The Mises Review -- Fall 1995
The Mises Review -- Fall 1995
The Mises Review
A Quarterly Review of Books, by David Gordon
A New Socialism?
A FUTURE FOR SOCIALISM
John E. Roemer
Harvard University Press, 1994. viii + 178 pgs
A Libertarian's Plea
SIMPLE RULES FOR A COMPLEX WORLD
Richard A. Epstein
Harvard University Press, 1995. xiv + 361 pgs
The Small Matter of Truth
THE REVOLT OF THE ELITES AND THE BETRAYAL OF
DEMOCRACY
Christopher Lasch
W.W. Norton, 1995. x + 276 pgs
Beyond the Beltway With Burnham
BEAUTIFUL LOSERS: ESSAYS ON THE FAILURE OF
AMERICAN CONSERVATISM
Samuel Francis
University of Missouri Press, 1993. x + 237 pgs.
Toward an Austrian Politics
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL
Raimondo Cubeddu
Routledge, 1993. xiv + 269 pgs
Lost in the Move?
AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS IN AMERICA: THE
MIGRATION OF A TRADITION
Karen I. Vaughn
Cambridge University Press, 1994. xiv + 198 pgs
Post-Charlatanism
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENTIALISM AND BEYOND
Jeffrey Friedman
Critical Review, Fall, 1994. pp. 493-502.
John E. Roemer
Harvard University Press, 1994. viii + 178 pgs.
John Roemer is a brave man. Few American economists today are
prepared to defend
full-fledged socialism; after the Soviet Union's collapse, even
Robert Heilbroner, that
quintessential leftist, had words of praise for Ludwig von Mises.
Roemer, an economist of
unquestioned technical competence, breaks with the current
consensus. His book has already won
praise from academics saddened by the fall of the Worker's
Paradise.
Roemer does recognize that "the Soviet model of socialist
society is dead" but, stalwart in his
faith, he does not despair. "[T]hat does not mean that other,
untried forms of socialism should be
buried along with it" (p. 1).
To abandon socialism because of so temporary a setback as
Communism's collapse would be to
ignore a basic truth. "The Bolshevik revolution was, I think, the
most important political event
since the French revolution, because it made real to hundreds of
millions or perhaps billions of
people, for the first time since 1789, the dream of society based
on a norm of equality rather than
a norm of greed" (p. 25).
Faced with so eloquent and moving a defense of a regime based
on cold-blooded mass murder, I
was reluctant to subject Roemer's inspiring vision to analysis.
But duty calls.
Roemer has had a bright idea. Why not save socialism by
abandoning what that term usually
designates? Thus, socialists need no longer support public
ownership of the means of production.
If public ownership has failed, and public ownership is equated
with socialism, then socialism
has failed. But this would end the dreams of millions, if not
billions. Instead, since the pursuit of
"equality" defines the "dream of society" even the once hated
market may be used in the
struggle.
But equality of what sort? As Roemer sees matters, socialists
aim at "equality of opportunity for:
(1) self- realization and welfare, (2) political influence, and
(3) social status" (p. 11). He glides
quickly over his three desiderata, evidently taking their
goodness to be self- evident.
Self-realization, we learn, "is a specifically Marxist conception
of human flourishing" (p. 11).
Under it, people develop their talents in a way that gives
meaning to life.
So vague a goal seems hardly suitable for a political system
who determines which abilities are to
be realized, and by whom? but minor matters such as this do not
faze Roemer. He does not
bother to characterize welfare in any specific way, nor does he
explore possible conflicts between
self-realization and welfare. What if some people would be
happier not developing their talents
in the fashion the Commissars specify? Judging by his praise for
the wisdom of Zhou Enlai, one
of our century's foremost mass murderers (p. 130), I rather
suspect that individual preferences
would not count for much.
But this, admittedly, is speculation. Giving Roemer the
benefit of every doubt, however, his
principles strike one as radically implausible. His first
principle mandates nothing at all about
self-realization or welfare, even putting aside the vagueness of
these terms. What his rule
requires is equality of opportunity to attain self-
realization and welfare. A slave society in which
all were equally oppressed, then, would outrank one with a
hereditary aristocracy, even though in
the latter everyone had a high level of self-realization and
welfare. The actuallevel of
self-realization does not matter: all that counts is that
everyone have the same chance at this
vague and impalpable goal. Given this principle, Roemer's pining
for the glorious days of
economic growth under Comrade Stalin becomes understandable (p.
43).
And just why should everyone have the opportunity for equal
political influence and social
status? Roemer does not tell us, although, commendably, he
recognizes that conflicts may arise
among his three principles. He does not specify a ranking for the
rules in case conflict does arise,
but that of course would be asking too much.
Roemer's principles raise a more fundamental question. Why is
equality (of welfare,
self-realization, influence, or whatever) desirable at all? As
must never be forgotten, Roemer is a
high-powered intellectual, "brilliant" in the opinion of the
eminent Warren Samuels; so he is not
without resources. He notes that "political philosophers
[working] on egalitarian theories of
justice" have established the truth of the egalitarianism on
which socialism rests. In particular,
John Rawls's A Theory of Justice"accomplished the feat
of convincing a large number of social
scientists that egalitarianism was not simply a value judgment'
that people might or might not
hold according to their taste but was, rather, a view of what
social arrangements were right, a
view that any rational, honest person had to accept" (p. 27).
Here then is the scintillating argument offered by our
talented author to support egalitarianism.
Political philosophers, especially Rawls, have established it.
Period.
Incidentally, he does not even succeed in getting right his
account of Rawls. Rawls does not
claim that any "rational, honest person" would adopt his theory;
on the contrary, his theory
proceeds from what he terms a reflective equilibrium among
certain moral intuitions. Rawls does
not go so far as to make holding these intuitions a criterion of
rationality. But accuracy is of little
account; after all, the future of socialism stands in the
balance.
Some backwards people may prefer to found political philosophy
on the right of self-ownership.
This principle, however much it may offend egalitarian
sensibilities, has at any rate the merit of
clarity. But to adopt it, Roemer thinks, would be to fall victim
to a drastic mistake. "Libertarians
use the postulate of self-ownership to deduce the injustice of
redistributive taxation; those
Marxists for whom self-ownership is the foundation of the attack
on capitalism must therefore
explain why they reject libertarianism's animosity toward the
welfare state" (p. 16).
Self-ownership must thus exit the scene: were it to be accepted,
it might lead to the rejection of
socialism, which is of course absurd. Q.E.D.
Perhaps, though, I have been overly harsh in assessing Roemer.
He is by training an economist,
not a philosopher; so whatever the problems of his forays into
political theory, his book may
have value for its contributions to economics. And indeed, Roemer
makes some useful points.
Surprisingly for a socialist, he maintains that Friedrich Hayek
got the better of Oskar Lange in
their famous debate over socialist calculation. Lange endeavored
to solve the challenge posed by
Mises: lacking a price system, a socialist economy cannot
allocate resources efficiently. Lange
ingeniously suggested that a socialist economy could mimic the
market. Why not use the market
to achieve socialist goals?
To this, Hayek had in Roemer's view a convincing reply: "to
the extent the planners would
require anything (other than profit maximization) of the firm
managers, the managers could not
then be held responsible for losses the firms incurred; thus, any
interference with the market by
the CPB [Central Planning Board] would let the managers off the
hook and, in effect, place all
responsibility on the planners for the outcome. This point
brilliantly foreshadows the political
sociology of the soft budget constraint as developed by Janos
Kornai . . . some thirty years later"
(pp. 31 32).
Further, Roemer usefully criticizes socialists who propose
that firms be managed by the laborers
who work in them. As Roemer notes, firms of this type may be
reluctant to take risks that
threaten the discharge of some of these managers. "Indeed, it is
possible that adopting the form of
labor management for all firms in an economy could have the
result that everyone is worse off
than they would be in an economy with mixed management firms" (p.
123).
If the socialist calculation argument of Mises and Hayek
works, and if worker management is not
the pearl of great price, why not abandon socialism altogether?
Oh, but this would be to ignore
the surpassing philosophical merits of egalitarianism, which we
have already had occasion to
examine. What, then, is Roemer to do? His philosophical views
mandate socialism, but
economic analysis speaks against it. How can he restore
consistency to his beliefs?
He does so by advocating a new version of market socialism,
which incorporates even more
market features than Lange's plan. In Roemer's scheme, firms
receive capital from publicly
controlled banks. Each bank would monitor the firms in its group;
by withdrawals or increases in
the supply of capital, it would impose economic discipline on its
firms. Thus, the problem, in
Roemer's view, that has plagued hitherto existing market
socialism at last is solved. No longer
are the firms in a market socialist order subject to arbitrary
interference from the state: instead,
they are subject to publicly controlled institutions whose
independence is constitutionally
guaranteed. If stockholders can control managers in a capitalist
market, Roemer asks, why cannot
banks do so as well under market socialism?
Roemer, as it seems to me, errs in thinking that the "agency
problem" poses the principal
difficulty for market socialism. Suppose that he is right that in
his system firms will do as
bankers dictate. What in his system channels money from banks
unskilled at meeting the wishes
of consumers to those better able to do so? He asks: how do
investors in a capitalist economy get
managers to do their bidding? But he does not ask: how does the
stock market promote efficiency
in investment?
And what Roemer grants with one hand he withdraws with the
other. In his view, the state ought
to play a large role in directing investment. But does this not
bring back exactly the problem that,
Roemer agreed, fatally flawed Lange's system, the "soft-budget
constraint"? As he says himself:
"A basic challenge to any model of investment planning is that
some political process must be
used to choose the investment targets, and this opens up the
Pandora's box of rent-seeking, the
wasteful use of resources for the benefit of interest groups who
aim to influence the outcome of
that process. It is beyond the scope of this essay to engage this
challenge" (p. 106).
Yet we have not yet reached the most incredible part of
Roemer's argument for socialism. As
mentioned earlier, Roemer is a technically accomplished
economist; and he constructs a model of
a market socialist economy which outperforms a rival capitalist
model (pp. 60ff). But his
"argument" simply assumes the key points he needs to establish.
He postulates that the rich are more likely to generate a
"public bad" than the poor: hence a
system that restricts the growth of the former will promote the
general welfare.
Suppose, using Roemerian tactics, one wishes to show that
socialism fails. One need only
construct a model, one of whose assumptions is that the socialist
planners are a gang of
homicidal maniacs, while capitalist entrepreneurs are decent and
economically rational. One
could quite easily "prove" the capitalist regime superior; but I
hardly think Roemer would find
this argument convincing. And yet its assumptions are
considerably closer to reality than those of
the models our author has devised.
Roemer's technical tools thus avail him little in his endeavor
to promote socialism. He offers a
"future" for socialism only in an Orwellian sense.
SIMPLE RULES FOR A COMPLEX
WORLD
Richard A. Epstein
Harvard University Press, 1995. xiv + 361 pgs.
Richard Epstein's excellent book is packed full of arguments
which continually engage the
reader, even if they do not always compel assent. He constructs a
powerful case for a free-market
social order, with a strictly limited state.
At times, Epstein compromises with the state more than he
should. Nevertheless, this book ranks
among the firmest defenses of private property ever written by an
American academic.
Epstein starts in an unusual place for a work of legal theory,
the widespread public perception,
shown for instance by lawyer jokes, that there "is too much law
and too many lawyers" (p. ix).
Lawyers, most people believe, burden the economy with costly
and often frivolous suits; but no
remedy seems in sight, given the complexity and detail of legal
regulations. Given that there is
too much law, there are not too many lawyers: we cannot cut down
on the number of lawyers
without a drastic simplification of the law. It is this far from
simple task that Epstein here
undertakes.
In doing so, Epstein shows himself well aware of two
objections that threaten to derail his
project. First, it would be easy to devise very simple rules that
would be utterly deplorable. "If
simplicity is the only goal of a legal system, I can think of
just two rules for determining the
outcome of a lawsuit that would satisfy a criterion of ultimate
simplicity. The first of these rules
says that the plaintiff always wins . . . if you don t like that
rule, there's always its mirror image,
which says that the defendant always wins" (p. 32). Simplicity,
then, does not alone suffice.
If so, is it not then open to a defender of complex rules to
enter a demurrer? Though complexity
may count against a rule, may this not be outweighed by other
factors? How can one tell whether
a legal system is too complex, absent an overall
judgment on the goodness of the system?
Epstein has his reply ready to hand. He is not after absolute
simplicity: rather, what he seeks is
governmental rules that generate more incentives than they impose
costs. "The central trade-off
that must be examined at all times is this: does the creation of
some administrative structure . . .
also create some desirable incentives for individual behavior
such that the gain from this
particular administrative expenditure is justified in terms of
the overall improvement in incentive
structures" (pp. 33 34)?
Epstein's real goal, then, is a set of efficient rules, and
simplicity is no more than a means to this
end. Nevertheless, it is a vital means, since complex rules are
liable to be inefficient. Epstein
constructs an excellent case for simplicity in the law; but I
wish he had at least mentioned the
once-famous essay of Rudolf von Jhering, The Struggle for
Law. Jhering maintained that the
assertion of rights was essential to the development of law;
thus, legal battles were to be desired
rather than shunned. Epstein would I think have found in this
essay a valuable counterpoint to his
own line of thought.
If, then, what Epstein principally seeks is efficiency, we
must know what he means by that. Here
there is little mystery: he understands it in a way analogous to
neoclassical economists
characterization of the market in equilibrium. In particular, the
market in equilibrium is Pareto
optimal: no change can be made which will make at least one
person better off while making no
one else worse off. This notion of efficiency underlies the
variant of utilitarianism which Epstein
defends, leading to difficulties in his argument. But of these
more later.
The first of Epstein's rules is for those familiar with the
Lockean tradition a familiar landmark:
"individual self- ownership" (p. 54). He defends this principle
against the competing view of
John Rawls. According to Rawls, people do not deserve their
natural abilities, which are from the
moral point of view arbitrary. Epstein rightly rejects Rawls's
opinion that abilities and talents are
"collective assets."
Epstein proceeds to defend a "first possession" rule for the
acquisition of property and follows
with strong support for freedom of contract. He notes a fact
familiar to all students of Austrian
economics: the parties to an exchange are, from their own point
of view, better off than they
would otherwise have been. If not, no voluntary trade would take
place. Thus, assuming no
effects on third parties, a voluntary exchange always increases
utility. Quite the contrary, of
course, with a coerced exchange.
But Epstein goes too far when he says this: "Theft arises when
one person takes something
without the consent of the other . . . it is at best a
constant-sum game, for what one party gains
the other necessarily loses" (p. 76). Of course Epstein is right
that the stolen item does not
multiply. But what is at issue is utility, and it does not at all
follow that no act of theft can
increase utility. What if the thief derives more utility from the
good than its rightful owner? This
objection presupposes that interpersonal comparisons of utility
can be made, which is eminently
questionable but Epstein does allow them, at least if made in a
non-rigorous fashion (p. 142).
Here I think Epstein would have profited from attention to
Murray Rothbard's fundamental
"Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics."
Rothbard disallows interpersonal
comparisons: he makes the more limited, and more defensible,
claim that in any coerced transfer,
we cannot determine that overall utility has increased.
So far, though, our objections to Epstein have been mere
matters of detail. Things change,
unfortunately, with his fifth rule, particularly as applied to
the government. Our author does not
forbid all coerced exchanges. Sometimes necessity demands that
one seize the goods of another.
If such a case arises, compensation is owed the person whose
property is taken, so that he is
restored to a position as well off as he was before the taking.
Applied to governmental action, Epstein's rule works in this
way: "Often the government needs
to obtain material resources from individuals in order to supply
services to the public at large. . . .
[H]oldout and coordination problems preclude that consensual
solution for certain key assets,
such as specific parcels of land needed for the construction of a
fort or a public road. This
problem is best met by government taking with payment of just
compensation. Ideally, the
individual citizen is left indifferent to the loss" (p. 128).
All of this seems to me radically unsatisfactory. Suppose that
someone owns a parcel of land that
the government needs in order to build a road. (Why,
incidentally, must roads be provided by the
government?) If the land had to be purchased, the owner could
secure a large sum of money by
threatening a holdout. If the land is taken, and its owner
compensated, in what sense is he
rendered indifferent to the loss? He has been deprived of his
profit-making opportunity. The
"take-and-pay" rule that Epstein favors does not fulfill the
principle, basic to his position, that
governmental actions be Pareto superior. Only on an etiolated
notion of compensation is the
owner left equally well off.
What Epstein here in effect says is that the state may take
your property, so long as you are not
left too much worse off. Is it not a sad commentary on our times
that, to the likes of Senator
Biden, this counts as a "right-wing extremist" position on the
takings issue?
Obviously, this is neither the time nor place to offer a
treatment of cases of necessity. I shall
confine myself to two observations. In those cases of necessity
that strike one intuitively as
calling for remedial action (e.g., the person who demands from a
victim of thirst in the desert a
million dollar fee for a drink of water), something is going on
of a morally dubious character
other than so-called "strategic-bargaining." Second, if one does
hold that it is wrong for someone,
by taking advantage of a threat position to seize virtually all
the gains from trade, it does not
follow that he may be deprived of any gain at all.
After he presents his rules, Epstein applies them to a number
of legal issues, including
employment discrimination, product liability, and environmental
protection. In all of the areas he
treats, Epstein displays a formidable mastery of case law. He
exposes to devastating effect the
fallacies of governmental programs that often make almost
everyone, including their intended
beneficiaries, worse off.
In one instance, though, Epstein's discussion seems
incomplete. In his excellent discussion of
employment discrimination, he notes that sometimes what appears
to be discrimination against
certain groups is from the employer s point of view economically
rational. Sometimes, e.g., an
employer may find it profitable to hire a racially homogeneous
workforce.
Epstein's point is well taken, but his discussion fails to
speak to a key issue in the debate on
discrimination. What about those who contend that discrimination
is morally wrong, even in
cases where it is economically rational? To answer them, a more
robust moral theory is required
than the "Pareto-optima"l brand of utilitarianism that Epstein
professes.
As his last chapter, "The Challenges to Simple Rules," makes
clear, Epstein disagrees; and it is
here that I find myself most fundamentally at odds with him.
He contrasts the utilitarian system he favors with moral
intuitions that lack a systematic basis.
Since his theory usually arrives at the same conclusions as do
the intuitions about justice, why
not jettison separate resort to them? "Make way for Occam's
Razor. If a smaller class of
assumptions can be used to account for all the relevant results,
why treat the intuitive sense of
justice as the irreducible primitive of the system or even as an
important side constraint" (pp.
319-20)?
Here Epstein erects an unreal antithesis. Why are unsupported
intuitions the sole alternative to
his theory? What about other moral theories (including
intuitionism) of a non-utilitarian sort?
Here once more attention to Rothbard and Robert Nozick would have
helped.
And Epstein's theory is vulnerable to pressure from another
direction. What about utilitarian
theories that do not operate under the Pareto constraint that
Epstein favors? Why should a change
that greatly benefits a large number of people be ruled out
simply because a few are made
somewhat worse off? (Suppose circumstances make compensation
impossible.) Why, on
utilitarian grounds, should measures of this kind always be
disallowed? Epstein's view must thus
confront both non-utilitarian theories and more robust
utilitarian accounts. Faced with a war on
two fronts, can it survive?
If Simple Rules For a Complex World frequently rouses
me to dissent, it is nevertheless a
distinguished work that merits the attention of anyone interested
in ethics and legal philosophy.
THE REVOLT OF THE ELITES AND THE
BETRAYAL OF DEMOCRACY
Christopher Lasch
W.W. Norton, 1995. x + 276 pgs.
Christopher Lasch loved debate; and in The Revolt of the
Elites, a collection of his essays
published posthumously, he indicts the American upper and
professional classes for abandoning
public argument. The elites no longer have roots in their local
communities. The issues of public
life no longer engage them; spurning contact with their fellow
citizens, they move from place to
place, concerned only with their own gratification.
His concerns emerge clearly in the book's best essay, "The
Common Schools." The essay
examines the thought of Horace Mann, the leading promoter of
public education in 19th-century
America. Lasch credits Mann with sincere concern for public
enlightenment and welfare. Yet the
movement he supported has led to ruin. "Here is our puzzle, then:
why did the success of Mann's
program leave us with the social and political disaster he
predicted, with uncanny accuracy, in the
event of his failure? To put the question this way suggests that
there was something inherently
deficient in Mann's educational vision, that his program
contained some fatal flaw in its very
conception" (p. 148).
Lasch locates the fatal flaw in Mann's aversion to politics.
Conflict over ideas and policies did
not, for him, lie at the essence of civic life. Quite the
contrary, conflict was to be shunned; the
schools offered a haven from the havoc of political life. Mann
termed the intense presidential
campaign of 1848, for example, a "Saturnalia of license, evil
speaking, and falsehood" (p. 153).
To avoid demeaning conflict, in Mann's view, the schools must
confine themselves to allegedly
non-controversial views. In particular, clashing religious dogmas
have no place in the school;
even better, sectarian religions should be excluded altogether
from public life. This view did not
stem from Mann's aversion to religion. Quite the contrary, he was
a devout adherent of those
tenets of Christianity common to all believers. By teaching
nondenominational Christianity, the
schools could insure universal uplift.
But just here is where Lasch's key difficulty arises. "The
real objection is that the resulting
mixture is so bland that it puts children to sleep instead of
awakening feelings of awe and
wonder" (p. 157). The clash of opinions in religion, as in
politics, must be actively sought, not
shunned.
Lasch effectively attacks Mann's assumption that a group of
experts possesses some body of
non-controversial knowledge about values that requires no debate,
but a few features of his
treatment stand open to challenge. First, his criticism of Mann
stops short. He attacks Mann's
view of morals and religion for being bland but fails to raise a
more fundamental question: was
Mann right?
Is there a core set of beliefs common to all Christians, or
more generally, to all religious
believers? If there is not, the claim that one has reached some
noncontroversial "essence of
Christianity", in Harnack's phrase, is itself sectarian
propaganda of a particularly insidious sort.
Mann had a distinct religious agenda, as R.J. Rushdoony has ably
discussed in The Messianic
Character of American Education. Lasch wants popular debate,
which he takes to be the basis of
democracy, but what about truth?
Lasch would no doubt reply that I have posed the wrong
question. He agrees with the great
American pragmatist John Dewey that there are no absolute
foundations for knowledge. "[I]t is
impossible, at this late date, to resurrect the absolutes that
once seemed to provide secure
foundations on which to build dependable structures of thought.
The quest for certainty . . . was
misguided to begin with" (p. 13). The truth that there are no
truths, the certainty that all is
uncertain: I cannot think that this is the formula for vibrant
public debate or the cure for
rootlessness among the elites.
A similar mixture of insight and misguided relativist
assumptions is elsewhere in evidence.
Lasch rightly criticizes the view that religion is a nostalgic
myth, inappropriate for the present
more developed age. Yet Lasch once more ignores what to my mind
is a more basic question. Is
religion true? Whether religious belief has good or bad
consequences does not tell us. I suspect
that Lasch would not have welcomed this query.
But the question of truth arises once more, at the very heart
of Lasch's argument. He vigorously
indicts the professional classes for weakening public debate. His
criticism of Walter Lippmann's
contrast between the uninformed public and the elite who are
alone fit to rule is powerfully
argued. But Lasch fails to ask himself: why is it a conclusive
point against a view that it impedes
public debate? Why is debate by the public, or public self-
government, the highest good? Is this
claim self-evident; if not, what is its foundation?
To echo Lasch, the failure to address this question has
serious consequences. He asserts: "Luxury
is morally repugnant, and its incompatibility with democratic
ideals, moreover, has been
consistently recognized in the traditions that shape our
political culture. The difficulty of limiting
the influence of wealth suggests that wealth itself needs to be
limited" (p. 22). Thus, Lasch
supports extensive government interference in the market because
he fears the effects of wealth
on democracy. But why democracy? Unless he can answer, his
argument hangs in the air.
Samuel Francis
University of Missouri Press, 1993. x + 237 pgs.
The heart of Samuel Francis's brilliant criticism of
contemporary American conservatism is
found in his essay "The Other Side of Modernism", included in the
present collection. Most
conservatives, he claims, whether libertarian or traditionalist,
condemn the Left from an
absolutist moral point of view.
Modernism, which holds that "[h]uman knowledge can be only
empirical; moral statements can
be only relative or factual . . . and human action cannot be
modeled on transcendent or spiritual
goods that either do not exist or cannot be known" (p. 131), thus
ranks for most traditionalists as
a stance to be utterly repudiated.
James Burnham, best known for The Managerial
Revolution, broke with traditional conservatism
precisely at this point. He agreed with the modernist denial of
absolute values, yet arrived at a
conservative position nonetheless. In his 1943 work The
Machiavellians, Burnham viewed
politics as the struggle of competing elites for power. The
appetite for power could be restrained
only through "a balanced distribution of power among various
social and political forces that
mutually checked the power of each other" (p. 133). (So exact is
Francis's knowledge of
Burnham that he cites differences in wording between the 1963
reissue of The Machiavellians
and the original edition.)
Instead of mere reflection on ideas, the Right needs to grasp
the realities of power. The failure of
the Right to do this has rendered it vulnerable to takeover by
liberalism and the managerial elite
it represents: it is for this reason that Francis terms the
American Right "beautiful losers."
Francis's analysis, in its penetration and power, brings to
mind Burnham's provocative
comparison in The Machiavellians of Dante's De
Monarchia with The Prince. And the
reservations I have about Francis's account closely resemble the
doubts I had when reading
Burnham.
Dante may well have had an unrealistic view of Italian
politics. But does this follow just from the
fact that he attempted to sketch out an ideal Christian political
regime? Whether there are
absolute values is one thing; whether these values are thought to
operate in history as "an
unearthly ballet of bloodless categories" independent of power
and interest is quite another. Why
must one adopt a "modernist" attitude toward values in order to
count as a realist?
But this criticism in fact points to a strength of Francis's
(and Burnham s) position. Even if one
rejects the modernist account of values, one can still recognize
the force of Francis's point that
the realities of power cannot be ignored. Even moral absolutists
need to be concerned with
interest and power at any rate, if they care about giving effect
to their ideas.
And I am inclined to the view, on second thought, that I have
underestimated Francis's subtlety.
Although he writes with apparent sympathy for Burnham's
modernism, and seems critical of
traditionalists, I cannot find any explicit profession by him of
the modernist creed. It would not
be surprising if it turns out that this ironist has baited a trap
for prospective critics.
If one heeds Francis's advice and looks at the realities of
power in contemporary America, what
do we find? Francis adopts Burnham's famous thesis of a
"managerial revolution."
Developments in science and technology, along with the attendant
growth of large corporations,
have in the 20th century made old-fashioned capitalism, based on
small business, obsolete.
Nowadays, managers and a technical- scientific elite control the
economy.
Liberalism expresses the interests of this managerial elite.
Those who wish to counter liberalism,
cannot proceed effectively by appealing to the same groups whose
interests liberalism serves.
Instead, the Right must seek to lead another social class:
"Abandoning the illusion that it
represents an establishment to be conserved,' a new American
Right must recognize that its
values and goals lie outside and against the establishment and
that its natural allies are not in
Manhattan, Yale, and Washington but in the increasingly alienated
and threatened strata of
Middle America. The strategy of the Right should be to enhance
the polarization of Middle
Americans from the incumbent regime, not to build coalitions with
the regime's defenders and
beneficiaries" (p. 230). On this basis, Francis dissects the
neoconservatives, who, he shows, are
not allies of the Right, but its enemies.
Those whose economics has been shaped by the Austrian School
will not look with complete
favor on the managerial revolution thesis. In the standard
Austrian view, supported by much
contemporary work on the problem of agency, capitalists control
corporate managers through the
stock market and the market for firms. But Francis's analysis
survives even if parts of the
scaffolding on which it rests are kicked away.
So long as one agrees that there is a managerial class whose
interests liberalism represents, why
need one hold that this class controls the economy in order to
oppose liberalism? The prospects
for wresting control of the political system from the liberal
elite seem better if in fact they do not
dominate the economy as well. Nevertheless, one can also accept
the thesis of managerial
dominance, if so inclined, while remaining true to Austrian
economics. To do this, all one need
do is drop the assumption that technological developments made
managerial supremacy
inevitable. Perhaps the managerial elite assumed control owing to
contingent political events
(such as regulation in securities markets).
Indeed, Francis's analysis seems much better off without an
inevitable managerial revolution. If
technological developments make necessary control by a managerial
elite, what can an elite that
rests on Middle American Radicals hope to accomplish? Perhaps it
can destroy the existing elite,
but will not the same technological developments that in the
first place gave us the managers
reinstate them? If it is replied to this that a new managerial
elite need not adopt liberalism, how
tight is the postulated connection between the presently existing
managers and liberalism?
Perhaps they did not have to adopt liberalism either.
Francis's book is packed with penetrating observations, such
as the connection he draws between
environmentalism, the view "that human beings are perceived as
the products of their social and
historical environment rather than of their innate mental and
physical natures" (p. 213), and the
progressivist ideology.
Francis's book ranks among the most skillful dissections of
contemporary conservatism to appear
in many years. Francis's originality and keen analytical powers
make his book essential reading.
Raimondo Cubeddu
Routledge, 1993. xiv + 269 pgs.
Raimondo Cubeddu approaches Austrian economics from an
interesting angle. He asks: what
implications does it have for political theory? The author has
carried out his investigation with
extraordinary attention to detail, and readers cannot fail to
benefit from his insights and
prodigious research.
Like Leo Strauss, on whom he has written an earlier work,
Cubeddu contends that political
theory in the 20th century is "an outcome of positivism,
historicism, and irrationalism" (p. 204).
Since man has no fixed nature, power, not discovering the good,
lies at the essence of modern
politics. But unlike Strauss (as commonly interpreted), he does
not urge a return to classical
political philosophy. He thinks that Austrian economics provides
an internal criticism of the
modern position. Not philosophy, but economics, now limits
political action.
As an example of his grasp of his subject, he places in
context the debate over the "interpretive"
method within the social sciences. He sees it as part of the
Austrian School s long struggle
against historicism. For Cubeddu, the German philosopher of
science Hans Albert in this
instance speaks for the Austrian tradition: Albert "defined the
hermeneutic type of Historismus as
a new form of German ideology, nothing less than the
attempt to extend the model of external
analysis to reality in general, and to hold up the speculative
style of theology as a philosophical
ideal'" (p. 34).
The methodological individualism characteristic of the
Austrian School of course stems from
Menger, but what gave Menger the idea? Cubeddu finds evidence of
Aristotelian influence, and
quotes a very Mengerian passage from Aristotle's
Politics to make his point: "As in other
departments of science, so in politics, the compound should
always be resolved into the simple
elements or least parts of the whole. We must therefore look at
the elements of which the state is
composed" (p. 79).
Cubeddu's keen sense of historical context appears to good
effect in the chapter "The Fate of
Democracy." One of Hayek's prime insights in political theory put
him at odds with his leftist
contemporaries: his skepticism about democracy. "The great
tragedy of democracy thus consisted
in the fact of its having entrusted the single assembly with the
power both of controlling the
government and of establishing what should be considered as
law'" (p. 177). Hayek rejected the
view that the people (or those who claim to act in their name)
may enact whatever laws they
wish; totalitarianism, not freedom, results from this sort of
democracy.
Hayek's polemic, Cubeddu makes clear, had as a principal
target the Austrian legal theorist Hans
Kelsen. To Kelsen, law was a formal science; the legislator need
observe no substantive limits on
his power. The contrast Cubeddu draws between Hayek and Kelsen
illuminates the thought of
both writers. He also offers a carefully nuanced treatment of the
differences between Mises and
Hayek on democracy.
One final instance of Cubeddu's historical insight must
suffice. Mises's criticism of socialism, he
maintains, was not confined to exposure of its faulty economics.
"The main objective that Mises
set himself [in Socialism] was to underscore that the
central nucleus of socialism was a theory of
the salvation and redemption of man, which included both ethical
and material aspects" (p. 117).
In viewing socialism as a secular version of heretical religious
ideas, Mises's work was an
important precursor of the work of Eric Voegelin, a fact Cubeddu
does not fail to note. It is no
coincidence that Voegelin attended Mises s private seminar.
Let us return to Cubeddu's main project. It is usually said
that economic theory has no necessary
implications for political theory. Economics is a value-free
science, while politics depends on
individuals judgments. Though economics may help the policymaker
carry out his plans, it
cannot tell him what those plans should be. Cubeddu sharply
dissents from this commonly held
position. In the end, however, I do not think this argument fully
succeeds.
Cubeddu effectively illustrates the Austrian contention that
economic law limits politics. Contra
Kelsen and other modernists, the state cannot do whatever it
wants. And this criticism is internal
to modernism, since it assumes nothing about absolute values. But
Cubeddu goes farther: he uses
Austrian economics to argue against classical political theory.
Cubeddu proceeds in this way:
according to Austrian economics, value is subjective. The prices
at which goods are traded in the
market depend on the preferences of consumers: supposed objective
measures of a good's true
worth count for nothing. But this has clear implications for any
political theory based on a notion
of objective good.
The object of Mises's and Hayek's inquiry, Cubeddu writes,
"encompassed not only man's
limitations in discerning the good' and striving to achieve it,
but also the concept of good' itself,
analyzed penetratingly and highly critically in terms of the
theory of subjective values. In other
words, one can find fault with the concept of common good' in
politics, just as one can attack the
classical concept of value in economics. Therefore the
concept of political order founded on the
so-called common good' appears to be untenable" (p. 35).
But it does not follow that because economics confines itself
to subjective preferences that there
are no objective values. Mathematics does not deal with the
common good either: this hardly
shows there is no such thing.
An analogous point applies to another of Cubeddu s
contentions. A leitmotif of the Austrian
School is methodological individualism: only individuals act, and
collective entities must be
analyzed in terms of the individuals who compose them. Theories
that take society or the state to
be independently existing collective entities must be cast out.
Once more, why does the fact that
economics recognizes only individual actors settle the matter for
other disciplines?
Cubeddu addresses the objection I have raised in one passage,
but his response seems
unconvincing. He suggests that the primacy accorded to
individuals pursuing subjective ends in
Austrian economics "implies a theory of human action which must
be not only methodological
but also philosophical-systematic, so that it may provide an
answer to the question as to the
nature of society" (p. 81).
If so, Cubeddu recognizes, the theory may be criticized "in
the light of an ethical principle"; but
such criticism would mean "endowing ethics with a predominance
over politics and economics
that may not be shared by other thinkers" (p. 81). But the
criticism in question need not tell
economists to use some other notion of value than the subjective
one. Why, then, must it be taken
as making a claim to "predominance" over economics?
Cubeddu's book nevertheless is valuable, a judgment I hope is
not merely the expression of
subjective preference. The scope of his argument, with its
impressive citations and accompanying
bibliography of Austrian literature, reminds us that the Austrian
School is no longer living at the
subsistence level as it was 20 years ago. Yet the book is best
read not only as a systematic work,
but for its incidental remarks and references. Here Mies van der
Rohe is right: God is in the
details.
Karen I. Vaughn
Cambridge University Press, 1994. xiv + 198 pgs.
I closed Karen Vaughn's Austrian Economics in America
with a sense of disappointment. In
several ways, as it seems to me, it fundamentally misconceives
its topic.
Vaughn has revisited a common query: what is the task and
scope of Austrian theory and what
direction should it take in the future? Unfortunately, Vaughn's
response to the latter part of the
question biases her entire presentation. To her, a group of
friends and colleagues she knows by
virtue of professional proximity lies at the center of the
contemporary Austrian School. She
reads the history of the School backwards: whatever leads to the
distinctive concerns of her
group is stressed; whatever does not is slighted or downplayed.
She sets the stage with a chapter on Carl Menger, the founder
of the Austrian School. She
maintains that Menger did not primarily concern himself with
equilibrium prices, in the style of
the neoclassical school. "His theory of value . . . was embedded
in a larger attempt to answer
what was basically Adam Smith's question: what are the causes of
the progress of the wealth of
nations? He identified the source of progress as man's increasing
knowledge of the causal
connection between goods and human needs and showed how it was
brought about by the active
efforts human beings take to satisfy their requirements" (p. 33).
Here the danger of a false step arises. She emphasizes,
following Erich Streissler, that Menger
thought the process of adjustment to "real needs" long and drawn
out; and, in this sense, she quite
correctly says that he did not believe the economy was likely to
be in equilibrium. But the notion
of equilibrium she here uses, adjustment of prices and quantities
of goods to the "real needs" of
consumers, differs fundamentally from a more common use of the
concept.
In that use, the economist is concerned with actually existing
consumer preferences. Are these
preferences, to a large degree, satisfied on the market; or, on
the contrary, are there substantial
maladjustments that cannot be readily rectified? From the fact
that preferences change, we cannot
say that the market fails to satisfy whatever preferences at a
given moment obtain.
Here, I am using equilibrium in a common-sense way rather than
to designate Walrasian general
equilibrium, the "final state of rest" or the "Evenly Rotating
Economy." Very roughly, I mean
that markets tend to clear and that the market economy is not
seriously out of kilter.
Anyone not foolish enough to believe that consumers' real
needs have been fully met counts as a
non-equilibrium theorist in the sense that Vaughn attributes to
Menger. However, she never
shows that Menger rejected equilibrium in the plainer sense that
the market fails accurately to
reflect consumer tastes. Indeed, Vaughn fails to distinguish
these two senses at all.
This failure leads to what is in fact the chief strategy of
the book. She claims, in effect, that since
Menger rejected equilibrium (sense one), and since he founded
Austrian economics, true
Austrian economics is by definition a non-equilibrium theory,
stressing the importance of
knowledge, time, and process (p. 36). Thus, economists who accept
equilibrium (sense two) such
as Mises and Rothbard, are less truly Mengerian, hence Austrian,
than Ludwig Lachmann,
Menger's rightful heir, who rejects it. And readers should have
no trouble guessing Lachmann's
heirs and assigns.
Further, she fails to distinguish "common-sense" equilibrium
(sense two) from Walrasian
general equilibrium (sense three). Those who accept the former
(again Mises and Rothbard) are
covertly neoclassicals, since the study of general equilibrium
(sense three) is the fons et origo of
neoclassical economics.
Before she comes to that neoclassical backslider, Ludwig von
Mises, Vaughn looks briefly at
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk. She rightly notes that
Böhm-Bawerk "showed that there was a fatal
contradiction in Marx's critique of capitalism." But her account
of that contradiction is surprising.
She states the problem this way: "it could not be the case both
that goods would exchange at
labor values in the long run and that the returns from capital in
all occupations would be
equalized at the same time. . . . Since Marxian theoretical
proposition was at odds with fact, his
system had to be incorrect" (p. 39).
This totally misses the point. Marx knew full well, and agreed
with Böhm-Bawerk, that goods
did not exchange at their labor values in the long run. So too,
as a Ricardian, Marx agreed that
there were equal returns to capital across industries. Marx took
upon himself the task of
explaining how this apparent contradiction of the labor theory of
value could be made consistent
with it. Böhm-Bawerk's deadly blow was to show that Marx's
attempted reconciliation utterly
failed.
In Vaughn's superficial version, the agreed-upon problem has
itself become the Böhm-Bawerkian
critique. Böhm-Bawerk is of little account, though; he
cannot be readily portrayed as a
proto-hermeneutician who leads to her chosen project.
Vaughn rightly stresses that Mises's seminar at New York
University was at the center of
Austrian economics in America and pays tribute to "the creativity
of his mind and the breadth of
insight he brought to economics" (p. 65). But it is difficult to
avoid the feeling that Mises does
not rank among her favorites: too much of his work, in her view,
merely rang the changes on
familiar neoclassical themes.
In her discussion of Mises, she makes a number of dubious
assertions. She gives this account of
Mises's method: "Praxeology is an axiomatic system that has as
its ultimate given that human
beings act . . . from this axiom all of economic theory can be
deduced" (p. 65). Not at all! Mises
admitted in economics subsidiary postulates that are not a
priori. Obviously, the theorems of
economics that use these subsidiary postulates are not themselves
a priori.
Vaughn knows this but, oddly, treats the use of non a
priori statements as a difficulty for Mises.
"However, Mises does not deduce all of praxeology from the action
axiom. He slips in subsidiary
statements that can only be viewed as hypotheses and not certain
truth" (p. 77). But Mises does
not slip these in they are explicit parts of his system. Vaughn
first misstates Mises's position and
then triumphantly finds a contradiction in it. And why does
Vaughn believe that the subsidiary
statements cannot be certain? Are a priori truths the
only certain ones? So that, for example,
"there is a variety of goods and services" is a mere conjecture?
Further, Vaughn displays an unsure hand in this: "If he
[Mises] could establish that praxeology
follows inexorably from the action axiom and if he could
convince us that there is no other
possible starting point for understanding human action then we
would have to grant the certainty
of praxeological laws and their ability to give us knowledge of
real things" (p. 77, emphasis
added).
Mises did indeed believe that the action axiom is the only
possible starting point for economics.
But why must he prove this in order to make valid deductions? If
praxeology starts from correct
postulates and draws from them valid conclusions, surely that
suffices. Why must one have some
sort of meta-proof that one's axiom is the sole possible point of
origin?
Mises's sins, in Vaughn's view, were not confined to
methodology. He wrongly claimed "that
monopolists will only restrict supply and charge a monopoly price
if the elasticity of demand is
less than one. . . . It is a matter of simple analysis that
no producer facing a downward- sloping
demand curve will charge a price in the inelastic region of the
demand curve" (p. 85, emphasis
added).
Elsewhere, though, she says: "Rather than presuming that Mises
was incorrect in his analysis of
monopoly, however, Rothbard shows a case in which Mises's
analytics make sense. Rothbard
began by assuming a fixed supply of some commodity and then
showed how a monopolist would
only raise prices if the competitive price fell in the inelastic
region of the demand curve" (p. 96).
Vaughn's two statements cannot both be true.
Murray Rothbard is yet another eminent Austrian who failed to
carry out adequately Menger's
revolution. His great treatise Man, Economy, and State
will seem to "a typical reader . . . more or
less familiar economics presented almost exclusively in words.
The familiarity is undoubtedly
the consequence of Rothbard's underlying assumption about the
organizing principle for
understanding market interaction, his concept of equilibrium
"(pp. 96 97).
Here we have a prime instance of the confusion to which I
earlier drew attention. Because
Rothbard thought that markets in the usual case adjust to
consumer preferences quite readily,
Vaughn thinks of him as virtually a neoclassical equilibrium
theorist. "Just as in conventional
neoclassical economics, general equilibrium, . . . was the
direction in which the economy was
headed" (p. 97).
Vaughn has not understood the counterfactual conditional at
issue: the final state of rest is the
direction the economy would be heading if, as they never
do, the data remained constant. It is not
just for Rothbard "unlikely that an economy would ever achieve
the ERE" (p. 97); "no such
position is ever reached in practice" (Man,
Economy, and State, Auburn: Ludwig von Mises
Institute, p. 275, emphasis added).
Vaughn's assault on Rothbard extends beyond his economics. He
was a dogmatist, who at the
famous South Royalton conference of 1974 would brook no dissent
from Mises. Here I cannot
but wonder whether Vaughn's remarks are colored by resentment at
some imagined slight (p.
108, esp. n. 20). She pictures Rothbard as going to inordinate
lengths to avoid the admission that
Mises erred in his discussion of monopoly price. Yet Rothbard's
treatment culminates in a
rejection of the entire concept of monopoly price on the free
market as illusory, in complete
contrast with Mises (Man, Economy, and State, pp. 604
ff). And has Vaughn ever examined
Rothbard's sharp criticism in Ethics of Liberty of
Mises's utilitarianism?
Vaughn does not reject "neoclassical" tendencies in Austrian
economics as without value. Quite
the contrary, she thinks they serve a very useful function in
criticism of mainstream assumptions.
In this regard, she singles out Kirzner's theory of the
entrepreneur for high praise. But if we aim
at a greater role for Austrianism than a mere supplement, she
says, we must go elsewhere.
Vaughn regards Ludwig Lachmann as Menger's rightful successor.
Lachmann realized that "one
can never see into the future; one can only imagine and
conjecture, interpret the present, and
form expectations about the future" (p. 152). Accordingly, he
cast out equilibrium from
economics. How could we know that the market will successfully
adjust to the changing
preferences of consumers? These lie in the future, which, as
Lachmann has repeatedly said, is
unknowable.
But why is future choice unknowable? "The reason . .
. Lachmann would argue, is that no two
minds are alike; neither in the bits of knowledge they contain or
in their method of interpreting
the information they receive" (p. 153). Here I confess to
complete bafflement. Suppose that no
two minds are completely alike: how does this have any bearing on
whether the future is
predictable? Presumably the problem of dissimilarity does not
arise if I confine myself to my
own mind: can I then predict my own future choices? The argument
attributed to Lachmann is
worthless.
In spite of her praise of Lachmann, Vaughn acknowledges that
"one cannot help but feel that he
has taken a tour of individual trees and missed the forest" (p.
160). He failed to arrive at a theory
of market process and left the role of institutions not fully
clear.
But all is not lost. Building on Lachmann's insight that we
cannot know the future, a younger
group of economists again, professionally associated with her
aims to elucidate what Lachmann
was able to see only imperfectly.
Vaughn cannot specify the group's theories in detail. After
all, these lie largely in the future, and
the future cannot be known. Will some yet-to-be-conceived-of
evolutionary economics offer the
key to the mystery? A "progressing healthy Austrian research
program," she offers, will involve
"a total rethinking of economic policy from the perspective of
pattern coordination" (p. 176).
Vaughn's discussion makes apparent that Lachmann had no sound
basis for his signature tune,
the "radical" uncertainty of the future; and his successors in
the Kingdom of Darkness, as
Hobbes would call it, have done no better.
It does not of course follow that one can foresee the
future; but I venture one prediction of my
own. Progress in Austrian theory will come not from our
self-styled radical subjectivists but from
theorists who know that human action consists of more than chaos,
and economics more than the
words "uncertainty," "subjectivism" " evolution," etc. to be
repeated in endless litany, like a
Tibetan lama spinning his prayer wheel.
Vaughn's criticism of Austrian economics leaves pure theory,
and its foremost practitioners
Mises and Rothbard, untouched. When you strike at a king, you
must kill him.
Jeffrey Friedman
Critical Review, Fall, 1994. pp. 493 502.
The first part of Jeffrey Friedman's piece, an account of the
stages in the intellectual evolution of
Critical Review, led me to have hope for him and his
journal. I do not regularly see Critical
Review, but I had the strong impression it was a central
organ for the promotion of hermeneutics
in Austrian economics, a postmodern movement with which I am not
entirely in sympathy.
But this, it appears, lies in the past. The "inadequacies of
postmodernism became apparent" (p.
493); among these are its "self-undermining relativism" (p. 494).
Having abandoned the
postmodern, is Friedman now ready to enlist under the banner of
Mises? Perhaps a merger of
Critical Reviewwith The Review of Austrian
Economics is in the offing.
But, it appears, my usual optimism and inability to criticize
blinded me. Friedman finds in the
failings of postmodernism renewed proof of the flaws of
contemporary classical liberalism.
In particular, classical liberalism suffers by comparison with
the left. "The difference between
classical liberalism and the left is that the latter takes
seriously the egalitarian premises implicit
in the former. By shying away from the Stirnerite apotheosis of
freedom for only one or a few
individuals instead embracing equal freedom for all classical
liberalism naturally leads to
attempts to actualize freedom by redistributing the resources
individuals need to freely pursue
their projects" (p. 495).
What exactly does Friedman have in mind by egalitarian
premises? If he means that everyone has
the right to be free, how does this lead to equal distribution of
resources? Why cannot one have
equal freedom understood in a classical liberal way? So eminent
an intellectual historian as
Friedman will no doubt be able to identify the pedigree of the
"law of equal freedom." Or is
Friedman's point that equal freedom amounts to little or nothing
without the resources to
"actualize" it? But that is simply the usual leftist complaint
against classical liberalism, not a
natural development of it.
Libertarianism, says he, suffers from another failing: "its
aprioristic approach to the nature of the
state" (p. 495). To remedy this defect, Critical Review
embarked on its second stage,
"postlibertarianism." In this stage, Friedman and his fellow
ex-libertarians sought "to investigate
the effects of capitalism on the good'" (p. 496). He and his
associates "experienced the
characteristically liberal contradiction between apriorism and
consequentialism . . . and have
chosen consequentialism" (p. 497).
Here once more Friedman baffles me. Why is it inconsistent to
think that an a priori argument
rules out state intervention and at the same time think the
consequences of intervention bad? I
should have thought it a strength of a view that two converging
lines of argument support it.
Perhaps the "contradiction" is that the consequences of state
intervention might turn out to be
good, but our benighted classical liberal will still find himself
committed to his a priori argument
against the state. But it is not contradictory to think that
something with good consequences is
wrong; and in any case, why should the mere possibility that
state intervention have good
consequences be supposed even to raise a problem, let alone
generate a contradiction? Isn t it
enough that the consequences of intervention be in fact
bad?
But the Weltgeist, incarnated in Jeffrey Friedman,
has moved on. Critical Review has now
reached the Third Stage, postliberalism. Economics alone, those
who have reached this level
realize, cannot "compare all the consequences of different social
systems" (p. 498). In particular,
various social systems must be compared to determine the degree
of happiness they are apt to
generate.
We await with eager interest the results of such inquiry.
Friedman offers us one preview of his
rigorous analysis: "as the mere ability to choose either goods or
evils, it [freedom] cannot be
considered intrinsically good" (p. 498). But why can't
one of the intrinsic goods just be the ability
to choose other intrinsic goods? Or, for that matter, the ability
to choose non-intrinsic goods?
Having sampled Friedman's skill in philosophy, readers will
have no difficulty in imagining a
fourth stage of Critical Review, for which we must hope.
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