FEDERICI, FEDERICO. _Der Deutsche Liberalismus._ Zurich:
Artemis-Verlag. 1946.
A study of German liberalism.
FERGUSON, ADAM. _An Essay on the History of Civil Society._ 1767.
“The spontaneous collaboration of free men often creates things which
are greater than their individual minds can ever fully comprehend. This
is the great theme of Josiah Tucker and Adam Smith, of Adam Ferguson
and Edmund Burke, the great discovery of classical political economy
which has become the basis of our understanding not only of economic
life but of most truly social phenomena.”--F. A. Hayek.
FERGUSON, JOHN M. _Landmarks of Economic Thought._ Longmans, Green.
1938. 295 pp.
A useful, readable and agreeable short history of economic thought,
stressing the contributions of the leading thinkers. Reviewing it in
_The New York Times_ of Oct. 30, 1938, I wrote: “Professor Ferguson
apparently intended his volume to serve both for the general reader
and as a textbook.... It has the virtues of ... straightforwardness,
balance, impartiality.”
FERRERO, GUGLIELMO. _The Principles of Power._ Putnam. 1942. 333 pp.
This is the last book of a trilogy by the eminent Italian historian of
Rome. It contrasts “illegitimate” government, or government by fear (as
represented by Bonapartism and Fascism), with “legitimate” government,
or government in good faith (as represented by democracy and hereditary
monarchy). Ferrero’s thesis is that the “illegitimate” government must
seek to keep itself in power by military adventures, neurotic activity,
and coercion. Wilhelm Röpke calls this book “a true legacy to us.”
FETTER, FRANK A. _Economics._ Vol. I: _Economic Principles_. 523 pp.
Vol. II: _Modern Economic Problems_. 498 pp. Century. 1915. Revised
ed., 1922.
Of Frank Fetter, Joseph Schumpeter writes: “Professor Frank A. Fetter
rose to a leading position in the first decade of this century. He
was primarily, though not exclusively, a theorist.... At that time
all serious theoretical endeavor had to start from the bases laid
by Jevons, Menger, and Walras ... [but] Fetter erected a building
that was his own, both as a whole and in many points of detail, such
as the theory of ‘psychic income.’ The vivifying influence upon the
American profession’s interest in theory of his critical exploits
cannot be evaluated too highly.” Vol. II makes practical application
of the theories treated in Vol. I to such matters as money, banking,
international trade, labor organizations, agricultural economics,
trusts, taxation, insurance, immigration, and similar topics.
FISHER, ALLAN G. B. _Economic Progress and Social Security._
Macmillan. 1945. 362 pp.
“Allan G. B. Fisher, well known New Zealand economist and professor
at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, has set
himself the difficult task of exploring the double impact of economic
change and of the quest for security upon economic policy, national
as well as international.... He shows that stability can be achieved
amidst change and security without loss of freedom, but the stability
as well as the security he offers are relative rather than absolute.
He discards the security of slavery as well as the stability of
immobility.”--_Weekly Book Review._ “A polished and mature effort
in the art of political economy.”--John Jewkes, in the _Manchester
Guardian_.
FISHER, ALLAN G. B. _The Clash of Progress and Security._ Macmillan.
1936. 234 pp.
“Professor Fisher’s thesis is briefly this: Material progress means
change, involving inconvenience and suffering for certain classes even
though it may benefit others. Resistance is generated among those who
suffer from change, so that the adjustments necessary, if progress is
to develop smoothly, are not made rapidly enough. In short, there is a
clash between progress and security.”--_Pacific Affairs._ “An admirable
and stimulating book, full of clear and concrete reasoning from start
to finish.”--London _Economist_.
FITE, WARNER. _Individualism._ Longmans, Green. 1924. 301 pp.
Four lectures which discuss the conception of the individual, the
individual as a conscious agent, individuality and social unity, and
individual rights and the social problem.
FLEMING, HAROLD. _Ten Thousand Commandments._ Prentice-Hall. 1951.
(Paper-covered edition: Irvington, N. Y.: Foundation for Economic
Education. 1952.) 206 pp.
The story of the antitrust laws, their history, their administration,
their complexities and contradictions, and the amazing court decisions
handed down about them. Mr. Fleming does not directly question either
past or present need for antitrust legislation, but he shows by the
record that within the framework of these laws there has operated an
administrative instrument of arbitrary power and hostility threatening
the very life of competitive enterprise in America. “The essential
purpose of all the variegated attacks has been to hamper the more
successful business for the benefit of the less successful business....
What is left is merely a rule that the bigger companies almost
invariably are wrong on some count or other and the little companies
almost invariably right. The result is that nobody knows what is legal
and what isn’t. The law is what the government lawyers say it is. And
they are essentially interested not in _what_ is done, but in _who does
it_.”
FLINT, ROBERT. _Socialism._ Lippincott. 1895. 1908. 512 pp.
Examining socialism in 1895, Professor Flint concluded that it “might
prove the reverse of a blessing to working men although those who are
pressing it on them may mean them well.” Reviewing the first edition,
the London _Athenaeum_ declared: “It is impossible for anyone to have
tried harder to be fair than Professor Flint.” F. J. C. Hearnshaw
declared it to be: “On the whole the ablest and most destructive
criticism of socialism ever written. The two editions (first, 1895;
second, 1908) differ considerably; both should be read and re-read.”
FLYNN, JOHN T. _The Road Ahead: America’s Creeping Revolution._
Devin-Adair. 1949. 160 pp.
John T. Flynn is one of America’s most powerful pamphleteers. The
central thesis of this book is that economic planning, social
insurance, deficit financing, and the nationalization of credit lead
step by step toward mass enslavement and the totalitarian state. This
tendency, he believes, has been shown empirically by the British
experience; it follows that the preservation of American freedoms and
institutions is inseparable from the preservation of a free capitalism.
The Americans for Democratic Action, he holds, are the present
equivalent of the British Fabians. They sincerely consider themselves
to be anti-communist; but their efforts to achieve the socialized
state through a process of gradualism must lead, if successful, to
dictatorship and the police state.
FLYNN, JOHN T. _As We Go Marching._ Doubleday. 1944. 272 pp.
“Mr. Flynn’s thesis is that despite the many differences in the
character, customs, laws, traditions, and resources of the people of
Italy, Germany, and the United States, this country has been drifting
on the same currents and experimenting with the same political and
economic measures which resulted in the establishment of Fascism
abroad. Two-thirds of his book is a scholarly, sober, valuable
examination of the rise of Fascism in Italy and Germany, one-third is
an attempt to support his thesis by trying to prove that it not only
can happen here but already has happened.”--_New Yorker._
FLYNN, JOHN T. _The Epic of Freedom._ Philadelphia: Fireside Press.
1947. 127 pp.
The story of the growth of freedom told simply and briefly for young
people of high-school age.
FLYNN, JOHN T. _The Decline of the American Republic._ Devin-Adair.
1955. 224 pp.
The American Republic, as the Founding Fathers conceived it, has been
declining with special rapidity, according to the author, since 1930.
A large part of this decline he attributes to the sapping of the
Constitution by a modern semantics that has distorted the plain meaning
of crucial clauses--so that the federal power to regulate commerce
between the states may be interpreted to mean the federal power to
regulate the pay and hours of an elevator operator who never leaves New
York City. “A very necessary book.”--John Chamberlain, in _The Freeman_.
FOERSTER, F. W. _Europe and the German Question._ Sheed. 1940. 474 pp.
An analysis of German history by a Prussian exiled from his native
land long before World War I because of his unorthodox views. In his
introductory chapter the author declares: “This book is above all
intended to acquaint Germans living outside the Third Reich with
Germany’s authentic tradition and with its European mission. But it
also looks forward to a not too remote day when the Germans of the
Third Reich ... may learn from it the chain of sin and doom in German
history since Bismarck.”
FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION. _Essays on Liberty._ Irvington, N.
Y. Vol. I: 1952. 307 pp. Vol. II: 1954. 442 pp.
Essays on various aspects of liberty. The subjects include government,
taxes, inflation, money, monopoly, price controls, subsidies, security,
competition, etc. Among the authors are: Maxwell Anderson, Sir Ernest
Benn, Arthur Bestor, Spruille Braden, Asa V. Call, Frank Chodorov,
Russell J. Clinchy, W. M. Curtiss, Richard L. Evans, Ben Fairless, F.
A. Harper, Henry Hazlitt, Bertrand de Jouvenel, Ed Lipscomb, Clarence
Manion, Ludwig von Mises, Ben Moreell, W. C. Mullendore, Mario Pei, Sam
Pettengill, Leonard E. Read, Dean Russell, Thomas J. Shelly, William
Graham Sumner.
FOWLER, THOMAS. _Locke._ Macmillan. 1880. 205 pp.
“A concise biographical sketch. The author calls Locke, ‘Perhaps
the greatest, but certainly the most characteristic of English
philosophers.’”--PI.
FRIEDMAN, WOLFGANG. _Law and Social Change._ London: Stevens & Sons.
1951. 322 pp.
A legal study from a libertarian point of view.
GANDIL, CHR (ed.). _Moderne Liberalisme._ Copenhagen: Rosenkilde og
Bagger. 1948. 132 pp.
In this Danish book, Mr. Gandil has attempted to reply to the question:
“What is liberalism?” (in the sense of individual liberty, as the word
is still understood on the European continent). “He himself has written
an introduction. Thereupon follows a chapter written by Dr. Thorkil
Kristensen, a former Danish Secretary of the Treasury. Then follows in
reprint form two lectures which were broadcast by Professor Wilhelm
Keilhau over the Norwegian radio immediately following the outbreak
of the war. In the final chapters a number of young Danish political
economists have taken extracts from neo-liberalist literature....
Mr. Gandil’s introduction rates as one of the best chapters of the
book.”--Trygve J. B. Hoff, in _Farmand_ (Oslo).
GARRETT, GARET. _The People’s Pottage._ Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton
Printers. 1953. 174 pp.
Garet Garrett, because of the accuracy of his knowledge, the quality
of his thinking, and the rare distinction of his style, was one of
the outstanding pamphleteers of our time. _The People’s Pottage_ is
made up of three pamphlets bearing on the same theme. _The Revolution
Was_, which appeared in 1944, propounded the thesis that under the
New Deal the social revolution, depriving the individual of essential
liberties and shifting power to the State, had already taken place. _Ex
America_, which appeared in 1951, continued this thesis, and explained
in particular how inflation is used to continue a statist regime
in power, and how it affects the attitude of the people. _Rise of
Empire_, which appeared in the following year, contends that the moral
and constitutional restraints on political power which distinguish a
republic from an empire have been all but obliterated. Despite this
pessimistic theme, the author concludes: “The people know that they can
have their Republic back if they want it enough to fight for it and to
pay the price. The only point is that no leader has yet appeared with
the courage to make them choose.”
GARRETT, GARET. _The Wild Wheel._ Pantheon Books. 1952. 220 pp.
A fascinating but episodic account of the career of Henry Ford. The
thesis of the book is that what Ford accomplished in the early decades
of the twentieth century under a regime of _laissez faire_ could not be
duplicated today because of government interventionism.
“If in this country, for both good and evil, free private enterprise
had its logical manifestations in a prodigious manner, so Henry Ford
was its extreme and last pure event.... It is easier to imagine
other Fords than it is to believe that another would be able to do
in this regulated world what Henry Ford did in his free world. He
would not be permitted to plow back his profits in that reckless
manner as capital.... You may like it better this way.... [But] if
_laissez-faire_ had not begotten the richest world that ever existed
there would have been much less for the welfare state to distribute.”
GARRETT, GARET. _The American Story._ Regnery. 1955. 401 pp.
This was Garet Garrett’s last book. It is a brilliant historical essay
on America which lays special emphasis on the country’s achievements
in invention and productivity, but views the course of the last
twenty-five years pessimistically, and despairs of the future of
personal liberty and growth in the United States if recent political
tendencies continue.
GÉBLER, ERNEST. _The Plymouth Adventure._ Doubleday. 1950. 377 pp.
A fictional account of the voyage of the Mayflower from England to
Cape Cod and of the first winter spent by the Pilgrims in New England.
The story is reconstructed from letters, journals and histories. This
account of the first Americans who risked their lives for freedom of
opinion will inspire all those who still believe in that ideal.
GEORGE, HENRY. _Protection or Free Trade._ 1886. Robert Schalkenbach
Foundation. 1946. 335 pp.
The great majority of economists today regard the central tenet of
Henry George--a single tax on land--as untenable. Yet what he _thought_
he was doing is revealed in a sentence in his preface to the fourth
edition of his famous _Progress and Poverty_ (1879). It was “to
unite the truth perceived by the school of Smith and Ricardo to the
truth perceived by the schools of Proudhon and Lasalle; to show that
_laissez-faire_ (in its full meaning) opens the way to a realization of
the noble dreams of socialism.” His book _Protection or Free Trade_,
which appeared seven years later, presents the case for free trade with
great eloquence and power: “He who follows the principle of free trade
to its logical conclusion can strike at the very root of protection;
can answer every question and meet every objection.... He will see in
free trade not a mere fiscal reform, but a movement which has for its
aim and end nothing less than the abolition of poverty, and of the vice
and crime and degradation that flow from it, by the restoration to the
disinherited of their natural rights and the establishment of society
upon the basis of justice. He will catch the inspiration of a cause
great enough to live for and to die for, and be moved by an enthusiasm
that he can evoke in others.”
It is only fair to add that the present-day followers of Henry
George, still numerous, are (apart from the implications of their
single-tax-on-land theory) among the most zealous champions of a free
capitalism.
GIDE, CHARLES, AND RIST, CHARLES. _A History of Economic Doctrines
from the Time of the Physiocrats to the Present Day._ Heath. 1948. 800
pp.
A standard history by two French economists which first appeared
in English in 1915 and has been brought down to date by successive
editions and enlargements. Written with great lucidity in the original
French, it has also been fortunate in its English translators. A full
and very valuable history. Its excellent critical comments on various
theories are written from a liberal point of view.
GIFFEN, SIR ROBERT. _Economic Inquiries and Studies._ London: George
Bell. 1904. 461 pp.
“A large number of economic essays by a well-known authority. Some of
them, such as _Protection for Manufacturers in New Countries_ and _The
Dream of a British Zollverein_, bear closely upon our subject. His
point of view is strongly Individualistic.”--PI.
GITLOW, BENJAMIN. _I Confess._ Dutton. 1940. 611 pp.
A disillusioned ex-leader of the Communist party in the United
States gives a detailed account of its works, its personalities and
its relations with Moscow. There is an introduction by Max Eastman.
“A personal and political history of the utmost relevance for an
understanding of the American Communist party.... A fascinating story
for any one, and should be a positive boon for the annual crop of
innocents who are drawn into Communist peripheral organizations under
false pretenses.”--Sidney Hook.
GITLOW, BENJAMIN. _The Whole of Their Lives._ Scribner’s. 1948. 387 pp.
“A former prominent Communist (head of the American Communist Party in
1929), the author describes world Communism with especial emphasis on
American Communism. Showing how it first started in this country among
various rival factions, he then demonstrates its penetration of earlier
liberal and Socialist groups and its emergence as a well-disciplined
party. With considerable attention to personalities, he describes the
American Communists, reveals their connection with Moscow, and flatly
states that American Communism is directly controlled by Russia.
Furthermore, he contends that it respects no American principles or
traditions in its zeal to make our country a Soviet vassal.”--_Library
Journal._
GLIKSMAN, JERZY. _Tell the West._ Gresham Press. 1948. 358 pp.
“Another eyewitness report on slave labor in the Soviet Union, this
time by a Polish lawyer and Socialist who was arrested, for reasons
he never fully understood, by the N.K.V.D. shortly after the invasion
of Poland and shipped off to a concentration camp to be ‘remolded’
into a useful citizen by ‘productive work and suitable educational
approach.’ The remolding, Mr. Gliksman says, consisted of nothing more
than systematic starvation, ill treatment, and a losing battle to fill
hopelessly high daily work quotas; it killed many of his fellows and
would have killed him if amnesty had not been granted Poles willing to
fight the Germans.”--_New Yorker._
GODWIN, WILLIAM. _An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice._ 1793.
Numerous editions. (Knopf. 1926.) 2 vols. 554 pp.
“Godwin’s book, coming at a time of revolution, created much
revolutionary fervor. It was considered so dangerous that the
authorities thought of prosecuting the author, but Pitt pointed out
that ‘a three-guinea book could never do much harm among those who had
not three shillings to spare.’ Godwin says: ‘Since government even
in its best state is an evil, the object principally to be aimed at
is that we should have as little of it as the general peace of human
society will permit.’ Like many ‘anarchists,’ he believes in human
perfectibility; the disappearance of government would be no evil, he
thought, because the natural goodness of man, enhanced by progress,
would serve to keep him in the right way. This theory of human
perfectibility led him to demand the abolition of private property
and the dissolution of all governments. To us, Godwin is now chiefly
interesting for having inspired Shelley with his poetic dreams of
innocent man, who has never been perverted and made miserable by the
falsehood and tyranny of priests and kings, and who, if given freedom,
will be once more happy and innocent.”--PI.
GONZALEZ, VALENTIN R. _El Campesino._ Putnam. 218 pp.
“‘El Campesino’ was a famous Communist Spanish general in Spain’s
Civil war. After the war he fled to Russia where he was at first
lauded as a hero, later fell into disfavor with the authorities, and
spent more than ten years in labor camps in Siberia before he made
his escape.”--_Book Review Digest._ “Campesino symbolized the highest
reach of communism’s romantic appeal. He suffered the worst horrors of
its awful reality. The contrasts make his book an ugly and convincing
testament.”--Michael Straight, in the _New Republic_.
GORDON, MANYA. _Workers Before and After Lenin._ Dutton. 1941. 524 pp.
A detailed study of conditions among the laboring classes in Russia
from the 1890’s to the present, with statistics wherever they can be
obtained. The author, born in Russia and educated in the United States,
points out the fact that many Russian statistics are unreliable, and
cites discrepancies. Among the subjects covered are insurance, wages,
housing, dress, factory conditions, social security, education and
the condition of the peasants. “Manya Gordon has performed a genuine
service to the cause of historical truth by puncturing almost beyond
the possibility of revival the legend that, whatever may be its
defects, the Soviet regime represents a vast forward step, especially
for the masses.”--W. H. Chamberlin, in _The New York Times_.
GOUGH, G. W. _The Economic Consequences of Socialism._ London: Allan.
1926. 178 pp.
“A keen criticism of current Socialist proposals and particularly of
the writings of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb and Mr. Tawney. Mr. Gough
merits the compliment of being compared with Mr. Hartley Withers in the
power of dealing with economic complexities in a light and readable
style. It is one of the best criticisms of Socialist theories that has
appeared in recent years.”--PI.
GOUZENKO, IGOR. _The Iron Curtain._ Dutton. 1948. 279 pp.
Autobiography of the young Russian code clerk, attached to the Canadian
Soviet Embassy, who revealed to Canadian authorities the existence of
a plot to turn over atomic bomb secrets to Russian spies. “The entire
narrative is notable for its simplicity, humility, and candor. ‘We
have been impressed,’ said the Royal Commission appointed in Canada to
investigate this matter, ‘with the sincerity of the man, and with the
manner in which he gave his evidence.’”--Asher Brynes, in _The Saturday
Review of Literature_.
GRAHAM, F. D. _Social Goals and Economic Institutions._ Princeton
University Press. 1942. 273 pp.
An attempt to describe the ethical, political, and economic policies
and institutions that would best embody liberal values.
GRAY, ALEXANDER. _The Socialist Tradition: Moses to Lenin._ Longmans,
Green. 1946. 523 pp.
A scholarly, witty and unsympathetic survey, by the professor of
political economy at the University of Edinburgh, of socialist
thinking. “Professor Gray has made a unique contribution, even to the
already voluminous literature about socialism and socialists. The book
does not, as the author himself hastens to make clear in the prologue,
‘aim at being a history of socialist thought.’ Still less is it a
history of the socialist movement. Rather, it is a series of studies
of the ideas of certain individuals who stand high in the socialist
tradition.... Students of socialist thought will be interested by the
fresh viewpoint and the unquestionable depth of scholarship which
Professor Gray brings to his consideration of even the familiar
landmarks. His erudition is almost incredible, and he writes with grace
and charm enlivened by frequent splashes of wit.”--Hilden Gibson, in
the _American Political Science Review_.
GRIFFIN, CLARE E. _Enterprise in a Free Society._ Chicago: Richard D.
Irwin. 1949. 573 pp.
“This book is a timely and useful addition to the literature of
American capitalism. Within its 573 closely printed pages of text,
containing more than 250,000 words, Professor Griffin has given
a systematic and scholarly treatment of enterprise in American
society--its functions, motivations, consequences and the environmental
conditions that facilitate it.”--N. H. Jacoby, in the _American
Economic Review_.
GROS, J. M. _Le Mouvement Littéraire Socialiste._ Paris. 1904.
“This well-written book, almost exclusively confining itself to
France, deals with the aid which poets and other authors have given to
Socialism since 1830.”--PI.
GURIAN, WALDEMAR. _Bolshevism._ University of Notre Dame Press. 1952.
189 pp.
An introduction to Soviet communism. “Some excellent source
material--verified citations from the writings of Lenin and
Stalin--supplements and completes this highly valuable and instructive
work, which is at once scholarly and unpretentious.”--W. H. Chamberlin.
GUYOT, YVES. _Economic Prejudices._ London: Sonnenschein. 1910. 166 pp.
“To a superficial reader this book might leave an impression of
M. Yves Guyot as a rather extreme doctrinaire free trader, but on
its appearance it received a great deal of praise from the British
Conservative Press.... The most valuable part of the book is its
analysis of current Socialist and Labor fallacies. It is written in the
form of a dialogue.”--PI.
GUYOT, YVES. _La Démocratie Individualiste._ Paris: Giard & Brière.
1907.
“As a champion of liberty M. Yves Guyot is a worthy disciple and
successor of Bastiat, although he is a little less optimistic than his
master. _La Démocratie Individualiste_ contains an excellent short
account of the evolution of Individualism, and a brief statement and
explanation of the doctrine.”--PI.
GUYOT, YVES. _Principles of Social Economy._ Scribner’s. 1892. 305 pp.
“A live and original introduction to the study of the subject. It
is particularly valuable for its chapters on ‘State Intervention in
Economics’ and ‘The Province of the State.’”--PI.
HABERLER, GOTTFRIED VON. _The Theory of International Trade._ London:
Hodge. 1936. 408 pp.
“This is a systematic treatise written primarily for the specialist....
The author makes the most devastating attack on the whole
paraphernalia of tariffs, quotas, and exchange restrictions that has
come from the pen of any living writer.”--_Manchester Guardian._ “The
most important and comprehensive study of the subject since Taussig’s
_International Trade_.”--_New Statesman and Nation._
HACKER, LOUIS M. _The Triumph of American Capitalism._ Simon &
Schuster. 1940. (Columbia University Press. 1947.) 460 pp.
A study of the development of forces in American history to the end of
the nineteenth century. “Mr. Hacker has written a remarkable book. It
is not a systematic history of the economic development of the American
people ... [but] an interpretive study, much of it brilliant and all
of it suggestive.... At various points ... the author is tempted
into generalizations which will make all but the hardened economic
determinist blench ... but these passages ... do not greatly impair the
essential merit of his volume.”--Allan Nevins.
HAHN, L. ALBERT. _The Economics of Illusion._ New York: Squier
Publishing Co. 1949. 273 pp.
In my introduction to this book I wrote: “Dr. Hahn enjoys an enormous
advantage as an analyst of Keynesian fallacies. As he has reminded
us himself: ‘All that is wrong and exaggerated in Keynes I said much
earlier and more clearly.’... There is no more important task for the
economic theorist today than to disentangle the network of confusion
and error that now goes under the name of the Keynesian Revolution.
Until this work has been thoroughly done, clarity and real progress
in economics will not be possible. There is no more sophisticated,
penetrating and thorough guide in this task than Albert Hahn.”
HAHN, L. ALBERT. _Wirtschaftswissenschaft des gesunden
Menschenverstandes._ Frankfurt-am-Main: Verlag Fritz Knapp. 1954. 280
pp.
The author describes a “model” of the economic process based on
neo-classical as opposed to Keynesian thinking. It is written as an
introduction to economics for students as well as a “minimum economics”
for educated businessmen. A French translation has appeared under the
title _Notions Pratiques d’Économie Politique_. (Paris: Librairie de
Médicis. 1954.) An American edition is in preparation.
HALÉVY, ÉLIE. _L’Ère des Tyrannies._ Paris: Gallimard. 1938. 249 pp.
A discussion of “the era of despotisms.” English versions of two of
the most important essays in this volume will be found in _Economica_,
February, 1941, and in _International Affairs_, 1934.
HAMILTON, ALEXANDER; MADISON, JAMES; AND JAY, JOHN. _The Federalist._
1787. Many editions. (Random House. 1941.) 618 pp.
A collection of eighty-five articles in defense of the American
Constitution. All but eight appeared originally in the New York press,
between October 1787 and May 1788.
“It remains a classic commentary, not merely on American constitutional
law, but on the principles of government generally. Guizot said of
it that ‘in its application of elementary principles of government
to practical administration’ it was the greatest work he knew, and
Chancellor Kent declared it--quite justly--to be ‘equally admirable
in the depth of its wisdom, the comprehensiveness of its views,
the sagacity of its reflections, and the fearlessness, patriotism,
candor, simplicity and elegance with which its truths are uttered and
recommended,’”--_Encyclopaedia Britannica._
More than half of the articles were written by Hamilton. Madison’s
contributions “advocated a system of government in which democracy
should be reconciled with the security of private rights. He saw that
the central problem of democracy is not the maintenance of equality but
the preservation of liberty.”--William Carpenter in the _Encyclopaedia
of the Social Sciences_.
HANEY, LEWIS H. _History of Economic Thought._ Macmillan. 1911, etc.
1949. 957 pp.
A critical account of the origin and development of the economic
theories of leading thinkers in the leading nations. “Professor Haney,
in addressing himself to the truly colossal task of writing of the
totality of economic thought, has provided for the student by far the
most comprehensive text for the study of this subject now available in
the English language. By and large, the subject matter is well chosen
and well arranged.”--J. M. Ferguson, on third edition, in _American
Economic Review_, 1936.
HANEY, LEWIS H. _How You Really Earn Your Living._ Prentice-Hall.
1952. 282 pp.
This is intended to be “Every Man’s Guide to American Economics.” It
is an admirable introductory volume written with great clearness and
simplicity. In addition to chapters on such central problems as market
value, money, production and distribution, there is a chapter on public
vs. private enterprise, and two chapters on “Seven Ways to Lose Freedom
or Save It.”
HANEY, LEWIS H. _Economics in a Nutshell._ Macmillan. 1933. 213 pp.
Most of these short discussions appeared originally in the author’s
column in the _New York Evening Journal_. They contain a condensed
statement of the principles of economics as taught to Professor Haney’s
classes in New York University.
HARPER, F. A. _Crisis of the Free Market._ New York: National
Industrial Conference Board. 1945. 83 pp.
This study, while aimed particularly at the policy of control during
reconversion from a war to a peace basis, provides a simple exposition
of some of the fundamental facts and principles that form the framework
of a voluntary society and a free economy.
HARPER, F. A. _Liberty: A Path to Its Recovery._ Irvington, N. Y.:
Foundation for Economic Education. 1949. 159 pp.
An analysis of the nature of individual liberty, a measurement of how
much remains, and a program to regain what has been lost. The author
explains how liberty in every other area rests on its preservation in
the economic sphere.
HARRIS, S. HUTCHINSON. _Auberon Herbert: Crusader for Liberty._
London: Williams & Norgate. 1943. 382 pp.
The biography of an individualist whose works are discussed in the
present bibliography.
HASKELL, HENRY J. _The New Deal in Old Rome._ Knopf. 1939. 269 pp.
In his preface the author, editor of the _Kansas City Star_, says:
“To prevent any misconception let me say that this book is neither a
criticism nor a defense of the New Deal. It is an attempt to provide an
objective survey of instances of government intervention in the ancient
world. Many of these were so like experiments tried in the United
States in recent years that they may fairly be classed as New Deal
measures. I have tried to show what these experiments were, why they
were tried, and how they worked. Making allowance for the differences
between ancient and modern society, I have ventured to call attention
to certain warning signals from the past.”
HAYEK, FRIEDRICH A. _The Road to Serfdom._ University of Chicago
Press. 1944. 250 pp.
Reviewing this book in _The New York Times_ of Sept. 23, 1944, I
wrote: “In _The Road to Serfdom_ Friedrich A. Hayek has written one of
the most important books of our generation. It restates for our time
the issue between liberty and authority with the power and rigor of
reasoning that John Stuart Mill stated the issue for his own generation
in his great essay, ‘On Liberty.’ It throws a brilliant light along the
direction in which the world has been heading, first slowly, but now
at an accelerative rate, for the last half-century. It is an arresting
call to all well-intentioned planners and socialists, to all those who
are sincere democrats and liberals at heart, to stop, look, and listen.”
“Although,” Hayek writes, “we had been warned by some of the greatest
political thinkers of the nineteenth century, by de Tocqueville and
Lord Acton, that socialism means slavery, we have steadily moved
in the direction of socialism.... We are rapidly abandoning not
the views merely of Cobden and Bright, of Adam Smith and Hume, or
even of Locke and Milton, but one of the salient characteristics of
Western civilization as it has grown from the foundations laid by
Christianity and the Greeks and Romans. Not merely nineteenth- and
eighteenth-century liberalism, but the basic individualism inherited by
us from Erasmus and Montaigne, from Cicero and Tacitus, Pericles and
Thucydides, is progressively relinquished.”
HAYEK, FRIEDRICH A. _Individualism and Economic Order._ University of
Chicago Press. 1948. 271 pp.
A collection of a dozen essays, some on various aspects of the
philosophy of individualism, and others on technical economic subjects.
For the purposes of this bibliography by far the most important
essay is the first: “Individualism: True and False,” which every
individualist who desires to avoid or combat confusion should study.
Other excellent essays deal with The Use of Knowledge in Society,
The Meaning of Competition, “Free” Enterprise and Competitive Order,
and Socialist Calculation. All of these essays bring great learning
and intelligence to bear upon economic and social issues of central
importance to our era. Every open-minded reader of this book will
find his own understanding of these questions enriched, clarified and
deepened.
HAYEK, FRIEDRICH A. _The Counter-Revolution of Science._ Glencoe,
Ill.: Free Press. 1952. 255 pp.
This book is divided into two parts. The first is an acute and abstract
study of the essential differences in method required in the study of
the physical sciences on the one hand and the social sciences on the
other. An uncritical and slavish imitation in the social studies of the
methods, concepts and language of physics or engineering is condemned
by Professor Hayek as “scientism.” He goes on to show how “scientism”
produces as its logical corollaries collectivism, Marxism and other
forms of economic planning through centralized coercion.
The second part of the book is historical. It gives an amusing as well
as enlightening account of the common origin of “scientism,” positivism
and socialism in the environment of the great engineering school of
Paris, the _École polytechnique_. It traces the intellectual histories
of Henri de Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte, and others, and shows how
their ideas gave birth to “the religion of the engineers,” merged
with German Hegelianism, led to Karl Marx (who borrowed heavily from
the Saint-Simonians as well as from Hegel), and is still seen in the
engine-room outlook and pseudo-science which today threaten to reverse
the historical trend toward greater freedom.
HAYEK, F. A. _John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor._ University of
Chicago Press. 1951. 320 pp.
In his _Autobiography_, John Stuart Mill gave a highly extravagant
account of the moral and intellectual qualities of Mrs. Harriet Taylor,
who finally became his wife, and of her influence on his writings.
Until quite recently, little has been known of the facts behind
this tribute. But much of the correspondence between Mill and Mrs.
Taylor came into the hands of various libraries in 1922 and 1927, and
Professor Hayek (in 1951) gathered and published this material in the
present book. It indicates that Mrs. Taylor did exercise considerable
influence over the less technical aspects of Mill’s thought. Whether
this influence was on net balance for good or ill, the individual
reader can decide for himself. But the evidence is clear that it was
Harriet Taylor who was largely responsible for Mill’s retraction of
most of his opposition to socialism as expressed in the first edition
of his _Political Economy_, and for his far more sympathetic attitude
in the third edition. It was Michael St. John Packe’s ability to draw
heavily on the material in the present book that enabled him to add so
much to our knowledge of Mill in his admirable _Life of John Stuart
Mill_ (q.v.) published in 1954.
HAYEK, F. A. _The Political Ideal of the Rule of Law._ Cairo: National
Bank of Egypt. 1955. 79 pp.
Professor Hayek, although internationally best known as an economist,
was by original training a lawyer. This book reprints lectures he
delivered at the invitation of the National Bank of Egypt. They begin
with an historical survey of the evolution of freedom and the Rule
of Law in Britain, France, Germany, and America. They emphasize such
safeguards of individual liberty as the generality, equality, and
certainty of the law. The final lecture discusses the decline of the
Rule of Law, particularly in England and the United States.
HAYEK, F. A. (ed.). _Capitalism and the Historians._ University of
Chicago Press. 1954. 194 pp.
A provocative set of essays, several of which are brilliant, which
argue that capitalism, even in the days of the Manchester slums and
the child worker, was an immediate positive social good. The authors
hold--from actual case studies of the English worker, his work, and
his times--that the prevalent belief in the immediate evil of the
Industrial Revolution is a myth, perpetuated by a few historians and
intellectuals. The contributors are F. A. Hayek, T. S. Ashton, Louis
Hacker, W. H. Hutt, and Bertrand de Jouvenel.
HAYEK, FRIEDRICH A. (ed.). _Collectivist Economic Planning._ London:
Routledge. 1935. 293 pp.
This is a collection of critical studies on the possibilities of
socialism by N. G. Pierson, Ludwig von Mises, George Halm, and Enrico
Barone. A central subject is the possibility of economic calculation
under socialism. Professor Hayek contributes an admirable introduction
on the “Nature and History of the Problem” and a final chapter on the
“Present State of the Debate.”
HAZLITT, HENRY. _Economics in One Lesson._ Harper. 1946. (Paperbound
1952.) edition: Irvington, N. Y.: Foundation for Economic Education.
222 pp.
“Mr. Hazlitt writes strictly in terms of economics, urging upon his
readers to look not merely at the immediate but also at the larger
effects of an act or a policy.... [He] resents the travesty that many
of his fellow economists have made of their profession. And so he has
gone back patiently to first principles, proving once more that public
works must be paid for by taxes, that taxes discourage production,
that the invention of labor-saving machinery releases men to do other
productive things, that soldiers and bureaucrats live off the rest
of us, that tariffs make us collectively poorer, that exports must
be paid for by imports, that ‘parity’ prices in agriculture do not
solve the ‘farm problem,’ that you cannot produce for use except by
producing for the profit that will enable you to buy other things for
use, that government price-fixing increases the scarcity it is supposed
to alleviate, that inflation is a form of taxation that exempts no
one, that a still poverty-stricken world needs more ‘saving’ and not
more ‘spending,’ that unions defeat themselves when they press for an
uneconomic wage, and that the way to be sane is to look for the hidden
long-term effects of a proposition on the whole social fabric as well
as its effect here and now on Joe Doakes.”--John Chamberlain, in _The
New York Times_.
HAZLITT, HENRY. _The Great Idea._ Appleton-Century-Crofts. 1951. 374
pp.
This is written as a novel, set in the future, in a completely
communized world, from which every trace of the former capitalist
civilization has been removed; but in trying to solve their problems
the people of this world rediscover democracy and the free enterprise
system. I used this story-and-dialogue form because it seemed to me
not only the most effective way to dramatize the contrast between
communism and socialism on the one hand and capitalism or a free market
economy on the other, but the most effective way to explain some of the
fundamental and even abstruse problems involved in the choice.
The theme of the book might also be stated in the form: If capitalism
did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it--and its discovery
would be rightly regarded as one of the great triumphs of the human
mind.
The title of the British edition of the book is _Time Will Run Back_
(London: Ernest Benn).
HAZLITT, HENRY. _Will Dollars Save the World?_ Irvington, N. Y.:
Foundation for Economic Education. 1947. 95 pp.
A critical examination of the Marshall Plan, made when it was first
proposed. It analyzes the fallacies behind most of the American
inter-governmental “foreign-aid” programs, the controlist, statist or
socialist assumptions implicit in them, and their consequent tendency
to encourage and prolong controls, statism and socialism in the nations
receiving aid. A 48-page pamphlet, also by the present author and under
the imprint of the same publisher, makes a similar analysis of the
_Illusions of Point Four_ (1950).
HEARNSHAW, F. J. C. _A Survey of Socialism: Analytical, Historical,
and Critical._ Macmillan. 1929. 473 pp.
“An unusually able student of the literature of liberty speaks of
Hearnshaw’s _A Survey of Socialism_ as the only thing of its kind in
existence. And were there many competitors, one would expect this to
be acclaimed the best. Written by an outstanding British historian in
a period when Britain had many and the United States had few, this
is a reference book on socialism which anyone fortunate enough to
possess a copy will want at his elbow. It treats persons, ideas, and
programs from the earliest ancient times. Its depth and thoroughness
reflect the forty years study of socialism which preceded its being
written. Starting as a socialist sympathizer, his study radically
altered his view to one of its most learned historical critics. He
makes socialism a tragic drama on a literary stage where important
personages from Moses onward take their places in the unfolding events
and concepts.”--F. A. Harper.
HEARNSHAW, F. J. C. _Democracy and Labor._ Macmillan. 1924. 274 pp.
“A vigorous attack on Socialism chiefly on the grounds that it is
undemocratic. Democracy is held, rather optimistically, perhaps, to
be the most effective means of securing freedom. The author, who
is an eminent historian, is an Individualist of the Conservative
school defending existing society on the grounds that it is based on
Individualism. “It is becoming evident that the supreme issue of the
day is the issue of Socialism versus Individualism: of Authority versus
Freedom ... of the maintenance of the Existing Order versus Utopian
and Revolutionary Reconstruction.” The book is a sequel to and in some
respects a revision and abridgment of _Democracy at the Cross-Ways_,
published in 1918. It is often witty and epigrammatic.”--PI.
HECKSCHER, E. _Mercantilism._ Macmillan. 1935. 2 vols. 472 pp. 419 pp.
An effort has recently been made (e.g., by the late Lord Keynes and
some of his disciples) to resuscitate mercantilism and to pretend that
the mercantilists were more nearly right than Adam Smith and their
other liberal critics. Anyone who is inclined to take this argument
seriously, or to believe in modern State “planning” (which is little
more than a revival of mercantilism) would do well to read this
book by a Swedish economic historian. Here is a passage concerning
French mercantilism during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
(p. 173): “It is estimated that the economic measures taken in this
connection cost the lives of some 16,000 people, partly through
executions and partly through armed affrays, without reckoning the
unknown but certainly much larger number of people who were sent to
the galleys or punished in other ways. On one occasion in Valence, 77
were sent to the galleys, one was set free and none were pardoned.
But even this vigorous action did not help to attain the desired end.
Printed calicoes spread more and more widely among all classes of the
population, in France as everywhere else.”
HEILPERIN, MICHAEL A. _The Trade of Nations._ Knopf. 1947. 1952. 302
pp.
Intended as a book for the intelligent layman interested in the
workings of the world economy, as well as a guide and reference for
the professional economist. “In contemporary economic literature
this book fills a niche that has been empty far too long. Michael
Heilperin presents a spirited and intelligent defense of economic
internationalism and its twin, free enterprise in international trade
and investment, and a refutation of both the traditional and the new
collectivist protectionism.”--_Fortune._
HENDERSON, H. D. _Supply and Demand._ Harcourt, Brace. 1922. 181 pp.
“The best short exposition of the standpoint of the modern ‘Cambridge
School’ of economists. It is a very clearly written text-book, and the
first chapter, ‘The Economic World,’ gets right to the heart of what
may be called the _Laissez-faire_-Socialist controversy. The existence
of an anti-Individualist bias may be suspected in his allusion to
attempts by some persons to glorify the existing system of society
whilst ‘plastering over’ such things as wastefulness in production,
sweating, unemployment and slums. A reference to Bastiat suggests that
Mr. Henderson has in mind those people who believe that the evils
referred to are largely caused or aggravated by irrational government
interferences with forces that he himself regards as fundamental.”--PI.
HERBERT, AUBERON. _A Politician in Trouble About His Soul._ Chapman &
Hall. 1884.
“This publicist, who (as will be acknowledged by all who had the good
fortune to meet him) was one of the most charming personalities of
his day, deserves considerably more attention than he has received.
Accepting Herbert Spencer’s strict Individualist creed, Herbert gave
up his political career and devoted himself to its propagation in a
form so thorough that to his contemporaries he appeared as a modern
Don Quixote tilting at windmills. He long provided funds for a little
journal called _Free Life_, whose main tenet was voluntary taxation.
Auberon Herbert’s proposals were derided as ‘Anarchy plus a Policeman,’
and they were too extreme for practical politics at a time when
Socialism had not become formidable or very mischievous. It may be,
however, that the spirit of Auberon Herbert will revive and inspire a
new generation in England.
“_A Politician_ is a charmingly written dialogue in which a Member
of Parliament announces to his friends his intention of giving up
his political career and entering upon a crusade for ‘the perfect
creed of liberty which he found in the writings of Herbert Spencer.’
Doubtless, the zeal of the new convert went far beyond that of his
master; Herbert admits this with his accustomed candor and urbanity.
‘Would Mr. Spencer, do you think, agree to all these applications of
his principle?’ asked Argus. ‘I fear that Mr. Spencer would dissent.
You must not regard him as responsible for any corollaries which I have
drawn.’”--PI.
HERBERT, AUBERON. _The Voluntarist Creed._ Oxford University Press.
1908. 107 pp.
“The swan-song of Auberon Herbert--the latter half was finished a few
days before his death. The first, ‘Mr. Spencer and the Great Machine,’
was delivered in the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford. The second,
‘The Great Machine,’ was addressed principally to the ‘workers.’
He entreated his audience: ‘Don’t believe in suppressing by force
any form of evil--always excepting direct attacks upon person and
property.’ He declared that ‘these new bonds and restrictions in which
the nations of today have allowed themselves to be entangled’ merely
prepare ‘docile and obedient State-material, ready-made for taxation,
ready-made for conscription--ready-made for the ambitious aims and ends
of the rulers.’ He tells the wage-earners: ‘Property is the great and
good inducement that will call out your efforts and energies for the
remaking of the present form of society.’ No man has suffered more than
Auberon Herbert from his contempt of the Time Spirit, and, undoubtedly,
there was in his own day only a small audience for his creed. But the
battle is not over, and he showed a way to success. The ‘selfish’
system of Bentham may repel sentimentalists and altruists. Auberon
Herbert aimed at giving Individualism a noble spiritual significance.
His writings are worthy of careful study, though he underestimated the
value and possibilities of the modern State as a means of organizing
public-spirited activity. In the eighteenth century the State was
regarded, with considerable justification, as hostile to liberty.
This was Herbert’s view, and since his death the extension of State
functions has made another revival of Individualism imperative in order
to save Democracy from itself.”--PI.
HERLING, ALBERT K. _The Soviet Slave Empire._ Funk. 1951. 230 pp.
An exposé of slave labor in the U.S.S.R. and its satellite countries.
The report contains reprinted photostats of documents from the files
of the Russian secret police. The author is a Unitarian minister who
temporarily left his parish to devote himself to investigating this new
slavery. He became director of research for the commission of inquiry
into forced labor, which was set up in December 1948.
HERMANS, FERDINAND. _Democracy or Anarchy?_ University of Chicago
Press. 1940. (University of Notre Dame. 1951). 447 pp.
This study presents the arguments against proportional representation
and in favor of majority rule. “What the conservatives have lacked up
to now has been a well-documented scholarly analysis of the failure
of proportional representation where it has been tried, and of the
appalling contribution which this gadget has made to the growth of
communism, fascism and other undemocratic phenomena. Professor Hermans,
who has long since been regarded as a leading authority in this field,
has now filled the gap by an excellent volume entitled _Democracy or
Anarchy?_”--Robert Moses, in the _Political Science Quarterly_.
HEWART OF BURY, LORD. _The New Despotism._ London: Ernest Benn. 1929.
311 pp.
By the “new despotism” the author, who at the time of the appearance of
this book in 1929 was Lord Chief Justice of England, means the danger
which threatens the institutions of self-government through the steady
encroachment of the executive upon the powers of the legislative and
judiciary. His book is a strong argument against bureaucracy--the
practice by which Parliament delegates wide powers of legislation
to government departments and commissions. “Lord Hewart’s new book
is a political event of first-rate importance.”--_Saturday Review._
“Lord Hewart proves his case. He gives chapter and verse for all his
accusations.”--_Spectator._
HEWES, THOMAS. _Decentralization for Liberty._ Dutton. 1947. 238 pp.
“Mr. Hewes’ legal background, his obviously extensive studies of the
literature on liberty, much experience in public service, and keen
insight have enabled him to see clearly the great problem that Western
Civilization must solve if it is to survive. In terms understandable
to the layman he has described the principal features of this problem.
That accomplishment alone is a meritorious public service.”--American
Institute for Economic Research.
HIRST, FRANCIS W. _Early Life and Letters of John Morley._ Macmillan.
1927. 2 vols. 327 pp. 285 pp.
Morley’s “political doctrine,” writes Hirst, “unites the traditions
of the philosophical Radicals and of the Manchester School. Disciple
of Mill, biographer of Cobden, friend of John Bright, favorite and
most trusted colleague of Gladstone in his two last administrations,
he held in later years a unique position as the philosophic guide of
English Liberals.” As Morley was the disciple of Mill, Hirst was the
disciple of Morley; and Hirst has been himself described as “the most
distinguished Cobdenite spokesman and political philosopher of his
generation.” He died in 1953, in his eightieth year. He was editor of
the London _Economist_ from 1907 to 1916, honorable fellow of Wadham
College, Oxford, and governor of the London School of Economics.
HIRST, FRANCIS W. _Adam Smith._ Macmillan. 1904. 240 pp.
A standard biography.
HIRST, FRANCIS W. _Life and Letters of Thomas Jefferson._ Macmillan.
1926. 588 pp.
A full biography of a great individualist statesman.
HOFF, TRYGVE J. B. _Economic Calculation in the Socialist Society._
1938. London: Hodge. 1949. 264 pp.
This book by a distinguished Norwegian economist and editor originally
appeared in Norway in 1938 and was not translated into English until
1949. In it Dr. Hoff examines the crucial question whether economic
calculation is or is not possible in a completely socialist society. He
concludes, with Drs. Mises and Hayek, that it is not. “Very balanced
and fair.... It is a pleasure to read such a scholarly, clear and
patient exposition.”--H. D. Dickenson, in _The Economic Journal_.
HOFF, TRYGVE J. B. _Fred og Fremtid. Liberokratiets vei._ Oslo: H.
Aschehoug. 1945. 500 pp.
This is a book by an eminent Norwegian economist, editor of the
magazine _Farmand_, published in Oslo. The book was written during
World War II, the last chapter in a German concentration camp. It is
a homage to Western culture and stresses the necessity of opposition
to collectivist and Asiatic ideals, to the extent that the latter are
fundamentally aggressive.
The book is also a plea for a new liberalism to which Mr. Hoff gives
the name “liberocracy.” In his own words: “Liberocracy is the name of
an economic and political system representing the best in liberalism,
in democracy and the aristocratic form of rule. It does not pretend to
be something new; it is a new name for a new combination of old but
revised ideas. Liberocracy means the rule of the free by the free. Its
central idea is freedom--freedom for the individual, freedom of press,
freedom for science and art, freedom to choose and exchange goods and
services within and outside national borders.”
The Norwegian title may be translated as _Peace and Future: The Way of
Liberocracy_.
HOFFER, ERIC. _The True Believer._ Harper. 1951. 176 pp.
This carries the subtitle, “Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements.”
It is a scholarly, witty, epigrammatic, sometimes flippant but usually
penetrating analysis of fanaticism, particularly in the political realm.
HOLYOAKE, G. J. _Self-Help a Hundred Years Ago._ London: Swan,
Sonnenschein. 1888. 214 pp.
“Deals with the various elementary forms of self-help, in which
the poor with the assistance of the well-to-do engaged during the
darkest days of the Industrial Revolution. The spirit of the plucky,
self-reliant man in adversity is still valuable, perhaps more necessary
than ever. In our time we are too much inclined to scoff at thriftful
industry. Yet may we not expect a finer character from one who rises by
these means from poverty than from one who applies for the dole as soon
as he sees the approach of trouble?”--PI.
HOOK, SIDNEY. _Heresy, Yes, Conspiracy, No._ Day. 1953. 283 pp.
A treatise on the nature of liberal thinking and its place in American
life, particularly in academic circles. The author is opposed to
communism because it is secret and conspiratorial, but holds that
the outspoken leftist critic should not be silenced. “A balanced and
incisive contribution.”--E. N. Case, in _The New York Times_.
HOOVER, HERBERT. _American Individualism._ Doubleday. 1922. 72 pp.
A short but vigorous and important book, arguing for American
individualism, “our most precious possession,” and against governmental
encroachment on personal freedom, initiative and enterprise.
HOOVER, HERBERT. _Challenge to Liberty._ Scribner’s. 1934. 212 pp.
“The challenge to liberty is, briefly, regimentation. This, as Mr.
Hoover points out, is close kin to Fascism, Communism, Nazism and
Socialism in that it implies that the individual is the pawn of the
state.”--_Books._
HOOVER, HERBERT. _Memoirs: The Great Depression._ Macmillan. 1951. 503
pp.
The third volume of ex-President Hoover’s memoirs covers the years
1929 to 1941. In it he reviews the great depression era and gives his
defense of his administration in Washington. “Mr. Hoover has turned
his pen to a great penetrating analysis of the causes of the great
depression, that economic catastrophe that nearly overwhelmed the
Western world in 1929 and the years immediately after. Unthinking or
malicious people have often dubbed this ‘Hoover’s depression,’ one of
the basest slanders of this century. The mountain of facts presented in
this book should do much to sound the death knell of this calumny.”--W.
H. Baker, in the _San Francisco Chronicle_.
HOPKINSON, AUSTIN. _The Hope of the Workers._ London: Martin
Hopkinson. 1923. 104 pp.
“The point of view of one who has himself been successful as an
employer and is well known as an Individualist. In form a criticism of
the Socialist attitude and an exposure of Socialist fallacies, the book
is addressed as much to employers as to the work people of the country.
Mr. Hopkinson believes that the survival of Socialist fallacies has
been largely due to the fact that those who support the Individualist
system have failed to show clearly that ‘they do so, not for their own
selfish ends, but because it is the one system under which prosperity
and liberty can be secured to the people.’”--PI.
HUGHES, FRANK. _Prejudice and the Press._ Devin-Adair. 1950. 654 pp.
A restatement of the principle of freedom of the press with specific
reference to the Hutchins-Luce commission. “_Prejudice and the Press_
cannot be shrugged off. It presents a considerable body of authentic
material, with citations and some documentation, which goes to the
heart of the issues discussed in _A Free and Responsible Press_ and
which upsets many of the too facile generalizations of the group
responsible for that ‘report.’”--F. L. Mott, in the _New York Herald
Tribune_.
HUME, DAVID. _Essays Moral, Political and Literary._ 1741-2. Numerous
editions. 616 pp.
Although Adam Smith referred to David Hume in his _Wealth of Nations_
as “by far the most illustrious philosopher and historian of the
present age,” even professional economists seldom seem to recognize
the great intellectual debt that Smith owed to his older friend
Hume, not merely in general philosophy but in the special realm of
economics. These essays, published more than thirty years before _The
Wealth of Nations_, embody many important ideas which Adam Smith later
expanded and pushed further. The most important economic essays are
Of Commerce, Of the Balance of Trade, Of the Jealousy of Trade, Of
Money, Of Interest, Of Taxes, and Of Public Credit. In addition there
are political essays, Of the Liberty of the Press, Of the Independence
of Parliament, and Of Civil Liberty, that stand among the earlier
developments of the modern philosophy of individualism. Hume was hardly
less distinguished for the excellence of his literary style than for
the originality and acuteness of his ideas.
HUNOLD, ALBERT (ed.). _Die Konvertibilität der europäischen
Währungen._ Zurich: Eugen Rentsch. 1954. 336 pp.
An anthology on the measures that can be taken to bring about a
return to freedom of currency convertibility. The contributors
include G. Haberler, P. Jacobson, W. Röpke, G. Carli, F. Collin, H.
Germain-Martin, H. Homberger, J. E. Meade, F. W. Meyer, S. Posthuma,
and F. A. Lutz.
HUNT, R. N. CAREW. _Marxism: Past and Present._ Macmillan. 1955.
“It is a worthwhile endeavor to put the claims of Marxism through the
wringer of factual analysis. This is what a British scholar, Mr. R.
N. Carew Hunt, has now done with conspicuous success.... One Marxian
dogma after another is fairly stated, examined and dismissed with
the reasoned verdict: disproved or unprovable. From this searching
examination a very deflated Marx emerges, stripped of all pretension to
be recognized as a seer of the shape of things to come, or even as a
reasonably accurate guesser.”--William Henry Chamberlin.
The author pronounces this final judgment on utopianism in general
and Marxism in particular: “It is easy enough to attack any economic
system, as it is certain to contain features which are open to
criticism, and to make large promises of replacing it by a new order of
ideal harmony. But in an imperfect world no such order is attainable.
‘It is a disease of the soul,’ says a Grecian sage, ‘to be in love with
impossible things.’”
HUNT, R. N. CAREW. _The Theory and Practice of Communism._ Macmillan.
1951. 231 pp.
“The book falls into three sections. The first deals with the basis of
Communist theory as laid down by Marx and Engels, which is still the
official creed of the movement. The second covers the development of
the European labor movement in the Nineteenth Century, with special
reference to Marxist influence upon it and to the cross-currents of
opinion which arose by way of reaction to his doctrines.... The third
brings us to the period when the revolutionary movement begins to be
shaped by Russia, which has since directed it, and deals with the
attempts by Lenin and Stalin to apply Marxist principles to the changed
conditions of the present century.”--From the Foreword. “With a single
demurrer, I recommend _The Theory and Practice of Communism_ as a book
that every man of politics, and every one prone to get into political
arguments, ought to carry in his pocket.”--Max Eastman, in _The New
York Times_.
HUNTER, EDWARD. _Brain-Washing in Red China._ Vanguard Press. 1951.
311 pp.
The calculated destruction of men’s minds. “One of the largest and
most important jobs confronting the initial band of Chinese Communists
was to subject their citizens to ‘brainwashing’ in order to rid them
of ‘imperialist poison’ and to qualify them for their position in the
‘new democracy.’... The author interviewed at length returnees from
the mainland to Hongkong, and his story is a horribly incredible one
of exploitation of human nature, destruction of individualism, and
intellectual conquest.”--_Library Journal._ “Mr. Hunter points up the
basic issue of the struggle between Communism and democracy--that
is, that Communism means the end of individual freedom. He says that
we must find means of checking the psychological offensive of the
Communist world if we ourselves are to be safe from brain washing and
brain changing.”--A. T. Steele, in the _New York Herald Tribune_.
HUTT, W. H. _The Theory of Collective Bargaining._ 1930. Glencoe,
Ill.: Free Press. 1954. 150 pp.
This is a short but lucid and penetrating “history, analysis and
criticism of the principal theories which have sought to explain
the effects of trade unions and employers’ associations upon the
distribution of the product of industry.” As Ludwig von Mises writes
in his preface to the 1954 edition: “Professor Hutt’s brilliant essay
is not merely a contribution to the history of economic thought. It
is rather a critical analysis of the arguments advanced by economists
from Adam Smith down and by the spokesmen of the unions in favor of
the thesis that unionism can raise wage rates above the market level
without harm to anybody else than the ‘exploiters.’ As such it is of
utmost use not only to every student of economics but to everybody who
wants to form a well-founded opinion about one of the most vital as
well as most controversial political issues of our age.”
HUTT, W. H. _Plan for Reconstruction._ Oxford University Press. 1943.
328 pp.
Appearing during World War II, this presented Professor Hutt’s project
for victory in war and peace. “It is a careful and sound analysis of
all forms of restrictionism, and it is a skilful discussion of some of
the most important economic evils of our era.”--B. F. Hoselitz, in the
_American Journal of Sociology_.
HUXLEY, ALDOUS. _Brave New World._ Doubleday. 1932. 311 pp.
A chilling satirical novel on the “brave new world” of the future, when
human liberty, dignity and individuality will have been systematically
destroyed by “scientific conditioning.”
HUXLEY, ALDOUS. _Ends and Means._ Harper. 1937. 386 pp.
This book, which combines lucidity and insight with mysticism and
confusion, has a mixed value for the individualist. Reviewing it in
_The New York Times_ of Dec. 12, 1937, I wrote: “_Ends and Means_
rests on the premise ... that the end cannot justify the means,
for the simple reason that the means employed inevitably determine
the nature of the ends produced. Hence Huxley is opposed to all
efforts to achieve a better world through the method of violence....
He is against the ‘capitalistic system,’ or at least he thinks he
is.... Yet he fails to realize how much more opposed he is to the
real alternative to capitalism.... ‘State Socialism,’ he recognizes
explicitly at one point, ‘tends to produce a single centralized,
totalitarian dictatorship, wielding absolute authority over all its
subjects through a hierarchy of bureaucratic agents.’ The political
road to a better society, he tells us, on the other hand, is ‘the
road of decentralization and responsible self-government.’ But this
comes pretty close to being a definition of private enterprise in the
economic field.”
HYDE, DOUGLAS. _I Believed._ Putnam. 1950. 312 pp.
Autobiographical account of how the author became a communist, worked
hard for many years in the British Communist Party, and then left the
party and became a convert to Catholicism. “This book is one of the
most interesting and revealing of the score or so of confessions by
ex-Communists.”--Freda Utley, in the _Chicago Sunday Tribune_.
JEFFERSON, THOMAS. _The Declaration of Independence._ 1776. 1 p.
This is the most famous short statement in existence of the principles
of political liberty (with the possible exception of Magna Charta
[1215], if the two can be compared). Certainly, nothing bearing on
those principles is more often quoted than the second paragraph of the
Declaration, beginning: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness.” Although Jefferson drew up the Declaration, it
was slightly amended by Adams and Franklin.
JEFFERSON, THOMAS. _The Life and Selected Writings of._ Many editions.
(Modern Library. 1944. 756 pp.)
Every student of human liberty should know something of the philosophy
and writings of Jefferson (in addition to the Declaration of
Independence, here listed separately). There are several collections
and many selections. The volume listed above gives the _Notes on
Virginia_ and the _Autobiography_ virtually complete, and allots the
greatest amount of space to the letters. Jefferson was a staunch
champion of limited government and the diffusion and decentralization
of powers. He favored (p. 323) “a wise and frugal government, which
shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave
them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and
improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it
has earned. This is the sum of good government.”
JEVONS, W. STANLEY. _The Theory of Political Economy._ 1871. Numerous
editions.
A work of epoch-making importance. John Maynard Keynes writes of it:
“Jevons’s _Theory_ is the first treatise to present in a finished
form the theory of value based on subjective valuations, the marginal
principle and the now familiar technique of the algebra and diagrams
of the subject. The first modern book on economics, it has proved
singularly attractive to all bright minds newly attacking the
subject;--simple, lucid, unfaltering, chiselled in stone where Marshall
knits in wool.”
JEVONS, W. STANLEY. _The State in Relation to Labor._ 1882. Macmillan.
174 pp.
In this book Jevons takes a cautious, intermediate position regarding
state intervention: “The all-important point,” he explains in the
preface, “is to explain if possible why, in general, we uphold the
rule of _laisser-faire_, and yet in large classes of cases invoke the
interference of local or central authorities.... The outcome of the
inquiry is that we can lay down no hard-and-fast rules, but must treat
every case in detail upon its merits.” But in his _Primer on Political
Economy_, published in 1878, he wrote, for example: “There is no reason
whatever to think that trades unions have had any permanent effect in
raising wages in the majority of trades.”
JEVONS, W. STANLEY. _The Coal Question._ 1865. Macmillan. 383 pp.
This bears the subtitle: “An enquiry concerning the progress of
the nation, and the probable exhaustion of our coal mines.” It is
significant as foreseeing far in advance a physical condition which,
when it developed, was attributed to the wastefulness of private
competition and led to Britain’s futile nationalization of the coal
mines.
JEWKES, JOHN. _Ordeal by Planning._ Macmillan. 1948. 248 pp.
The most forthright and powerful attack on government economic planning
that has appeared in England since Hayek’s _Road to Serfdom_. While it
lacks some of the philosophic penetration and depth of Hayek’s book,
it is more explicit and concrete. Its style is lively, sparkling, and
witty. Professor Jewkes was a wartime member of the British bureaucracy
and has seen central economic planning from the inside. “The planned
economy,” he concludes, “must finally destroy the very instruments
of free speech.... This is no accident.... It is due to the logical
incompatibility of a planned economy and freedom for the individual....
There is no end to this process of seeking to cure the evils of
planning by more planning except a totalitarian economy of the Russian
type.”
JOSEPH, H. W. B. _The Labor Theory of Value in Karl Marx._ Oxford
University Press. 1923. 176 pp.
Professor Joseph holds that the theory which finds an objective measure
of value for things in the labor embodied in them is fundamentally
false. The author is well known as a logician. The late L. Susan
Stebbing called his _Introduction to Logic_ “by far the best systematic
exposition of the traditional logic.” James Bonar wrote of the present
book in _The Economic Journal_: “It is not censure but commendation
that in showing [that Marx’s theory is false] Mr. Joseph follows
the lines of many predecessors, especially Böhm-Bawerk, that model
of conscientious thoroughness.... The book is sane and helpful. Its
discussions give good training in Applied Logic.”
JOUVENEL, BERTRAND DE. _The Ethics of Redistribution._ Cambridge
University Press. 1951. 91 pp.
Deliberately putting aside the argument that current government efforts
to redistribute incomes reduce or destroy incentives, Baron de Jouvenel
seeks to deal with the subject on purely ethical grounds. Would
total equalization of incomes, he asks, even if it did not reduce
production, be good or desirable? Or does justice demand individual
rewards proportionate to the value of individual services? In an acute
and original discussion, de Jouvenel shows not only how disappointing
(in Great Britain, for example) the results of a further redistribution
of incomes would be, but how redistribution has turned out to mean in
effect “far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to
the poorer, as we imagined, than a redistribution of power from the
individual to the State.”
JOUVENEL, BERTRAND DE. _On Power._ Viking Press. 1949. 421 pp.
“M. de Jouvenel, a French journalist and historian, who finished this
book in exile during the war, maintains that all power is corrupt, no
matter what political philosophy it is dedicated to. Even revolutions,
which break up special privilege in the name of the common good, are
the products of a desire for power, he believes, and the iniquities
of power cannot be prevented by putting philosophers, scientists, and
‘men of good will’ in high office, for as soon as they are on top, they
become politicians.... The book is not a tract, but a fully considered
line of thinking, and has caused a great deal of comment in Europe. An
important book, brilliantly written.”--_New Yorker._
KALME, ALBERT. _Total Terror._ Appleton-Century-Crofts. 1951. 310 pp.
An account of the fate of the three Baltic countries--Estonia, Latvia
and Lithuania--under the Nazis and the Russian communist regime.
KANTOROWICZ, HERMANN U. _The Spirit of British Policy, and the Myth of
the Encirclement of Germany._ Oxford University Press. 1931. 541 pp.
The primary purpose of this scholarly and thorough book by an eminent
German jurist is to disprove the notion of the “encirclement” of
Germany through the operations of British diplomacy as a cause of World
War I.
KAPLAN, A. D. H. _Big Enterprise in the Competitive System._ Brookings
Institution. 1953. 269 pp.
A careful statistical study which throws a brilliant light on the
question of bigness, monopoly, “oligopoly” and competition in American
industry. Dr. Kaplan shows, for example, that of the 100 largest
industrial firms in the United States in 1909 only 36 stayed in the
list of the 100 largest for 1948. “The top is a slippery place,” and
no safeguard against the hazards of competition. Dr. Kaplan points
out that the attitude of the American public toward “big business”
is oddly inconsistent. Individually, as investors, employees, and
consumers, the people support and promote the growth of big business
enterprises. But collectively they regard “big business” with distrust.
KASENKINA, OKSANA. _Leap to Freedom._ Lippincott. 1949. 295 pp.
Autobiography of the Russian teacher, Oksana Kasenkina. “Her story
of the first faint glimmering of the idea of breaking away from the
soul-crushing tyranny which surrounded her, of the slow growth of her
hope and determination, of her first abortive attempt to pull free and
of her final desperate plunge from a window of the Soviet Consulate
into the courtyard below, and into the welcoming arms of America, make
up the best part of the book. Even though you know that she did escape,
the suspense at the end is terrific.”--Oriana Atkinson, in _The New
York Times_.
KEETON, G. W. _The Passing of Parliament._ London: Ernest Benn. 1952.
208 pp.
G. W. Keeton is dean of the Faculty of Laws at University College,
London. During the past seventy years, he points out, the British
Parliament, although still nominally supreme, has conferred on
government departments and agencies increasingly wide powers of
lawmaking. The jurisdiction of the courts and the legislative powers of
the House of Lords have been seriously curtailed. Party discipline has
intensified, so that a government may rely upon a firm majority in the
House of Commons to give legal force to almost any measure it proposes.
The Rule of Law has been gravely undermined. It is Professor Keeton’s
thesis that, in consequence of these developments, the sovereignty
of Parliament is in danger of becoming a fiction, and that all the
necessary machinery for Cabinet dictatorship already exists. This
scholarly and cogent book is a worthy successor to _The New Despotism_
written by Lord Hewart (q.v.) more than twenty years ago.
KEEZER, DEXTER MERRIAM, and associates. _Making Capitalism Work._
McGraw-Hill. 1950. 316 pp.
A program for preserving freedom and stabilizing prosperity. The volume
is the joint product of several members of the economics department
of the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company. Its own declaration of purpose
is: “This book is written from a definite point of view and with a
clear-cut purpose. The point of view is that capitalism is the best way
to economic life for the United States of America. The purpose is to
explain that point of view and present a series of steps which, in the
view of the authors, must be taken to give capitalism the promise of a
prosperous future in the United States.”
KELLER, THE REV. EDWARD A. _Christianity and American Capitalism._
Chicago: Heritage Foundation. 1954. 92 pp.
Father Keller examines socialism, capitalism, big government and big
labor, and restates the case for the American economic system.
KELSEN, HANS. _The Political Theory of Bolshevism._ University of
California Press. 1948. 60 pp.
A critical analysis of the political theory of bolshevism. “The purpose
of this study is to show the paradoxical contradiction which exists
within bolshevism between anarchism in theory and totalitarianism
in practice, and to defend the true idea of democracy.”--From the
Introduction.
KELSEN, HANS. _The Communist Theory of Law._ Frederick A. Praeger.
1955. 203 pp.
“Hans Kelsen is one of the world’s leading authorities on legal theory
and international law.... He begins with an analysis of the Marx-Engels
theory of state and law that is positively brilliant.... Kelsen’s
analysis of the logical contradictions in historical materialism
and its application to state and law has, so far as I know, no
equal.”--Bertram D. Wolfe, in _The New York Times_.
KEMMERER, E. W. _The A B C of Inflation._ Whittlesey House. 1942. 174
pp.
An excellent little book on the causes and consequences of monetary
inflation, although the threat of inflation to liberty was not as clear
when this book was written as it has since become.
KIEKHOFER, WILLIAM H. _Economic Principles, Problems and Policies._
Appleton-Century-Crofts. 1951.
A standard college textbook.
KING, WILLFORD I. _The Keys to Prosperity._ Constitution and Free
Enterprise Foundation. 1948. 242 pp.
Dr. King believes that most of the keys that unlock the gates to
prosperity were found by Adam Smith in _The Wealth of Nations_.
Additional “keys” have been discovered since that time. Yet “a great
tangle of misconceptions and fallacies” has buried many of them “so
deeply that it has required a trained eye to detect them.” Dr. King
attempts here to disentangle the fallacies from the economic truths in
order that the reader may find the “keys to prosperity.” He writes with
lucidity and statistical authority.
KINTNER, WILLIAM R. _The Front Is Everywhere._ University of Oklahoma
Press. 1950. 274 pp.
“The author, now at Fort Leavenworth, started research for this book
while doing graduate work at Georgetown University. He believes that
an overruling military purpose shapes every aspect of Communist
organization. Kintner endeavors to prove his point by examining the
history of the Marxist movement from origins to era of Lenin and
Stalin. The volume contains some significant observations, based on
wide acquaintance with Communist literature.”--_Library Journal._
KIRK, RUSSELL. _The Conservative Mind._ Regnery. 1953. 458 pp.
In my Introduction to this bibliography I call attention to the
compatibility of an intelligent conservatism with a vigorous defense
of freedom. Russell Kirk recognizes this. “Political liberalism before
the middle of the nineteenth century,” he writes, “was conservatism of
a sort: it intended to conserve liberty.” The present book analyzes
the conservative spirit and philosophy as exemplified in a series
of writers from Edmund Burke to George Santayana. “The author of
_The Conservative Mind_ is as relentless as his enemies, Karl Marx
and Harold Laski, considerably more temperate and scholarly, and in
passages of this very readable book, brilliant and even eloquent....
Against the Hegel-Marx-Laski axis he analyzes and describes the
affirmative tradition of Burke, de Tocqueville and Irving Babbitt.”--G.
K. Chalmers, in _The New York Times_.
KNIGHT, FRANK H. _Risk, Uncertainty and Profit._ Houghton Mifflin.
1921. 381 pp.
In his preface, Professor Knight declares: “The particular technical
contribution to the theory of free enterprise which this essay purports
to make is a fuller and more careful examination of the role of the
_entrepreneur_ or enterpriser, the recognized ‘central figure’ of the
system, and of the forces which fix the remuneration of his special
function.”
“The outstanding fact about Professor Knight’s book is that the author
has made a contribution to the theory of profit that no student of
the subject can afford to neglect.”--G. P. Watkins, in the _Quarterly
Journal of Economics_.
KNIGHT, FRANK H. _The Ethics of Competition, and Other Essays._
Harper. 1935. 363 pp.
A collection of eleven important essays by Professor Knight, brought
together by a group of his former students. It includes a bibliography
of his writings from 1915 to 1935. “Professor Knight ... manages in
the course of this volume to throw original and arresting light on
almost every corner of the contemporary economic problem. One page
after another in his book is filled not merely with great wisdom and
subtlety, but with constant aphoristic sentences that strike the reader
at once with their pertinence and truth.... It is ... because Professor
Knight is an economic theorist of the first rank and a believer in
personal and political liberty, that his criticism of the existing
economic system is so extremely valuable. He also has the great merit
of seeing the philosophical background clearly, and not falling back,
like some economists, on philosophical solecisms while professing to
eschew philosophy altogether.”--London _Times Literary Supplement_.
KNIGHT, FRANK H. _Freedom and Reform._ Harper. 1947. 409 pp.
Essays in economic and social philosophy. “Knight’s personal influence,
through his teaching, exceeds even the influence of his writings. It is
hardly an exaggeration to state that nearly all the younger American
economists who really understand and advocate a competitive economic
system, have at one time been Knight’s students.”--F. A. Hayek.
KNOWLES, LILIAN C. A. _Industrial and Commercial Revolutions in Great
Britain during the Nineteenth Century._ Dutton. 1921. 420 pp.
“The best general economic history of England in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. On the question of the interpretation of
State intervention during this period, its attitude may be described as
‘neutral.’”--PI.
KOESTLER, ARTHUR. _Darkness at Noon._ Macmillan. 1941. 267 pp. (Also
Modern Library. 1946.)
A powerful novel based on the famous Moscow trials. It centers about
a former People’s Commissar who has followed certain practices for a
cause that seemed of supreme importance, and now finds himself victim
of his own methods. In portraying the psychology of a loyal communist,
the novel illuminates not only Russia but the conflict between the
individual and the State.
KOESTLER, ARTHUR. _The Yogi and the Commissar._ Macmillan. 1945. 247
pp.
A collection of sixteen essays. These essays contain the shrewd and
sometimes brilliant insights of a former communist--and the confusions
of one who still remains a socialist.
KORNER, EMIL. _The Law of Freedom as the Remedy for War and Poverty._
London: Williams & Norgate. 1951. 2 vols. 562 pp. 663 pp.
This work, translated from the original German, contains much
that seems to me confused and crotchety, but also much that
is illuminating. “Korner offers stimulating viewpoints to
those who adhere to L. Mises’, F. A. Hayek’s and L. Robbins’
doctrines of economic freedom or to H. C. Simons’ _Positive
Program of Laissez-faire_ and reject Marxism as well as Keynesian
economics.”--Theo Surányi-Unger, in _The American Economic Review_.
KRAVCHENKO, VICTOR. _I Chose Freedom._ Scribner’s. 1946. 496 pp.
“About two months before D-Day on the beaches of Normandy, a frightened
member of the Soviet Purchasing Commission deserted his post in
Washington and placed himself under the protection of the people of the
United States. He was Victor Kravchenko, long a member of the Communist
party, an engineer, a factory director and for a time an official in
the Council of Peoples Commissars of the Russian Soviet Federative
Socialist Republic, by far the largest of the republics constituting
the U.S.S.R. Kravchenko was not frightened of shell-fire but of the
long arm of Soviet law dealing with a renegade. He escaped, however,
and in _I Chose Freedom_ he and his translator have described his life
in the Soviet Union, his views of the Soviet régime and the events that
prompted him to desert.”--_Weekly Book Review._ “It is, I believe, the
most remarkable and most revelatory report to have come out of the
Soviet Union from any source whatsoever.”--Dorothy Thompson, in the
_Saturday Review of Literature_.
KRAVCHENKO, VICTOR. _I Chose Justice._ Scribner’s. 1950. 458 pp.
“A sequel to _I Chose Freedom_. The author describes his successful
libel suit against _Les Lettres Françaises_, a Parisian Communist
magazine which had called his book a fake.”--_The New York Times._ “The
world is indebted to the author for material which should settle once
for all every honest doubt as to the Kremlin’s determination to destroy
human liberties.”--_Catholic World._
KROPOTKIN, PRINCE. _Mutual Aid._ London: Heinemann. 1904. 348 pp.
“The Anarchists are Individualists of a somewhat perverse kind. So
extreme an Individualist as Auberon Herbert was very careful to
disclaim any connection with Anarchy. Kropotkin--who was considerably
influenced by the farm-loving Fourier--advocated the extreme
Individualism which threw off all restraint, and arrived, through
Anarchy, at Communism. But the goal is ‘free Communism untrammelled
by the State.’ In economics a good time is coming.... In social life
and politics there is to be the enjoyment for all of the same liberty.
All contracts--above all, marriage--are void unless ‘voluntarily and
frequently renewed.’ With almost incredible optimism, the Anarchists
held that sovereign Reason coupled with the inherited instinct of
solidarity impelling men towards mutual aid (this seems to have
been Kropotkin’s own and comparatively commonsense contribution)
would be sufficient to control human passions. Government would be
quite unnecessary. There is a myth that the philosopher Empedocles,
to prove some philosophical principle, threw himself into Etna and
perished. Much the same fate befell poor Kropotkin. Believing that his
principles had triumphed in Russia, he hurried to his native land in
the expectation of seeing the world’s great age begin anew. He soon
discovered that, as the Jacobins were said to have no need of chemists,
so the Leninites had no use for philosophers, and he died in poverty
that almost amounted to starvation.”--PI.
KRUTCH, JOSEPH WOOD. _The Measure of Man._ Bobbs-Merrill. 1954. 261 pp.
This is a well-written and closely reasoned book. It is a significant
and hopeful sign that Joseph Wood Krutch, whose background has
been mainly that of a literary and dramatic critic, and who has no
special knowledge of economics and politics, should have arrived by
an independent route at much the same conclusions as those of F. A.
Hayek in _The Counter-Revolution of Science_ (q.v.). Although the two
writers show no knowledge of each other’s work, Krutch, like Hayek,
has become profoundly critical of the mechanistic, “conditioning”
and “engineering” point of view toward man and society: he answers
the arguments of the mechanists not on emotional or mystical, but on
scientific and rational, grounds. Historically he shows how nineteenth
century thought, under the influence of Darwin, Marx, Freud, and
their followers, left us the heritage of materialism, mechanism and
determinism that has played into the hands of the totalitarians. Krutch
contends that man is capable of making independent choices and value
judgments and of freely choosing what he will do.
KÜHNELT-LEDDIHN, ERIK MARIA VON. _Liberty or Equality._ Caldwell,
Idaho: Caxton Printers. 1952. 395 pp.
“The book is an exploration of certain interconnected hypotheses,
of varying generality, about contemporary politics. The first set
of propositions to be examined is: That the impulse of ‘democracy’
(popular government) is the pursuit of equality, and that this leads
unavoidably (and has in fact led) to collectivism and on to oppressive
totalitarianism; and that ‘liberalism’ is the pursuit of liberty and is
an incompatible mate for ‘democracy.’... The second proposition: That
‘monarchy’ is a more serviceable manner of government than ‘democracy’
and likely to be more ‘liberal.’... The third: That the political
temper of Catholic nations is more ‘liberal’ than that of Protestant
nations.”--_Spectator._ “The book is uneven--sometimes naive, sometimes
poorly thought out, and sometimes exasperatingly repetitious. But its
genuine insights make it worth reading, despite its weaknesses.”--W. P.
Clancy, in _Commonweal_.
LACOUR-GAYET, JACQUES, and LACOUR-GAYET, ROBERT. _De Platon à la
Terreur._ Paris: Éditions SPID. 1948. 268 pp.
This is a short history of the philosophy and practice of State
economic planning and price controls “from Plato to the Terror.” It
contains chapters on Plato and the planned economy, the price-fixing
edicts of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, reflections on the “just price”
of medieval theory, the search for economic liberty in France from
1789 to 1791, the enormous inflation of the French currency, and its
culmination in the dreadful Law of the Maximum (price control), which
made the situation far worse and abolished liberty.