Freedom in One Lesson

64.

Willing or Unwilling?

George Orwell, in his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language,” writes that “in our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible” (Orwell 1946). But perhaps even more insightful is his statement that “the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

Both statements apply no less to today’s political situation. The current attacks on free markets, and liberty in general, whether from the media, the White House, or regulators everywhere, as well as presented solutions that involve government control, illustrate how the abuse of language has made foolish thoughts increasingly prevalent.

It is worth looking at how serious defenders of liberty dealt with the problem of linguistic misrepresentation in the past. Leonard Read, particularly in “Finding Words for Common Sense,” from his 1969 book The Coming Aristocracy (Read 1969a), and “Saying What You Really Mean,” from his 1967 book Deeper than You Think (Read 1967), expresses valuable insights into this problem.

The following passage is from “Finding Words for Common Sense”:

Teachers and students of liberty . . . are faced with a word problem: the language of liberty is strange to ears long attuned to the notions, clichés, plausibilities of statism, interventionism, socialism. . . .

Assuming—as we do—that the ways of freedom make sense, ours then is the task of finding words for common sense. And I am unaware of any term that better illustrates our dilemma than “the free market.” We have one concept in mind, but frequently a different idea comes through to the reader or hearer. The image that “free market” conjures up is rarely a faithful reproduction of the intention.

. . . To understand our meaning, those aspects of the economy which have never been free must be imagined as free. And here is where we run into communication troubles: not many people can make the leap to imaginary situations; they can draw only on experience. This explains, in part, why so many take our term, free market, to mean no more than private enterprise, as if the two were one and the same. The failure to make the distinction leads to ideological confusion and educational mischief. . . .

The free market is that which prevails when all exchanges are free of coercion; it is willing exchange only, that is, freedom in transactions.

But what, precisely, is coercion? . . . The free market’s antithesis.

. . . Generally, coercion is thought of as force, with no distinction as to the kind of force. What we have in mind as the antithesis of the free market is aggressive force which can best be understood by contrasting it with defensive force. . . . Aggression is always an initiated action; defense is exclusively a secondary action, never coming into play except as a life-saving, rights-preserving, peace-keeping action. Aggression is a malignancy, antithetical to free market existence; defensive force, on the other hand—dormant until antagonized—is an ally and the armor of freedom.

When one can imagine a situation in which no aggressive force exists or, if it does, where it is promptly suppressed by defensive force, then one envisions creativity flowing freely and uninhibited from all citizens—the free market! With this ideal in mind, it is easy to observe the countless current practices that exemplify what the free market is not. . . .

Piracy is an enterprise and is definitely private. But observe that piracy’s distinguishing feature is aggressive force. Now, as aggression lessens in any private operation the enterprise moves from the piratical state toward the ideal: the free market. . . . Being private is not the feature that controls the position of an enterprise on the piracy-free market spectrum. Aggressive force is the distinctive feature. Any enterprise, be it destructive or constructive, can be and often is private. Thus, the mere fact that an enterprise is privately initiated lends it no special virtue, economic or otherwise. . . .

. . . Indeed, where the aggressive forces are dominant, private enterprises may be as far from free market in their operation as is the TVA or the Post Office!

The free market can properly function only as aggressive force is diminished. Government, theoretically at least, is society’s agency of defense, its role being to rid society of aggressive force in its numerous manifestations: fraud, violence, predation, misrepresentation. Yet, today, government itself is by far the outstanding practitioner of aggressive force: for instance, the forcible extortion of your income and mine. . . .

A compelling reason for this reversed role of government—aggression rather than defense—is that countless minorities and localities insist upon special privileges, that is, the gratification of their wishes at the expense of others. This type of gratification is attainable only by aggressive force. While nearly everyone can see the fallacy of this as a way of life when indulged in by others, very few can imagine getting along without their own special privilege. Aggressive force, they concede, is wrong—except in our case; we couldn’t get along without it!

In “Saying What You Really Mean,” Read makes the distinction between aggressive force and defensive force, without which coercion cannot be adequately understood. He proposes an alternative to words like “capitalism” and “free markets” not so tainted by confusion and misrepresentation. He argues that the contrast between liberty and government domination (even when it is disguised as freedom) can be recognized more clearly by focusing on whether arrangements involve willing exchange or unwilling exchange.

[There are] a babel of nondefinitive classifications [for politico-economic beliefs]. . . . Most . . . labels are meaningless and utterly confusing unless one is aware of the author’s thinking, motivations, prejudices, predilections; they’re no aid to clarity.

. . . We are at the mercy of definers, few of whom agree. . . .

. . . Recognize how deeply exchange extends into human affairs. It goes to the very roots of and is fundamental to earthly existence. . . . Specialists exchange—or perish! . . .

. . . Shall it be willing or unwilling exchange?

. . . Standing for willing exchange, on the one hand, or for unwilling exchange, on the other, more nearly accents our ideological differences than does the employment of the terms in common usage. . . . There is a minimum of verbal façade to hide behind.

Willing exchange . . . has not yet been saddled with emotional connotations. . . . Further, [as for] its antithesis, unwilling exchange, . . . no one, not even a protagonist, proudly acknowledges he favors that; it does offense to his idealism. . . .

If we cut through all the verbiage used to report and analyze political and economic controversy over the centuries, we find that much of it boils down to a denial of willing and the insistence upon unwilling exchange. . . .

It is not necessary to draw on ancient history for examples of unwilling exchange. . . . The list of coercive activities that go beyond the principled scope of government runs into the thousands. . . .

Unwilling exchange has its genesis . . . in the forcible imposition on the individual of a value standard not of his choice but of someone else’s making. . . . Throughout the ages, right up to the present moment, unwilling exchange has been conspicuous. . . .

. . . The concept of willing exchange unseats Napoleonic behavior—all forms of authoritarianism—and enthrones the individual. The consumer becomes king. Individual freedom of choice rules economic affairs. . . . [It] is for me, and a willing seller, to decide; it is no one else’s business! In good theory this is true; in practice it faces opposition.

. . . Very few will accord that liberty to others which they personally cherish so much. . . .

. . . A good society . . . [requires] the unobstructed flow of creativities . . . in free and willing exchange.

. . . The good society is a manifestation, not of a predesigned blueprint—not of a mass blindly following some person’s scheme of organization—but, rather . . . a configuration of the tiny wisdoms men come upon when seeking, above all else, what is right and righteous . . . the unobstructed flow of millions of individually acquired wisdoms, that is, flashes of enlightenment in free and willing exchange.

No man set about inventing willing exchange. Instead, some men were in pursuit of Truth. Their numerous findings and insights combined to make of them the kind of men who understood the advantages of willing or free exchange. But whenever the pursuit of Truth has not been uppermost among the aims of a considerable number of people, the understanding recedes to the point where unwilling exchange is believed in and practiced.

No man preconceived and set about designing and writing the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights as a means of erecting a good society. These political documents were really a configuration of beliefs that achieved dominance through a pursuit of Truth quite extraordinary in its intensity. The seeking of Truth was the seed; a good society, perhaps the best that has existed was the bloom; these documents were but a recording of the beliefs. To confirm this, merely note that when the beliefs changed, the documents became commensurately meaningless.

When we entertain the idea that political documents and laws cause a good society, we are wont, in adversity, to repair and revise the documents and laws. This is not only useless but seriously diverting. For nothing counts but Truth, and Truth comes to us only when we are seeking what is right and righteous. This, to my way of thinking, is the most important and practical of all political facts.

. . . I believe that no person, or any combination of persons, regardless of numbers, or any agency they may contrive . . . has any right of control over any other person that does not exist or inhere as a moral right in each individual. The only moral right of control by one individual over another or others is a defensive right, that is, the right to fend off aggressive or destructive actions. Governments, therefore, should go no further in controlling people than the individuals who organize it have a moral right to go. For, if government does not obtain its power of control from those who establish it, from where then does its power derive? In short, limit governmental power to codifying the do-nots consonant with the defense of life and livelihood, to the protection of all citizens equally. No special privilege for anyone!

This is to say that, ideally, government should be limited to inhibiting and penalizing all violence, fraud, predation, misrepresentation—that is, to keeping the peace. Insist that it tolerate no unwilling exchange and that it never indulge in what it is organized to prohibit. Let government do only this; leave all else, including welfare and prosperity, to willing exchange.

One of the difficulties of defending liberty has always been that those who wish to restrict it hide what is involved behind linguistic smokescreens. The malleability of language allows new versions of the same old statism to masquerade as “new and improved” versions of the good society.

Linguistic misdirection makes foolish thoughts about social organization more politically palatable while making it harder to communicate the benefits that are only achievable through liberty. But Read knows that liberty is so superior to any possible alternative that it can turn back the tide of foolishness if what it entails—and what its absence entails—can be made clear enough.

Read’s focus on voluntary exchange backed solely by defensive force can help cut through the tangle of verbal confusion and distortion about social organization. After all, at the root of virtually every complaint about capitalism or markets is a claim that it harms someone in an unjustified way (i.e., it violates some right). If people can see that a system of solely voluntary exchange does not violate anyone’s rights and only harms those who wish to gain some government-backed privilege that amounts to piracy at the expense of others, then such claims will be quickly dismissed rather than given credence.

Leonard Read spent most of his life trying to communicate, against a tide of attacks and misrepresentations, the miracles that occur when people are left free to arrange their affairs voluntarily. That tide has only grown, but Read’s careful thinking and insights can aid those still engaged in rhetorical combat with the many promoters of the nonsense of statism.