Freedom in One Lesson

74.

How to Decontrol

While Leonard Read published a vast array of articles in his efforts to advance liberty, he also gave many speeches. One of those speeches— “How to De-control: Divest Your Mind of Attachments to Power” (Read 1946)—is of particular interest because it was given the year he began the Foundation for Economic Education and because its focus—the question of easing government controls after the end of World War II, is again a major issue in the aftermath of the wide swath of controls imposed in response to covid.

Fortunately, his speech—given to the National Butter, Poultry, and Egg Association on September 16, 1946 in Chicago, Illinois, is now available, having been published by FEE in 2016, seventy years later.

Officially, the United States is still at war. This is because, so it is alleged, of the fearful things that would happen to the population if you and I, and our fellow Americans, were as free to carry on our affairs as before the war.

In fact, our rulers consider freedom to be so dangerous that in June of this year, the Federal Government was employing more people to control you and me than at the end of the war in August of last year. . . .

This reluctance of government to surrender in peacetime the authority given it for war purposes is not new. It has existed after every war, both in this country and in others. The destruction of liberty has always been one of the chief evils of war. . . .

Those who take their opinions from Washington and the Federal bureaucracy have come to regard liberty, not as man’s birthright, which government was established to protect, but as a special privilege to be doled out by a benevolent State. They see liberty, not as a necessity for man’s moral growth and economic progress, but as a rare luxury to be indulged in only under certain fortunate circumstances. They think of their fellow-citizens, not as adult individuals, capable of responsibility and discrimination, but as childlike masses, foolish and irresponsible.

According to this opinion, the citizens’ problems— housing shortages, strikes, inflation, deflation, bottlenecks, surpluses, unemployment or labor shortages [all traceable back to government restrictions]—all show the inability of the individual to take care of himself, and, consequently, prove the need for government intervention.

If we accept this view, the question of when to “de-control” becomes as futile as the question of when people will cease to have problems and difficulties. Every new event, problem or condition will be regarded as a new emergency continuance of extension of “control.”

Of one thing I am certain, therefore. If you listen only to Washington, you will never be decontrolled. New emergencies will produce new justifications, one after another, seeming to warrant, not decontrol, but new controls supposedly designed to make more effective the controls already in effect. . . .

Government is by its very nature a restrictive agency . . . given authority and means to use violence. . . .

This authority and means of violence bestow on government the power of compulsion, or coercion. It should never be forgotten, however, that coercion is always restrictive, never . . . productive or creative. . . .

Therefore, whenever government appears to have accomplished something, remember that it is only by destroying or restricting something else. In judging a proposal for government intervention, consider what is to be destroyed or prevented as well as what the advocates put forth as the object to be accomplished.

When government restrains theft or private assault, it releases energy for production and creative purposes. When, however, the policeman turns from his job of preventing theft and mayhem to telling producers what to produce and how, the net result is a reduction in production and trade. . . .

. . . Authority to use violence against citizens . . . bestows no wisdom. The policeman cannot decide what producers want and need. Only producers can do this for themselves. Therefore, every attempt by government to direct production for civilian, peacetime use results in a net loss to the nation.

You will find, therefore, the world over and throughout all history that man has progressed in proportion as government intervention has been limited to its primary function of protecting producers against violence and predation, foreign or domestic. . . . Stagnation, confusion and retrogression have developed and persisted in proportion as government has departed from its protective function and has turned to interfering with the freedom of producers. . . .

Those who are now seriously debating how and when to de-control, therefore, make me think of how a similar group might approach the problems a man flat on his back, struggling in the grasp of a burly ruffian who has him by the throat with knees firmly planted in his midriff. . . .

. . . How to de-control? How do you take your hands off someone’s throat? You take them off ! These controls are nothing but the suppression of human energy. Suppression, that’s all! Let all the controllers go home. . . .

Do you recall that the successful presidential candidate in 1932 was elected on a platform and by campaign speeches calling for a dismantling of an overgrown Federal bureaucracy, a cessation of governmental meddling, reduction of government expenditures and taxes, a balanced budget, adherence to the gold standard, and a return to free, competitive enterprise? This platform, the speeches, and the election results registered a widespread recognition of the leading role government policies had played in causing and prolonging the depression which began in 1929. . . .

Far from proving the instability of free enterprise or the dangers or liberty, United States history . . . shows how each new statist intervention gives rise to new problems and greater emergencies. . . .

If there is a line or reasoning which can be used to justify any attempt by government to control prices or wages, or to redistribute wealth for one minute, one week or one year, it can be used to justify all such interferences forever. That is because every such argument is based on the premise that what any individual earns belongs, not to him, but to anyone or everyone else, according to what government decides.

Once this collectivist premise is admitted as a justification for bureaucratic interference with producers, government becomes predatory rather than protective.

Each new government seizure of wealth or restriction of enterprise creates new problems, new emergencies, new shortages, plunder. Each of these new conditions, in turn, appears to provide new excuses for new “controls,” or restrictions, and for new seizures of wealth from some individuals for the supposed benefit of other.

Thus, as my friend, the late Albert J. Nock put it, government becomes a State—the enemy of man.

Today, as after other wars or crises brought on by Statism, the forces of individualism are again struggling to resume the offensive. This age-old struggle to reclaim man’s birthright of freedom again calls for the enlistment of every patriot . . . to combat the Frankenstein monster of collectivism which harries and harasses us at every turn. . . .

Even in America, men are being increasingly cowed and silenced by the popularity and prestige of the collectivist idea. . . .

In fact, the collectivist way of thinking has held sway over most of the World for the most of time. Denying the concept of unalienable rights, it maintains that the individual’s efforts, his person and even his personality, belong to others, to the group; that the group can manage him in accordance with its own preference, it any way it wishes, for the benefit of whatever it decides to be its own good. According to this view, therefore, each person lives only by the sanction of others and for the sake of others—the majority. . . .

The opposing view is the New World, American concept. Over the ages it has been a dream in the minds of only a few, but for a brief period it came near realization in this country. It is the individualistic concept.

Individualism maintains that the individual has unalienable rights, which cannot be taken away from him by any other person, nor by any number of persons, group or collection of other persons. It insists that each individual exists by his own right and for his own sake, and not for the sake of the group, the collective or the state.

Under individualism you have the free economy. The idea is, to each the full value of his product. There are no controls over the individual beyond a restriction of such acts as may be harmful to other. There are no controls over the individual beyond a restriction of such acts as may be harmful to others. His property and his income are his, except that share required to finance an honest government of limited powers. In the view of the individualist, the injunction, “Thou shalt not steal!” applies to legislators in their official lawmaking capacities as well as in their private affairs.

Under a government which observes moral law as an engineer takes account of physical law, the individual cultivates thrift, honesty, knowledge, self-discipline, self-restraint, good manners, good sportsmanship, because these virtues are essential to personal happiness and welfare and are necessary for getting along with fellow man. . . .

. . . Making the case for individualism, for the free economy and for limited government, explaining their meanings and high benefit, is the greatest educational challenge facing this nation today.

It is this task that the Foundation for Economic Education has set for itself. . . .

My conclusion is simple. Divest the minds of American citizen of collectivistic and “managed economy” notions. It is, in the end, the only way to de-control and to stay decontrolled.