Freedom in One Lesson

71.

The Bloom Preexists in the Seed

History reveals an almost endless supply of people who want to remake society into their own imagined utopia. But in the monomaniacal focus on forcing people into a mold, the essential shortcomings of these reform attempts are ignored. The result cannot match the vision, and the means of achieving it must be unjust and undermine individual potential, the source of any true social advance.

Leonard Read is an astute observer of such coercive political panaceas. He frequently starts his rebuttals by quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed” (Emerson 1841).

Echoing Emerson, Read argues that the ends actually generated are implied in the means used. Thus, only moral means can achieve moral advances, while immoral means will result in moral decline. He makes the argument most clearly in “The Bloom Pre-Exists in the Seed,” from his 1969 book Let Freedom Reign (Read 1969b).

[Many] people expect to achieve lofty goals without any thought of the means they use to attain them . . . [but] a hard look at means and ends is appropriate. . . .

Ends, goals, aims are but the hope for things to come, in a word, aspirations. They are not a part of the reality . . . from which may safely be taken the standards for right conduct. They are no more to be trusted as bench marks than are day dreams or flights of fancy. Many of the most monstrous deeds in human history have been perpetrated in the name of doing good—in pursuit of some “noble” goal. They illustrate the fallacy that the end justifies the means.

. . . Examine carefully the means employed, judging them in terms of right and wrong, and the end will take care of itself. . . .

An individualist . . . looks upon society as the upshot, outcome, effect, recapitulation incidental to what is valued above all else, namely, each distinctive individual human being. . . .

. . . Nor is there a middle-of-the-road between collectivism and individualism.

. . . Professor Hayek said, . . . “ We differ not so much on ultimate values, but on the effective means of achieving them.” Thus, if we would find the distinction between collectivism and individualism . . . examine the actions— means—that are implicit in achieving the goals. . . .

. . . [There are] opposed means implicit in the pursuit of collectivism or of individualism. . . . So, for us to understand, . . . we must discover what is implicit in the collectivistic as well as in the individualistic approach.

Implicit in the collectivistic approach . . . is the masterminding of the people who make up society. . . . The control of the individual’s life is from without. . . .

The collectivistic view holds that society is the prime concern. . . . The individual does not fit himself into place but, instead . . . is assigned that niche or role which the political priests believe will best serve whatever societal pattern they have formulated. . . . These coercive actions . . . are implicit in and must logically follow from the beehive way of looking at humanity. . . .

Implicit in this beehive view is that men exist who are competent to form the ways and shape the lives of human beings by the millions. . . . There are those who not only can rightly decide what is best for all of us but who can prescribe the details as to how the best that is in us can be realized. . . .

. . . Any conscientious collectivist, if he could see beyond his utopian goals and thus properly evaluate the authoritarian means his system of thought demands, would likely defect. . . . Goals or ends must always be the summation of the means employed to achieve them. However lofty the goals, if the means be depraved, the result must reflect that depravity. Therefore, the eventual outcome (bloom) of the collectivistic way of life may be accurately predicted by anyone who understands the means (planting) which must be employed. . . .

. . . People who call themselves individualists rarely reflect on the means implicit in their philosophy. Individualists thus overlook the merits of their means to the good life just as the collectivists overlook the shortcomings of their way. When only ends are envisioned and means ignored, there can be no reliable estimate as to whether the consequences will be good or bad.

When the individual replaces the beehive as the ultimate goal, . . . the means implicit in achieving such a goal must be radically different. . . .

. . . Either I will concentrate on me and my welfare or on others and their welfare; in other words, mind my own business or mind other people’s business.

. . . In view of the obstacles to the relatively simple task of self-realization, reflect on the utter absurdity of my . . . undertaking to manage the lives of millions.

Attention to self is not a disregard for others. On the contrary, each individual best promotes his own self-interest by peaceful, social cooperation as in the free market. Indeed, the more I make of myself the more are others served by my existence. . . . The way to assume “social responsibility” is for the individual to rise . . . as far as possible. . . .

. . . The incentive of private ownership is far more powerful than the sentimental thrust of laboring for-the-good-of-all.

If we concede . . . that man has a right to his life, it follows that he has a right to sustain life, the sustenance being the fruits of one’s own labor. Private ownership is as sacred as life itself.

Private ownership lies at the very root of individual liberty. Without it there can be no freedom; with it freedom is secure. For private ownership presupposes free choice in disposition, that is, freedom to exchange. It is senseless to talk about freedom if the right of private ownership be denied.

Can we pronounce a moral judgment on these means implicit in the individualistic goal . . . to the pursuit of self-perfection and the right of owning what one produces? . . . These means serve as a powerful thrust toward the individual’s material, intellectual, moral, and spiritual emergence—and that is right! Others—those who comprise society—are the secondary beneficiaries of individual growth. If we would help others, let us first help ourselves by those means which qualify as righteous.

Leonard Read sees that coercive utopian “reforms” that substitute external dictation for individual choices—which are the only way for individuals to mature or “ bloom”—are by their nature unjust and unsuccessful. In contrast, voluntary means that do not violate the rights of anyone are the only reliable path to individual growth and social advance. The bloom of liberty preexists in the seed of self-ownership, while the wilting of collectivism pre-exists in the seed of violations of self-ownership. That is a lesson which few have learned as well as Read and we are in desperate need of learning today.