Éditions SPID. 1951. 302 pp.
A critical examination by nine writers of “twenty years of State
capitalism” in France. The authors show the deleterious consequences
of the nationalization of various industries in the period from 1930
to 1950. The contributors are: André Armengaud, Louis Baudin, Jacques
Chastenet, Pierre Fromont, Emile Mireaux, Marcel Pellenc, André Thiers,
Daniel Villey and Jacques Lacour-Gayet.
LACOUR-GAYET, JACQUES (ed.). _Monnaie d’Hier et de Demain._ Paris:
Éditions SPID. 1952. 226 pp.
Essays by five distinguished French economists on the vicissitudes of
French money in recent years and on the necessity for returning to an
international gold standard. Charles Rist writes on the experience of
1926 and the franc of today. Jacques Rueff writes on the reasons for
returning to a gold standard. Alfred Pose writes on monetary stability
and gold money. And Edmond Giscard d’Estaing writes on commerce and the
need for an international money.
LACY, MARY G. _Food Control During Forty Centuries._ _Scientific
Monthly_, June, 1923. 14 pp.
Mary G. Lacy was librarian of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics
of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This paper on the results of
government efforts to control food prices through the centuries was
reissued in pamphlet form by Swift & Co. in 1933. Although compact, it
is remarkably comprehensive and carefully documented, and deserves to
be far better known. Mary Lacy also compiled in 1926 (with Annie M.
Hannay and Emily L. Day), _Price-fixing by Governments, 424_ B.C. _to
1926_ A.D.
LANE, ARTHUR BLISS. _I Saw Poland Betrayed._ Bobbs-Merrill. 1948. 344
pp.
The author was appointed United States ambassador to Poland in July
1944 and took up his duties while the Potsdam conference was still
in session, July 1945. He retired in 1947, after nearly two years of
frustration, to “tell the story as I had seen it.” “For the sake of the
American share in the history of the post-war years, one is sorry that
the analysis of Soviet plans, the pattern for ideological conquest,
were not presented to the public during the last days of the war. But
since Lane was a career diplomat, that was impossible. He has done his
best. It is very good.”--Drew Middleton, in _The New York Times_.
LANE, ROSE WILDER. _The Discovery of Freedom._ John Day. 1943. 262 pp.
A discussion of man’s struggle against authority. Mrs. Lane argues (1)
that progress depends on a minimum of governmental control; and (2)
that the only true control is individual and that individual control is
in accord with religious faith. The book is eloquent and stimulating
and covers a wide range of subjects.
LANE, ROSE WILDER. _Give Me Liberty._ Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton
Printers. 1945. 56 pp.
An expansion of an article that originally appeared in _The Saturday
Evening Post_. Mrs. Lane vividly describes her friendliness with
communists in New York, her encounters with socialist bureaucracies
in Europe, and her observations and discussions with simple villagers
and primitive communists in Russia during the early years of the
Soviet regime. She tells how she came to understand the rarity and the
supremely precious values of personal freedom.
LE BON, GUSTAVE. _The Psychology of Socialism._ London: Unwin. 1909.
489 pp.
“This brilliant work by a convinced opponent of Socialism is based
on the view that the best way to fight it and expose it is to make a
scientific examination of it.... ‘Hitherto psychologists has disdained
to study it.’... The book abounds in epigrammatic apothegms.... ‘All
that has gone to make the greatness of civilization [he insists]:
sciences, arts, philosophies, religions, military power, etc., has
been the work of individuals, not of aggregates.... The peoples among
whom Individualism is most highly developed are by this fact alone
at the head of civilization, and today dominate the world.’... The
theories of Socialism and its history are subjected to a penetrating
analysis. Le Bon seems to fear that it will be victorious, and thus, he
thinks, bring about the destruction of modern civilization.... Le Bon’s
other works are _The World in Revolt_, 1921; and _The Crowd_, 16th
impression, 1926.”--PI.
LECKY, W. E. H. _Democracy and Liberty._ Longmans, Green. 1896. 2
vols. 1169 pp.
“Of all English publicists Lecky was the most fit to take the place
vacated by John Stuart Mill. He differed from Mill in most of his
political and philosophical views, but he has the same candor and
delight in learning. This discursive treatise is not one of his best
works, but it has many wise comments on modern democracy, and the
chapters on Socialism and Labor Questions should be studied. There is
no systematic attack upon Socialism, but Lecky’s intellectual attitude
is Individualistic. He observes that ‘Socialism is essentially opposed
to Free Trade and international commerce.’ As democracy is hasty and
impatient, it may make changes in a collectivist direction. ‘But
proposed changes which conflict with the fundamental laws and elements
of human nature can never, in the long run, succeed. The sense of right
and wrong, which is the basis of the respect for property and for the
obligation of contract; the feeling of family affection, on which the
continuity of society depends, and out of which the system of heredity
grows; the essential difference of men in aptitudes, capacities, and
character, are things that never can be changed, and all schemes and
policies that ignore them are doomed to ultimate failure.’”--PI.
LEVINE, ISAAC DON. _Stalin._ Cosmopolitan Book. 1931. 421 pp.
The first clear and complete account of the life of Stalin to appear
in English, published when the Russian dictator was still an enigmatic
figure to the Western world. The author’s thesis is that “if it was
Lenin who conceived the Communist party as a military order ... it is
to Stalin that is due the lion’s share of the credit or onus of forging
this order into an army of steel.” The book gives a portrait of Stalin
that is “vivid, graphic, intelligent and convincing.... Moreover, it
portrays Bolshevism infinitely better than most of the books on Russia
do.”--Alexander Nazaroff, in _The New York Times_.
LHOSTE-LACHAUME, PIERRE. _Réhabilitation du Libéralisme._ 1950. Paris:
Éditions SÉDIF. 320 pp.
The liberalism that this French economist wants to see restored is the
traditional kind which demanded that the state should not encroach on
“liberty of thought, of speech and of the press, private ownership of
the means of production and a free market.” Felix Morley writes: “The
epic struggle of today, as M. Lhoste-Lachaume sees it, is between true
liberalism and communism. The parliamentary socialists, among whom he
includes many Americans who would resent the description, will in the
long run be taken over by communism. When people get the habit of
living on subsidies, and expecting ‘social security’ from government,
they tacitly become the fellow-travelers of the communists.” The book
is the first of a contemplated trilogy, and has not yet been translated
into English.
LHOSTE-LACHAUME, PIERRE. _The Keystone of Liberty._ Paris: Éditions
SÉDIF. 1954. 79 pp.
The French title of this book is _La Clef de Voute de la Liberté_. It
presents the English text on each left-hand page, and the French on
each right-hand page, of an article that appeared originally in the
British quarterly, _The Owl_, in September 1953. The book discusses
the liberal era of the nineteenth century, the gradual giving up
of traditional liberal principles, and the necessity of a “liberal
renovation” which would recognize the beneficial effects of the free
market and avoid “the blind alley of democratic socialism.” The
author believes that the world’s present choice is between either a
“spiritualist liberalism” or a totalitarian materialism. There is an
eight-page appendix presenting an extensive bibliography of recent
books in French, German, Italian, Dutch, and English which support a
free society and a free economy.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS LEGISLATIVE REFERENCE SERVICE. _Communism in
Action._ U. S. Government Printing Office. 1946. 141 pp.
A documented study and analysis of communism in operation in the Soviet
Union. House Document No. 754. There is a foreword by Congressman
Everett M. Dirksen.
LINDBLOM, CHARLES E. _Unions and Capitalism._ Yale University Press.
1949. 267 pp.
This is a strange book, written by an associate professor of economics
at Yale University, a declared “liberal” (in the recent American
sense, as opposed to “conservative”), yet which states the menace of
present-day big unionism with far more power and clarity than most
conservative economists have dared to state it. Professor Lindblom’s
thesis, in his own words, “is that unionism and the private enterprise
economy are incompatible.... Unionism is destroying the competitive
price system.... The strike ... paralyzes production, and it is
dramatic. But the real labor problem is its aftermath.... For if wage
disputes call a halt to production temporarily, their settlement may
disorganize it permanently. Unionism will destroy the price system
by what it wins rather than by the struggle to win it. It sabotages
the competitive order, not because the economy cannot weather the
disturbance of work stoppages but because it cannot produce high output
and employment at union wage rates.” His grim conclusion is, in sum,
that “union monopoly destroys the price system because it produces ...
waste, unemployment, inflation, or all combined ... to a degree which
the economy cannot survive.”
LINK, HENRY C. _The Rediscovery of Morals._ Dutton. 1947. 223 pp.
A discussion of what is wrong with the world of today and its people,
and what can be done about it. Problems of race and class conflict
are given special attention. The author takes our educational system
to task for its lack of emphasis on morals, and advocates a return to
Christian morality.
LIPPER, ELINOR. _Eleven Years in Soviet Prison Camps._ Regnery. 1951.
310 pp.
“A gently nurtured Dutch girl studying medicine in Berlin in 1931
was deeply touched by the miseries of the German unemployed, and at
Hitler’s ascendancy transferred her loyalties to the Soviet Union. From
1937-1948 she was a political prisoner held without trial for the bulk
of her hideous, subhuman imprisonment at Kolyma in Siberia.”--_Library
Journal._
LIPPMANN, WALTER. _The Good Society._ Little, Brown. 1937. 402 pp.
Reviewing this book in _The New York Times_ of Sept. 26, 1937, I
wrote: “No more powerful and thorough indictment” of the fallacies of
collectivism and of a managed economy “has been written in America.”
The latter part of the book is marred by an inconsistent support of an
apparently Keynesian type of “monetary management.” But the first half
is as penetrating as it is eloquent. Mr. Lippmann contends that it is
governmental coercion that is creating the very chaos it purports to
conquer. He insists that a managed economy must mean a censored and
managed opinion. He concludes that the consequences of collectivism
must be regimentation, censorship, militarism, war, despotism,
impoverishment, and barbarism, and that the only hope of mankind lies
in the restoration of liberal doctrine.
LOCKE, JOHN. _Two Treatises of Civil Government._ 1690. Many editions.
(Everyman’s Library. 1924.) 242 pp.
The historical importance of these two works in the history of
individualism is enormous. (For a discussion, see the introductory
essay to this list, “Individualism in Politics and Economics.”)
LOCKE, JOHN. _An Essay Concerning Human Understanding._ 1690. Many
editions.
“This work, which is a landmark in the history of philosophy, does not
bear directly upon Individualism; but some of the earlier chapters
at least should be carefully studied, in order that the reader may
grasp Locke’s general principles, which guided politics in England
and the United States for some 200 years. It bases all knowledge and
practice on experience.... As Sir James Mackintosh said: ‘Few books
have contributed more to rectify prejudice--to diffuse a just mode of
thinking--to excite a fearless spirit of inquiry--and yet to contain
it within the boundaries which nature has prescribed to the human
understanding.’ This ‘fearless spirit of inquiry’ was subversive of the
faith in established laws and governments and was a necessary equipment
for those who, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, began
their attack upon obsolete institutions. It was thus a preliminary to
Individualism, to voluntary instead of compulsory co-operation--to use
the phraseology of Herbert Spencer.”--PI.
LOCKE, JOHN. _Considerations on the Lowering of Interest._ 1691.
Several editions. 138 pp.
“Here Locke anticipated many of the arguments of the better-known work
_On Usury_ by Bentham, i.e., his position was _laissez-faire_.”--PI.
LUTZ, HARLEY L. _Guideposts to a Free Economy._ McGraw-Hill. 1945. 206
pp.
A series of essays on federal fiscal policy, taxation, and public
expenditures that give a rounded understanding of our journey along
two divergent roads of fiscal policy--one leading to a controlled
economy and the other to the strengthening of the enterprise system and
individual freedom in a free economy. “Professor Lutz has written such
a book as will give true liberals no end of satisfaction and cause the
national planners acute anguish.”--G. R. E., in the _Christian Science
Monitor_.
LUTZ, HARLEY L. _A Platform for the American Way._
Appleton-Century-Crofts. 1952. 114 pp.
The author, who was Professor of Public Finance at Princeton for
nearly twenty years, is distinguished for his clarity and logic and
his vigorous defense of the free enterprise system. His thesis in this
book is that “we are both drifting and being steered into some form of
the national socialist state.” He regards the Right to Own as a basic
human right, and he here offers “a program and a way of life to all who
believe in freedom and who want to remain free here in America.”
LUTZ, HARLEY L. _Public Finance._ Appleton-Century. 1936. 940 pp.
A solidly reasoned textbook pointing to the dangers in deficit
financing and reaffirming the case for balanced budgets and other
“orthodox” fiscal practices.
LYONS, EUGENE. _Assignment in Utopia._ Harcourt, Brace. 1937. 658 pp.
The author writes of his years of growing disillusionment in Russia,
where he served as an American newspaper correspondent from 1928 to
1934. He describes among other things the famine of 1932-1933, and
some of the causes of it. “An important book--vivid, sincere and full
of factual and of psychological interest.”--London _Times Literary
Supplement_.
LYONS, EUGENE. _The Red Decade._ Bobbs-Merrill. 1941. 423 pp.
A study of the activities of communists and fellow-travelers in the
United States during the decade from 1930 to 1940. “The facts are
fabulous, and Lyons relates them with a gusto that rises at times
almost to hilarity. He has a gift of slashing satire, and no fear
of calling foolish acts and famous people by their exact names. But
besides that, and somewhat surprisingly combined with it, he possesses
sympathetic understanding.”--Max Eastman, in _The New York Times_.
MACAULAY, LORD. _Selections from Writings and Speeches._ 1853. Many
editions.
“Among Macaulay’s Essays the most notable for our purposes is on
Southey’s _Colloquies on Society_. Among the speeches should be read
that on the Ten Hours Bill (1846), in which he takes the modern view
that in some cases it may be the duty of the State to protect labor.
That on the Corn Laws (1845) is a vigorous statement of the Free
Trade position. Another noteworthy speech is on the People’s Charter
in 1842. To Macaulay the Chartists appeared as the Communists appear
to most people today. He was convinced that their object was the
nationalization of the land and the abolition of private property. He
says: “The doctrine of the Chartist philosophers is that it is the
business of the government to support the people. It is supposed by
many that our rulers possess, somewhere or other, an inexhaustible
storehouse of all the necessaries and conveniences of life, and, from
mere hard-heartedness, refuse to distribute the contents of this
magazine among the people.... Is it possible to believe that the
millions who have been so long and loudly told that the land is their
estate and is wrongfully kept from them, should not, when they have
supreme power, use that power to enforce what they think their rights?
What could follow but one vast spoliation?’”--PI.
MCCARRAN, SISTER M. MARGARET PATRICIA. _Fabianism in the Political
Life of Britain._ Chicago: Heritage Foundation. (Catholic University
of America Press.) 1952. 612 pp.
The Fabian Society, which later, through the membership of Bernard
Shaw, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, H. G. Wells and others, came to
exercise an enormous intellectual influence for socialism out of all
proportion to its numbers, was originally founded in 1883 by a few
obscure young people in London with the object of “reconstructing
society in accordance with the highest moral possibilities.” This is a
highly critical but encyclopedic reference work on the history of the
society and its activities.
MACCUN, JOHN. _Six Radical Thinkers._ London: Arnold. 1907. 268 pp.
“The articles on Bentham and Cobden are worth notice.”--PI.
MACEOIN, GARY AND ZOMBORY, AKOS. _The Communist War on Religion._
Devin-Adair. 1951. 264 pp.
“Today few Americans are complacent about the threat Communism
constitutes to the things they hold dear.... But we are still hazy
about the essence of the Communist threat. The essential threat is
to truth and freedom: that is, the freedom of men to be men, free
to choose, free to move, to speak, to think--free to worship God.
Wherever the Communists have seized power, they have destroyed these
freedoms, wading through seas of human blood.... This book tells
that story as illustrated in the persecution of religion in every
Communist-controlled country.”--From the Introduction.
MACINNES, HELEN. _Neither Five Nor Three._ Harcourt, Brace. 1951. 340
pp.
“A group of attractive, intelligent, well-intentioned New Yorkers
who create, edit and publish an influential popular magazine called
‘Trend’ suddenly wake up to the fact that their magazine has been
infiltrated, quietly and with devilish cleverness, that its columns
are now being used subtly to disparage and undermine faith in
everything American.”--_New York Herald Tribune._ “It is good, exciting
reading.”--Edmund Fuller, in the _Saturday Review of Literature_.
MACKIEWICZ, JOSEPH. _The Katyn Wood Murders._ London: Hollis & Carter.
1951. 252 pp.
A former member of the Polish underground, who went to Katyn while the
Polish Red Cross was investigating the discovery of the mass graves,
describes his experiences and his beliefs about the crime. “The book is
as fascinating as a detective story and deserves the widest possible
audience as a final, conclusive exposure of Soviet responsibility for
an atrocious butchery. This responsibility was hushed up far too long
because of the supposed necessity of appeasing Stalin during the war
years.”--W. H. Chamberlin, in the _Chicago Sunday Tribune_.
MADISON, JAMES. _Reports of Debates in the Federal Convention._ 1787.
Several editions. 3 vols.
The basic source book on the actual framing of the American
Constitution.
MAINE, SIR HENRY SUMNER. _Popular Government._ Holt. 1886. 261 pp.
“Including the famous essay on the ‘Constitution of the United States.’
The careful student will also familiarize himself with Maine’s _Ancient
Law_.”--Felix Morley.
MALLOCK, W. H. _A Critical Examination of Socialism._ Harper. 1907.
303 pp.
“Mallock was a brilliant critic. This book in substance consists
of lectures delivered in the United States in 1907. It is an able
attack upon Socialism. He rightly begins with Marx, pointing out the
main error of his theory of labor--the leaving out of consideration
_directive ability_.”--PI.
MALLOCK, W. H. _Social Reform as Related to Realities and Delusions._
Dutton. 1915. 391 pp.
“The primary purpose of this book is to illustrate the ‘mischievous
delusions’ by which popular opinion is vitiated in questions of social
reform owing to the general lack of knowledge and understanding of the
structure and functioning of the social system.... The immense material
advance which the nineteenth century has witnessed is constantly
emphasized. Strangely enough, most of the specific delusions to which
Mallock drew attention in 1914 still seem to persist almost as much as
they did when the book was published.”--PI (in 1927).
MALLOCK, W. H. _Democracy._ 1924. 213 pp.
“A ruthless exposure of the fallacies lurking in the term ‘democracy.’
The present edition is an abridgment of an earlier and very much larger
work entitled _The Limits of Pure Democracy_. [London: Chapman & Hall.
1918. 397 pp.]”--PI.
MALLOCK, W. H. _Property and Progress._ Putnam. 1884. 248 pp.
“A criticism of Henry George’s _Progress and Poverty_ (1882). Also
somewhat out of date, even as George is out of date. But the Georgian
theory of land is historically important and still has its influence on
a certain type of Radical.”--PI.
MALTHUS, THE REV. THOMAS R. _An Essay on Population._ 1798, etc. Many
editions. (Everyman’s Library. 2 vols. 315 pp. 285 pp.)
This book has perhaps been “refuted” more often, and denounced and
ridiculed more often, than any other. Yet it is one of the world’s
great seminal works. In the scientific field it helped to inspire
Darwin’s theory of evolution. And in the economic field, if its
influence has been unfortunately less than it should have been, it has
given birth to an enormous body of controversial literature. The form
in which Malthus stated his theory in his first edition was certainly
extreme and erroneous. Yet he was the first to seize and document a
great and sobering truth. This is that, unless restrained, population
tends to increase up to the limits of the means of subsistence. Because
he overlooked many technical and scientific possibilities, Malthus’s
personal pessimism has not been justified by events. But it does
not follow that his proposition, in its most general form, has been
disproved by events, as it has been so often fashionable to believe.
The rising standard of living in the Western world has been at least
partly the result of deliberate population restraint (even if in the
form of birth control rather than of the sexual “continence” that
Malthus advocated). Where this population restraint still does not
exist, as in India, China, and other parts of the Orient, the lesson of
Malthus is only too plain today. An important corollary of his theory
is that schemes of social reform and “redistribution of wealth” are not
only futile but pernicious when they neglect the effect upon population
growth.
MANDEVILLE, BERNARD. _The Fable of the Bees._ 1705. (Ed. by F. B.
Kaye. Oxford. 1924.)
“The decisive importance of Mandeville in the history of economics,
long overlooked or appreciated only by a few authors (particularly
Edwin Cannan and Albert Schatz) is now beginning to be recognized,
mainly thanks to the magnificent edition of the _Fable of the Bees_
which we owe to the late F. B. Kaye. Although the fundamental ideas of
Mandeville’s work are already implied in the original poem of 1705, the
decisive elaboration and especially his full account of the origin of
the division of labor, of money, and of language occur only in Part II
of the _Fable_ which was published in 1728.”--F. A. Hayek.
MANION, CLARENCE. _The Key to Peace._ Chicago: Heritage Foundation.
1950. 121 pp.
This bears the subtitle: “A Formula for the Perpetuation of Real
Americanism.” The author, dean of the law school of Notre Dame
University, believes that the only possible formula for peace was
discovered by the Founding Fathers when they wrote the Declaration
of Independence and framed the American Constitutional system. The
basic American principle, he declares, is “an uncompromising and
uncompromised demand for the freedom and independence of the individual
man.”
MARKHAM, REUBEN HENRY. _Rumania Under the Soviet Yoke._ Meador. 1949.
601 pp.
“There is no better informed or more responsible writer on Balkan
affairs than Mr. Markham. He was a European correspondent for the
_Christian Science Monitor_ for twenty years, and for _The Christian
Century_ for a shorter period, and during the war he served as
deputy director of the Office of War Information. He knows the
people, the languages, the history and (so far as anyone can) the
present conditions in the Balkan states. In the 600 pages of this
volume he surveys Rumania before and during the Hitler regime and
recites in detail the course of events since the beginning of Soviet
domination.”--_The Christian Century._ “Mr. Markham’s book is one
of the strongest and best documented indictments of the system of
political communism flourishing under the ever-lengthening shadow of
Moscow.”--_Christian Science Monitor._
MARSHALL, ALFRED. _The Principles of Economics._ 1890. Often
reprinted. Macmillan. Eighth edition, 1920. 871 pp.
“This book has had an immense influence and will remain a standard work
for many years to come. It shows a pronounced reaction from the severe
Individualism of most of the early economists, and, whilst no one would
belittle its value in focussing and clarifying earlier thought, one
may doubt whether the ultimate verdict of economists will regard the
reaction that it heralded as entirely good.”--PI.
MARTIN, EVERETT DEAN. _Liberty._ Norton. 1930. 307 pp.
The author seeks to arrive at the meaning of liberty partly through
the method of historical survey. He discusses the Grecian conception,
the contributions of Christianity and the Renaissance, of Rousseau,
Voltaire, and others. In reviewing this book in _The Nation_ of June
18, 1930, I wrote: “It is with misgivings that one approaches Everett
Dean Martin’s _Liberty_. These misgivings soon dissolve, however,
before the flow of Mr. Martin’s eloquence, his gift for felicitous
and forcible statement, his attractive historical summaries, his
broad, humane culture, his shrewd analysis and unfailing clarity. His
_Liberty_ is not perhaps a profound book or a remarkably original one,
but it is none the less admirable. For in spite of the great existing
classics, and of the fact that much of his argument is necessarily
repetition, Mr. Martin has done a task that greatly needed to be done.”
MENGER, KARL. _Principles of Economics._ Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.
1950. 328 pp.
This epoch-making book, “one of the great landmarks in the development
of economic thought,” as Frank H. Knight calls it, had to wait
seventy-nine years before it appeared in the present (or any other)
English translation. The “Austrian School,” of which Menger was the
founder, was a fountainhead of classical liberalism on the European
continent. F. A. Hayek, who calls Menger’s _Principles_ “the best
introduction to the understanding of the theory of value which we
possess,” has also pointed out that Menger was “among the first in
modern times consciously to revive the methodical individualism of Adam
Smith and his school.”
MIKOLAJCZYK, STANISLAW. _The Rape of Poland._ Whittlesey. 1948. 309 pp.
“The author, formerly Premier of Poland and head of the now suppressed
Peasants’ Party, witnessed what he calls the betrayal of his country
from every political level, starting as a common soldier during the war
in Poland.... After the war, he was helpless, even as a leader of one
of the great parties, to avert the violent destruction of his country’s
democratic processes and finally had to flee in disguise. He believes
that the Soviets were resolved from the first to annihilate Poland and
says flatly that they killed fifteen thousand Polish officers in the
woods around Katyn, near Smolensk, and that they purposely delayed
giving help to General Bor during the Warsaw uprising until it was too
late.... This book, heavily documented and written without fireworks,
is a pretty powerful indictment.”--_New Yorker._
MILL, JOHN STUART. _Utilitarianism._ 1861. _On Liberty._ 1859.
_Representative Government._ 1861. Many editions. (Dutton. 1950.) 532
pp.
“Three short but vital works. The first is outside our immediate
purpose, being ethical, but it should be read; it reveals the mind of
Mill perhaps better than any other of his works.
“_On Liberty_ may be called the Individualist’s textbook. It is a
plea for allowing scope to individual character and action--even
eccentricity is better than convention. Its whole argument should be
carefully studied. There is also a concise and useful statement towards
the end: ‘The objections to government interference, when it is not
such as to involve infringement of liberty, may be of three kinds.
The first is when the thing to be done is likely to be better done by
individuals than by the government.... The second ... in many cases,
though individuals may not do the particular thing so well, on the
average, as the officers of government, it is nevertheless desirable
that it should be done by them, rather than by the government, as a
means to their own mental education.
“(Thus juries, ‘free and popular local and municipal institutions,’ and
‘the conduct of industrial and philanthropical enterprises by voluntary
associations,’ are valuable on this principle as well as in themselves.)
“‘The third and most cogent reason for restricting the interference
of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.’
Gladstone, with most of our Victorian statesmen, disliked increasing
the functions and expenditure of the State. He came to regard with
dismay the vigorous growth of the Income Tax, his own child, which he
had adopted from Peel, its actual father. He sometimes likens it to a
sword of excessive sharpness which is a dangerous weapon to entrust to
a minister. He writes to Cobden in 1864 (Morley’s _Gladstone_, Book V,
Chapter iv): ‘I seriously doubt whether it [the spirit of expenditure]
will ever give place to the old spirit of economy, as long as we have
the income tax.’ The income tax was then sevenpence in the pound, and
within fifteen months was to fall to fourpence, and a little later to
twopence!
“Mill’s book _On Liberty_ gives the pure doctrine of Individualism. His
excellent _Representative Government_ does not bear so closely upon our
subject. The present Master of Balliol (Mr. A. D. Lindsay) remarks:
‘It reflects strikingly Mill’s curious political position, combining
as it does, an enthusiastic belief in democratic government with most
pessimistic apprehensions as to what the democracy was likely to do.’
This is due to Mill’s Individualism, for he saw that individual freedom
might incur great danger from majority rule in a Democracy. It led
him to attach much importance to such schemes as Hare’s Proportional
Representation, which he hoped would protect minorities against
tyrannical ignorance.”--PI.
MILL, JOHN STUART. _Autobiography._ 1873. Many editions. (Columbia
University Press. 1944. 240 pp.)
“All who study Individualism or any kind of economic or political
science must devote much careful consideration to Mill. This
autobiographical masterpiece is too well known to require much comment.
It shows the influences to which Mill was subjected, his reactions, and
his invincible candor. It is pardonable to repeat that Mill’s great
object was not to found a sect but to discover truth, as far as it is
discoverable.”--PI. (See also PACKE, MICHAEL ST. JOHN.)
MILL, JOHN STUART. _Principles of Political Economy._ 1848. Many
editions. 1013 pp.
“Mill wrote this work at a time when Individualism had reached its
zenith, and its triumph was largely due to the efforts of his spiritual
and actual fathers, Bentham and James Mill. Thus this most important
work is, in the main, an exposition of Individualism. But J. S. Mill
here aims at stating his opponents’ case, and so has given Socialists
the opportunity of citing him in their favor. In I, I, sec. 3, he
makes an amazing observation: ‘If, therefore, the choice were to be
made between Communism [Socialism] with all its chances, and the
present state of society with all its sufferings and injustices; if
the institution of private property necessarily carried with it as a
consequence, that the produce of labor should be apportioned as we now
see it, almost in an inverse ratio to the labor--the largest portions
to those who have never worked at all, the next largest to those whose
work is almost nominal, and so in a descending scale, the remuneration
dwindling as the work grows harder and more disagreeable, until the
most fatiguing and exhausting bodily labor cannot count with certainty
on being able to earn even the necessaries of life; if this, or
Communism, were the alternatives, all the difficulties, great or small,
would be but as dust in the balance.’
“Again, Mill was so dominated by the Malthusian theory, that he was
ready to adopt stringent Government measures to check overpopulation,
e.g., by ‘a great national measure of colonization.’ (II, XIII, sec. 4.)
“Again we have his celebrated apology for occasional Protection when
duties ‘are imposed temporarily (especially in a young and rising
nation) in hopes of naturalizing a foreign industry, in itself
perfectly suitable to the circumstances of the country.’ (V, X, sec. 1.)
“But the general spirit of the book is very strongly _laissez-faire_.
The foregoing passages are exceptional. The following sentence is
representative: ‘The grounds of this truth are expressed with tolerable
exactness in the popular dictum, that people understand their own
business and their own interests better, and care for them more, than
the government does, or can be expected to do.’ (V, XI, sec. 5.)
Throughout his life Mill believed, as he tersely expresses the truth
in _Liberty_, that everyone ought to be allowed to do as he likes,
provided that he does not make himself a nuisance to his neighbor.
His candid mind brought forward numerous exceptions, but he steadily
maintained his rule.”--PI.
MILLAR, FREDERICK. _Socialism: Its Fallacies and Dangers._ London:
Watts. 1907. 1923. 96 pp.
“This little shilling work was written to warn the public of the
dangers of Socialism. It has chapters to show that it means material
and national decay, the abolition of family life, its impossibility,
etc. The writer has a healthy dislike of all kinds of Government
interference. ‘To attack wealth, to menace the free accumulation of
private property, is like cutting open the bellows to see where the
wind comes from. In this matter of wealth it comes from self-interest,
and, therefore, the more you seek politically to prevent the free,
unfraudulent, and unaggressive expression of self-interest, the less
wind you will have to blow your fire, and consequently the worse off
you will be.”--PI.
MILTON, JOHN. _Areopagitica._ 1644. Many editions.
This written oration against censorship is the noblest of Milton’s
tracts, and one of the great documents on liberty. It is rich in
magnificent sentences: “As good almost kill a man as kill a good book:
who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who
destroys a good book kills reason itself.”... “Who ever knew Truth put
to the worse in a free and open encounter?” John Morley, in an article
in the _Fortnightly Review_ (August, 1873) wrote: “[John Stuart] Mill’s
memorable plea for social liberty was little more than an enlargement,
though a very important enlargement, of the principles of the still
more famous speech for liberty of unlicensed printing with which Milton
enobled English literature two centuries before.”
MISES, LUDWIG VON. _Human Action._ Yale University Press. 1949. 889 pp.
Reviewing this book in _Newsweek_ of Sept. 19, 1949, I wrote: “_Human
Action_ is, in short, at once the most uncompromising and the most
rigorously reasoned statement of the case for capitalism that has yet
appeared. If any single book can turn the ideological tide that has
been running in recent years so heavily toward statism, socialism and
totalitarianism, _Human Action_ is that book. It should become the
leading text of everyone who believes in freedom, in individualism, and
in the ability of a free-market economy not only to outdistance any
government-planned system in the production of goods and services for
the masses, but to promote and safeguard, as no collectivist tyranny
can ever do, those intellectual, cultural, and moral values upon which
all civilization ultimately rests.”
MISES, LUDWIG VON. _Socialism._ 1936. Yale University Press. 1951. 599
pp.
Reviewing this book in _The New York Times_ of Jan. 9, 1938, I wrote:
“This book must rank as the most devastating analysis of socialism yet
penned. Doubtless even some anti-socialist readers will feel that he
occasionally overstates his case. On the other hand, even confirmed
socialists will not be able to withhold admiration from the masterly
fashion in which he conducts his argument. He has written an economic
classic in our time.”
MISES, LUDWIG VON. _The Theory of Money and Credit._ 1935. Yale
University Press. 1953. 493 pp.
“In continental circles it has long been regarded as the standard
textbook on the subject.... I know few works which convey a more
profound impression of the logical unity and the power of modern
economic analysis.”--Lionel Robbins.
It may seem strange to include any work on money and credit in a
bibliography concerned primarily with individual liberty. But Professor
Mises shows here as elsewhere how mistaken monetary policies lead to
the destruction of liberty. As F. A. Hayek has written, Mises “has
been working since the early twenties on the reconstruction of a
solid edifice of liberal thought in a more determined, systematic and
successful way than anyone else.”
MISES, LUDWIG VON. _Omnipotent Government._ Yale University Press.
1944. 291 pp.
In this book Professor von Mises provides an economic explanation of
the international conflicts which caused both World Wars. He shows that
economic nationalism and the trend toward economic self-sufficiency
are the necessary outcome of present-day policies of government
intervention in the private enterprises of citizens. He supports his
analysis with an interpretation of the historical facts which both gave
rise to Nazism and prevented Germany and the rest of the world from
stopping until it was too late to do so without a frightful cost in
blood and terror.
MISES, LUDWIG VON. _Bureaucracy._ Yale University Press. 1944. 125 pp.
Reviewing this book in _The New York Times_ of Oct. 1, 1944, I wrote:
“The main thesis of Professor von Mises is that bureaucracy is merely
a symptom of the real disease with which we have to deal. That disease
is excessive State domination and control. If the State seeks excessive
control over the economic or other activities of the individual it is
bound to need a bureaucracy to do it, and this bureaucracy is bound to
function in a certain way.... Professor von Mises’ penetrating analysis
is closely reasoned.... Published on the day after F. A. Hayek’s
_The Road to Serfdom_, [it] once more calls attention to the ironic
fact that the most eminent and uncompromising defenders of English
liberty, and of the system of free enterprise which reached its highest
development in America, should now be two Austrian exiles.”
MISES, LUDWIG VON. _Planning for Freedom._ South Holland, Ill.:
Libertarian Press. 1952. 174 pp.
This is a collection of twelve addresses and essays which supplement
and present in simpler and shorter form the analyses of Professor von
Mises in his great works on _Human Action_ and _Socialism_. Readers
without a special background in economic theory will find these essays
not only rewarding in themselves but an excellent introduction to von
Mises’ work. The essays are: Planning for Freedom; Middle-of-the-Road
Policy Leads to Socialism; Laissez-Faire or Dictatorship; Stones Into
Bread, the Keynesian Miracle; Lord Keynes and Say’s Law; Inflation and
Price Control; Economic Aspects of the Pension Problem; Benjamin M.
Anderson Challenges the Philosophy of the Pseudo-Progressives; Profit
and Loss; Economic Teaching at the Universities; Trends Can Change;
and The Political Chances of Genuine Liberalism.
MISES, LUDWIG VON. _Liberalismus._ Jena: Gustav Fischer. 1927. 175 pp.
This is a discussion of Liberalism (in the traditional sense of the
term), of the political basis, economic policy and foreign policy
appropriate to it, and of its probable future. There is an appendix on
the literature of liberalism.
MISES, LUDWIG VON. _Kritik des Interventionismus._ Jena: Gustav
Fischer. 1929. 136 pp.
Five collected essays discussing interventionism, restrictionism, price
control, and the economic theories behind these policies.
MOLEY, RAYMOND. _How to Keep Our Liberty._ Knopf. 1952. 339 pp.
Raymond Moley, contributing editor of _Newsweek_ magazine and professor
of public law at Columbia University, created and headed the famous
Brains Trust of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first campaign for the
Presidency and later was a major architect of the early New Deal. His
opposition to later developments in national policy culminated in this
lucid and vigorous, but admirably organized and carefully thought-out,
“conservative manifesto.” “Today the people of this nation,” he writes,
“are presented with a choice between two forms of political and
economic life. One form is that of our traditions, in which individual
liberty prevails and is guarded by ‘the long, still grasp of law.’ The
other is the dominance of the state in human affairs. My purpose here
has been to present a plan for political action for those who do not
wish to go down the road to socialism.” Mr. Moley’s book combines rich
scholarship with the readability of first-rate journalism.
MONTESQUIEU, BARON DE. _The Spirit of Laws._ 1748. Many English and
French editions. 2 vols.
The Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) published his famous _L’Esprit des
Lois_ in 1748. The _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ declares that it “may be
almost certainly ranked as the greatest book of the French Eighteenth
Century.” The political writer George Catlin thinks it “dull and
prolix.” To Montesquieu, however, is due the classical formulation of
the doctrine of checks and balances, and of the division of powers.
Lytton Strachey writes of it in his _Landmarks in French Literature_:
“It is enough to say that here all Montesquieu’s qualities--his power
of generalization, his freedom from prejudices, his rationalism, his
love of liberty and hatred of fanaticism, his pointed, epigrammatic
style--appear in their most characteristic form. Perhaps the chief
fault of the book is that it is too brilliant.... Montesquieu’s
generalizations are always bold, always original, always fine;
unfortunately, they are too often unsound into the bargain.... He
believed he had found in [the English constitution] a signal instance
of his favorite theory of the beneficial effects produced by the
separation of the three powers of government--the judicial, the
legislative, and the executive; but he was wrong. In England, as
a matter of fact, the powers of the legislative and the executive
were intertwined. This particular error has had a curious history.
Montesquieu’s great reputation led to his view of the constitution
of England being widely accepted as the true one; as such it was
adopted by the American leaders after the War of Independence; and its
influence is plainly visible in the present constitution of the United
States. Such is the strange power of good writing over the affairs of
men!”
MONTGOMERY, GEORGE S., JR. _The Return of Adam Smith._ Caldwell,
Idaho: Caxton Printers. 1949. 160 pp.
“This book is intended to serve as a little prayer for the awakening
or--symbolically--for the return of Adam Smith.” And it speculates
upon how Adam Smith would probably feel and think about our present
institutions. Mr. Montgomery discusses the merits and demerits of
government-run business and re-evaluates such terms as “reactionary,”
“laissez faire,” and “robber baron.” He also points out vigorously the
socialist and collectivist implications in many present-day textbooks,
and particularly in some articles in the fifteen-volume _Encyclopaedia
of the Social Sciences_.
MORGAN, CHARLES. _Liberties of the Mind._ Macmillan. 1951. 252 pp.
A collection of essays and addresses, some previously published
elsewhere, several in the London _Times Literary Supplement_. The
theme of the essays is what the author sees as the imminent danger of
the loss of freedom of mind and moral choice, of individuality and
identity, by the majority of mankind. “There can be scarcely a more
important task than that which this book attempts, and perhaps no more
encouraging and hopeful sign than that one of the greatest contemporary
masters of English prose should be impelled to undertake it.... All
that the mere student of these problems can do is to testify to the
importance of the book and to acknowledge that here certainly the
artist sees much to which the expert tends to be blind.”--F. A. Hayek.
MORLEY, FELIX. _The Power in the People._ Van Nostrand. 1949. 293 pp.
In this scholarly, thoughtful and often brilliant book, Mr. Morley
attempts to present a unified study of the origin of the political
ideas on which our nation was founded, and how they have developed.
“This is a remarkable book, nobly written and profoundly thought out.
It is also, at least to this reviewer, sui generis, an account of the
founding and development and significance of the American Republic
which is unique as far as my acquaintance with the literature on the
subject goes.... There is a fire in it which no survey of the past as
the past could kindle. _The Power in the People_ is a Tract for the
Times, concerned with what is of paramount importance for us today, at
this precise moment in our history.”--Edith Hamilton, in _The Saturday
Review of Literature_.
MORLEY, JOHN (VISCOUNT). _The Life of Richard Cobden._ 1881. London:
Unwin. 1903. 985 pp.
The outstanding biography of the great Free Trader and leader of the
Manchester School.
MORLEY, JOHN (VISCOUNT). _The Life of William Ewart Gladstone._
Macmillan. 1911. 3 vols.
A masterly biography of the great nineteenth century liberal statesman.
MORLEY, JOHN (VISCOUNT). _Voltaire._ Macmillan. 1872. 365 pp.
“Morley’s _Voltaire_ fully appreciates the influence of Locke and
English Individualism upon Voltaire.”--PI.
MOSCA, GAETANO. _The Ruling Class._ McGraw-Hill. 1939. 514 pp.
This is an English translation, with some reorganization of the
material, from the 1923 edition of the work of the eminent Italian
political philosopher first published in 1895. The Italian title is
_Elementi di Scienza Politico_. It contains an illuminating chapter
on the political character of collectivism. “This work, already a
classic in Europe, deserves the widest attention in America.”--_Foreign
Affairs._ “The picture Mosca gives of the ruling class, of politics
and of political behavior is one which students in these fields cannot
afford to neglect.”--A. T. Mason, in the _Survey Graphic_.
MUSSATTI, JAMES. _The Constitution of the United States._ Van
Nostrand. 1956. 173 pp.
A short, simple and admirably organized statement of the basic
principles of the American Constitution. Its intent is to explain
to the layman the philosophies, motives, and actions of the framers
of that great document. It is accompanied by full bibliographic
references, and a study guide prepared by Thomas J. Shelly.
MUTHESIUS, VOLKMAR. _Müssen wir arm bleiben?_ Frankfurt a. M.,
Germany. 1952.
A discussion by a courageous and outspoken German liberal, who is
devoted to the principles of the free market, of the postwar problems
of his country.
NEWBURY, FRANK D. _The American Economic System._ McGraw-Hill. 1950.
Designed as a textbook on the basic institutions and principles of the
American economic system. Among those institutions and principles the
author stresses private property; individual freedom of choice and
action; individual responsibility for success or failure; free and
active competition; and the principle of economic rewards proportional
to economic contribution.
NEWCOMB, SIMON. _Principles of Political Economy._ Harper. 1886.
Schumpeter says of Simon Newcomb: “He was an eminent astronomer who
also taught, and wrote on, economics but not enough to acquire the
influence he deserved. His _Principles of Political Economy_ is
the outstanding performance of American general economics in the
pre-Clark-Fisher-Taussig epoch. His presentation was masterly and
highly suggestive, also original in several points.”
His rugged individualism and his vivid illustrations are often
reminiscent of Bastiat. He emphasizes the “let-alone principle” and
the “keep-out principle”: “The one claims that the government should
not stop the citizen from acting; the other that it should keep out of
certain fields of action.”
NICHOLSON, J. S. _The Revival of Marxism._ Dutton. 1921. 145 pp.
“A ruthless criticism and exposure of Marxism. Marx’s writings are
shown to have contributed nothing of tangible value to the world’s
knowledge. Insofar as they are original they are false.”--PI.
NOCK, ALBERT J. _Our Enemy, the State._ 1935. (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton
Printers. 1946.) 209 pp.
The author develops the theme that the State is founded on conquest
and confiscation and tends to devour civilization. He foresaw
“ever-increasing corruption, inefficiency and prodigality” under State
domination which will lead us to impoverishment and “a system of forced
labor.” Some of Nock’s ideas were extreme and tended toward anarchism.
But his style combined urbanity with vigor.
NORTH, SIR DUDLEY. _Discourses upon Trade._ London. 1691.
“He exposes the fallacies of the Mercantile Theory and is an
advocate--one of the earliest--of Free Trade.... ‘A nation in the
world, as to trade, is in all respects like a citizen in a kingdom, or
a family in a city.’ Therefore trade between nations ought to be left
free and not loaded with restrictions, as is the present practice of
rulers. The following sentence might have been written by Fawcett or
any of his fellow economists: ‘There can be no trade unprofitable to
the public, for if any prove so, men leave it off, and whenever traders
thrive, the public, of which they are a part, thrive also.”--PI.
NORTON, THOMAS J. _The Constitution of the United States._ 1922. (New
York: America’s Future. 1951.) 319 pp.
An elementary reference work, designed not for the legal profession
but “to make accessible to the citizen ... such a knowledge of the
Constitution of the United States as will serve in emergency as a
‘first line of defense.’” The text of the Constitution is printed in
bold-face type, followed by a note to every line or clause “that has
a historical story or drama back of it” or that otherwise calls for
interpretation in the light of court decisions. The book has been
kept up-to-date by numerous printings. “I know of no book which so
completely and coherently explains our form of government.”--James M.
Beck, former Solicitor General of the United States.
NORTON, THOMAS J. _Undermining the Constitution._ Devin-Adair. 1950.
351 pp.
“The author, who in the twenties published a standard commentary on
the constitution, calls his new commentary a ‘history of lawless
government’ and cites case after case to support his charge that
‘clever, irresponsible men’ have been doing their best to demolish
the Constitution and popular government along with it. As examples
of how the intent of the writers of the Constitution has been
‘demolished,’ Mr. Norton discusses such matters as the TVA, the
agricultural adjustment act, the national labor relations act, the
child labor law, the assumption by Washington of much police power
originally held by the several states, the influence of the Supreme
Court in creating new laws, and the loss of congressional power to the
executive.”--_Springfield Republican._
NUTTER, G. WARREN. _The Extent of Enterprise Monopoly in the United
States, 1899-1939._ University of Chicago Press. 1951. 169 pp.
A careful and detailed statistical study. Professor Nutter concludes
that there is no basis for the impression that there has been a
significant increase in monopoly in the United States since about 1900.
NYARADI, NICHOLAS. _My Ringside Seat in Moscow._ Crowell. 1952. 307 pp.
“A report on a most melancholy mission to Moscow, written by the last
non-Communist Finance Minister of Hungary. Mr. Nyaradi went to Russia
in 1947 to negotiate with the Kremlin a two-hundred-million-dollar
Russian claim against his government.... He got it reduced, but it
took him seven months to do so, and by that time the Communists had
infested his government and the claim had become academic.”--_New
Yorker._ “From one point of view this book can be read as a rollicking
account of Moscow life, with its strange contrasts between the abysmal
poverty of the many and the sybaritic life of the rulers.... More
important, however, Nyaradi gives us a glimpse of some key figures
in the Politburo and near Politburo levels of Soviet life.”--Harry
Schwartz, in _The New York Times_.
ONEAL, JAMES, AND WERNER, G. A. _American Communism._ Dutton. 1947.
416 pp.
“A revision and extension of Oneal’s same title published in
1927 by the Rand School. To the original thirteen chapters now
slightly revised, Werner adds nine, covering events since original
publication.... The original sections are careful and judicious, the
latter, somewhat less so; but the documented whole adds up to a clear
picture of the development of Communism in the United States which the
authors insist is not a political party in our sense but an agency of
the Russian Dictatorship.”--_Library Journal._
OPPENHEIMER, FRANZ. _The State._ Huebsch. 1922. 302 pp.
“This brilliant political study is simultaneously readable, brief and
profound.”--_Felix Morley._
ORME, ALEXANDREA. _Comes the Comrade._ Morrow. 1950. 376 pp.
Beginning with Dec. 22, 1944, this diary of a Polish woman, “Lida,”
married to a Hungarian aristocrat, covers the days to March 28, 1945.
During that time the Russians were supposed to have “liberated” that
section of Hungary. At first Lida had welcomed the Russians, but as
it became apparent that their ideas of liberation were very crude,
she devoted all her time and intelligence to the task of keeping one
step ahead of them. “If one can imagine a group of Roman patricians
caught by an invading flood of Goths and Vandals one can appreciate the
situation which Mrs. Orme describes with courage, wit and vivacity....
There could hardly be a better close-up view of the Soviet overrunning
of Eastern Europe.”--W. H. Chamberlin, in the _Chicago Sunday Tribune_.
ORTON, WILLIAM AYLOTT. _The Liberal Tradition._ Yale University Press.
1945. 317 pp.
This bears the subtitle: “A Study of the Social and Spiritual
Conditions of Freedom.” “In an era that speaks so glibly and so
hopelessly of the inevitability of collectivization, Professor
Orton casts a favorite-son vote for freedom.”--H. T. Maguire, in
_Commonweal_.
ORTON, WILLIAM AYLOTT. _The Economic Role of the State._ University of
Chicago Press. 1950. 192 pp.
A discussion of the basis and limitations of government action. John
Chamberlain writes: “Orton’s view is that the best society is the
one in which people put their reliance on the voluntary action of
autonomous non-state social groups. He brings us back to the central
lack of modern man, which is philosophy. He himself is evidently in
accord with the Catholic philosophy of economics and government. But he
is so persistently oblique in his phraseology that he often leaves the
reader in doubt as to how he would apply Catholic philosophy in given
instances.”
ORWELL, GEORGE. _Nineteen Eighty-Four._ Harcourt, Brace. 1949. 314 pp.
A satirical novel about a future time when men and women living in a
collectivist society are constantly spied upon through “telescreens,”
and drilled by a Thought Police into thinking that war is peace, that
ignorance is strength, and that freedom is slavery. Orwell was the
foremost satirist of our time. _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ portrays with
classic power and finality the intellectual paralysis and spiritual
depravity that a totalitarian regime imposes. But except for its vivid
picture of the dreadful end-results for consumers, it leaves the
determining _economic_ aspect of such a totalitarian society virtually
blank.
Orwell in an earlier book (_The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and
the English Genius_; Secker & Warburg: 1941) had argued for a special
“English socialism.” With his increasing disillusionment he ceased to
be a communist sympathizer, and, in the end (some time after writing
_Animal Farm_), even to be a socialist. In _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ he
ridiculed his own former ideas by his sarcastic references to “Ingsoc”
(the short name in his collectivist society for English socialism).
But so bitter and complete had been Orwell’s previous hatred of
“capitalism” that he never came to understand the real nature and
effects of free private enterprise. This, I think, is why _Nineteen
Eighty-Four_ could only end on a note of utter despair. Yet the book
presents an unforgettable picture of what collectivism leads to.
ORWELL, GEORGE. _Animal Farm._ Harcourt, Brace. 1946. 118 pp.
The animals on Mr. Jones’s farm stage a successful revolution and
take the place over. The revolution begins to go wrong--yet ingenious
excuses are always forthcoming for each perversion of the original
doctrine. This fable is the vehicle for a brilliant satire on the
actual course of the Russian communist revolution up to the time when
_Animal Farm_ appeared. Unfortunately, much in this satire implies
the familiar socialist view that the Russian revolution was perhaps a
necessary method of putting a great ideal into effect, but that the
revolution was “betrayed” by Stalin through selfishness and abuse
of power and a return to capitalist ideals. These implications spoil
the satire for individualists and believers in free enterprise. In
_Nineteen Eighty-Four_ Orwell was to become far more disillusioned with
socialism than he is here.
PACKE, MICHAEL ST. JOHN. _The Life of John Stuart Mill._ Macmillan.
1954. 567 pp.
An admirable biography of the great nineteenth century liberal
economist and philosopher. It carries the reader along like a
first-rate novel, yet Mr. Packe never invents conversations or inner
thoughts, but supplies documentation for all his statements. Readers
of Mill’s _Autobiography_ will find Mr. Packe’s book an almost
indispensable supplement; it throws entirely new light on Mill’s life
and character, and supplements the material in the _Autobiography_ at a
hundred points, while repeating surprisingly little. “For eighty years
after his death,” writes F. A. Hayek in a preface, “no satisfactory
biography of Mill has been available. In many ways, the unique value
of his own description of his intellectual development has increased
rather than diminished the need for a more comprehensive account of the
setting against which it ought to be seen. Until recently, the material
on which such a picture could be based was not available.... There may
still be details to be filled in here and there; but on the whole I
feel that Mr. Packe has given us the definitive biography of Mill for
which we have so long been waiting.”
PAINE, THOMAS. _Common Sense._ 1776. Many editions. 129 pp. ----. _The
Rights of Man_, 1791. Many editions. 389 pp.
“Paine’s _Common Sense_ helped to inspire the Declaration of
Independence, while _The Rights of Man_ raised a great outcry among
the admirers of the British Constitution. He was a bold champion of
individual as well as of national independence.”--PI.
PAINE, THOMAS. _The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine._ Edited by
Philip S. Foner. New York: The Citadel Press. 1945. 2 vols.
These two volumes contain, among other writings, both _Common
Sense_ and _The Rights of Man_. “At once the fullest, the most
inexpensive, and the most usable edition of Paine that has yet been
published.”--Allan Nevins, in _The New York Times_.
PALGRAVE, R. H. INGLIS (ed.). _Dictionary of Political Economy._
Macmillan. 1918. 3 vols. 2,525 pp.
“An indispensable work of reference. The article on Individualism
should be studied.”--PI.
PALMER, CECIL. _The British Socialist Ill-fare State._ Caldwell,
Idaho: Caxton Printers. 1952. 656 pp.
A study of the shortcomings of the British welfare state, which
examines the State’s challenge to individual liberties, nationalized
medicine, and the nationalization of industries and utilities. The
author was a former British publisher and lecturer, and was the
organizer of the Society of Individualists. He died in January 1952.
PALYI, MELCHIOR. _The Dollar Dilemma._ Regnery. 1954. 208 pp.
In this vigorous, well-informed and penetrating book, the author
argues that American dollar aid to Europe and elsewhere has done
more harm than good. He contends that it has financed socialism,
planned and directed economies, excessive social security and wealth
distribution systems, the destruction of incentives and the promotion
of inefficiency. Dr. Palyi was born in Hungary but since 1933 has lived
in America, where he has been active as a research economist.
PALYI, MELCHIOR. _Compulsory Medical Care and the Welfare State._
Chicago: National Institution of Professional Services. 1949. 156 pp.
An analysis based on a special study of governmentalized medical care
systems on the continent of Europe and in England.
PARKES, HENRY BAMFORD. _Marxism: An Autopsy._ Houghton Mifflin. 1939.
300 pp.
Reviewing this book in _The New York Times_ of April 7, 1940, I wrote:
“Mr. Parkes’s autopsy ... cannot compare in depth, penetration and
rigor of thought with von Mises’ masterly refutation of socialism, to
the extent that the two volumes cover similar ground. But it is an
important volume and one of the ablest direct replies to Marxism ever
to appear in America.... In his attempt to formulate a constructive
program Mr. Parkes is less happy.”
PATERSON, ISABEL. _The God of the Machine._ Putnam. 1943. 292 pp.
The author argues that only free men, in a free economy of private
property, can maintain “the long circuit of energy” that makes
civilization work. Collectivism, she contends, does not and cannot
work. The book is acute, pungent, epigrammatic, full of original
insights and sometimes powerfully eloquent. (The chapter “The
Humanitarian with the Guillotine” is an outstanding example.) But
much of the thinking and style of the work are marred by a persistent
and obsessive effort to write of man’s economic, political and moral
problems on the analogy and in the vocabulary of the flow of electrical
energy.
PATON, WILLIAM A. _Shirtsleeve Economics._ Appleton-Century-Crofts.
1952. 460 pp.
A highly successful effort, by an eminent accountant and professor of
economics at the University of Michigan, to present “a common sense
survey” of economics in easily understandable terms. “The central
proposition of this book,” declares the author, “is very simple: We
can’t consume any more than we produce and only through increased
production is a higher standard of living possible. This has an
important corollary: We must be everlastingly on our guard to check
those influences and developments that tend to limit and discourage
production. Among such is ‘social legislation’ which emphasizes
diversion only, without regard to what happens to output.”
PERCY OF NEWCASTLE, LORD. _The Heresy of Democracy._ Regnery. 1955.
The author, a British statesman and scholar, shows how democracy,
in the sense of a temporary majority sentiment, may be corrupted
and frozen into totalitarian forms. His book deals with such basic
questions as the growth of state power, the relation of the individual
to the state, and the dangers of demagogic mass manipulation. “It
is possible,” he warns, “for multiplied legislation, whether by Act
of Parliament or dictatorial decree, to destroy the very conception
of law.... Under the best laws much governed men are less free than
lightly governed men. For, whenever the law converts (as it often must)
an obligation to a fellow-citizen into an obligation to the state it
substitutes a claim to obedience for the give-and-take of mutual rights
and duties between individuals.”
PETROV, VLADIMIR. _Soviet Gold._ Farrar, Straus & Young. 1949. 426 pp.
“A sixteen-year-old boy writes his political thoughts into a diary.
Three years later a lady friend turns against him and plants
anti-Soviet books in his room. The young fellow is caught in the net of
the vast purges of the mid-1930’s. Terror-stricken ex-friends denounce
him. It all adds up to a fat NKVD dossier, a six-year sentence to heavy
labor, and an odyssey that leads through the prisons of Leningrad to
the labor camps and gold mines of Siberia. That’s what happened to
Vladimir Petrov. That is the story he tells.”--_Saturday Review of
Literature._
PETROV, VLADIMIR. _My Retreat from Russia._ Yale University Press.
1950. 357 pp.
In his earlier book, _Soviet Gold_, the author gave an account of
his six years in the forced labor camps in Siberia. In the present
volume he describes his activities after his release at the time of
the outbreak of the war. He worked his way back to his home in Russia
proper, where he discovered that as an ex-prisoner he was no longer
considered a trusted citizen. Thence he fled through Central Europe
into American-occupied Italy.
PETTENGILL, S. B. _Jefferson, the Forgotten Man._ America’s Future,
Inc. 1938. 249 pp.
“Mr. Pettengill is a member of Congress from Indiana and one of those
Democrats who, enthusiastic in their support of the first New Deal,
looked with misgiving on the second; his attitude toward the third
New Deal is one of dismay. In a vigorous style, with ample reference
to Jefferson’s principles and precepts and to those of other eminent
mentors, including the President himself, he explains this.”--W. M.
Houghton, in _Books_.
PETTY, SIR WILLIAM. _A Treatise on Taxes._ 1662. Many editions. 75 pp.
“This and Petty’s other works are of much historical interest. Like
North, later in the century, Petty anticipated Adam Smith in his
exposition of Free Trade.”--PI.
PHILBRICK, HERBERT A. _I Led Three Lives._ McGraw-Hill. 1952. 323 pp.
“The now-it-can-be-told story of Herbert Philbrick, ‘Citizen,
Communist, Counterspy,’ who testified before Judge Medina against The
Eleven after nine years of conspiracy, uncertainty, and deliberate
penetration into the Communist Party.”--Virginia Kirkus. “The real
significance lies in the clarification it brings to Communist purposes
and achievements through indirect infiltration.”--E. B. Canham, in the
_New York Herald Tribune_.
PICK, FRANZ. _Black Market Yearbook._ 1951, etc. Pick’s World Currency
Report. 160 pp.
Since 1951 Dr. Franz Pick has published a yearbook on world blackmarket
prices and trading in currencies and gold. His book is dedicated “to
the more than 2,000,000,000 victims of inflation, who, for obeying
the law, have been punished by the law.” He declares in his foreword:
“Distrust of every system of planned economy, fictional official values
of gold, currency, and government bonds cannot be wiped out. People
cannot and will not accept arbitrary confiscation through inflation, as
practiced by every government in the world today.” In his 1954 edition
he points out: “At the beginning of 1954, nine-tenths of the world’s
population were legally denied freedom to transfer their assets into
less diseased monies.”
PILAT, OLIVER RAMSEY. _The Atom Spies._ Putnam. 1952. 312 pp.
“An exhaustive account of how the Communist spy network succeeded,
with disturbing ease, in relieving the United States of the biggest
military secret in history. It is a complicated story, dealing not only
with the machinations of the spies but also with their motives.... Mr.
Pilat focusses attention on this ideological aspect of the case, and on
the clear and continuing danger of having among us an amorphous group
of people who can be persuaded at any time to betray their country for
what they are told are super-patriotic reasons.”--_New Yorker._
POIROT, PAUL LEWIS. _The Pension Idea._ Irvington, N. Y.: Foundation
for Economic Education. 1950.
The author points out that there is not nearly enough total capital
or savings in any nation to support in retirement all citizens over
65, and hence there cannot be a fully funded pension plan covering
everybody. The unfunded “social security” promises can only mean either
further inflation, taxes upon private savings, or further attempts to
tax the earnings of future citizens.
POLANYI, MICHAEL. _The Contempt of Freedom._ London: Watts. 1940. 116
pp.
Essays about the Russian experiment and its consequences. It includes:
_The Rights and Duties of Science_ (1939); _Collectivist Planning_
(1940); _Soviet Economics--Fact and Theory_ (1935); _Truth and
Propaganda_ (1936).
POPPER, K. R. _The Open Society and Its Enemies._ Vol. I: _The Spell
of Plato_. Vol. II: _The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx and
the Aftermath_. London: Routledge. 1945. 2 vols. 268 pp. 352 pp.
(Princeton University Press. 1950. 744 pp.)
The author, Reader in Logic and Scientific Method in the University of
London, demonstrates that Plato, Hegel, and Marx formulated ideas in
political philosophy inimical to the “Open Society,” i.e., to a society
based on reason and not on myth. The encomiums with which this book was
greeted on its British publication in 1945 were for the most part fully
deserved. Certainly we can agree with Sir Ernest Barker that “There is
an abundance of riches in the book--classical scholarship, scientific
acumen, logical subtlety, philosophic sweep.” Bertrand Russell thought
it: “A work of first class importance ... which ought to be widely read
for its masterly criticism of the ... enemies of democracy, ancient
and modern.... His attack on Plato, while unorthodox, is in my opinion
thoroughly justified.... His analysis of Hegel is deadly.... Marx is
dissected with equal acumen.”
The book is weak, however, on the economic side. Dr. Popper gives
Marx undeserved credit for his alleged services to “social justice.”
He is himself capable of saying that Marx was “right in asserting
that increasing misery tends to be the result of _laissez-faire_
capitalism.” This is because Dr. Popper has in his own mind a mere
caricature called “_laissez-faire_ capitalism,” as Marx had. In spite
of this weakness there are so many merits in the book that we must set
it down as powerful and important.
POSSONY, STEFAN THOMAS. _Century of Conflict._ Regnery. 1953. 439 pp.
“The author, Professor of International Politics at Georgetown
University, traces the Communist techniques in revolution from 1848.
Beginning with Marx, he depicts the story of Communist efforts in
Western Europe, the Russian Revolution, Communist tactics between
the wars, and Communist internal and external aggression since the
war. He outlines the methods, both from without and from within, by
which he believes the Communists hope to win a war with the United
States.”--_Current History._ “An invaluable storehouse of first-hand
information.”--W. H. Chamberlin, in the _Chicago Sunday Tribune_.
POUND, ROSCOE. _The Rise of the Service State and Its Consequences._
New Wilmington, Pa.: The Economic and Business Foundation. 1949. 34 pp.
This is a devastating analysis, by the former dean of the Harvard Law
School and one of the world’s great authorities on jurisprudence, of
“the service state, the state which, instead of preserving peace and
order and employing itself with maintaining the general security, takes
the whole domain of human welfare for its province and would solve all
economic and social ills through its administrative activities.”
Dean Pound’s pamphlet is included in this list, in violation of my
announced general rule against including pamphlets, in the hope that
some publisher may be inspired to publish it in book form, together
with a score of the same author’s other pamphlets and articles on
kindred topics, now scattered in the files of a dozen legal journals.
These would include such articles as _The Disappearance of Law_,
_Dangers in Administrative Absolutism_, and _Administrative Agencies
and the Law_.
POUND, ROSCOE. _Justice According to Law._ Yale University Press.
1951. 98 pp.
This small book consists of three lectures by Roscoe Pound, dean
emeritus of the Harvard Law School, on What Is Justice?, What Is Law?,
and Judicial Justice. The book is a wise, scholarly and compact survey
of the philosophy of law, a plea for the rule of law rather than
for widened administrative discretion, and a defense of the justice
of the courts as against that of administrative or other substitute
agencies. Dean Pound defends the rule of law also as the guardian of
individual liberty. “The real foe of [governmental] absolutism is
law. It presupposes a life measured by reason, a legal order measured
by reason, and a judicial process carried on by applying a reasoned
technique to experience developed by reason and reason tested by
experience.”
POUND, ROSCOE. _Administrative Law._ University of Pittsburgh Press.
1942. 138 pp.
“To the growing attacks on current developments in administrative
justice, Roscoe Pound adds the weight of history and philosophy in
a volume that is one of the more succinct and reasoned analyses
of the shortcomings of administrative justice unrestrained by the
traditions and processes of the common law as administered by regularly
constituted courts. Proceeding from the assumption that the common law
is a taught tradition of the supremacy of law, of individual rights,
and of adjudication instead of administration, Dean Pound denies the
idea that ‘whatever is done officially is law.’ Administrative law,
so-called, is, therefore, but a species of justice without law, lacking
the restraints of judicial procedure and the techniques of decision
inherent in that ‘artificial reason’ of the law.”--_American Political
Science Review._
POUND, ROSCOE. _New Paths of The Law._ University of Nebraska Press.
1950. 69 pp.
Three lectures delivered at the University of Nebraska in 1950, which
marked the opening of a lectureship established in honor of Roscoe
Pound. The lectures discuss, respectively, “The Path of Liberty,” “The
Humanitarian Path,” and “The Authoritarian Path.”
PROTHERO, MICHAEL. _Political Economy._ London: George Bell. 1895. 266
pp.
“This is meant for beginners, who will find it most useful. Two
chapters, ‘Alternative Schemes to Private Property,’ and, especially,
‘Theoretic Ideas about Economic Facts,’ give more serviceable
information than perhaps will be found, in a concise form, in any other
book.”--PI.
QUEENY, EDGAR M. _The Spirit of Enterprise._ Scribner’s. 1943. 267 pp.
It is the spirit of enterprise exercised by individuals and voluntary
groups, according to the author, who is chairman of the board of the
Monsanto Chemical Company, that has made America grow. The kind of
social planning advocated by New Dealers, he contends, can lead only
to a lower standard of living and a loss of liberty. “This book is
a magnificent indication that business is finding its voice. In the
public debate over what kind of social and economic system the U. S.
should have, the professional theorists on the left have done most of
the talking during the past decade. Now comes a businessman with a
fluent pen and a vigorous set of convictions to take up the cudgels for
free enterprise.”--Claude Robinson.
QUESNAY, FRANÇOIS. _Tableau économique._ 1758. 216 pp.
“A man of great importance among French Physiocrats; he was physician
to Louis XV, and a man of noble character; he had much influence on
Turgot, the wise minister of Louis XVI. Accounts of him and his school
are given in all economic histories. His doctrine, which was carefully
studied by Adam Smith, is briefly: Let entire freedom of commerce be
maintained; for the regulation of commerce, both internal and external,
the most sure, the most exact, the most profitable to the nation, and
to the State, consists in entire freedom of competition.”--PI.
RAE, JOHN. _Contemporary Socialism._ 1884. Scribner’s. 1905. 555 pp.
“A very useful and fairly full history of modern Socialism beginning
with Lassalle and Marx. The point of view is strongly Individualistic,
but the writer sees the necessity of constructive action. He remarks:
“Free institutions run continual risk of shipwreck when power is in
the possession of the many, but property--from whatever cause--the
enjoyment of the few. With the advance of democracy a diffusion of
wealth becomes almost a necessity of State.”--PI.
RAND, AYN. _Anthem._ 1938. (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Press. 1946.) 105
pp.
This book, first published in England in 1938, is a striking
predecessor of Orwell’s _Nineteen Eighty-Four_. “_Anthem_ records the
life of a rebel against the totalitarian order, a man named Equality
7-2521, who rejects the collectivist Utopia. He dwells in a society
which, by deliberately destroying independence of mind, has laid
waste all the achievement of earlier civilizations--a world which
has banned as criminal the singular pronoun and all talk of ‘The
Unmentionable Times.’ The Council of Vocations ... proclaims him a
street-sweeper. Secretly working underground in the shafts of former
days, he rediscovers electricity. He defies the world of State-planned
eugenics and State-directed mating and discovers a personal love. Among
a people which exists to serve a soulless State, he discovers that
the pursuit of his own happiness conjointly advances the happiness of
his fellows. He is denounced, imprisoned and tortured, but his spirit
cannot be conquered. _Anthem_ is at once an exaltation of liberty and
an exhortation to the counter-attack.”--Deryck Abel.
RAND, AYN. _The Fountainhead._ Bobbs-Merrill. 1943. 754 pp.
This novel about an uncompromising architect is based on a belief
in “the importance of selfishness.” Its theme is that man’s ego is
the fountainhead of human progress. Many will think the author’s
intransigent type of individualism extreme, but the novel is exciting
and impressive.
RANDALL, CLARENCE B. _A Creed for Free Enterprise._ Little, Brown.
1952. 177 pp.
An admirable book on American business and businessmen by the president
of the Inland Steel Company. “Should do much in counteracting the
untruthful and insidious propaganda of the socialists against free
enterprise.”--The Rev. A. Keller, in _The Freeman_.
RANDALL, CLARENCE B. _A Foreign Economic Policy for the United
States._ University of Chicago Press. 1954. 83 pp.
A plea for the removal of barriers and the liberalization of
international trade by a distinguished businessman who is also a
vigorous thinker and writer.
RAPPARD, WILLIAM E. _The Secret of American Prosperity._ Greenberg.
1955. 124 pp.
This book originally appeared in French as an attempt by an eminent
Swiss economist to explain the secret of American prosperity to other
Europeans. In my foreword to the American edition I wrote: “Among the
qualities that make it remarkable ... are not only the generosity
with which it acknowledges and insists upon the economic superiority
of the United States, but the still rarer generosity with which it
attributes this superiority not merely to good luck--such as great
natural resources or escape from the direct destruction of the two
world wars (the usual European explanation)--but primarily to the
character and the free economic institutions of the American people, to
our greater efficiency and to our greater competitive spirit.” The book
is lucid and admirably organized. It may serve as an indirect reminder
to Americans that their own economic achievement has been the result,
above all, of a free, dynamic, private, competitive economy, and can be
preserved only by preserving this type of economy.
RAPPARD, WILLIAM E. _The Crisis of Democracy._ University of Chicago
Press. 1938. 288 pp.
An analysis of democracy: its definition, sources, and probable
longevity. While he “does not despair of modern democracy, [the
author] rather questions the solidity and the longevity of modern
dictatorships.”--From the Foreword.
RAVINES, EUDOCIO. _The Yenan Way._ Scribner’s. 1951. 319 pp.
“A sort of _mea culpa_ by a man who was until recently one of the top
Communist organizers in South America. Mr. Ravines, a Peruvian, studied
his peculiar art in the same Comintern schools in Moscow that Klement
Gottwald and Mao Tse-tung attended. He was one of the major figures in
the South American Bureau of the Comintern and was very active in the
Spanish Civil War. It was while he was on Comintern duty in Spain that
he began to lose faith in the world revolution and in revolutionists,
and began to see Stalin for what he is, rather than as the workers’
messiah. Altogether, an important, instructive, and astonishingly
specific book.”--_New Yorker._
READ, LEONARD E. _Government--An Ideal Concept._ Irvington, N. Y.:
Foundation for Economic Education. 1954. 149 pp.
Leonard Read argues that the purpose of government is to use “defensive
force” to neutralize “aggressive force”; and that government can have
no legitimate function beyond that. He applies this principle to such
subjects as socialism, taxation, conscription, world government,
efforts to increase trade or prevent depressions, money, public
housing, foreign aid, education and religion.
READ, LEONARD E. _Outlook for Freedom._ Irvington, N. Y.: Foundation
for Economic Education. 1951.
This small volume contains an allegorical report of the ideas and
experiences, failures and successes, of many associates and friends
of the author during the last two decades, and relates it to the
concept of individual liberty. “The substance for a thorough-going,
twentieth century intellectual revolution,” he writes, “is in the
making, and is showing a vitality that can be accounted for only by
the inextinguishable spirit of individualism--the insistence of man to
complete his own creation. That this spirit at present is evident among
only a minority need not necessarily deject the devotee of liberty.
Everything begins with a minority of one, extends to a few, and then to
many.”
RICARDO, DAVID. _Principles of Political Economy and Taxation._ 1817.
Many editions. 538 pp.
The work of this brilliant deductive thinker has been used to draw such
corollaries as extreme _laissez faire_, the single tax, and Marxism! In
1952 _The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo_ were published in
nine volumes under the careful and scholarly editorship of Piero Sraffa
with the collaboration of M. H. Dobb. “Ricardo is more the father of
Victorian Political Economy (hated by Ruskin and Carlyle) than either
Adam Smith or John Stuart Mill.”--PI.
RICHTER, EUGENE. _Pictures of the Socialistic Future._ 1893. London:
Jarrolds. 1925. 134 pp.
“A satirical account of an imaginary Socialist regime by an eminent
German. It is very interesting when read in conjunction with the
earlier works of Robert Blatchford. Sir Ernest Benn writes in the
introduction: ‘The really extraordinary thing about this book is that
it was written and first published more than thirty years ago, in 1893.
It is not, however, published afresh now on account of its interest as
a piece of prophecy, but rather because of the remarkable way in which
it fits in every detail the problem of Socialism as it presents itself
to us in 1925.’”--PI.
RIST, CHARLES. _Défense de l’Or._ Paris: Recueil Sirey. 1953. 120 pp.
A collection of articles appearing over eight years in favor of a
return to the international gold standard in place of present “managed”
paper money systems.
ROBBINS, LIONEL. _The Great Depression._ Macmillan. 1934. 238 pp.
In reviewing this book in _The New York Times_ of Nov. 18, 1934, I
wrote: “If Mr. Robbins’s economic philosophy is ‘discredited’ and
‘outmoded,’ it is not because he is a bleary old man with an ossified
brain. He is, to be sure, a professor, and his acquaintance with the
work of the classical economists has no doubt poisoned his mind, but
he is still only 35, and writes with as much clarity and vigor as J.
M. Keynes or John Strachey. What he himself is sometimes pleased to
call his ‘orthodox’ economics, indeed, will seem very unorthodox to
those who are fairly well acquainted with contemporary British economic
thought.”
ROBBINS, LIONEL. _Economic Planning and International Order._
Macmillan. 1937. 330 pp.
Reviewing this volume in _The New York Times_ of Aug. 1, 1937, I wrote:
“Altogether, Mr. Robbins’s short volume is one of the ablest and most
vigorous statements in recent years of the orthodox liberal position,
as it is one of the most uncompromising and damaging analyses of the
whole philosophy of planning. Professor Robbins is deeply grounded;
he uses the tools of classical economic analysis like a fine surgeon;
he moves deliberately from step to step with relentless logic; and he
writes a lucid and compact prose.”
ROBBINS, LIONEL. _The Theory of Economic Policy in English Classical
Political Economy._ Macmillan. 1952. 217 pp.
Professor Robbins here presents in broad outline the theory of economic
policy held by the leading English classical economists--notably
Hume, Adam Smith, Bentham, Malthus, Ricardo, Senior, Torrens,
McCulloch and the two Mills. It is the author’s conviction that
the views of the classical economists on economic policy have been
gravely misrepresented in contemporary discussion, on the one hand
by presenting them as being callous to or neglectful of humane
considerations, such as the problems of unemployment and poverty, on
the other hand as carrying the doctrine of _laissez faire_ further
than they actually did. But Dr. Robbins does emphasize their general
adherence to “the System of Economic Freedom.” This “was not just a
detached recommendation not to interfere,” but “an urgent demand that
... hampering and anti-social impediments should be removed and that
the immense potential of free pioneering individual initiative should
be released.” Dr. Robbins’s book is written with great lucidity and
charm, out of a rich and accurate scholarship. It contains an excellent
index.
ROBBINS, LIONEL. _The Economic Basis of Class Conflict._ Macmillan.
1939. 277 pp.
A collection of essays united by a common theme--an analysis of the
way in which forms of organization facilitating group exclusiveness
may be the cause of social disharmony. The author contends that the
real modern tendency of the West is not so much “collectivism” as
syndicalism or corporativism. The book also discusses the causes of
increased protectionism, the consequences of agricultural planning, and
the general vices of restrictionism. In reviewing it in _The New York
Times_ of Oct. 22, 1939, I wrote: “Readers of Professor Robbins will
find here, as in his previous volumes, vigor of style, rigor of thought
and an uncompromising liberalism.”
ROBBINS, LIONEL. _The Economic Causes of War._ London: Cape. 1939. 124
pp.
“The chief British exponent of neo-classical economics writes in his
usual lucid and suave way about war. He carries on his long standing
feud with Marxian theory, and rejects any basic connection between war
and capitalist imperialism.”--_The New Republic._ “A masterpiece of
sound analysis and clear exposition by a professor of economics at the
University of London.”--_Foreign Affairs._
ROBBINS, LIONEL. _Wages._ London: Jarrolds. 1925. 94 pp.
“A modest but valuable essay. It is a lucid discussion of the economics
of wage determination. Although written primarily for those who have no
economic training, it is a work which might well be read with profit by
all students of social problems, for although its language is simple,
it is much more than a mere elementary tract. One would like to feel
that a means could be found of persuading all intelligent workmen to
read this book.”--PI.
ROBBINS, LIONEL. _The Economic Problem in Peace and War._ London:
Macmillan. 1947. 86 pp.
Some reflections on objectives and mechanisms. “This authoritative
recapitulation of the case for individualism by an illustrious
economist, with a philosophical background, is most timely.”--London
_Times Literary Supplement_.
ROBERTSON, D. H. _The Control of Industry._ London: Nisbet. 1924. 169
pp.
“A compact study of the physiology of modern industry and the forms
of control to which it can be subjected by the capitalist, the State,
the consumer and the worker. Mr. Robertson writes with toleration
and detachment, although his conclusions do not favor undiluted
Individualism. He believes that for some years to come ‘private
enterprise will be the dominant form of industrial organization,’ but
that ‘by its side there is plenty of room for collectivism in selected
cases,’ Further, that as in the case of an alternative creed, the
‘philosophy of the academic Individualists does not fit all the facts.’
Written in an entertaining style, this book should be read by all
Individualists because it is probably the fairest criticism of extreme
Individualism that exists and deals directly with the difficulties
involved.”--PI.
RÖPKE, WILHELM. _International Economic Disintegration._ Macmillan.
1942. 283 pp.