I was going through some files and found this essay I wrote during the Beijing Olympic Games. I never had a chance to publish it, so why not post it now? It’s a somewhat tongue-in-cheek look at the Olympics as promoting peace. Actually, given that the 2010 Winter Games are coming up, you never know, perhaps it could become relevant again. Enjoy!

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The Olympic Games have historically represented a time of peace for the world. The sacred city of Olympia, the site of the games of ancient Greece, forbade the possession of weapons within its borders. A special “Olympic Peace” was proclaimed throughout the land to allow spectators and athletes travel safely to and from the games.

French aristocrat Pierre de Coubertin created the International Olympic Committee in 1894 with the explicit goal of influencing the world for peace. Coubertin once said, “Wars break out because nations misunderstand each other. We shall not have peace until the prejudices which now separate the different races shall have been outlived. To attain this end, what better means than to bring the youth of all countries periodically together for amicable trials of muscular strength and agility?” The first Olympic games took place in 1896, but the IOC did not formalize the ideal of the Olympic truce until a century later, in 1992. Since 1993, the UN General Assembly adopts a resolution every two years that invites the member states to observe the truce during the games.

This tradition raises an interesting question: If we can call a truce for sixteen days so that the countries of the world can participate in the Olympic games, why hold the games only once every two years? Why not every year, and for a longer period of time? Why not thirty days? Surely that wouldn’t be very difficult. But then, why not three months? For that matter, why not hold the Olympics year-round? Then we could have peace (and sports) all the time!

“Whoa there, hold on!” you say. “Thirty days might be possible, but all the time? Surely you jest, oh silly Olympics fanatic! How could we afford year-round games? How could we solve international problems? How will disputes be arbitrated? How could we manage our imperialist ways?”

True, holding the Olympics year-round would be incredibly expensive. Running the 2008 Beijing games cost the Chinese over 1.8 billion dollars (1.22 billion Euros) minus revenues – and that’s just for sixteen days! Let’s make a liberal estimate on extended costs. For one month, it would cost roughly 3.5 billion dollars. Multiply that by 12, and you’re talking 42 billion dollars per year. That’s a lot of money… but it’s only a fraction of what the United States spends on Iraq. The war in Iraq has already cost United States taxpayers over $800 billion, and in this year alone the budget for the war is $196 billion. The Congressional Budget Office is even calling it the Trillion-Dollar War. I’m pretty sure it would be more affordable to just fund year-round Olympics than have year-round war.

True, countries could no longer point guns and set up blockades to coerce others into doing their bidding, but there would be a mechanism for resolving disputes – the games themselves! Suppose the United States and Russia get mad at each other (or rather, their governments get mad at each other) and they can’t reach a diplomatic solution. Instead of taking up arms and blowing cities to kingdom come, each country picks an event of their choice, and they agree on a third event. Best two out of three wins! They have to accept the result or other countries will ostracize them for being bad sports. And considering they just avoided massive financial losses the wanton destruction of war, both are now better off!

Yes, it could get complicated, but we surely have to admit that perpetual sports is better than perpetual war. At least in the Olympics, no civilians die from stray shot-puts or loose javelins!

Think of the further advantages of this kind of system. First, the rules are well-defined, unlike in war, and there are no Geneva Conventions you can conveniently ignore when you need to “enhance” your interrogation techniques. Steroids might be a problem, but that could be dealt with if necessary. If an employer can take a urine sample correctly, I’m positive that the governments of the world can figure this out.

Second, the Olympic games are, quite simply, more fun for everyone. War is hell, as they say, and even though the Olympics aren’t heaven they surely are a step up from hell. Who doesn’t like sports? Certainly mothers and fathers would be much more comfortable sending their kids off to learn the backstroke than to learn how to kill en masse. International politics could become a family outing, rather than the untouchable subject at the dinner table. In fact, Olympic games politics might provide just the right incentive to get young people more civically involved – that’s what all the government schools want, right?

Third, the Olympic games could foster a sense of national unity better than a war ever could. Imagine the United States getting behind Michael Phelps swimming his way to resolving territory disputes, or the USA Basketball Team showing Britain that we do NOT want the Kyoto Protocol.

Better yet, why not have the world leaders – the ones who think it’s their right to impose their will upon others – participate in the events? Bush versus Kim Jong-il – who gets to keep his nukes? In the team sports, let the administrations duke it out. Bush Co. [or now, Obama Co.] versus Ahmadinejad-and-other-long-named-guys – be there and watch the Secretary of State leap over Mahmoud to victory! Now that’s drama. Who could ask for more?

Alright, enough of all this strange and silly talk. We all know that perpetual Olympic games could never bring about world peace. Unfortunately, even participating countries have repeatedly broken resolutions they signed regarding the Olympic truce. Did Operation Iraqi “Freedom” stop for one moment during 2002, 2004, or 2006? Are current operations on hiatus? Absolutely not.

So what’s the point?

Politics from the very beginning has marred the renewed Olympic tradition. The paradox of rectifying international peace and nationalism continues to cast an eerie shadow over an experience that challenges people to look beyond borders. Most importantly, few of the participating countries have any desire to honor the Olympic truce, including the United States. Should this be any surprise? Not really. The nature of the state is antithetical to peace, as its very existence depends upon continual coercion against its citizens. As Randolph Bourne says, “War is the health of the state.” The state sets up a completely artificial us-them mentality based upon imaginary lines on a map. Those within the state are the good guys, and everybody else outside it is potentially a bloodthirsty fiend. In some sense, the Olympics could never break through these barriers since it continues to encourage nation-worship. Nevertheless, I think we can appreciate Coubertin’s vision for peace.

Although the symbolic truces of the Olympic games have some value, the nations of earth must realize that lasting peace is preserved not through millions of guns, but rather through the millions of goods and services they can trade with others. When we cooperate non-violently with one another as free people through free enterprise, we build relationships with a foundation of respect and mutual admiration. On the other hand, as we cease to interact peaceably we lay a foundation of enmity. Frederic Bastiat once said, “When goods don’t cross borders, soldiers eventually will.” May we take heed of Bastiat’s wisdom and encourage peace through cooperation, Olympian and otherwise.

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How to Eliminate War (with the Olympics)

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By Edmund Opitz.

Is there anything in the basic makeup of the men and women we know, or those we read about in the press, or encounter in the pages of history texts, which encourages us to believe that the free society we strive for is a realistic possibility?

Edward Gibbon, the great historian of Rome’s decline and fall, offered, as his considered judgment, the opinion that “History is little more than a register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.” The bleakness of this assessment is redeemed somewhat by the inclusion of the words “little more.” Human nature does have its dark underside which pulls us down below the norm and produces the crimes, follies, and misfortunes recorded by historians.

But there is more to our story than this; there is also a record of the geniuses in every field—including heroes and saints—who demonstrate the realized potential of our common humanity. And then there are the multitudes who are just plain, ordinary, decent, hardworking folks, uplifted on occasion by the magnetism of those who rise above the average, and sometimes seized by a madness of sorts when the criminal and depraved acquire a kind of glamour.

Every society takes on its unique characteristics from the people who compose it; we are the basic ingredients of our society. The human story is a checkered affair; some ups, many downs. Does a realistic appraisal of our history on this planet provide any warrant for believing that we human beings are capable of approximating a truly free society with its market economy?

I propose to deal with four features of human nature and conduct which give me confidence that in the constitution of ordinary men and women are the characteristics which incline them to strive for a freer life with their fellows. I shall list these four points and then discuss them.

1. There is a strong instinct in all men and women to be free to pursue their personal goals.

2. There is a universal need in each of us to call something our very own; an instinct for property.

3. There is an upward thrust in human nature to live a life that is not simply more comfortable, but better in a moral sense. We really believe in fair play; we respond to the ideals of justice.

4. The market is everywhere; people in every part of the globe have sought to better their economic circumstances by barter and trade. The market is universal; but only occasionally does the market become institutionalized as the market economy.

First Point—Freedom

Every person has a deeply rooted urge to be free to pursue his chosen goals; it is impossible to imagine a person, who is determined to accomplish a certain task, inviting people to hinder or prevent him from getting his job done. Even a dictator as vicious as Stalin, one of whose aims was to extinguish personal freedom in a great nation, demanded complete freedom to pursue his evil goals. Anyone who tried to hinder him was shortly referred to in the past tense.

But despite the universal urge for full personal liberty, most people who have ever lived have been slaves, serfs, bondsmen, thralls, helots, Sudras, retainers, lackeys, vassals, liege men, and the like. Despite the fact that every person wants to be free to live on his own terms, most of the earth’s people have lived wholly or in part on terms laid down by someone else. There are more of them today than ever before. A powerful instinct for individual liberty animates virtually every man and woman, but this universal urge to be free has been fully institutionalized only once in history—in the theory and practice of old-fashioned Whiggery and Classical Liberalism, rising and falling during the period, approximately from the American Revolution to the early twentieth century.

Second Point—Property

The sense of personal identity is aroused in us early in infancy; it suddenly dawns on each of us that “I am me!” The seeds of our lifelong personal uniqueness are planted early. As soon as we learn to think “me” we begin to think its inevitable corollary, “mine.” Every child, early on, comes to regard certain toys as his own. Each of us grows into a property relationship with things in his environment long before he evolves a theory of property, that is, a theory of the correct relationship between ourselves and the things that belong to us. Your property is an extension of your self; no one can live his life to the full unless he owns the things on which his life depends, things which he may use and dispose of in any peaceful way he chooses. Justice demands that every person have a right to acquire property, for every person’s sense of self is powerfully linked to the things he owns.

Because property is right, theft is wrong. The belief that property is fight is so nearly universal that even thieves believe it. The pickpocket who steals your wallet does not intend his action as a symbolic gesture against the idea of private property; he may be a crook, but he’s no socialist! Every crook believes in the sanctity of private property—he doesn’t want people stealing from him! His attitude toward other folks’ property is, shall we say, somewhat liberated. And there’s the rub. “Me” and “mine” is a natural instinct; it’s the “thee” and “thine” that needs to be fortified by moral values, by manners, and by the law. Gradually, as we mature into moral beings, reciprocity—the idea of “do as you would be done by”-generates the belief that mutual respect for individual property rights is the cornerstone of the free society.

Since the dawn of history, getting hold of other people’s property by war, plunder, piracy, pillage, and looting has been a way of life for a large segment of mankind. “Robbery is perhaps the oldest of labor saving devices,” wrote Lewis Mumford fifty years ago, “and war vies with magic in its efforts to get something for nothing.” And Ludwig von Mises points out that “All ownership derives from occupation and violence.” (Socialism, p. 32. See also Human Action, p. 679.) English civilization emerged in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest; most modern nations have followed a similar pattern, including our own. A people or a tribe acquires its territory by successfully doing battle. It is only the slow progress of civilization and the development of the idea of The Rule of Law that generates the belief that every person’s property should be regarded as inviolate by every other person.

A corollary of this is the belief that the primary task of a just legal system is to secure every person’s right to that which is his own. We do this by stressing the sanctity of private property and, when moral deterrents to theft are not enough, we seek to discourage thievery by invoking a swift and sure justice designed to increase the risks of robbery and diminish any conceivable benefits.

Third Point—Justice

The practice of pillage is ancient, but so is mankind’s concern for justice. Some fifteen hundred years before Christ, a legislator of ancient Israel wrote: “You shall not pervert justice, either by favoring the poor or by subservience to the great. You shall judge your fellow countrymen with strict justice” (Lev. 19:15). Pericles, the Athenian statesman of the fifth century B.C., said in his great funeral oration, “If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences.” And Cicero, one of the last of the old Romans, in the century before our era: “Of all these things respecting which learned men dispute there is none more important than clearly to understand that we are born for justice, and that right is founded not in opinion but in nature.”

Long before some unknown genius framed a theory of justice, men and women knew when they had been wronged, betrayed, let down, dealt with unfairly. The capacity to make moral judgments is built into human nature itself; and human nature is constituted as it is because our nature is derived from the ways things are in the universe.

We are “in play” with the universe as we try to keep in time with its music. We have, for example, categories of round and square because these shapes and others are found in the nature existing outside us. The concepts of long and short would be meaningless to us were length not one characteristic of the way-things-are. We have a sense of beauty because we have seen lovely things and listened to melodious sounds. And by the same token, the distinction that mankind universally makes between right and wrong or good and evil presupposes a moral dimension in this universe from which our personal categories derive.

As far back as we can trace man’s story we find him drawing ethical distinctions, employing the categories of right and wrong. Jeane Kirkpatrick speaks of “. . . the irreducible human concern with morality.” Obviously, we would not expect universal agreement as to which actions should be classified as right and which wrong; but the classification would stand—nearly everyone has agreed that some things are right and others are wrong. It is a long trail that leads from these primitive beginnings to the insights of the moral geniuses of the race—the Hebrew Prophets, Jesus, Confucius, St. Francis—and to the refinements of moral theory of the great philosophers of ethics—Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Aquinas, Spinoza, Adam Smith, to name a few.

At this point some timid folk may fear that we are treading on dangerous ground here. Start with the philosophical distinction between right and wrong, they point out, and the next step is to divide people into the multitudes who are wrong, and the few of us who are right. A third step seems to follow: We who are right are commissioned to correct the evil ways of the rest of you. Hence, crusaders against the infidel, suppression, prohibitions, and the like. A spoilsport like Carrie Nation goes around with her hatchet busting up saloons! Innocent pleasures and festive occasions come under attack. Reaction against such real or imagined sequences of events contributes to the widespread ethical relativism of our time. Right and wrong, we now hear it said, is a matter of taste, a matter of feeling; everyone is entitled to decide for himself what is right or wrong for him. In today’s vernacular, we are told: “Do your own thing.”

But when you discard ethical yardsticks, the weak doing their thing are at the mercy of the strong doing theirs, as the twentieth century attests. Ours is the age of ethical relativism and nihilism, and it’s no coincidence that “we live in an age unique for the unrestrained use of brute force in international relations.” The words are those of Pitirim Sorokin, from his four-volume study of war during the past 2,500 years. The most widespread, potent, evangelizing religion of our time is communism, and communist theory has no place for the traditional ethical yardsticks; in Marxist theory, right and wrong are whatever the party commands. In consequence, communist policy during the first seventy years after the Russian Revolution has exacted a toll of more than a hundred million lives, and what it has not destroyed it has damaged.

These horrors do not faze the liberals who, when their attention is called to the facts, like to refer to Lenin’s remark that you cannot make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Human life is cheap in the twentieth century.

You can burn down the ham and get rid of the rats, and you can discard the idea of a moral order and get rid of the reformers. But at what price! If there are no ethical standards, moral relativism holds sway, right gives way to might, and disaster overtakes us in the ways made familiar in this century.

Traditional ethical theory maintains that right is right and wrong is wrong. Why? Because the universe has a built-in moral dimension, a moral law, often identified with God’s will. In any event, this moral law is anchored in something deeper and more fundamental than private feelings, majority opinion, party dictates, or the will of some despot. The moral law is an important facet of the nature of things, and it is binding on all men and women.

Every one of us is fallible; no one can be certain that he has correctly read some deliverance of the moral law. So we shouldn’t be surprised when some would-be reformer comes out of the woodwork and annoys us with his eccentric interpretations of the moral law. He may earnestly desire to do good, but he goes about it in the wrong way. But such a person is harmless, unless he comes to power. Moreover, if we solicit the counsel of the most ethically advanced men and women we find that they are unanimous in telling us that the right and the good can be advanced in three ways only: by reason, by persuasion, and above all by example.

Fourth Point—Economic Action

It is a fact of the human situation—regardless of the nature of the social order—that man does not find, ready-made in his natural environment, the wherewithal to feed, house, and clothe himself. There are only raw materials in nature, and most of these are not capable of satisfying human needs until someone works them over and transforms them into consumable goods.

Man has to work in order to survive. He learns to cooperate with nature, making use of natural forces to serve his ends. Work is built into the human situation; the things by which we live do not come into existence unless someone grows them, manufactures them, builds them, and moves them from place to place.

Work is irksome and things are scarce, so people must learn to economize and avoid waste. They invent labor-saving devices, they manufacture tools, they specialize and exchange the fruits of their specialization. They learn to get along with each other, our natural sociability reinforced by the discovery that the division of labor benefits all. Division of labor and voluntary exchange constitute the marketplace, which is the greatest labor-saving device of all.

“This division of labor, from which so many advantages are derived,” wrote Adam Smith, “is not originally the effect of any human wisdom which foresees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual, consequence of a certain propensity in human nature . . . the propensity to track, barter, and exchange one thing for another. . . . It is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.”

It is natural for us human beings, as we seek to improve our circumstances, to bargain, swap, barter, and trade. This is the market in action: men and women trading goods and services in a noncoercive situation. The benefits of such activity are mutual and obvious, which is why the market is everywhere. The market has always existed, and it’s in operation today all over the world. Virtually no tribes are so primitive, and no collectivism so totalitarian as to prevent people from engaging in voluntary exchanges for mutual advantage. But only rarely has the market ever got itself institutionalized as the market economy—the thing called capitalism.

What does it mean to say that something has been institutionalized? When practices which heretofore have been informal and sporadic become formalized, regular, habitual, and customary they are said to be institutionalized. As institutions they operate by an established rule or principle; they draw support from the moral code and are buttressed by appropriate laws.

For example, education is institutionalized as the school; religion is institutionalized as the church. And the market—individuals trading, bartering, and swapping—is institutionalized as the market economy, or capitalism. This occurs when free-market practices are allied with appropriate moral, cultural, legal, and political structures. Has this ever happened? Yes, but probably only once, and in a few countries only, when free-market practices coalesced with the Whig social order in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This was the social order Adam Smith referred to as his “liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice.”

I have briefly set forth four convictions of mine—which I would put into the category of self- evident truths. First, every person has an unquenchable urge to be free to pursue his personal goals—but seldom translates this into the idea of “equal freedom.” Second, every person has an instinct for private property—every “me” requires a “mine.” Third, every person has moral sense; he knows when he has been dealt with unfairly or treated unjustly. When we become mature persons we strive for equity; we try to treat others as we would like to be treated. In the fourth place, it is a fact of common observation that people of every culture, and at every level from the most primitive to the most civilized, engage in trade and barter; the market is ubiquitous.

A Fifth Point—Political Plunder

And now for the bad news: Whenever a society moves above the level of desperate poverty, and has generated even a modicum of prosperity, some citizens set up institutions which enable them to live on the fruits of others’ toil. The law, established to achieve justice between person and person, is perverted into an instrument of plunder. This is the central message of Frederic Bastiat’s The Law.

Citizens of our own nation have gone far in this direction. A recent news item reports that 66 million Americans receive 129 million checks each month from the Department of Health and Human Services. Tens of millions of additional Americans derive their incomes in part or in full from money taxed from productive working people. These 80 or 90 million people constitute what Leonard Read used to call a plunderbund.

We are now a nation where almost everyone is trying to live at the expense of everyone else. We have written a form of theft into our statutes. Why? Because there’s a little bit of larceny in our souls! Large chunks of the American electorate have discovered that living off government handouts is easier than working for a living and safer than stealing, so they create political parties in their own image; and they elect politicians who promise them an inside track to the public treasury.

Present-day Americans are not unique in this respect. The legal transfer of wealth from producers to beneficiaries goes on today in every nation, and something like this has occurred in virtually every society since the dawn of time.

The Roots of Plunder

How did this politico-economic pattern originate? The most plausible answer is that the system of plunder was installed in the aftermath of a conquest. A hardy band of warriors swoops down from the hills and overcomes the people of the plain. The victors enslave the vanquished, setting themselves up as a governing body over a permanent underclass. Time passes, intermarriage occurs, and gradually the former warriors go soft and a hardier tribe overcomes them, and history repeats itself.

Apart from whatever excitement some men feel in battle, and the gratification that some people get from being the boss and giving orders, there is an economic motive behind the conquest and the subsequent system of rule. There is a natural drive in human beings to live better while working less; or, better yet, to live well without working at all.

Now, no one can get something for nothing unless he wields political power or is a friend of those in power. If you have such power you don’t have to go into the marketplace and try to woo customers; you take what you want. This is not considered theft because the legal system has been set up to facilitate this transfer of property from those who produced it to those in power.

Such is the political pattern exhibited by most nations known to history. This pattern can be viewed as an effort to answer three questions:

1. Who shall wield power?

2. For whose benefit shall this power be wielded?

3. At whose expense shall this power be wielded?

What we are describing here is the well-nigh universal arrangement by which nations have been governed over the centuries by kings, presidents, and potentates; by emperors and mikados; by shahs, czars, maharajas, and pooh-bahs of all kinds. Their institution is usually called “government.” The word “govern” is derived from the Latin Guber-nare, to steer. So when a group of people is elevated above the generality of citizens — as a result of conquest, usually — to ride herd on them, rule them, regulate them, control them, and exact tribute from them, they are “governing.”

This was the modus operandi in the governance of nations, everywhere, and in every century. Then came the Whig breakthrough in the eighteenth century. It was the polar opposite of “rule” in the old sense; it was a new vision of a society which aspired to achieve liberty and justice for all. It was the novel idea of a government that did not “govern,” but sought instead to protect the life, liberty, and property of all persons alike. The keynote of Whiggery was the ideal of equality before the bar of justice: The Rule of Law.

It is an idea familiar to everyone that the same instrument may he put to radically different uses. The knife you use to slice the roast may be used to kill someone. The hand that now caresses may, next hour, deal someone a mortal blow. And the law, as Bastiat points out, may serve justice, or it may violate justice when it is employed as an instrument of plunder.

The law serves justice when it acts to restore the peace, broken when someone’s rights were violated. But the law may misuse the power entrusted to it by itself violating someone’s rights, for its own ends or to further the purposes of a third party.

The Whigs used the word “government” but gave it a radically new meaning; from now on its role was to be limited to the actions required to maintain justice between person and person. Government was no longer to intervene positively in people’s lives to rule them, regulate them, or interfere with the peaceful actions of anyone.

Confusion is sown when two radically different functions are tagged with the same label; the agency designed to serve the ends of justice by securing each person’s rights to life, liberty, and property may rightfully be called “government.” But the institution set up to impair people’s rights to the life, liberty, and property ought to bear some other name. Albert Jay Nock suggested that the law, when perverted into an instrument of plunder, be called The State. The functional distinction between the two institutions—government and state—is clear.

It is in the nature of government, we might say, to use lawful force against aggressors for the protection of peaceful people. Government does not initiate action; government is triggered into “re-action” by earlier criminal conduct which causes personal injury to innocent people or otherwise disrupts the peace of the community. The state, on the other hand, initiates action. The state initiates legalized violence against peaceful people in order to advantage some people at the expense of others, or to further some grandiose national plan, or to promote some impossible dream. To paste the same label on two such radically different actions is to promote misunderstanding.

The problem is ancient, as witness the testimony of St. Augustine, dating back to the fifth century A.D.:

Without justice, what are kingdoms but great robber bands? For what are robber bands themselves, but little kingdoms. The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince; it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues people, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom.

The Whig Idea

The Whigs got the point. Whiggery was the eighteenth-century creed of such men as Edmund Burke and Adam Smith; on these shores it was embraced by the likes of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Whiggism became Liberalism after 1832, and this noble creed projected a pattern for the lawful ordering of a society which was radically different from every political pattern known to history prior to the eighteenth century. Since the eighteenth century many nations have gone from monarchy to republicanism to democracy to socialism, but this is merely to rearrange the furniture while the political plundering continues much as before.

Whiggism is a difficult philosophy to grasp, for old ways of thinking stand in the way—and so does the ingrained reluctance of many to give up the ages-old political racket which operates whenever the law is perverted into an instrument of plunder.

Jefferson and his friends had a solid grasp of the old Whig idea when they wrote that “all men are created equal,” and that they are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” and that governments have no other reason for being than to secure people in their God-given rights.

The Whig idea filtered down into the popular mentality and came out as a piece of folk wisdom wrongly attributed to Jefferson: “That government governs best which governs least.” Close, but no cigar. Thoreau did better with his play on words: “That government governs best which ‘governs’ not at all,” perhaps having in mind Aesop’s fable about King Log versus King Stork.

The Whig idea, the American idea as voiced in the Declaration of Independence, viewed “government” as an instrument of justice, set up to interpret—and enforce when necessary—the previously agreed upon rules without which a free society cannot function. “Government,” then, would be analogous to the umpire in the game of baseball. The umpire does not direct the game, nor does he side with either team; the umpire acts as an impartial arbiter who decides whether it’s a strike or a ball, whether or not the runner is safe at first, and so on. In the nature of the case these decisions cannot be made by the players or by the fans; the game of baseball needs an independent functionary who sees to it that the game is played within the rules. Every society, likewise, needs a nonpartisan agency to act when there is a violation of the rules on which that society’s very existence depends.

The uniquely Whig and American political breakthrough was the conception of a government that did not “govern,” an umpire government limited to insuring that the rules upon which a society of free people is premised are maintained—and with the authority to penalize anyone who violates those rules.

We have moved a long distance away from a truly free society; and we’re even further from the theory or philosophy which gave rise to the free society. The restoration of that philosophy begins with a candid exploration of the issues.

However, no clarification of the issues is sufficient by itself to rehabilitate the old ideals of freedom and justice. The next step must be adequate educational attention to the matters in question; and from there on we rely on informed moral choice.

Originally published in The Freeman, October 1987.

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What are we so worried about again?

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By Edmund Opitz.

Adam Smith’s monumental achievement was to enlarge the individual person’s freedom of action in economic affairs, and thus in other sectors of his life as well. Smith’s argument had several minor loopholes, but these were plugged by the Austrian School—Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk about a century after The Wealth of Nations. Today, it is fair to say that Ludwig von Mises and his students have created a genuine science of economics—a systematic exposition of the free market economy-which, as an intellectual structure, is virtually impregnable. Misesian economic science is, so to speak, The Answer. It’s the recipe for anyone who wants to know how a society must organize its workplace activities so as to maximize economic well-being for all.

The Question is: How may we achieve the free and prosperous commonwealth? To which The Answer is: Install the free market economy, as taught by Austrian—and some other—economists.

Trouble is, almost no one is asking The Question!

Economic science does not tell John Doe how to make a million dollars on Wall Street, or a killing in real estate, or how to protect his assets. Entrepreneurship is an art, not a science; profitable investing likewise. Economic science, like every other science, deals with abstract principles and general rules. Economic science sets forth the general rules which members of a particular society must apply in practice if the society is to enjoy maximum productivity and raise the general level of economic well-being. Economic science is a scholarly endeavor which shows what must be done to maximize the wealth of nations.

Economic science has The Answer for anyone who asks how a society may advance from poverty toward affluence. But economic science has no answer for those who ask: How can I make a fast and easy buck?

This is the wrong question, so far as economic science is concerned. How can people be persuaded to ask the right question? The question people should ask might be phrased as follows: How can we create the social institutions which provide maximum opportunity for all of us to be more prosperous? Only a sense of moral obligation will generate such a question.

The ordinary, decent, law-abiding citizen in his private dealings with his fellows would not use force or fraud to gain advantage over another. But when force and/or fraud are legalized millions do seek some advantage for themselves at the expense of their fellows. When the State allocates resources and redistributes the wealth, it is using its power to deprive producers of what belongs to them, in order to dispense it to those who have not earned it. Everyone is forced to pay tribute for the benefit of the wield-crs of power and their friends. Concerned with their own immediate well-being and looking to the State for handouts, tens of millions of Americans have no interest in working toward an economic order which would assure a rising level of prosperity for everyone—the free market economy.

Austrian economics is The Answer, all right, but it is the answer to a question which only a few are asking. The reason: only a few have an ethical incentive to ask it. Millions are searching for ways to increase their salaries, double their incomes, and enjoy the good life. Only a handful, by comparison, are working with any intensity to advance the free society-market economy way of life.

Economic Fallacies

We have it on the authority of Henry Hazlitt that “Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man.” Who can deny it? Any reasonably bright high school student can read Economics in One Lesson. Haw ing read the book, he can spot the fallacies in many textbooks of economics, in the speeches of public figures, in the commentaries of television and radio pundits, in sermons and academic lectures, in almost any place he cares to look.

The discipline of economics is not mired in simple ignorance; it is stalled by willful ignorance. Economic fallacies abound because every economic fallacy in practice gives someone an economic or other advantage over someone else. Pocketbook motivations keep economic fallacies alive; slay them in one generation and they return from the dead in the next.

Virtually every economic fallacy that plagues us today has been demolished time and again over the past couple of centuries; but has this work of demolition diminished the number and power of economic fallacies? Hardly; they appear about as numerous and virulent as ever. There are few new economic truths, but new errors proliferate wildly. Demolishing fallacies and exposing errors may be exhilarating for a time, but it is negative work; it is to toil on a treadmill. The positive maths of a market economy—together with its supporting institutions and ideas—are reached only by taking a different route.

The celebrated classicist, Gilbert Murray, offers some wise words on truth and error: “The great thing to remember is that the mind of man cannot be enlightened permanently by merely teaching him to reject some particular set of superstitions. There is an infinite supply of other superstitions always at hand; and the mind that desires such things—that is, the mind that has not trained itself to the hard discipline of reasonableness and honesty, will, as soon as its devils are cast out, proceed to fill itself with their relations.”

There will always be a need to expose economic error and demolish fallacies, but something more is needed if we wish to advance in the direction of a truly free society; and that something more is the sense of moral obligation which motivates persons to pursue the goals they perceive to be ethically right and good. Economics needs ethics.

Mises points out that economics “is a science of means, not of ends,” and that science, furthermore, is value- free. A science describes; but does not prescribe. “Science,” Mises goes on to say, “never tells a man how he should act; it merely shows how a man must act if he wants to attain definite ends . . . . Praxeology and economics do not say that men should peacefully cooperate within the frame of societal bonds; they merely say that men must act this way if they want to make their actions more successful than otherwise.” Moral obligation, a sense of “oughtness,” is not within the purview of science; the sciences, basically, operate in a sector of the universe that is ethically neutral. By the same token, there are no grounds in economic science per se for telling anyone that he ought to do this when he prefers to do that.

Although every science is value-free, the universe is not value-free! We live in a rationally and ethically structured universe where some things are morally right and other things are morally wrong; there is genuine good, as well as real evil. Moral obligation, besides being a reality that presses on the sensitive conscience, is a potent incentive to strive to translate the reasoned maths of economic science into a go_ ing concern economy.

Economics is the science of human action, and the actions of human beings are intimately implicated with ethical standards and moral obligation. In other words, economic science does not stand alone; it is a “means,” and as a means economics needs to be hooked up with disciplines that deal with ends.

What we have here is an IF—THEN situation. The economist cannot tell us that we ought to prefer a free and prosperous commonwealth; but IF that is what we want, THEN economic science can demonstrate that the market economy is the only means to achieve that end. Economic science can only explain; the economic argument must therefore be joined to an ethical imperative which commands.

Strengthening the Case

Economic reasoning can demonstrate that the free market system is the most efficient way to produce goods and services, rewarding every participant according to his contribution to the productive process—as that contribution is judged by his peers. But the economic case for freedom is strengthened immeasurably when it is bolstered by moral reasoning which demonstrates that the market economy is the only economic order which embodies the ideas of liberty and justice for all. Capitalism is the only economic system that does not reward some at the expense of others.

The interventionist state provides cushy jobs for many a predator and parasite, people whose services would not be needed in a truly free economy. Many of these people, once they become dependent on consumer choice, might, to begin with, be worse off economically than before. The pocketbook argument will not persuade them, but the moral argument might.

Originally published in The Freeman, April 1989.

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Economics Has the Answer: What’s the Question?

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By Edmund Opitz.

The church plays an important role in human life.

It was once the unwritten rule in polite society that two topics have no place in civilized conversation; religion and politics. It was ill-bred to discuss religion; it was gauche to talk politics. But times have changed. We live in a different and more open age. Now we discuss religion for political reasons, and we talk politics for religious reasons! The Bishops issue a Letter; the highest dignitaries of the various denominations pronounce on matters of government and business. The people behind these proclamations represent only a tiny minority of the total church membership, but they presume to speak for everyone. What they say is, in effect, the Socialist Party platform in ecclesiastical drag.

These ecclesiastical documents focus on an economic malaise, poverty; the poverty of the masses, especially the masses of the Third World. Churchmen profess to know the cause of this poverty. Third World poverty is caused by the wealth of the capitalistic nations; they are poor because we, in becoming wealthy, have pauperized them. Likewise, within our own nation the wealth of those who are better off is gained at the expense of those who are made worse off in the process. These are the typical allegations: the rich get richer by making the poor poorer.

Ecclesiastical myopia views the market economy—or capitalism—as an evil system which, by its very nature impoverishes the many as the means by which the few are enriched. The suggested cure for these differentials in wealth is to use government’s power to tax to exact tribute from the rich, and then distribute the proceeds to the poor—minus the cost to the nation of these wealth transfers. Robin Hood robs the rich to pay the poor, but Robin takes his cut!

It is as if these churchmen had swallowed the current secular agenda to which they have merely added oil and unction; as if social reform were the end, religion the mere means; as if religion has little more to offer modern men and women beyond what they can get from contemporary liberalism or socialism. The church has a more important role to play in human life, as I shall suggest in the course of this article.

One of my favorite modern theologians is the late William Ralph Inge. Inge was the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, the scholar’s pulpit of the Church of England. Dean Inge wrote some notable books in theology, philosophy, and social theory, but he was also a newspaper columnist during the 1920s where his hard-nosed comments on the passing scene earned him the nickname, “the gloomy Dean.”

Christian Socialism was strong within the church of England, with some churchmen going so far as to declare that for a Christian not to be a socialist was to be guilty of heresy. A popular slogan was “Christianity is the religion of which Socialism is the practice.” Dean Inge would have none of this, so he waged a perpetual war of words against the socialists, especially against socialists of the Christian variety. “I do not like to see the clergy,” he wrote, “who were monarchists under a strong monarchy, and oligarchs under the oligarchy, tumbling over each other in their eagerness to become court chaplains to King Demos. The black coated advocates of spoliation are not a nice lot!”

It was not that Dean Inge was a defender of the status quo; far from it. Inge was a severe critic of many features of the modern western world. He argued that socialism is little more than a logical extension of many of the worst features of the modern temper, derived from the French Revolution, with its inveterate faith that man is a good animal by nature, but corrupted by his institutions; “Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains,” as Rousseau put it. This being the case, said the socialists, all we have to do is change our institutions in order to produce an improved society out of unimproved men and women.

Dean Inge foresaw a tendency within this mind-set toward “a reversion to a political and external religion, the very thing against which the Gospel waged relentless war.” It is not that Christianity regards social progress as unimportant, Inge goes on to say; it is a question of how genuine improvement may occur. “The true answer,” he wrote, “though it is not a very popular one, is that the advance of civilization is in truth a sort of by-product of Christianity, not its chief aim; but we can appeal to history to support us that [the advance of civilization] is most stable and genuine when it is the by-product of a lofty and unworldly idealism.”

The Pull of Public Opinion

Churchmen in every age are tempted to adopt the protective coloration of their time; like all intellectuals, churchmen are verbalists and wordsmiths; they are powerfully swayed by the printed page, by catch words, slick phrases, slogans, and bumper stickers. In consequence, they are pulled first this way then that by whatever currents of public opinion happen at the moment to exert the greatest power over their emotions and imagination. Today, it is the powerful gravitational pull of “environmentalism.”

I’m using the word environmentalism as a label for the belief that the human species is nothing but what external conditions have made us, that we are the victims of circumstances, that our lives are determined by forces we can barely understand, let alone control. Random chemical and physical interactions produced mankind in the first place. Then this raw material—mankind as it comes from nature—is shaped into various forms by the particular society in which we find ourselves. The social class to which we belong determines, finally, what we are and how we view the world and ourselves. Environmentalism exerts a powerful attraction today over intellectuals of all creeds. It is the ideology of Marxists and non-Marxists alike that men and women are the mere end products of nature and society—responsible men and women no longer—and that social engineering can construct a perfect society out of defective human units. Environmentalism has the cart before the horse; it is dehumanizing.

If there is disorder in our society it follows that there is disorder within our very selves, in our faulty thinking and erroneous beliefs, in our misplaced loyalties and misguided affections. Disharmony in our personal lives will result in conflict and frictions in society. This is why serious religion has traditionally focused on the inward and the spiritual, on the mind and conscience of individual persons, to make them responsible individuals. The premise is that only right beliefs rightly held can produce right action. The good society emerges only if there is a significant number of people of intellect and character; and the elevation of character is the perennial concern of genuine religion, in league with education and art.

But the modern world views the matter differently. The modern world assumes that the human species is the mere end product of external forces; a product, first of all, of physics and chemistry—our natural environment; and a product, secondly, of the particular society in which an individual happens to live. The basic assumption is that man’s character is made for him, by others; no individual is really responsible for himself. It is only necessary, then, for “the others” to acquire political power and use it to create social structures designed to produce a new humanity. Transform external arrangements and—according to this ideology—it matters little if men and women remain unregenerate; they will behave correctly because their institutions have programmed them to act according to the blueprint. This is the modern heresy.

Christianity, rightly understood, stands for a society with such basic features as personal responsibility, equal justice under the law, and maximum freedom for every person—the kind of society envisioned by the 18th- century Whigs like Burke, Madison, and Jefferson. Such a social and political order as the Whigs had in mind lays down the conditions in a nation which permit the operation of one kind of an economic order only, the free market economy—later nicknamed capitalism—the thing described by Adam Smith.

The economic order which Adam Smith challenged was called Mercantilism. Mercantilism was the communism or socialism or planned economy of the 17th and 18th centuries. The nation was covered with a network of minute regulations controlling every stage of manufacture and exchange, and the controls were brutally enforced, as they must be in every planned economy; in a 73-year period in France, 1686 to 1759, approximately 16,000 people were put to death for some infraction of the government regulations over the economy.

Adam Smith set out to free the economy with what he referred to as his “liberal plan of liberty, equality, and justice.” (p. 628)It is more than a coincidence that The Wealth of Nations and the Declaration of Independence appeared within a few months of each other, in the year 1776. The Declaration endorses the Whig political vision whose main features were voiced by Jefferson in his First Inaugural: “Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations—entangling alliances with none . . . freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of the person under the protection of the habeas corpus,” and so on. This was the political and legal framework laid down by the Whig theorists, within which Adam Smith’s free market economy, or capitalism, had the freedom necessary if it was to function-his “liberal plan of liberty, equality and justice.”

Millions of people during the 20th century have turned away from the traditional religious faiths of the West—Christianity and Judaism-to embrace some form of secular religion, such as communism or socialism. The prevailing world view in our time is not Theism—the belief that mind and spirit are rock-bottom realities in the universe; it is Materialism—the belief that basic reality is composed of nothing else but particles of matter.

Materialism is explicit wherever Marxism is the official creed, but it is implicit almost everywhere else. Begin with the Marxist premise of Dialectical Materialism—or any other variety of Materialism—and some form of totalitarianism logically follows. Such a society reduces human persons to minions of the state, to be used and used up in the utopian endeavor to bring about the classless society of the communist pipe dream. Christian doctrine, by contrast, makes the individual person central. His role in life is to serve the highest value he can conceive—God; the modest role of the political order is to provide maximum freedom for all persons in order that we, as created beings, may achieve our proper destiny.

The Theocratic Temptation

In the free society, church and state are independent of one another, as set forth in the First Amendment. But there is, historically, a perennial temptation for church and state to join forces and form a theocracy—an alliance which tends to divinize politics and depreciate genuine religion. We are moving in that direction.

The church has been allied with the state ever since the fourth century, and this church-state combination has often been less than Christian in its treatment of Christians, and others. Edward Gibbon, the 18th-century historian, is only one of the many scholars who have chastised the official church for its misdeeds. But listen to Gibbon when he refers to original Gospel Christianity; he speaks of “. . . those benevolent principles of Christianity, which inculcate the natural freedom of mankind.” (Vol. I, p. 661)

The idea of Christian freedom came into sharp focus in the preaching of 18th-century clergymen in New England. F. P. Cole, an historian of the period, writes: “There is probably no group of men in history, living in a particular area at a given time, who can speak as forcibly on the subject of liberty as the Congregational ministers of New England between 1750 and 1785.”

It was the custom of the New England clergy to preach twice a year on some theme having to do with the secular order, the Artillery Day Sermon and the Election Day Sermon. These scholarly sermons were published by the Massachusetts General Court, as the legislature was then called, and they have provided the raw material for many a doctoral dissertation. Let me offer a typical statement by one of the ablest of these preachers, Jonathan Mayhew of Boston, in 1752. “Having been initiated in youth in the doctrines of civil liberty, as they were taught by such men as Plato, Demosthenes, Cicero, and other renowned persons among the ancients; and such as Sydney and Milton, Locke and Hoadley among the moderns, i liked them; they seemed rational. And having learnt from the Holy Scriptures that wise, brave, and virtuous men were always friends of liberty,—that God gave the Israelites a king in His anger, because they had not the sense and virtue enough to be a free commonwealth,—and that ‘where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty’—this made me conclude that freedom was a great blessing.”

Religion and the Founders

Most of the men we refer to as our Founding Fathers were not active churchmen, for one reason or another, but they were men of strong religious convictions. Norman Cousins has compiled a 450-page anthology of the religious beliefs and ideas of eight of these men in their own words. (In God We Trust, 1958) Those quoted are Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, the two Adamses, Hamilton, and Jay. There’s also a section devoted to Tom Paine. A familiar statement of Jefferson pretty well summarizes the outlook of this remarkable group of men. “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.”

Tom Paine authored some influential political pamphlets, and he also wrote a great deal on the subject of religion, much of it critical—which is all right, because there is much about the ecclesiastical life of any period which deserves criticism. But when it was a matter of Christian liberty, Paine was on target. Cousins, for some reason, does not quote a surprising statement by Paine: “Wherefore, political as well as spiritual liberty, is the gift of God, through Christ.” (From his essay “Thoughts on Defensive War”)

What was the situation in the 19th century? Let me offer a few remarks by one of the keenest foreign observers ever to visit this nation, Alexis de Tocqueville. Tocqueville landed in New York in May, 1831. Nine months and seven thousand miles later he returned to France and wrote his great book, Democracy in America, with special attention being given to religion and the churches. “The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds,” he wrote, “that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other . . . Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions . . . They hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions.”

“Despotism may govern without faith,” he continues, “but liberty cannot . . . [for] how is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed?”

Tocqueville observed that the clergy stayed away from politics. The clergy, he observed, “keep aloof from parties and public affairs . . . In the United States religion exercises but little direct influence upon the laws and upon the details of public opinion; but [religion] directs the customs of the community, and, by regulating everyday life it regulates the state.”

A Spotty Record

The history of the church during the past two thousand years is a spotty record, with many ups and some downs. There have been glorious epochs, and there have been periods which make for melancholy reading. Occasionally, the church has sanctioned tyrannous political rule; from time to time it has lent its support to persecutions, inquisitions, and crusades. As an arm of the state, or as a tool of the state, it has betrayed its sacred task while it pursued secular goals like wealth and power.

In the 20th century segments of ecclesiastical officialdom and councils of churches demand legislation to transfer wealth from one group of citizens to another. They work for a collectivist economic order planned, controlled, and regulated by government. The intended aim is to overcome poverty and feed the hungry; the means is the planned economy, otherwise labeled socialism, collectivism, the new deal, or whatever. Whatever the label, the planned economy puts the nation in a strait jacket; the planned economy, however noble the intentions of the planners, is the road to serfdom, as F. A. Hayek demonstrated in a landmark book written some forty years ago.

A planned economy forcibly directs the lives of individual men and women, and to do so the state must deprive people of their earnings which they would otherwise use to direct their own lives. Nation after nation during the 20th century has gone in for political planning of the economy and the results have been disastrous; where the planning has been strictly enforced, as in communist nations, the result has been a nation ill housed, iii fed, and ill clothed, it is a sad paradox indeed that the secular program, promoted by church hierarchies to alleviate poverty, has caused poverty in every society which has tried it. The only way to alleviate poverty in a nation is to increase productivity; and increased productivity is generated only by an economy of free men and women. Freedom is an essential part of the church’s business. Freedom is a blessing in itself, and it’s a double blessing, for prosperity follows freedom.

The socialists, until recently, have claimed the high moral ground. Their boast is that only socialists—or liberals—really care about people. What nonsense! Every person of good will wants to see other people better off; better housed, better fed, better clothed, healthier, better educated, with finer medical care, and all the rest. The dispute between socialists and believers in the free economy is not so much over the goals as over the means by which these goals may be met. The socialist’s means—his command economy—will not achieve the goals he says he wants to reach; socialism makes the nation worse off; poorer in material wealth, and poorer in every other respect as well.

There is another route for churchmen to take, a way that leads to more freedom for people in society, rather than less freedom. Freedom is at the heart of the gospel message, and the true genius of our religion was proudly proclaimed by our forebears, some of whose words I have quoted.

Man’s will is uniquely free; that’s the way God made us. We are free beings precisely in order that each person shall be responsible for his own life and therefore accountable for his actions. It is by acts of will, acts of choice, exercised daily over the course of a lifetime that each of us becomes the person we have the potential to be. Each person is by nature self-controlling; each person is in charge of his own life.

The free society, then, is our natural habitat; freedom in the relations of persons to each other accords with human nature. The tactic of freedom in the business and industrial sectors is the free market economy; the free choice economic system corresponds to the freely choosing creature that each of us is.

Animals, unlike us humans, have a finely tuned set of instincts which infallibly guides each creature according to its species. We humans do not have such elaborate instinctual equipment; instead of instincts we are given a moral code, which we are free to obey or not. Anyone can figure out for himself that no kind of society is possible unless most people most of the time do not murder, steal, assault, or lie. Thus we have commandments that say Thou shalt not murder, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, and so on. These and other commands compose the basic moral code which is the foundation of our law.

Because we are flawed creatures as well as free, we occasionally break the law, and so we need an umpire to interpret and, if necessary, enforce the rules. We refer to this umpire function as the political order—government, the police power, the law. And we have the courts, where honest differences of opinion may be examined and resolved.

The Productivity of Capitalism

The free market economy, or private property order, or capitalism—if you like—is, by common agreement, the most productive economic order. In fact, it’s the only productive economic order. Socialism in a given country lives by exploiting the previous productive economy of that country, and when that gives out, socialist nations live on largess from capitalist nations.

The incredible productivity of capitalism is generally admitted, even by its critics; it’s the way the wealth gets distributed that they complain about. What’s wrong about capitalism, the critics charge, is that some people in our society have enormous incomes while other people have to get by on a mere pittance. Disparities in income show up most vividly in the sports and entertainment industries. Take basketball players, for instance. Basketball is a fun game which thousands play for pleasure and recreation. But many professional players make more money in a year than any six of us will make in a lifetime of hard work. Baseball is almost as grotesque, and then the players threaten to strike for more pay! A rock singer gives what is laughably called a concert and more money changes hands in one evening than the Seattle Symphony sees in a year. Supply your own examples. The question is: How can any person with even a modicum of intelligence and refinement condone such grotesqueries? How do we respond to such a critic?

Part of the answer is that in a free society—a social order characterized by equal freedom under the law—the market place becomes a showcase for popular folly, ignorance, superstition, bad taste, and stupidity. The market, in other words, is individual free choice in action, and no one is pleased with everyone else’s choices. But our displeasure is a price we must learn to pay if we are to enjoy the blessings of liberty. We must stand firmly behind the processes of freedom, even though we can barely stand some of the products of freedom. So let’s stop wringing our hands; let’s try to be tolerant, and let’s get on with our lifelong task of setting a better example of what freedom means.

Remember that no one is forced to pay over good money to watch a sporting event; no one has to listen to some hyperkinetic young man howl and gyrate in public places to the accompaniment of amplified sound. You and I might not pay money for such a performance, and if everyone were just like us, those who now make millions playing games would have to go back to sport for its own sake, just like the rest of us. And if a miraculous change in musical taste should occur, there’d be crowds attending Bach recitals every Sunday afternoon on your local church organ.

Turn from the sports and entertainment field to the business and industry sector. Here, too, there are wide variations in wages, income and wealth. How does this come about?

Here’s a person with a knack for manufacturing a better mousetrap, which turns out to be just what millions of consumers have been waiting for. They are willing to pay handsomely for this better mousetrap, and so the manufacturer becomes wealthy. His employees also benefit. Our entrepreneur’s wealth is voluntarily conferred upon him by consumers who aren’t forced to buy the product, but who find that these new mousetraps make their lives safer, better, and more enjoyable. Every step in this procedure—manufacturing, marketing, exchanging—is free and fair, and when this is the case the resulting distribution of rewards is also fair. It is only when someone profits and becomes rich because government gives him a subsidy or provides him with some advantage over his rivals and his customers that there is mal-distribution and unfairness in the final result.

Setting a Good Example

Let me emphasize the fact that the free market economy rewards each participant according to the value willing consumers attach to his offering of goods and services. Why does a rock singer make millions while your fine church organist makes hundreds? The answer is obvious; crowds of people would rather pay a lot of money to hear rock than to listen to Bach for free. We may find this intellectual and esthetic wasteland repugnant to our refined sensibilities. But what an opportunity this situation presents to every teacher. I refer not only to full time professors, preachers, and writers. Most anyone can be a teacher. Nearly everyone, in other words, has the capacity to convey a new idea to some other person, to instill a nobler sentiment, a superior value, a higher moral tone. More persuasive than any of these, we can set a good example.

It is a solid truth, I believe, that you cannot build a free society out of just any old kind of people. A free society is built around a nucleus of people of superior intellect and integrity who are, at the same time, cognizant of economic and political reality. You need people who love God and their neighbor; people of understanding and compassion; people with enduring family ties. Our schools and our churches should be producing people of this caliber, for it is the function of education and religion—in the broad sense of both terms—to make us better and wiser men and women. When we have a significant number of wise and good people living lives of a quality high enough to deserve a free society we’ll have a free society. All the rest of us, riding on their coattails, will reap the rich blessings of liberty.

Originally published in The Freeman, August 1986.

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Churches and the Social Order

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By Edmund Opitz.

Countless generations of men have lived in unfree societies, but many men dreamed of freedom and hoped for the day when their children would be free. Gradually the West developed a philosophy of freedom, a rationale for individual immunity against governmental power. This intellectual movement gathered strength in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; Liberalism, as it was called, became the major social force in country after country. As the twentieth century dawned it appeared that the ideals of the free society were safely installed in the thinking of the West and progressively realized in practice in the major countries. But then something hap pened. In country after country, the highway of Liberalism turned into the road to serfdom. We made an about face in this country, but those who led off in a new direction didn’t even bother to change the labels. They still call themselves Liberals, but the program of Liberalism in 1993 is radically opposed to the ideals of a free society. It is merely a pragmatized version of old-line socialism.

We sense that all is not well with our society, nor with our world. Our traditional rights and liberties, once taken for granted, are in jeopardy; they are undermined by dubious theories, and often overridden in practice. Under constant attack are such things as individual liberty, limited government, the private property concept, and the free market way of doing business. Taken together these items are the essential elements of the free society.

This essay is an effort to get to the roots of the present situation, to determine, if possible, some of the causes; and to suggest, in the light of this analysis, the nature of the remedy. The dislocations which meet the eye most immediately appear on the economic and political levels, but they stem if the analysis of this paper is correct from aberrations at the deeper levels of ethics and religion. Believing that no remedy can be successful that does not go at least as deep as the disease, it is suggested that sound economic and political theory, while imperative and good as far as it goes, does not go far enough by itself to make the case for liberty. It is further suggested that the typical added arguments from ethics are in fact substitutes for a genuine ethical theory. The difficulties that confront any effort to construct or revive an ethical consensus are alluded to, leading to an awareness of the need for reconstruction in the area of philosophy or theology. The case for liberty, in short, needs to be watertight. If there is an open seam at any level it may prove to be the gap through which liberty will be lost, for “Nature always seeks out the hidden flaw.”

Liberty Lost

Given a choice, most people today, will choose liberty—other things being equal. People don’t give up their liberties except under some delusion, such as the delusion that the surrender of a little liberty will strengthen the guarantee of economic security. There never has been a serious anti-liberty philosophy and platform as such, whose principles people have examined, accepted, and then put into practice. Things haven’t happened this way. But although we haven’t chosen statism, statism is what we are getting: Speaking now not of conquered countries where liberty has been suppressed but of nations like our own where the old legal forms have been preserved, we may say that the steady attrition of liberty in the modern world is not the consequence of a direct assault by open and avowed anti-libertarians. No, the steady decline of liberty among people who sincerely prefer liberty if given a choice is the unforeseen and unwanted by-product of something else.

Liberty Regained

Many people are concerned with the plight of liberty and are working toward its restoration. The tremendous upsurge of interest in the libertarian-conservative philosophy since 1950 is sufficient witness to that fact. The libertarian-conservative camp is unanimous in its opposition to every variety of collectivism and statism, but at this point the unanimity begins to break down. Libertarians and conservatives differ among themselves in their estimate of what it takes to challenge the prevailing ideologies successfully. There are four possible levels or stages of the anti-collectivist, pro-freedom argument: the economic, the political, the ethical, and the religious. Do we need to use all four? Or is one or two sufficient? Opinions differ in the libertarian- conservative camp. Let us examine some of the arguments advanced at each level, beginning with the economic.

It is enough to expound free market economics, say some. Socialism is nothing more than economic heresy and all we have to do is demonstrate the greater productive efficiency of the free market and the socialists will retire in confusion. Freedom works, they say, and as proof point to America’s superiority in computers, telephones, bathtubs, and farm products. The improvement of his material circumstance is man’s chief end, and the only thing that makes a man a Communist or a collectivist is his ignorance of the conditions which must prevail if a society is to be prosperous.

Most of those who stress economic arguments add considerations drawn from political philosophy. Socialism is not only unproductive economically, but the operational imperatives of a socialist society make government the sole employer. Society is run by command, by directives from the top down, the way an army is run. The individual citizen must do as he is told, or starve. There is no independent economic base to sustain political resistance, so the population in a socialized society is necessarily reduced to serfdom. This is an inevitable consequence of a managed economy, a development which is fatal to such political goods as the Rule of Law, respect for the rights and dignity of the individual, and the idea of private ownership protected by law.

Some libertarians and conservatives agree with the urgent need to argue the case on economic and political grounds, but believe that it must be carried a stage further—into ethics. There is not, they would argue, one ethical code for politicians and another for people—there is just one set of ethical norms which is binding on rulers and ruled alike. A socialized society is poor in economic goods, and its citizens are, politically, reduced to serfs. These are social consequences of the moral violations which are built-in features of every variety of collectivism and statism. The moral violations which this argument has in mind are not simply the obvious sins of totalitarian regimes; the lying for political advantage, the murders for convenience, the concentration camps, and so on. These are included, of course, but this argument is mainly directed at the more subtle moral violations inherent in the operations of the welfare state.

The welfare state in America, whether run by Democrats or Republicans, is based on the redistributionist principle: “Votes and taxes for all, subsidies for a few.” In actual practice, the welfare state deprives all citi zens of a percentage of their earnings in order to redistribute this money to its favorites-after taking out a healthy cut to cover its own costs. Such a Robin Hood operation would be both illegal and immoral if private citizens engaged in it; and although any government can, by definition, make its actions legal, it cannot make them moral. Every variety of collectivism, therefore, is charged with ethical violations, in addition to practicing economic and political lunacy.

“Social Utility” Trap

It is at this point that a major rift begins to appear in the freedom camp. Some libertarians challenge the validity of ethical arguments. The universe, they assert, displays no recognizable ethical dimension. Says one of them: “Nature is alien to the idea of right and wrong . . . . It is the social system which determines what should be deemed right and what wrong . . . . The only point that matters is social utility.” Well, all sorts of habit and customs, from primitive ritual cannibalism to using the proper soup spoon, serve the ends of “social utility,” and if social utility is “the only point that matters” I doubt that the case for liberty can be made convincing, however skillful our economic reasoning.

Those who discount ethical and religious arguments get off the bus here. These sturdy fighters for freedom have made their choice of weapons and they are drawn exclusively from the arsenal of economic and political theory. But even among those who would use ethical arguments there is great difference of opinion. “Whose ethics?” they ask, or “What theory of ethics?” One group steers clear of religion, regarding it as a strictly private matter with little or no relevance to the free society. A second group regards religion as hostile to the free society. I propose to deal first with this position.

These anti-religionists employ what they label ethical arguments, as well as arguments drawn from economic and political theory, but when it comes to religion, they draw the line. They want nothing to do with this God stuff! God’s existence is, in their eyes, improbable, but this is not all; religious belief is actually harmful! The title of a lecture in a series sponsored by this group is “The Destructiveness of the God idea.” They proudly proclaim themselves atheists.

There are numerous conceptions of God, and every one of us is a-theist-ic with reference to one or more of them. Most self-styled atheists are a-theist-ic with respect to a childish version of the deity. This is about on a par with not believing in the moon because some people say it is made of green cheese! In history there have been men of incomparable intellectual attainments who have been theists, who would not have been theists if they had had to believe in such a concept of the deity as the typical atheist rejects. And the same is true of contemporary theists. There are popular and degrading notions of God, but the argument is not confined to the limitations imposed by superstition!

Competing Ethical Codes

Now let me return to the first group of ethicists; those who lean heavily on ethical arguments but steer clear of the religious area. These people generally understand that in economics, liberty means reliance on the uncoerced buying habits of consumers as a guide to making economic decisions; “the market,” in short. In politics, liberty implies limited government. This means that governmental action, circumscribed by a written constitution, is designed to protect the lives, the liberties, and the property of all citizens alike. But it also means that both government and constitution must operate within the framework imposed by an ethical code. In terms of this ethical code, political invasions of personal liberty and property are morally wrong. If an act is wrong when done by private citizens, it is just as wrong when done by public officials.

Such a statement as this assumes that private citizens and public officials acknowledge and try to live by the same ethical code. They may, or again, they may not. There is not just one ethical code in 1993; there are several competing and conflicting codes even in this country. Today, however, there is general confusion in the area of our moral values, and some contend that “right” and “wrong” are not meaningful terms. Ethical relativism is widely accepted, and this creed maintains that something which may be right in one time or place may be wrong in another time or place.

A century ago in this country the ethical code could pretty much be taken for granted; people’s notion of what things were right and what things were wrong were, for the most part, deductions from a common source. We derived our ethical consensus from the prevailing religion of the West, Christianity. This ethical consensus was recognizably different, even a century ago, from the ethical consensus of Hindu society, which sanctioned the division of society into inferior and superior castes, and put millions of outcastes outside the category of human beings. It differed in important ways from the ethical consensus which had prevailed in Greece and Rome. W.E.H. Lecky’s famous book, History of European Morals (1869), was a dispassionate account of the transformation wrought in the moral ideals of the ancient world by the introduction of Christianity.

But, although there was a nineteenth-century ethical consensus, fateful developments were pending in the realm of religion and ethics. Friedrich Nietzsche told his contemporaries, in effect: You have given up the Christian God and this means that you cannot long retain your ethical code which is bound up with this faith. Let’s get back to the ethical code of the ancient Greeks! Nietzsche urged what he called “a trans-valuation of all values.” Karl Marx was telling us during this period that the productive efforts of a society are the main thing; ethical, intellectual, and spiritual things are mere superstructure. The moral values of the nineteenth century, therefore, were capitalist ethics; get rid of capitalist production and capitalist ethics would follow it down the drain, to be replaced by Communist ethics. And Communist ethics, as spelled out by Lenin, are an inversion of Christian ethics. Whatever advances the Party is right and good. Lying and murder are endorsed as ethical practices if they further the cause of the Communist Party.

The ethical confusion has worsened in our own day, and become more complicated. And so an awareness grows that the kind of an ethical code we would endorse is by no means obvious to a lot of people; therefore, if this code is again to become an active principle in the lives of people it needs some attention.

The Lack of an Ethical Consensus

Our traditional ethical code is the end result of a particular historical development. This code is something people have learned; they have imbibed it from Western culture. It is not, in other words, a biological set of guidelines with which people come equipped at birth, as they have two hands, two feet, one head, and so on. Recognition of this fact turns up in odd places. John Dewey, himself no Christian, spent some time in China after World War I, and in 1922 he made this pertinent observation: “Until I had lived in a country where Christianity is relatively little known and has had relatively very few generations of influence upon the character of people, I had always assumed, as natural reactions which one could expect of any normal human being in a given situation, reactions which I now discover you only find among the people that have been exposed many generations to the influence of the Christian ethic.” In other words, our traditional ethical code is one we have learned over the centuries in a Christian culture. We were educated into it century after century, until the past several generations, during which time we have been slowly educated out of it. The assumption that we can take our ethical code for granted and use it to confound the collectivists presupposes a situation that does not exist; it presupposes an ethical consensus, when it is precisely the absence of such a consensus which has helped create the vacuum into which collectivism has seeped!

As the French philosopher André Mal-raux tells us, we are living in the first agnostic civilization. Until the past two or three generations, men believed that their moral ideals reflected the nature of the universe. But if the universe is a complete moral blank, completely alien to notions of right and wrong, then all moral codes are merely homemade rules for convenience. A rule against murder is on the same level as a rule against driving on the left hand side of the street; there is no intrinsic difference between the two. A libertarian writer defends the integrity of scientific and economic laws as the only constants in the universe. These, he writes, “must not be confused with man-made laws of the country and with man-made moral precepts.” It follows, therefore, that if men do not happen to like the ethical code they are living under they can write themselves a new one, just as easily as they can change from summer to winter clothing.

To sum up the matter: We can no longer take our traditional ethical code for granted. The foundation it was based upon has been neglected, and an ethical code, by its nature, is a set of inferences and deductions from something more fundamental than itself. We may behave decently out of habit, but ethical theory—by its very nature—must be grounded in a theology, or cosmology, if you prefer. A belief in the impossibility of ethics because the universe is a moral blank is an instance of the truism that every code for conduct is a deduction from a judgment based on faith as to the nature of things.

We hear it said frequently that individual man, in the totalitarian countries, is made for the state; but here, the state is made for man. If we say that the state is made for man, the implication is that we have come to some tentative conclusions as to what man is made for. We must have asked, and found some sorts of answers, to questions such as the following: What is the end and goal of human life? What is the purpose and meaning of individual life? What is my nature, and my destiny? Within what framework of meaning does the universe make sense? These are theological and religious questions, and when they are seriously pondered some sorts of answers are bound to come.

That things are senseless and individual life without meaning is one sort of an answer. Once this answer is given, it will start to generate an appropriate ethical code. This is a sort of salvage effort to which the works of the late Albert Camus were devoted. “I proclaim that I believe in nothing,” he writes, “and that everything is absurd.” The only appropriate response to this act of faith is rebellion, arising “from the spectacle of the irrational coupled with an unjust and incomprehensible condition.” This is one reading of the universe and the human condition, together with an appropriate recommended code of conduct. It is, therefore, a religion, although the number of its adherents do not appear in any census. In passing, one might remark that it is a curious kind of “incomprehensible condition” from which a man can apprehend enough to write several books about it! Communism is another contemporary religion. Its universe is a materialistic one, but the universe contains a dynamic force—the mode of production—which is working toward the fulfillment of history in a classless society. And there is an appropriate code of conduct enjoined upon all good Communists.

Choosing Christianity

There is a third option which makes considerable sense to me, and that is Christianity. Such a statement comes as no surprise, and you are probably telling yourself that I, as a professional religionist, have a vested interest in offering just such a conclusion. Permit me, therefore, to digress and sound an autobiographical note. If anyone had told me during my high school years, or up to my senior year in college that I’d wind up as a minister, I’d have taken it as a personal affront! As things turned out, however, I did find myself in theological school after college, but before the first year had gone by I had decided that the ministry was not for me. I was skeptical about theological matters and decided to go into the field of psychology. In theological controversy it seemed to me there were good arguments in favor of all the basic doctrines, and good arguments against. How, then, does one tip the balance in one direction or another? On the level of doctrinal theory it was difficult for me to say. To make a long story short, I finally returned to theological studies, got my degree, and—full of misgivings—was foisted upon an innocent and unsuspecting congregation.

During these years I held to a parallel set of interests in economics and political science. I was a libertarian before I ever heard the word, based on an acquaintance with the thinking of the Classic Liberals and a prejudice in favor of freedom. But my social thinking was in one compartment and my religion was in another. Unbeknownst to me, however, these two things were on a collision course, and it was fated that one day they should bump into each other. They did, and lots of things began to fall into place. I became aware of what Christianity had meant to Western civilization and to the framing of America’s institutions, and before long I had the ingredients to tip my theological balance in the direction of firmer religious convictions. I also knew why Classic Liberalism failed, although it had played its own game with its own deck—it lacked the religious dimension which alone makes life meaningful to individuals and provides a foundation for ethics.

People were freer in the nineteenth century than men had ever been before. This period was the heyday of Liberalism, but it also happened to be the twilight of religion. Large numbers of people became uncertain about the ends for which life should be lived. Lacking a sense of purpose and destiny they were afflicted by the feeling that life has little or no meaning, that the individual doesn’t matter nor his life count. Just when people had the most freedom they lost touch with the things which make freedom really worth having. Freedom had once been affirmed as a necessary condition for man if he were to achieve his true end, but when the religious dimension dropped out of life the advocates of freedom got themselves into a “promising contest” with the collectivists as to which could outpromise the other when it came to delivering the maximum quantity of material things. As was to be expected, the collectivists outpromised their opponents, although their actual performance must forever fall short. Liberty, in other words, is recognized for the precious thing it really is when significant numbers of people know that they must have it in order to work out their eternal destiny.

There are two things I am not saying. I am not saying that we have to cook up or feign an interest in religion merely to accomplish political or economic ends. Such efforts would be fruitless, but even if they were effective I’d oppose them. Secondly, I am not saying that men who, for reasons of their own, cannot embrace religion and ethics, cannot therefore be effective champions of free market economics and limited government. There are technical areas in political theory, and especially in economics, where a lot more enlightenment is needed, and where there is no impingement on the domains of ethics and religion. Nonreligious libertarians may be invaluable here. Even so, they cannot touch all bases. The man who is a socialist for religious or ethical reasons won’t be shaken in his convictions by economic and political arguments alone; his religious and ethical misconceptions must be met on their own ground.

Utilitarianism

At this point I shall be reminded that economists, after Adam Smith to the present day, do tend typically to hold some variety of the ethical theory known as Utilitarianism, which dates back to Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill in the early and middle part of the nineteenth century. But as Mill himself pointed out, the creed has a long history, dating from Epicurus in the third century B.C.

Utilitarianism states its principles in various ways, but invariably it emphasizes two cardinal points—maximum satisfaction and minimum effort. Man, in terms of this theory, acts only to maximize his happiness, pleasures, satisfactions or comfort, and he seeks to do this with a minimum expenditure of energy. Utilitarianism has little or nothing to say about the spiritual, ethical or cultural framework within which its “maximum economy—maximum satisfaction” principle operates. It minimizes or denies life’s spiritual dimension, it uses the word “good” in a non-ethical sense, i.e., equivalent to “happiness producing,” and it asserts that men are bound together in societies solely on the basis of a rational calculation of the private advantage to be gained by social cooperation under the division of labor.

The Utilitarian proposition that each man invariably tends to achieve his ends with a minimum of effort says nothing about the means he may or will use. The “maximum economy” principle, when it first took over as a conscious maxim of human behavior—in nineteenth-century England—operated within the value system or ethical code persons happened to have at the time. The ethical code in the West during the period of the appearance and gradual acceptance of the “maximum economy” principle—during the past century—was largely a product of the religious heritage of Europe. This ethical legacy assured that although men would tend to take the line of least effort in the attaining of their ends, they would at the same time use only those means which are compatible with the moral norms enjoined by their religion. Moral norms are restraints on certain actions, and if the “maximum economy” principle is fervently accepted it must go to work on the restraints embodied in the ethical code whenever they interfere with the line of least resistance between a man’s aims and their realization. The” maximum economy” principle, by its very nature, necessarily sacrifices means to ends, and in the circumstances of the modern world Utilitarianism begins to undermine the old ethical norms wherever these impede an individual’s attainment of his economic ends.

Robbery, it has been observed, is the first labor saving device. If a man accepts, without qualification, the precept “Get more for less” as his categorical imperative, what will he do when a combination of circum stances presents him with a relatively safe opportunity to steal? His ethical compunctions against theft have already been dulled, and the use of theft as a means of acquiring economic goods is one of the possible logical conclusions that may be drawn from the “greatest economy” principle. Theft is, of course, forbidden in many of the world’s ethical codes, and conformity to these codes over the millennia has bred a reluctance to steal in most men. Thievery there has been aplenty despite the bans, but it has been accompanied by a guilty conscience. The “maximum economy” principle, when first accepted, is applied to productive labor within the framework of the code. But if the idea of “Get more for less” is a principle, why not apply it across the board?

There are two impediments to a man’s acquisition of economic goods: First, there is the effort required to produce them, and second, there is the prohibition against stealing them. The former is in the nature of things, but the latter comes to be regarded as merely a man-made rule. The “greatest economy” principle goes to work on the first impediment—productive effort—by inventing labor saving devices; it goes to work on the second impediment—the moral code—by collectivizing it. It reduces the commandment against theft to a matter of social expediency.

Society is admonished against theft on the grounds that a society in which property is not secure is a poor society. But this truism offers no guidance to the individual who finds himself in a situation where he can steal with relative impunity. To the extent that he is emancipated from “outmoded” taboos and follows the line of least resistance, he will steal whenever he thinks he can get away with it, and to make theft easier and safer he will start writing a form of theft into his statutes: “Votes and taxes for all, subsidies for us.” Utilitarianism, in short, has no logical stopping place short of collectivism. Utilitarian collectivism is not a contradiction in terms, although particular Utilitarians, restrained by other principles, may stop short of collectivism.

Utilitarianism purports to be a theory of ethics; man ought to act, it declares, so as to augment the quantity of satisfactions. It is usually linked to a theory of motivation which sweepingly declares that every human action aims at improving the well-being of the acting agent: “acting is necessarily always selfish.” Capitalism, it is asserted, is based on this deterministic psychology. The militant atheist group mentioned earlier adopts what it calls a morality of self-interest. “Morality is a rational science,” we read in their literature, “with man’s life as its standard, [and] self-interest as its motor.” “Capitalism,” the author continues, “expects, and by its nature demands that every man act in the name of his rational self-interest.” Let us examine this unqualified assertion. Capitalism, or the market economy, begins to work automatically in a society where there is a preponderance of fair play and an evenhanded justice in operation. Lacking these essential conditions capitalism cannot be made to work. Here’s a person with more shrewdness than ability; he has little energy and fewer scruples. On the market, the verdict of his peers is that his services aren’t worth very much; so he consults his rational self-interest—unimpeded by old-fashioned ethics—and learns that his shrewdness and lack of scruples admirably equip him to operate a racket. He starts one, and becomes wealthy and famous. Would anyone care to try to convince an Ivan Boesky, for instance, that it is really to his own self-interest to play the game fairly even though this would put him behind the wheel of a bakery truck at $160.00 per week? How can the anti-capitalistic mentality, if it is true to itself, and acts in its own self-interest, project a capitalist society? The answer is, it can’t.

Some accidents of history shattered our society’s ethical and religious framework just at the time when free market economists came forth armed with insights into human behavior in the areas of production and trade. But because men respond one way in one sector of life it cannot be inferred that they respond the same way everywhere, nor that they should. Oddly enough, it is precisely free market economists themselves who best embody this truism. Free market economists in these days find a poor market for their services. There is, on the other hand, a great public demand for the tripe palmed off as the new economics by the “social scientists.”

Resisting all such market demands the free market economists stand by their principles even though this means that, with motives impunged, they are lonely voices, victims of academic and professional dis crimination. Why do they not yield to pressure of popular demand, as they themselves advocate should be done in the realms of production, trade, and entertainment? Does the market demand ridiculous spike-heeled shoes and mismatched clothes? Then give the public what it wants, say the free market economists; in the realm of material things, the majority is always right. Are there complaints about the high salaries of rock wailers and Hollywood sex symbols, coupled with laments about the low estate of the legitimate theater? Yes, but not from free market economists who conceal any disgust they may feel and merely say, “Let the public be served.” But when it comes to the realm of ideas the economists, to their enormous credit, ignore the market—public and majority pressures—and do not trim or hedge or yield an inch on their convictions. In other words, they operate with one set of principles in the realm of material things-“Give the public what it wants”—but they invoke another set of principles when they enter the realm of economic ideas—“Resist public pressure on behalf of intellect and conscience.” Oddly enough, however, there is nothing in their philosophy to legitimize the second set of principles. They know by a kind of instinct or intuition that ideas or opinions which have a price tag attached—as if they were marketable commodities like any other—aren’t worth much, and neither is the person who hawks them. But instincts and intuitions, however civilized and humane, are largely uncommunicable.

Conduct, however exemplary, cannot make its point when it is tied to a philosophy which alleges that the game of life has no rules; therefore, seek private advantage, maximize personal satisfactions. No matter how such ingredients as these are combined they won’t result in a philosophy of liberty. This needs something else, namely, a framework of values which makes possible a different approach. The restoration of our ethical consensus and the repair of our value system brings us to arguments on the religious level. The traditional arguments in this area won’t be given a fair shake by our contemporaries unless there is a contemporary approach to them which really confronts us with them. Perhaps there is such an approach.

The City of God and The City of Man

Christianity introduced a concept into the thought of the West which is alien to the thinking of Plato and Aristotle, the two major thinkers of the ancient world. This new concept has been called, after Augustine, the idea of the two cities: the City of God and the City of Man. Man, it is asserted, holds his citizenship papers in two realms, the earthly and the heavenly. He is to negotiate this life as best he can, seeking as much justice and such happiness as this world permits, but in full awareness that his ultimate felicity may be attained only in another order of existence.

This concept would have been largely incomprehensible to the Greeks. Man, for Aristotle, was a political animal who might find complete fulfillment in the closed society of the Greek city-state. A standard work on this aspect of Grecian life is Ernest Barker’s Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle (1906, 1959), and a few sentences from this book convey the flavor of the Greek outlook. Summarizing Aristotle, Barker writes: “The good of the individual is the same as the good of the society . . . . The notion of the individual is not prominent, and the conception of rights seems hardly to have been attained.” Speaking of Socrates, Barker writes, “For him there was no rule of natural justice outside the law; law is justice, he held, and what is just is simply what is commanded in the laws.” Ethics and politics are one, and there is no distinction between Church and State. The city-state, “being itself both Church and State . .. had both to repress original sin—the function to which medieval theory restricted the State, and to show the way to righteousness—a duty which medieval theory vindicated for the Church.”

After the decay of ancient society and the polarization of Church and State, the distinction between spiritual and secular power in Europe and America for the past nineteen centuries guaranteed that there would always be some separation and dispersal of power within the nation. But with the dropping of the religious dimension from modern life we return to the unitary state in both theory and practice. This was obvious to Barker early this century as he foresaw the rise of the welfare state: “It seems to be expected of the State that it shall clothe and feed, as well as teach its citizens, and that it shall not only punish drunkenness, but also create temperance. We seem to be returning to the old Greek conception of the State as a positive maker of goodness; and in our collectivism, as elsewhere, we appear to be harking ‘back to Aristotle.’”

Christianity introduced another concept into Western thought which has had an effect upon our thinking about government, the concept of the Fall. Christian thought distinguishes between the created world as it came from the hand of God, and the fallen world known to history; between the world of primal innocence we posit, and the world marred by evil, which we know. It follows from this original premise that Christian thought is non-behaviorist; it is based on the idea that the true inwardness of a thing—its real nature—cannot be fully known by merely observing its outward behavior. Things are distorted in the historical and natural order, unable to manifest their true being. Man especially is askew. He is created in the image of God, but now he is flawed by Sin.

Some political implications may be drawn from these premises: It has been a characteristic note in Christian sociology, from the earliest centuries, to regard government not as an original element of the created world but as a reflection of man’s corrupted nature in our fallen world. Government, in other words, is a consequence of sin; it appears only after the fall. Government is an effect of which human error and evil are the causes. Government, at best, is competent to punish injustice, but it cannot promote virtue. In other words, the Christian rationale for government is incompatible with the total state required by collectivism. When the Christian rationale for government is understood and spelled out, the only political role compatible with it is the modest function of defending the peace of society by curbing peace breakers. When government is limited to repressing criminal and destructive actions, men are free to act constructively and creatively up to the full limit of their individual capacities.

We arrive at a similar conclusion by contemplating the second half of the Great Commandment, where we are enjoined to love our neighbor as ourselves. The bonds that should unite people, it is here implied, are those of unyielding good will, understanding, and compassion. But in collectivist theory, on the other hand, people are to be put through their paces by command and coercion. This is the nature of the means which must be, and are being, employed in even the most well-intentioned welfare state. In practice, every collectivized order careens toward a police state whose own citizens are its first victims. The love commandment of the Gospels, brought down to the political level, implies justice and parity and freedom. There is no way to twist these basic premises into a sanctioning of the operational imperatives of a collectivist society.

The argument from liberty to Christianity has now been sketched in outline. Those who would limit the defense of liberty to a discussion of free market economics, with an assist from political theory, have a genuine role to perform, as far as they go. And if they cannot bring themselves to accept the truth of ethics and religion, integrity demands that they refuse to pretend otherwise. Their economic arguments are much needed, and thus they are invaluable allies in this sector. But liberty has not been lost on this level alone, and it cannot be won back on this level alone.

We are confronted, not only by highly developed and sophisticated arguments for socialism and communism, but by fully collectivized nations.

Before there was ever a collectivist nation, there was a collectivist program. Before there was ever a collectivist program, there was a collectivist philosophy. Before there was ever a collectivist philosophy, there were collectivist axioms and premises, with appropriate attitudes toward life, and an appropriate mood.

The roots of collectivism go this deep, right down to our basic attitude toward the universe and our primordial demands on life. This is the level of a man’s fundamental orientation of his life, the level at which religion begins to do its work. We must get squared away here, otherwise our thinking on the other levels will be distorted. But with a proper religious orientation—at this fundamental level of basic attitudes and mood we can work out a philosophy of freedom.

When we have worked out the philosophy of freedom, we can advance a program based upon it.

And when we have a freedom philosophy and program we will eventually get a free society. This sounds like a laborious route to take, and it is. But life doesn’t serve up many short cuts.

Originally published in The Freeman, January 1993, Volume 43, Issue 1.

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The following two essays on the morality of the free market were written by Edmund Opitz. The first was a paper delivered at St. Mary’s University (San Antonio, TX) and subsequently published in The Freeman (Vol. 43, Issue 3). The second was also published in The Freeman originally in December 1983.

Ethics and Business (March 1993)

A few years ago there was an immensely popular television series, named after Dallas. The central character of this show was a powerful and unscrupulous businessman who got that way by climbing over the backs of rivals, manipulating politicians, and wheeling and dealing with shadowy figures on the fringes of the underworld. J. R. Ewing finally got in the way of a bullet, and for months this nation was racked by the question: “Who shot J.R.?” But the civilized man could only wonder why the trigger man waited so long!

Business and the businessman have had a bad press, almost uniformly. Do you remember the television show whose hero was a businessman? The show that portrayed this businessman as a person of integrity and vision, who labored long hours to produce a product that supplied a genuine need, which he marketed at prices people could afford? Who treated his employees with generosity and consideration, and his customers with unfailing courtesy? Who was a devoted family man, active in civic affairs, and a churchman? Who could recite Shakespeare by the yard, relaxed by listening to his fine collection of recorded symphony music, and could tell a Corot from a Monet? Do you remember that show? Perhaps it was a movie? Actually it was neither. Such a show was never produced; the subject is taboo, by today’s mores.

The businessman has rarely if ever been treated fairly and accurately in drama or fiction. Is this because there are no men and women of superior intellect and high character in the world of business, industry, and trade? Not at all. Has the world of business no dramatic possibilities? Of course it has. But the fictional businessman invariably turns out to be the villain. There is a reason why this is so; the businessman is portrayed as a scoundrel because there is an almost universal bias against business on the part of novelists and dramatists. Businessmen do not get a fair shake because novelists and dramatists—with rare exceptions—have an ideological axe to grind.

This is the impression that emerges from our casual contact with the world of popular entertainment, the world of television, films, and fiction. This impression is confirmed in an unpretentious little volume by Ben Stein entitled The View from Sunset Boulevard. Stein interviewed a number of Hollywood writers and producers of television shows in order to find out how they viewed the various aspects of American life. If a visitor from England were to spend a little time watching television, what image of America would he come away with? Stein deals with television’s treatment of crime, the police, government, the army, the family, and other aspects of American life, including business. How do the people in Hollywood regard business? “One of the clearest messages of television,” Stein writes, “is that businessmen are bad, evil people, and that big businessmen are the worst of all . . . the murderous, duplicitous, cynical businessman is about the only kind of businessman there is on TV adventure shows, just as the cunning, trickster businessman shares the stage with the pompous buffoon businessman in situation come-dies.” A well known producer, Stanley Kramer, sees business as “part of a very great power structure which wields enormous power over the people.” And beyond that, Kramer implies, there is an “arrangement” between business and organized crime: “the Mafia is part of the entire corporate entity now.”

The warped feelings of wealthy and talented Hollywood writers and producers did not spring into existence unaided; it is one of the calculated end results of an intense propaganda effort that has been hacking away at the roots of Western society since the middle of the last century—attacking its religious origin, its values, and what is perceived as the last bastion of the bourgeoisie, business. A scholarly work which meticulously researched this vast literature appeared in 1954, by Professor James Desmond Glover of the Harvard Business School, entitled The Attack on Big Business. Professor Glover writes: “In volumes upon volumes of testimony before Congressional committees, in popular novels, in learned treatises and textbooks, in poetry, in sermons, in opinions of Supreme Court justices, ‘big business’ and its works are seen as evil and attacked. The literature of criticism of ‘big business,’ and of the civilization it has done so much to bring into being, represents by now a perfectly staggering mass of material.”

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality

What is the rationale for this widespread antagonism toward the business system, otherwise known as capitalism? I don’t profess to understand all the reasons for the anti-capitalistic mentality, but the root cause of the antipathy is surely the perception, the mistaken perception, that the relation between employer and employee is that of exploiter to victim. The employer may intend no harm, he may intend only good to those who work for him, but in the capitalistic mode of production Karl Marx contended the worker is denied the full fruits of his labor; a portion of every wage earner’s product is garnished by his boss. To simplify Marxist theory, we might say that John Smith who runs a machine in a shoe factory—punches the clock at eight o’clock in the morning and works till noon. During these four hours he produces six palm of shoes, which represent his wage for the day. John Smith returns to his bench and works four more hours in the afternoon, but the shoes he produces during these four hours are expropriated by his employer.

This is a summary statement of the surplus value theory, otherwise known as Marx’s exploitation theory. It is a central contention of Marxism that labor alone creates value, the value of a commodity being measured by the quantity of labor normally necessary to produce it. But if it is labor alone that creates value, the value created should belong exclusively to labor. It does not, however; the lion’s share is grabbed by the employer while the real producer is paid only a subsistence wage.

This theory overlooks the role of tools and machinery in production. The tool user in this generation is many times more productive than his counterpart of a few generations ago. Why is this? His naked labor power is no greater than that of people over the ages. The enhanced productivity of labor today is due to the tools and machinery at the disposal of every one of us—and those tools are the fruits of the labor of earlier generations. If today’s “worker” retained the full product of his individual effort, and only that, the poor fellow would starve.

A contemporary of Marx, the celebrated Austrian economist Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk, demolished the surplus value theory in a book entitled Capital and Interest, published in 1884, the year after Marx died. The demolition job has been repeated many times since the appearance of Bohm-Bawerk’s great book, and the consensus of opinion among independent economists is that the surplus value theory does not hold water. The exploitation theory has great propaganda value, however, and it is used unthinkingly by those who are acting out a grudge against business, which, in their distorted vision, keeps the poor locked in their poverty in order that others might be rich.

Ben Stein, in the book mentioned earlier, records a portion of his conversation with television writer Bob Weiskopf:

“Q. Why are people poor in America?

“A. Because I don’t think the system could function if everyone was well off.

“Q. What do you mean?

“A. I think you have to have poor people in a capitalist society.

“Q. Why?

“A. To exploit. The rich people can’t exploit each other. Consequently they always exploit the poor.”

It is not only Hollywood script writers who profess to believe that the rich get richer only by making the poor poorer. The coordinator of the National Council of Churches’ Anti-Poverty Task Force asserts that, “Poverty would not continue to exist if those in power did not feel it was good for them.” A moment’s reflection will reveal this insulting accusation for the silly sentiment it is. We live in a commercial and manufacturing society. Our economy is featured by mass production, not only in factories but also in agriculture. The products of mass production flood our stores and supermarkets and showrooms, to be bought by the mass of consumers. Mass production cannot continue unless there is mass consumption; and the masses of people cannot consume the output of our mass production factories and fields unless they possess pur chasing power—the money to buy the goods of their choice. To suggest that those who have goods and services to sell have some sinister interest in keeping their potential customers too poor to buy is sheer nonsense! If the president of General Motors wants to sell you a Cadillac or a Buick or a Chevrolet—which he does—then he wants you to be rich enough to buy. in the free economy, everyone has a stake in the economic well-being of every other person.

It is in the immediate interest of business and businessmen that the masses of people be well off; people who are poor are poor customers, and business cannot survive without customers. Business has no stake in poverty; but there is a class of people who do need the poor, who do have an interest in keeping them poor. Permit me, in a slight digression, to offer you a few words on this point by the celebrated economist Thomas Sowell: “To be blunt, the poor are a gold mine. By the time they are studied, advised, experimented with and administered, the poor have helped many a middle class liberal to achieve affluence with government money. The total amount of money the government spends on its ‘anti-poverty’ efforts is three times what would be required to lift every man, woman, and child in America above the poverty line by simply sending money to the poor.”

Back now to the widespread animus against business, stemming from the false idea that labor is the sole source of value but is not allowed to keep what it produces. In the distorted vision of Karl Marx, business, industry, and trade—as these economic activities are organized in the free world—re intrinsically evil, and the businessman is a parasite and predator. Similar notions are entertained by many a man in the street who has never read a line of Marx, as well as by intellectuals who regard themselves as anti-Communists. Given this climate of opinion, the term “ethical businessman” is a contradiction in terms; it is the figure of speech known to English teachers as an oxymoron—a figure which juxtaposes incongruous terms like “virtuous thief” or “honest liar.”

Now, if businessmen are involved in activities which are intrinsically crooked, evil by their very nature, then it is pointless to discuss the ethical situations of business or the moral dilemmas businessmen sometimes face. It would be like instructing a thief on how to rob banks honestly! So I propose to spend a few minutes trying to understand the nature of the economic activities that engage businessmen, while touching upon some of the values that are implicated in the production of goods and services.

All Are Sinners

You have a right to know the direction from which I am coming at you, to know my bias. I have examined the catalogue of sins of which businessmen are allegedly guilty, and Lo! they are the very same sins exhibited by people in every other walk of life. We all break the Commandments now and then, every one of us. Businessmen have no monopoly on sin. My mind goes back to a conversation I had several years ago with a professor of economics with years of teaching behind him, who had also served for many years as the academic dean of a prestigious Midwestern college. He said to me, “You know, Ed, a thoroughly dishonest man can last a lot longer in teaching or preaching than as a used car salesman.” There may be some hyperbole here, but my friend has a point. There are good and bad in all walks of life, and there are very few saints anywhere; but in the eyes of the law all are equal. The law should mete out justice upon the guilty party with impartiality. It should punish those who harass, steal, defraud, breach a contract, assault, or murder. This is the rule of law in action.

There is no justification for the assumption that all businessmen are evil people who must therefore be regulated, i.e., adjudged guilty until proven innocent. There is no more reason for regulating businessmen than for regulating clergymen or teachers!

Who Decides?

The free market economic system produces goods and services in abundance, and it rewards every participant according to his individual contribution—as his peers judge that contribution. “To the producer belongs the fruits of his toil,” is an ancient bit of wisdom, as true now as when first uttered. The relation between an individual’s effort and the eventual reward of his exertions is fairly clear in a simple situation like subsistence farming. You work by yourself, preparing the ground in the spring, seeding and tilling it, watering the furrows with your sweat during the heat of summer, reaping in the fall. The abundance of your harvest is directly traceable to your skills and the amount of work you put forth. The greater your effort the more ample your harvest—other things being equal. The harvest is your wage, and your wage in this instance is pretty much determined by your own skill and your own exertions; the more you put in the more you will take out. What you take out is your wage, the economic equivalent of your contribution.

How is your wage determined in a complex division of labor society such as ours? Justice still demands that every participant in the economy be rewarded according to his contribution to the productive process. But how shall we identify each individual’s contribution in order to reward him commensurately? Economists from Adam Smith to Ludwig von Mises to F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman have worked this question over and come up with an answer that is completely democratic and economically efficient, while encouraging every person in the full exercise of his lawful liberties. The answer provided by the economist is: Let the market decide what each person’s contribution is worth and reward him accordingly. “The market” describes the process of social cooperation under the division of labor where free people specialize in a complex variety of tasks in anticipation of a consumer demand for the goods and services they produce—followed by multiple voluntary exchanges of these products in which persons give over something they value for whatever they value more. This market process will reward people unequally, but it will reward them equitably, compensating each person in a measure equal to his peers’ evaluation of his services.

The eminent economist Frank H. Knight, founder of the Chicago School, put the matter in these words: “It is a proposition of elementary economics that ideal market competition will force entrepreneurs to pay every productive agent employed what his cooperation adds to the total, the difference between what it can be with him and what it would be without him. This is his own product in the only meaning the word can have where persons or their resources act jointly.” In short, each person will get his fair share, defined as what others will voluntarily offer for his goods and services—provided there is general freedom.

Each one of us is judged by his peers; our offerings of goods and services are evaluated by consumers who give us what they think our offerings are worth to them, and not a penny more. This is a democratic judgment on the value of the products of our labor—one dollar, one vote—and it is made by consumers who are, as everyone knows, ignorant, venal, superstitious, neurotic, biased, and stupid. In other words, people just like us—because every one of us is a consumer! When it is a question of the wage we earn we are dependent on consumers, who couldn’t care less that we are upright men of sterling character; their sole concern is: Do we have a product or service they want? If we do, they reward us handsomely. If we don’t, it matters not that we have labored long and painfully over our brainchild; if the customers don’t want it, we’re stuck with it. This is consumer sovereignty.

Consumers run the free economy; producers cater to their demands. It’s their show. What kind of a show do they put on? Not always a good one, I’m sorry to say. But I’ll say one thing for consumer sovereignty: it sure beats the alternative.

Freedom to Excel and Fail

Freedom is a costly thing, and we cannot keep it unless we are willing to pay the price. It is required of each one of us that we firmly adhere to the processes of freedom, even when we can barely stand some of the products of freedom—the products being what people do when given their “druthers.” The freer the society the more things people will do that we might find distasteful; this is one of the consequences of freedom, and we have to school ourselves to accept it. This we have learned to do in two important areas—freedom of the press and freedom of worship. We must learn to be equally tolerant in the areas of business, industry, and trade.

How fares the written word when the masses are relatively literate and free to pick their own reading material, where they themselves select the men and women who will do their writing for them? The highest paid writers may be those whose subliterary efforts jam the boob tube, some of whose opinions I quoted earlier. The magazines and newspapers of largest circulation may be those which cater to our prurient interests. Best-selling novels are forgotten by next year. But as much as anyone might deplore the decline of reading and the low estate of publishing—now that the press is free—no one with any sense would wish to add a Department of Censorship to the already overgrown government bureaucracy. To put the press under a Ministry of Information and Propaganda would be disastrous. Freedom of the press may give every idiocy a voice; authors may not reap a monetary reward commensurate with their literary talents; so be it, we say; it’s the price we pay willingly for freedom of the press. Freedom merely allows the budding genius the elbow room he needs to live, and breathe, and write. And books of solid scholarly competence still appear regularly for the small audience which needs the nourishment only the word can provide. My mind goes back to an observation of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “There are not in the world at any one time more than a dozen persons who read and understand Plato:—never enough to pay for an edition of his works; yet to every generation these [works] come duly down, for the sake of those few persons . . . .”

Take the matter of religious liberty, the separation of church and state. In a free society people are not punished for belonging to the “wrong” church. They belong to the church of their own choice, or they belong to no church, as the case might be. In any event, the law pays no attention, so long as no injury is done to person or property. What happens when people are free in the area of religion? First of all, they mangle the phrase “separation of church and state” into my least favorite American shibboleth! Even people who should know better distort and misuse the phrase.

Then there are the so-called “electronic churches,” the spellbinders who appear in television; there are the “hot gospellers” who dominate radio every Sunday morning; there are the cults in which people give over their souls to some figure of dubious charismatic allure; there is the new appeal of mystical imports from the exotic Orient; the occult flourishes, along with magic and superstition. And the mainline churches, in many instances, have subordinated theology to dubious economic and political theory. Church bodies support and help finance revolutionary and guerrilla activities. But is anyone campaigning to establish a government Department of Religion? Not to my knowledge. However much we may dislike certain manifestations of religion when belief is free, we shrug our shoulders and tolerate what we dislike as the price of religious liberty.

Some of these same considerations apply to the realm of business, industry, and trade, where, as H.L. Mencken once wryly observed: “Nobody ever went broke by underestimating the taste of the American public.” This is all too obvious in what is called the entertainment industry. Here is a hyperkinetic young man, lacking in musical sense, who makes eight million dollars a year by howling and gyrating in public places. Here’s another young man, gifted with a high musical I.Q. and years of study behind him. A handful of people appreciate his organ virtuosity and his sensitive interpretation of Bach. He earns a living as a bank teller, directs a choir, and gives an occasional free organ recital. Young people pay millions of dollars to hear the Rolling Stones, while the Boston Symphony has to pass the hat in order to survive. Is this fair? No. Is it a matter for political solution? That would be an even greater travesty of justice.

The Market Economy

Human beings everywhere have engaged in trade and barter. There is some specialization and a division of labor even among primitive people, with a consequent exchange of the fruits of specialization. The voluntary exchange of goods and services is the market in operation, and the market is everywhere. But the market does not spontaneously or automatically transform itself into the market economy; the market economy emerges only when the moral, political, and legal conditions are right. This occurred under the Whig philosophy of men like Edmund Burke and Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. These men drew up a frame of government whose main purpose was to secure each person in his life, liberty, and property. This political idea of limited, constitutional government is grounded on the religious conviction that we are God’s creatures, possessing immortal souls. The conviction that persons are sacred is politically translated into our Creator- endowed rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Adam Smith referred to his “liberal plan of liberty, equality and justice,” with the free market as the economic counterpart to political liberty. The rule of law replaces the arbitrary will of rulers and personal freedom expands. It is significant that The Wealth of Nations appeared in the same year as the Declaration of Independence.

The discipline of economics as a separate subject matter was almost non-existent prior to Adam Smith. Virtually starting from scratch, Smith created nearly the whole edifice of economics. Adam Smith presupposed the legal framework of the Whig jurists, where the law would eliminate force from the marketplace, punish fraud, and enforce contracts. He also presupposed a high level of probity in the general population. Given these conditions, the market is self-starting and self-regulating; the buying habits of consumers guide producers, determining how the entrepreneur will decide to combine scarce resources for the maximum satisfaction of consumer needs. There will be a harmony in these diverse activities of millions of participants as if everything were directed by “an invisible hand.” The market economy—dubbed “capitalism” by its enemies about a century after Smith—contained the promise of prosperity for the multitudes. These same masses composed a self-governing people. Political liberty expanded and people had lots of elbow room to pick and choose and plan their own lives.

The Declaration and the Constitution created the political frame for a people who aspired to the ideal of”liberty and justice for all.” Political liberty assured freedom in economic transactions between employer and employee, seller and buyer. The work ethic was enshrined in America and wages doubled, redoubled, and doubled again during the nineteenth century—an eightfold increase in real wages. For the first time in history the masses glimpsed the possibility of pulling themselves out of poverty and creating new opportunities for their children. America’s schools and churches sought to shore up the traditional value structure of our culture and to orient the newly enlarged popular freedom toward virtue. Their success, needless to say, was only partial.

Was there ugliness in American life? Of course there was. Freedom was misused; the scramble for wealth was sometimes pretty crass. The newly rich were vulgar; plunderers bought and sold politicians, and fortunes were scooped out of the public treasury—all in violation of Whig theory and free market economics. But you cannot blame capitalism for the miscreants who refuse to abide by its rules.

Despite the gray and black areas in our history, there was still open opportunity on these shores, in comparison to what was available in other parts of the globe. Thirty-three million people told us so by coming here as immigrants during the half century before World War I. They came because life here—although far from perfect—was far better for them than life elsewhere.

The business of America is not business. It never was. The business of America is individual liberty, with the law enforcing an even-handed justice among equal persons. When the law provides a free field and no favor—which was the original implication of laissez faire—the economic order is the free market.

The market economy does not carry any implication that business may act irresponsibly with impunity. If, for example, industrial wastes are disposed of in such a way that persons are injured or property damaged, the law should punish those responsible and offer redress to the injured party. If a seller misrepresents a product he is guilty of fraud and the buyer’s injury should be redressed. If a businessman solicits and obtains a subsidy from government, or if government gives him monopolistic advantages over his competition enabling him to exact a higher price from his customers, he has forfeited his status as a businessman. A businessman as such has no power over anyone, his only leverage being the quality of his goods and the persuasiveness of his advertising. The businessman has the same rights and the same responsibilities as every other member of society, no more and no less.

Lord Acton’s aphorism about power has been over-quoted, but it is still terribly true. Power must be curbed if we will that people shall be free, and an independent economic order does put fetters on governmental power. People who control their own livelihood have little to fear from rulers; but political control of the economic life of a nation is totalitarian rule. The market economy curbs power in another way as well; it channels the activities of energetic, ambitious, and competitive personalities into the production of goods and services and away from politics. The rich in a free economy get that way because consumers appreciate the goods and services they offer; and if these few wish their descendants to enjoy this wealth the bulk of it must be invested in industries producing goods for the masses.

The End of Liberty

Let us give credit where credit is due; business, industry, and trade have made us into a prosperous nation. But our wealth has not made us a happy nation, or a contented one. We have proved once again—as if any further proof were needed—that prosperity and worldly success are, at best, a means to ends beyond themselves. Refine and improve a means as you will, it still remains only a means, needing a worthy end if it is to be meaningful. There is a discipline that deals with ends and goals, with the purposes that make life significant; it is called religion- though not everything bearing that label qualifies. But genuine Christianity is at a low ebb in the modern world; we have lost that vital contact with God and the moral law which energized our ancestors and made life for them an adventure in destiny. The decadence of Christianity is the root cause of the modern malaise; Plato argued two millennia ago that disorder in society is a reflection of disorder in the soul, that is, in our defective thinking and misguided loyalties. The work of renewal must begin here, with individual persons, and then go on to a restoration of the theological foundation necessary to a free society.

This is not the task of business, industry, and trade; the economic order has a more humble role to play. Business and the free economy beget a prosperous society which provides people the leisure they need to cultivate those goods which mark a high civilization: religion and worship, education and science, arts and crafts, conversation and play. These are the areas where people exercise their freedom most creatively, where they discover the goals proper to human life. Responsible freedom in the economic realm has the important role of supplying the indispensable means for these ends.

Read more from the Edmund Opitz Archive.

Business and Ethics (December 1983)

Mr. X manufactures gizmos in a plant which uses the varied skills of a thousand employees. These people might cheerfully acknowledge that they’d rather be sailing, or fishing, or whatever; but when it comes to supporting themselves they have chosen to work with Mr. X in preference to any known alternative. They are free to leave whenever a better opportunity offers, and many have indeed “graduated” into other forms of employment, to be replaced by people who have chosen to work with Mr. X as the best opportunity available to them. A lot of people find gizmos useful, and they are offered for sale at a price consumers can afford. So people buy, and Mr. X prospers. The relations between Mr. X and his employees are amicable; they are completely non-coercive and all arrangements are voluntary. Likewise all arrangements with customers. Mr. X is wholly dependent on willing customers, over whom he has no leverage except the appeal of his product, plus the persuasiveness of his advertising. Mr. X has a profitable business, and his customers profit too; owning a gizmo makes life more pleasant. There is an overall upgrading of the level of human satisfactions on the part of everyone involved: Mr. X, his employees, and the users of his product. By any definition of the term, Mr. X is performing a public service; everybody profits, nobody is coerced.

Mr. Y manufactures thingamajigs. There was once a brisk market for this gadget, but times have changed and the item is no longer fashionable. Sales decline steeply and the firm slumps into the red. Mr. Y’s firm is on the verge of failure. Now, no one likes to go down the drain, although in the profit and loss system of the free economy—usually called “capitalism”—some firms are bound to fail; customers simply stop buying, an act of free choice on their part, consumer sovereignty in action.

Mr. Y, although he has lost most of his former customers, has friends in Washington; so he lobbies for a handout. The politicians and bureaucrats respond by bailing him out with taxpayers’ money. What does this mean to the average citizen? People who had refused to voluntarily pay their hard-earned dollars for one of Mr. Y’s thingamajigs now have a portion of their earnings confiscated by the taxing authority in order to keep Mr. Y and his company afloat. Doesn’t seem right, does it?

As long as Messrs. X and Y operated in the private, voluntary sector of society they had no power to coerce anyone. Neither man could force anyone to work for him or buy his products. The rules of the marketplace forbid this. Under these rules Mr. Y faced failure, so he entered into an arrangement with government, and now the law forces every taxpayer to spend a fraction of his time working for Y, and another fraction to subsidize the sale of Y’s product.

There are many real-life situations that parallel the case of Mr. Y. Most recently in the news, and therefore fresh in our memories, is the Chrysler caper. The firm is a large one, and its products have merit. But for a complex set of reasons the American public turned to other makes of automobiles. The free market—which is the playing field where the rules of business hold sway—began telling Chrysler to go into some other line of business, or fail.

This adverse business judgment on its products turned Chrysler toward politics. The several hundred thousands of people who make up Chrysler—management, labor, and stockholders—refused to accept the verdict of consumers, who chose to buy other makes of cars. Instead, they turned to Washington and got help. They got a political remedy for economic failure, as have countless others.

Unbusinesslike Conduct

A business or industry endures only so long as it pleases customers. When a business ceases to please customers it ceases to exist as a business. At this stage of the game it may succeed in pleasing politicians, who have the power to force taxpayers to support the new operation. This is a different ball game. A failed business propped up by a government handout is no longer a business; it’s a hybrid which deserves criticism as an unethical raid on the public treasury. It doesn’t matter much what you label this politicized industry, so long as you realize that it operates in defiance of the rules which define a business or industry in a free society.

A businessman per se operates within the framework of rules laid down by “the market”; when he operates outside this framework, and by a different set of rules, he is something other than a businessman. “The market” describes the process of social cooperation under the division of labor, where free and virtuous people specialize in a complex variety of tasks in anticipation of a consumer demand for the goods and services they produce. This is stage one of the market, and it is followed by stage two—multiple voluntary exchanges of these goods and services where people give over something they value for whatever it is they value more. The end they have in view is maximum satisfaction of creaturely needs for food, clothing, shelter, recreation, or whatever.

Most of those involved in business, industry, and trade operate within the framework laid down by “the market.” They have a genuine desire to serve consumers; they take a craftsman’s pride in the honest workmanship embodied in quality products which make the life of all of us safer, healthier, or more pleasant. And they feel a moral obligation to give value for value received; they have adopted and try to live up to a code of “business ethics,” a praiseworthy effort, at which most businessmen succeed far better than many in other walks of life.

I was discussing this ethical point with a friend who had taught economics to a generation of students at a fine Midwestern college, where he also served for some years as Dean. We were talking about our two professions—teaching and preaching—some of whose seamier sides we had experienced from the inside. “You know, Ed,” he said to me, “a thoroughly dishonest man can last longer as a professor or a preacher than as a used car salesman!” I had to admit that there was more than a grain of truth in Ben’s cynical observation; and further, that these same intellectuals have a tendency to look down their noses at business, industry, and trade, as if the people involved in commercial activity are a lesser breed—a mean and mistaken opinion which I reject completely.

The Customer Is Boss

In a genuinely free society, a laissez faire society in the early sense of this much-abused phrase, the businessman is a mandatory of consumers; the customer is boss. Consumer sovereignty! Is this the way the businessman likes it? Of course not. Our businessman would like to think of himself as the man in charge, hands on the reins, running a tight ship. But who is he kidding? He doesn’t have even the power to set wages in his own factory, or fix the prices he’ll charge for his products! His competition, his employees, and his customers make those decisions for him. If he tries to lower wages he will lose his best workers to his competition who pay the going rate or more. If he tries to raise prices people buy elsewhere. He’s stymied, and that’s why he’s tempted on occasion to persuade some politician to bend the rules in his favor, just enough to give him a little “fair advantage.” But when a businessman yields to this temptation he forfeits his standing as a businessman and becomes something else—a branch of the government bureaucracy with a status similar to the postal service. Wealth has a universal appeal, but wealth production is a dull affair. There’s nothing about work to make the adrenalin flow or the heart to leap; there’s no poetry, dash, or glamour about commercial transactions—which is why the literary tribe turns its back on the realm of trade.

John Ruskin, for example, admired the buccaneer and freebooter type, calling him the Baron of the Crags—the knight with his castle atop a hill. The modern man of wealth Ruskin referred to contemptuously as the Baron of the Bags—moneybags, that is. The businessman tends to accept this caricature of himself and his function, vainly trying to conceal it under a false and somewhat ridiculous image. If only business radiated some of the magic that invests royalty, or reflected some of the panache of the military! So dreams the man of business, who then finds wish fulfillment, of sorts, in assuming titles such as The Spaghetti King, The Chewing Gum Czar, The Fast Food Tycoon, and so on. Captains of Industry meet with their Lieutenants at the Admirals’ Club to work out the strategy and tactics of the next “trade war.” Inside the plant or in the boardroom our tiger is referred to with affectionate dread as The Boss, or The Old Man.

The Function of the Businessman Is to Serve the Customer

There is an inversion of values here, as well as a gross misunderstanding of the role of the businessman in society, a misunderstanding on the part of the businessman himself, which is shared by friends and enemies alike. Kings and dukes in the precapitalistic ages did not produce or earn the wealth they enjoyed; they seized the wealth produced by others. They lived by “The good old rule, The simple plan, That they should take who have the power, And they should keep who can.”

Royalty and the nobility exercised vital functions at the time, but work was not one of them; and the same might be said of the military. As necessary as a military establishment is for the defense of the nation, is it not obvious that military action results in the consumption and destruction of wealth? The businessman appeared on the scene as a different breed altogether; the businessman earns whatever wealth he obtains, and the method he employs increases the well-being of others. He is on an ethical par, to say the very least, with those who rule and those who fight!

“I take what I want,” said Frederick the Great. “I can always get some pedant to justify my actions.” The thief also takes what he wants, and so does the pirate and the racketeer. The king, the crook, the buccaneer and the gangster pursue their naked self-interest directly, operating in terms of a ruthless egoistic hedonism. Bemused by these glamorous figures, apologists for capitalism have explained the motivation of the businessman in terms of the same egoistic hedonism. With friends like this the businessman doesn’t need enemies! It is a truism to say that everyone tries to improve his circumstances, to upgrade his level of well-being. The question is How? Pursuing one’s self-interest directly, at the expense of other people, is the way of the powerful and the crooked. Serving one’s self indirectly by advancing the well-being of other people is the operational principle of the free-market economy.

To illustrate: the successful buggy manufacturer with a deep personal commitment to this means of transport and pride in his product finds business falling off. Consumer taste is gravitating toward the new-fangled horseless carriage. Our entrepreneur, if he wants to stay in business, must swallow his pride and put his time, talents, and capital at the service of those who want automobiles. The ruler of this tiny industrial empire, as he fancies himself, surrenders, and agrees to put himself at the disposal of consumers. Everyone’s welfare is upgraded in the only way possible for this to occur.

The Good Society

The latter part of the 18th century marks a watershed in human history. Walter Lippmann, writing about the capitalistic era which opened two hundred years ago, utters an incandescent truth about this startlingly novel way of conducting our economic affairs: “For the first time in human history men had come upon a way of producing wealth in which the good fortune of others multiplied their own.” Read that one again, for it is the basic axiom of the free market economy, so fundamental that it is overlooked by friend and foe alike. Lippmann continues: “For the first time men could conceive a social order in which the ancient moral aspiration for liberty, equality, and fraternity was consistent with the abolition of poverty and the increase of wealth” (The Good Society, pp. 193–94).

This was the social order originally known as Classical Liberalism, built around the conviction that there is an inviolable essence in each person, which it is the function of the Law to protect. When the Law is limited to the administration of justice by securing the life, liberty and property of all persons alike, then people are free to peacefully pursue their personal goals, each respecting the right of every other to do the same. This is the good society operating under the moral law, the only kind of society in which a complex division-of-labor economy can flourish.

There is a moral law whose mandates are binding on every one of us. The moral law within each person—his individual conscience—instructs us to “injure no man.” It obligates us to work for justice and fair play in human affairs; to speak the truth in charity, keep our word and fulfill our contracts. This ancient code forbids murder, assault, theft, and covetousness. These are the most important items in any ethical code, so universal as to seem part of human nature itself, and so compelling that most of us acknowledge them as binding even while we fail to obey them.

There is not a separate ethic or set of moral principles trimmed or adapted to this group or that in society, even though our common speech seems to suggest this. It is improper, strictly speaking, to talk about “legal ethics,” “medical ethics,” “business ethics,” or the like. Lawyers, doctors, businessmen are judged by the same moral law that applies to all the rest of us. Free-market rules of business fall well within the moral law; and individual businessmen, large as well as small—so long as they stick to their last—measure up at least as well as members of other trades and professions. Only when a government grant of privilege is obtained is a moral principle violated. But when this happens the violator is no longer a businessman.

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Ethics and Business

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Both of these essays on Albert Jay Nock were authored by Edmund Opitz, founder of the Nockian Society and the Remnant. Since they are of similar point and brief, they are worth posting together.

Albert Jay Nock: Apostle to the Remnant

ALBERT JAY NOCK was before the public in one capacity only, as a man of letters. He was in turn clergyman, editor, professor, essayist, biographer, student of fundamental economics – and a superfluous man withal! How he got that way, what ideas went into the formation of his mind, he explained in his Memoirs [of a Superfluous Man], an unusual autobiography of a distinguished and lonely intellect whose bent for privacy amounted to a passion.

Nock had an ample but refined capacity for enjoying life, even though he believed that, like a citizen of fifth century Rome, he was living in the last days of a dying civilization. Nock believed he was experiencing the “imperatorship and anarchy” Henry George had predicted. But human nature is resilient, and once the pessimist assures himself that doom is certain, then that’s settled and cheerfulness breaks in – like the man in the tumbrel en route to the guillotine winking at the pretty girls in the rabble.

Albert Jay Nock devoted himself single-mindedly to the advancement of understanding – his own! Once he had unearthed a precious nugget of truth and put it on display where all who wished might see, he dropped the matter and went on to the next question. Training reinforced temperament to turn him away from even the slightest propaganda efforts; he never buttonholed anybody about anything. “Never argue; never explain,” he would say with infuriating detachment. Nock believed, correctly I think, that he had uncovered the plain truth of things in the several areas of his interest, and he painstakingly set forth his elucidations in impeccable English, serene in his faith that this fully discharged his duty. This assumption back of this faith is that truth has an internal energy of its own enabling it, if we don’t stand in its way, to cut its own channels and gain acceptance in minds ready for it. Trying to make truth palatable for minds not ready for it is no service to the people involved, for it clogs whatever thought processes they have; and truth tampered with is truth lost.

The hard truth is what Nock is talking about; truth with the bark on it, truth unsophisticated by even good intentions, undiluted by ulterior considerations. Are there minds ready for this kind of truth? Nock believed that every society has such minds else it would fall apart. Every society is held together by a select few – men and women who have the force of intellect to discern the rules upon which social life is contingent, and the force of character to exemplify those rules in their own living. Nock called these scattered few “the Remnant” in his brilliant essay,”Isaiah’s Job.”

Nock does not tell us whence his methodology derives, but we do know that his devotion to the philosophy of Henry George was life-long, and that as a student he read these words: “Social Reform is not to be secured by noise and shouting; by complaints and denunciation; by the formation of parties, or the making of revolutions; but by the awakening of thought and the progress of ideas. Until there be correct thought, there cannot be right action; and when there is correct thought, right action will follow.” Nock’s book on George appeared in 1939.

It’s a lovely notion, runs the thought, but is it practical? will it work? Well, it appears to be working in Mr. Nock’s case, although not all the returns are in and one can’t say for sure. Albert Jay Nock’s reputation while he lived was limited, and none of his books had much of a sale, except his Jefferson and the Memoirs. Nock’s death in 1945 passed relatively unnoticed. But then things began to happen; the posthumous publication of a Journal, two volumes of letters and a volume of essays; a new edition of the Memoirs, a reprinting of four of his out of print books with a fifth imminent; and formation of The Nockian Society which has just published Cogitations from AJN.

Nock sought to improve the quality of human life, and the forces he set in motion are still at work in those sensitive enough to feel them.

Originally published from the Henry George News, April 1971.

Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945)

Albert Jay Nock came before the public in one capacity only, as a man of letters. That’s the way he wanted it, believing that the rest of him was nobody’s business. We do know that he was exposed to the “grand old fortifying classical curriculum” at St. Stephen’s, where he earned a degree in 1892. He did graduate work in theology, was ordained and served three Episcopal parishes for a decade, entered the world of journalism, and won renown as an editor and belle lettrist. His autobiography, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943) was literary and philosophical, setting forth his views of life and society, how he came to hold them, and why. This is the kind of book that gets under a person’s skin, performing catalytically to persuade the reader to become what he has it in him to be.

Those whom Nock has reached do not form a movement or a clique: such men as the eminent sociologist, Robert Nisbet, out in the South Pacific during World War II where he “practically memorized” the Memoirs; or the influential scholar, Russell Kirk, at an army camp reading Nock and corresponding with him. Nock was a frequent guest at the Buckley home during the early ’40s, and it is safe to assume that the brilliant William F. Buckley, Jr., and his National Review owe something to these contacts. Nock inspires the reader to do his utmost for himself or herself as the only way there is for anyone to do some real service for anyone else. There’s only one way to improve society, he used to say; present it with one improved unit – yourself.

Nock laid no claim to originality; he sought to give known, tried, and true ideas a new twist, a different slant which breaks through current stereotypes. As a critic he stands in the great succession of men like Rabelais and Artemus Ward, who knew that “for life to be fruitful, life must be felt as a joy; that it is by the bonds of joy, not of happiness or pleasure, not of duty or responsibility, that the called and chosen spirits are kept together in this world.”

Nock’s books were not best sellers, but they keep coming back into print. The weekly journal he edited from 1920 to 1924, The Freeman, had a small circulation, but scholars continue to draw on it, and discerning souls regard it as the high water mark of American journalism. Nock wrote for the educable few who simply want to get at the plain truth of things – The Remnant. “You do not know, and will never know, who the Remnant are, nor where they are, nor how many there are, nor what they are doing or will do. Two things you know, and no more; first, that they exist; and second, that they will find you.”

Nock believed that he had uncovered the plain truth of things in several areas, and he set forth his elucidations in impeccable English, serene in his faith that this fully discharged his duty. The assumption back of this faith is that truth has an internal energy of its own, enabling it, if we don’t stand in its way, to cut its own channels and gain acceptance in minds ready for it. Trying to make truth palatable for minds not ready for it is no service to the people involved, for it clogs whatever thought processes they have.

Truth tampered with is truth lost. The hard truth is what Nock is talking about: truth with the bark on it, truth unsophisticated by even good intentions, undiluted by ulterior considerations. Are there minds ready for this kind of truth? Nock believed that every society has such minds, else it would fall apart. Every society is held together by a select few – men and women who have the force of intellect to discern the rules upon which social life is contingent, and the force of character to exemplify those rules in their own living.

The Remnant grows, and they are finding him. Since Nock’s death most of his titles have come back into print, only to be sold out. Two collections of letters were published posthumously, and another Journal. Two books have been written about Nock, one about his Freeman, plus several doctoral theses. Not bad for a superfluous man!

And there is a Nockian Society, at 30 South Broadway, Irvington, N.Y. 10533, with members throughout the world. The letterhead reads: “No officers, No dues, No meetings.” He would have liked that!

Much of Nock’s work defies time, which means that he will be discovered anew by each generation. Many will make his acquaintance in the new editions of his books, whose appearance is a happy portent that Nock’s best writing will never for long be out of print.

Originally published in Fragments, April-June 1982.

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Albert Jay Nock: Apostle to The Remnant

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It’s almost here!!! I am the chair of the Students for Liberty Texas Conference, to be held this Saturday, October 24, 2009 — and boy oh boy has it been a busy week. We have an incredible lineup of speakers and it’s going to be nothing short of stellar from start to finish. Gene Healy from the Cato Institute is the keynote speaker, and we will also be joined by Anthony Gregory, Mary Ruwart, Gil Guillory, Nigel Ashford, and many more great speakers.

Can’t come? Aw, that’s too bad — but you have another way to listen in. LiveOnLocation.TV is going to be webcasting the entire conference, thanks to George B. Way to go, George!

You can listen in here: http://liveonlocation.tv/

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By Edmund Opitz

Lord Northcliffe, the publisher of the London Times, came to this country a few years after World War I. A banquet in his honor was held in New York City, and at the appropriate time he rose to his feet to propose a toast. Prohibition was in effect, you will recall, and the beverage customarily drunk by Northcliffe in his homeland was not available here. So Northcliffe raised his glass of water and said: “Here’s to America, where you do as you please. And if you don’t, they make you!”

Here, in this land of the free, “we” as voters had amended the Constitution to punish conduct which “we”-as consumers-had been enjoying. If you point out that the 18th Amendment had been inserted into the Constitution by majority vote, and that therefore “we” had done it to “ourselves,” you need to be reminded that the “we” who did it were not the same people as the “ourselves” to whom it was done!

The 18th Amendment was repealed by passage of the 21st Amendment in 1933. Shortly thereafter another prohibition law was passed, this one a prohibition against owning gold. Under the earlier dispensation you could walk down the street with a pocketful of gold coins without breaking the law; but if you were caught carrying a bottle of whiskey you might be arrested. Then the legal switcheroo occurred, and you could carry all the whiskey you wanted, but if you had any gold in your pocket you could be thrown in jail!

Our scientists are exploring outer space looking for intelligent life on other planets. I hope they find some, because there’s none to spare on planet Earth! With how little wisdom do we organize our lives, especially in the areas of government and the economy. We’ve been going by dead reckoning for too long, and our dumb luck has just about run out.

Our present subject is political philosophy. This is a complex subject, so we shall do no more than ponder the first step. The big question in any serious theory of politics is to decide what’s political and what’s private. In a totalitarian nation there is no sector of life which is intrinsically private; the whole of life is politicized. The State controls economic life; there is a State Church; there is a controlled press; the schools are all run by government. Big Brother oversees every activity. When people in such a nation decide to move in the direction of a free society, they do so by carving private sectors out of what had hitherto been 100 percent public.

You’re all familiar with the division of society into the private, voluntary sector, in contrast to the public, governmental, coercive sector; and you know that “the history of liberty is the history of the limitations placed upon governmental power.” It is obvious that the more things the law commands you to do the fewer the things you may do freely, on your own initiative. If the public, governmental sector extends over 50 percent of the society, this means that the people of this society, are half free and half unfree. We become freer only as we limit government to its proper competence. But what is government’s proper competence?

In the 18th century they put the question as follows: What shall be the extent of rule? This is the fundamental, primordial question in political philosophy, but we’d phrase it differently. What are the functions appropriate to the political agency? we would ask. What is the role of the law? What tasks should be assigned to Washington or some lesser governmental agency, and in what sectors of life should people be free to pursue their own goals? When should legal coercion be used to force a person to do something against his will?

What Functions Are Appropriate?

In the light of government’s nature, what functions may we appropriately assign to it? This is the question, and there are two ways to approach it. The approach favored today is to count noses -find out what a majority of the people want from government, and then elect politicians who will give it to them! And believe me, they’ve been giving it to us!

The other approach, the one favored by our ancestors, was to think about the matter, employing relevant intellectual and moral considerations in order to decide what the law should and should not do. The backbone of every legal system is a set of prohibitions, a series of “Thou Shalt Not’s.” The law forbids certain actions and punishes those who persist in them, so we need to know what actions should be forbidden. Our moral code prescribes what not to do, so the solid core of any legal system is the moral code, which, in our culture is conveyed to us by the Mosaic Law: the Ten Commandments. The Sixth Commandment of The Decalogue says: “Thou shalt not commit murder,” and this moral imperative against murder is built into every statute which prescribes punishment for homicide. The Eighth Commandment says: “Thou shalt not steal,” and this moral norm gives rise to laws punishing theft.

There is a moral law against murder because each human life is precious; and there is a moral law against theft because rightful property is an extension of the person. “A possession,” Aristotle writes, “is an instrument for maintaining life.” Deprive a person of the right to own property and for his own survival he has to become the property of someone else-a slave. The master-slave relation is a violation of the rightful order of things, the rightful order being individual liberty and voluntary association.

The Gift of Life

We’ve taken care of the right to life and the right to property; what about liberty? Reflect on the fact that every human being has the gift of life, and each of us is charged with the primary responsibility of bringing his own life to completion. Each one of us is also a steward of the earth’s scarce resources, which we must use wisely and economically. In short, we are responsible beings. But no person can be held responsible for the way he lives his life and conserves his property, unless he is free. Responsibility-Freedom; two sides of one coin. Liberty, therefore, is a necessary corollary to Life and Property. Our forebears regarded Life, Liberty, and Property as natural rights, and the importance of these basic rights was stressed again and again in the oratory, the preaching, and the writings of the 18th century. Life, Liberty, and Property are potent ideas because they transcribe into words an important aspect of the way things are.

Our ancestors founded their legal and moral codes on the nature of things, on what they believed to be real-just as students of the natural sciences frame their scientific laws to describe the way things behave. For example: physical bodies throughout the universe attract one another; the attraction increases with the mass of the attracting bodies and diminishes with the square of the distance between them. This has always been so, but it was Sir Isaac Newton who made some observations along these lines and gave us the law of gravitation. How come gravitational attraction varies as the inverse square of the distance, and not as the inverse cube? One is as thinkable as the other; but it just happens that the universe is prejudiced against the inverse-cube in this instance; precisely as this same universe is prejudiced against murder, has a strong bias in favor of property, and wills that men and women be free.

Immanuel Kant echoed an ancient sentiment when he declared that two things filled him with awe: the starry heavens without, and the moral law within. The precision and order in nature manifest the Author of nature, the Creator. The Creator is also the Author of our being and requires certain duties of us, his creatures. There is, thus, a reality outside of us joined to the reality within, and this twofold reality-inner and outer-has an intelligible pattern, a coherent structure. This dual arrangement is not made by human hands; it’s unchangeable, it’s not affected by our wishes, and it can’t be tampered with. It can, however, be misinterpreted, and it may be disobeyed. We consult certain portions of the exterior pattern and draw up blueprints for building a bridge. If we misinterpret, the bridge collapses. And a society disintegrates if its members disobey the configuration laid down in the nature of things for our guidance. This configuration is the moral order, as interpreted by reason and tradition.

The point, simply put, is that our forebears, when they wanted some clues for regulating their private and public lives, anchored their beliefs in a reality beyond society and superior to government. They thought their way through to the idea of a sacred order which overarches the world-the order of creation. They figured out that our duties within society reflect the mandates of this divine order.

Take a Poll

This view of one’s duty is quite in contrast to the method currently popular for determining what we should do politically, which is to conduct an opinion poll. Find out what the crowd wants, and then say, “Me too!” This is what the advice of certain political scientists boils down to. Here is Professor James MacGregor Burns, a self-professed liberal and the author of several highly touted books, including The Deadlock of Democracy and a biography of John F. Kennedy. Liberals play what Burns calls “the numbers game.” “As a liberal I believe in majority rule,” he writes. “I believe that the great decisions should be made by numbers.” In other words, don’t bother to think; just count! “What does a majority have a right to do?” he asks. And he answers his own question. “A majority has the right to do anything in the economic and social arena that is relevant to our national problems and national purposes.” And then, realizing the enormity of what he has just said, he backs off: ” . . . except to change the basic rules of the game.”

Burns’s final disclaimer sounds much like an afterthought, for some of his liberal cohorts support the idea of unqualified majority rule. The late Herman Finer, in his anti-Hayek book entitled Road to Reaction, declares “For in a democracy, right is what the majority makes it to be.” (p. 60) What we have here is an updating of the ancient “might makes right” doctrine. The majority does have more muscle than the minority, it has the power to carry out its will, and thus it is entitled to have its own way. If right is whatever the majority says it is, then whatever the majority does is O.K., by definition. Farewell, then, to individual rights, and farewell to the rights of minorities; the majority is the group that has made it to the top, and the name of the game is winner take all.

The dictionary definition of a majority is 50 percent plus 1. But if you were to draw up an equation to diagram modern majoritarianism it would read:

5,081,540,418 plus 1 = 100, 50 minus 1 = O

Amusing confirmation comes from a professor at Rutgers University, writing a letter to The Times. Several years ago considerable criticism was generated by the appointment of a certain man to a position in the national government. Such criticism is unwarranted, writes our political scientist, because the critics comprise “a public which, by virtue of having lost the last election, has no business approving or disapproving appointments by those who won.” This is a modern version of the old adage, “To the victor belong the spoils.” This Rutgers professor goes on to say, “Contrary to President Lincoln’s famous but misleading phrase, ours is not a government by the people, but government by government.” So there!

The Nature of Government

What functions may we appropriately assign to the political agency? What should government do? Today’s answer is that government should do whatever a majority wants a government to do; find out what the people want from government, and then give it to them. The older and truer answer is based upon the belief that the rules of living together in society may be discovered if we think hard and clearly about the matter and the corollary that we can conform our lives to these rules if we resolve to do so. But I have said nothing so far about the nature or essence of government.

Americans are justly proud of our nation, but this pride sometimes blinds us to reality. How often have you heard someone declare, “In America, ‘We’ are the government.” This assertion is demonstrably untrue; “we” are the society, all 250 million of us; but society and government are not at all the same entity. Society is all-of-us, whereas the government is

only some-of-us. The some-of-us who make up government would begin with the President, Vice-President, and Cabinet; it would include Congress and the bureaucracy; it would descend through governors, mayors and lesser officials, down to sheriffs and the cop on the beat.

A Unique Institution

Government is unique among all the institutions of society; society has bestowed upon this one agency, government, the exclusive right to use legal force in specified situations. Governments use persuasion and they employ advertising technicians and public relations experts. They invoke the symbols of authority, legitimacy, and tradition-as do institutions like the Church and the School. But only one agency has the power to tax; only one agency has the authority to operate the system of courts and jails; only one agency has a warrant for mobilizing the machinery for making war; and that is government, the power structure. Monarchy, aristocracy, democracy-it doesn’t matter. Governmental action is what it is, no matter what rationale might be offered to justify what it does. Government always acts with power; in the last resort government uses force to back up its decrees.

It is a truism that government is society’s legal agency of compulsion. Virtually every statesman and every political scientistwhether Left or Right-takes this for granted and does his theorizing from this as a base. “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence,” wrote George Washington; “it is force.” Bertrand Russell, in a 1916 book, said, “The essence of the State is that it is the repository of the collective force of its citizens.” Ten years later, Columbia University professor R. M. MacIver spoke of the state as “the authority which alone has compulsive power.” The English writer Alfred Cobban says that “the essence of the State, and of all political organizations, is power.”

But why belabor the obvious except for the fact that so many of our contemporaries-those who say “we are the government”-overlook it? What we are talking about here is the power of man over man; government is the legal authorization which permits some men to use force on others. Whenever we advocate a law to accomplish a certain goal, we advertise our inability to persuade people to act in the manner we recommend, so

we’re going to force them to conform! As Sargent Shriver once put it, “In a democracy you don’t compel people to do something, unless you are sure they won’t do it.”

In the liberal mythology of this century, government is all things to all men. Liberals think that government assumes whatever characteristics people wish upon it-like Proteus in Greek mythology who took on one shape after another, depending on the circumstances. But government is not an all-purpose tool; it has a specific nature, and the nature of government determines what government can accomplish. When properly limited, government uses lawful force to annul violence and redress injury, thus limited government serves a social end no other agency-call it what you will-can achieve. But when the proper limits are overstepped, a government’s use of force is destructive. The alternatives here are defensive force versus aggressive force; or law versus tyranny-as the Greeks would have put it. Here’s how Aeschylus saw it in his drama The Eumenides: “Let no man live uncurbed by law, nor curbed by tyranny.”

The Moral Code

If the political agency is to serve a moral end it must not violate the moral code. The moral code tells us that human life is sacred, that liberty is precious, and that ownership of property is good. And by the same token, this moral code supplies a definition of criminal action; murder is a crime, theft is a crime, and it is criminal to abridge any person’s lawful freedom. It is the essential function of government, then, in harmony with the moral code, to use lawful force against criminals in order that peaceful citizens may go about their business. The use of lawful force against criminals for the protection of the innocent is the earmark of a properly limited government. Standing in utter contrast is the State’s use of tyrannical force on peaceful citizens-whatever the excuse, or whatever the rationalization. It’s the contrast between defense and aggression, between the rule of law and oppression.

People should not be forced into conformity with any social blueprint; their private plans should not be overridden in the interests of some national plan or social goal. Government-the public power-should never be used for private advantage; it should not be used to protect people from themselves. Well, then, what should the law do to peaceful, innocent citizens? It should let ‘em alone! When government lets John Doe alone, and punishes anyone who refuses to let him alone, then John Doe is a free man.

In this country we have a republican form of government. The word “republic” is from the Latin words, res and publica, meaning the things or affairs which are common to all of us, the affairs which are in the public domain, in sharp contrast to matters which are private. Government, then, is “the public thing,” and this strong emphasis on public serves to delimit and set boundaries to governmental power, in the interest of preserving the integrity of the private domain.

What’s in a name? you might be thinking. Well, in this case, in the case of republic, a lot. The word “republic” encapsulates a political philosophy; it connotes the philosophy of government that would limit government to the defense of life, liberty, and property in order to serve the ends of justice. There’s no such connotation in the word “monarchy,” for example; or in aristocracy or oligarchy.

A monarch is the sole, supreme ruler of a country, and there is theoretically no area in the life of his citizens over which he may not hold sway. The king owns the country and his people belong to him. Monarchical practice pretty well coincided with theory in what is called “Oriental Despotism,” but in Christendom the power of the kings was limited by the nobility on the one hand, and the Emperor on the other; and all secular rulers had to take account of the power of the Papacy. Power was thus played off against power, to the advantage of the populace.

Individual Liberty

The most important social value in Western civilization, historically, is the idea of individual liberty. The human person was looked upon as God’s creature, gifted with free will which endows him with the capacity to choose what he will make of his life. This is our inner, spiritual freedom and it must be matched by an outer and social liberty if man is to fulfill his duty toward his Maker. Creatures of the state cannot achieve their destiny as human beings; therefore, government must be limited to securing and preserving freedom of personal action within the rules, and the rules must be designed to maximize liberty and opportunity for everyone.

Now, unless we are persuaded of the importance of freedom to the individual, it is obvious that we will not bother to structure government around him to protect his private domain and secure his rights. So, the idea of individual liberty is the key. This idea is as old as Christianity but it was given a tremendous boost in the 16th century by the Reformation and the Renaissance. The earliest manifestation of this renewed idea of individual liberty was in the area of religion, issuing in the conviction that every person should be allowed to worship God in his own way. This religious ferment in 16th-century England gave us Puritanism. Early in the 17th-century, Puritanism projected a political movement whose members were contemptuously called Whiggamores-later shortened to Whigs-a word roughly equivalent to “cattle thieves.” The king’s men were called Tories-”highway robbers.” The Whigs worked for individual liberty and progress; the Tories defended the old order of the king, the landed aristocracy, and the established church.

One of the great writers and thinkers in the Puritan and Whig tradition was John Milton, who wrote his celebrated plea for the abolition of Parliamentary censorship of printed material in 1644, Areopagitica. Many skirmishes had to be fought before freedom of the press was finally accepted as one of the earmarks of a free society. Free speech is a corollary of press freedom, and I remind you of the statement attributed to Voltaire: “I disagree with everything you say, but I will defend with my life your right to say it.”

Adam Smith extended freedom to the economic order with The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776 and warmly received in the thirteen colonies. The colonists had been practicing economic liberty for a long time, simply because their governments were too busy with other things to interfere-or too inefficient-and Adam Smith gave them a rationale.

Ten amendments to the Constitution were adopted in 1791. Article the First reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .” The separation of Church and State enunciated here was a momentous first step in world history. Religious liberty, freedom of the press, free speech, and the free economy are four departments of the same liberating trend-the Whig movement.

The men we refer to as the Founding Fathers would have called themselves Whigs. Edmund Burke was the chief spokesman for a group in Parliament known as The Rockingham Whigs. In 1832 the Whig Party in England changed its name to one which more aptly described its emphasis on liberty. It became the Liberal Party, standing for free trade, religious liberty, the abolition of slavery, extension of the franchise and other reforms.

Classical Liberalism is not to be confused with the thing called “liberalism” in our time! Today’s “liberalism” is the exact opposite of historical Liberalism-which came out of the 18th-century Whiggismwhich came out of the 17th-century Puritanism. The labels are the same; the realities are utterly different. Present-day liberals have trouble with ideas as ideas, so they try to dispose of uncomfortable thoughts by pigeonholing them in a time slot. The ideas of individual liberty, inherent rights, limited government, and the free economy are dismissed by contemporary liberals as “18th-century ideas.” What a dumb comment! The proper test of an idea is the test of truth. Is the idea sound, does it hold water? You do not judge the quality of an idea by pigeonholing it in a particular time slot; you don’t dispose of an idea by relegating it to the historical period when the idea emerged and became influential. But this is a typical liberal tactic.

The Proper Role of Government

Our discussion has focused on the nature of government, and we have come to realize that government is society’s power structure constitutionally authorized to use legal force in certain last-resort situations. Once this truth sinks in we take the next step, which is to figure out what functions are properly assigned to the one social agency authorized to use force. This brings us back to the moral code and the primary values of life, liberty, and property. It is the function of the law to protect the life, liberty, and property of all persons alike in order that each human being has maximum opportunity to achieve his proper destiny. This is the thesis of Classical Liberalism, and I buy it.

There’s a second political question to resolve, tied in with the basic one, but much less important: How do you choose personnel for public office? Once you have employed the relevant intellectual and moral criteria and confined public things to the public sector, leaving the major concerns of life free in the private sector . . . once you’ve done this there’s still the matter of choosing people for public office. One method is choice by bloodline. If your father is king, and if you are the eldest son, why you’ll be king when the old man dies. Limited monarchy still has its advocates, and kingship will work if a people embrace the monarchical ideology. Monarchy hasn’t always worked smoothly, however, else what would Shakespeare have done for his plays? Sometimes your mother’s lover will bump off the old man, or your kid brother may try to poison you.

There’s a better way to choose personnel for public office: Let the people vote. Confine government within the limits dictated by reason and morals, lay down appropriate requirements for exercising the franchise, and then let voters go to the polls. The candidate who gets the majority of votes gets the job. This is democracy, and this is the right place for majority action. As Pericles put it 2,500 years ago, democracy is where the many participate in rule.

Voting today is little more than a popularity contest, and the most popular man is not necessarily the best man, just as the most popular idea is not always the soundest idea. It is obvious, then, that balloting-or counting noses or taking a sampling of public opinion-is not the way to get at the fundamental question of the proper role of government within a society. We have to think hard about this one, which means we have to assemble the evidence; weigh, sift, and criticize it; compare notes with colleagues, and so on. In other words, determining the proper role for government is an educational endeavor, a matter for the classroom, the study, the podium, the pulpit, the forum, the press. To count noses at this point is a cop out; there’s no place here for a Gallup Poll.

To summarize: The fundamental question in political philosophy has to do with the scope and functions of the political agency. Only hard thinking-education in the broad sense-can resolve this question. The lesser question has to do with the choice of personnel, and majority action-democratic decision-making-is the way to deal with it. But if we approach the first question with the mechanics appropriate to the second, we have confused the categories and we’re in for trouble.

“Democratic Despotism”

We began to confuse the categories more than a century and a half ago, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed. His book, Democracy in America, warned us about the emergence here of what he called “democratic despotism,” which would not shatter the wills of men, but merely soften and bend them. It would “degrade men without tormenting them.”

We were warned again in 1859 by a professor at Columbia University, Francis Lieber, in his book On Civil Liberty and Self-Government: “Woe to the country in which political hypocrisy first calls the people almighty, then teaches that the voice of the people is divine, then pretends to take a mere clamor for the true voice of the people, and lastly gets up the desired clamor.” Getting up the desired clamor is what we today call “social engineering,” or “the engineering of consent.” What is called “a majority” in contemporary politics is almost invariably a numerical minority, whipped up by an even smaller minority of determined and sometimes unscrupulous men. There’s not a single plank in the platform of the welfare state that was put there because of a genuine demand by a genuine majority. A welfarist government is always up for grabs; and various factions, pressure groups, special interests, causes, ideologies seize the levers of government in order to impose their programs on the rest of the nation. Formula for present-day liberalism: “Somebody’s program at everybody’s expense!”

Let’s assume that we don’t like what’s going on today in this and other countries; we don’t like it because people are being violated, as well as principles. We know the government is off the track, and we want to get it back on, but we know in our bones that Edmund Burke was right when he said, “There never was, for any long time . . . a mean, sluggish, careless people that ever had a good government of any form.” The politics of a nation reflects the character of a people, and you cannot improve the tone of politics except as you elevate the character of a significant number of persons. The improvement of character is the hard task of religion, ethics, art, and education. When we do our work properly in these areas, our public life will automatically respond.

Large numbers are not required. A small number of men and women whose convictions are sound and clearly thought out, who can present their philosophy persuasively, and who manifest their ideas by the quality of their lives . . . such people can inspire the multitude whose ideas are too vague to generate convictions one way or another. A little leaven raises the entire lump of dough; a small rudder turns a huge ship. And a handful of people possessed of ideas and a dream has got hold of the handle which can turn a nation around-especially a nation that is searching for new answers and a new direction.

Originally published in The Freeman, August 1992.

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Freedom and Majority Rule

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