although written primarily for those who have no economic training, it is a work which might well be read with profit by all students of social problems, for although its language is simple, it is much more than a mere elementary tract. One would like to feel that a means could be found of persuading all intelligent workmen to read this book.”--PI.

ROBBINS, LIONEL. _The Economic Problem in Peace and War._ London: Macmillan. 1947. 86 pp.

Some reflections on objectives and mechanisms. “This authoritative recapitulation of the case for individualism by an illustrious economist, with a philosophical background, is most timely.”--London _Times Literary Supplement_.

ROBERTSON, D. H. _The Control of Industry._ London: Nisbet. 1924. 169 pp.

“A compact study of the physiology of modern industry and the forms of control to which it can be subjected by the capitalist, the State, the consumer and the worker. Mr. Robertson writes with toleration and detachment, although his conclusions do not favor undiluted Individualism. He believes that for some years to come ‘private enterprise will be the dominant form of industrial organization,’ but that ‘by its side there is plenty of room for collectivism in selected cases,’ Further, that as in the case of an alternative creed, the ‘philosophy of the academic Individualists does not fit all the facts.’ Written in an entertaining style, this book should be read by all Individualists because it is probably the fairest criticism of extreme Individualism that exists and deals directly with the difficulties involved.”--PI.

RÖPKE, WILHELM. _International Economic Disintegration._ Macmillan. 1942. 283 pp.