Freedom in One Lesson

79.

Compromise or Surrender?

Compromise is frequently the lubricant of successful social interaction, and its rhetoric is a staple for politicians who want to “get things done.” But political compromises are different from most day-to-day compromises because they often abandon moral principles. For example, there are huge differences between market compromises—flexible, voluntary compromises by all whose rights are affected—and political compromises—arrangements where just over half the participants compromise on an agreement to coerce others.

In “Penalty of Surrender,” from his 1974 book Having My Way (Read 1974), Leonard Read argues for the importance of distinguishing the moral compromises involved in politics from other kinds of compromises. Since this distinction is all but ignored today, his analysis bears reconsideration.

The compromising attitude is exalted by many and deplored by only a few. Most current discussions are tempered with concepts of compromise and expediency.

Compromise, like many other words, has different meanings for different persons. I want to use the term in the sense of one of the definitions given by Webster: “The result or embodiment of concession or adjustment.” I wish to show that compromise is potentially good when applied in a physical sense and that it has no application whatever in a moral sense. . . .

Compromise in this sense [of ] adjustment of physical situations . . . is the process by which conflicts are reduced to the point most satisfactory to all parties concerned. When thought of in this way, compromise is the great harmonizer, the attitude that makes living together—social life—a pleasure.

Indeed, the marketplace of willing exchange where tens of millions of transactions go on daily is one vast area of compromise. Buyers aim at low prices. Sellers aim at high prices. In a free market, unhampered by private thieves and political restrictions, there is an adjustment of these diverse desires. Compromise establishes the price at which the mutual satisfaction of buyer and seller is at its highest level.

It is in the physical realm that most of our daily life is lived. In this realm compromise is good and it is practical. It begets harmony and peace.

How easy it would seem then, finding compromise so useful in such a vast segment of life, to conclude thoughtlessly that it has an equal place, a comparable value, in that phase of life which consciously occupies little of our thoughts: moral life.

. . . What is compromise in physical affairs—that is, in an adjustment of physical positions—is something entirely different when applied to principles and morality.

For example, let us make the reckless assumption that most of us are committed to the Biblical injunction, “Thou shalt not steal.” This is based on the moral principle that each person has the right to the fruits of his own labor. The point I wish to make—my major point—is that this as a principle defies compromise. You either take someone else’s property without his consent, or you do not. If you steal just a bit—a penny—you do not compromise the principle; you abandon it. You surrender your principle.

By taking only a little of someone’s property without his consent, as distinguished from taking a lot, you do compromise in the physical sense the amount you steal. But the moral principle, whatever the amount of the theft, is surrendered and utterly abandoned.

If all the rest of mankind is in favor of passing a law that would take the property, honestly acquired, of only one person against his will, even though the purpose be allegedly for the so-called social good, I cannot adjust myself both to the moral injunction, “Thou shalt not steal,” and to the demand of the millions. Principle does not lend itself to bending or to compromising. It stands impregnable. I must either abide by it, or in all fairness, I must on this point regard myself as an inconsistent, unprincipled person rather than a rational, reasonable, logical one. . . .

The correctness of a principle has little to do with the intensity of conviction with which a man holds it. . . . But there is another type of difference which is more pertinent to the point of this essay: the difference between those who accept unyieldingly a moral principle as their standard, and those who accept a principle watered down by “practical” considerations. Lord Morley warned of this danger when he deplored the tendency to forget the principle itself in our preoccupation with the practical difficulties of applying it.

To me, “Thou shalt not steal,” is a principled injunction, not alone because some sage of antiquity said so, but largely because my own experience has compelled me to adopt this as a principle of right conduct which must be adhered to if I am not to destroy my own integrity, and if I am to live peacefully with my fellow men.

To those of opposite judgments, who believe that they should gratify their personal charitable instincts not with their own goods, but with goods extorted from others by the police force, who fail to see how thieving damages integrity, and who accept the practice of political plunder as right and honorable—to them, “Thou shalt not steal” must appear wrong in principle.

. . . Aristotle claimed that there were a million ways to be wrong; only one way to be right. How easy for fallible beings to decide on a wrong way!

. . . More fundamental, however, than anything else is intellectual integrity. . . .

Intellectual integrity simply means to reflect in word and in deed, always and accurately, that which one believes to be right. Integrity cannot be compromised. It is either practiced or not practiced. . . .

All the world is filled with examples of surrendered principles: men who know practically nothing about themselves trying to play God, attempting to control and forcibly direct the creative actions of others; . . . expediency substituting for the dictates of conscience; businessmen employing “experts” to help them seem right, often at the expense of rightness itself; labor leaders justifying any action that gratifies their lust for power; political leaders operating on the premise that the end justifies the means; clergymen preaching expropriation of property without consent in the name of the “common good”; teachers not explaining but advocating coercive collectivism; aspirants to public office building platforms from public opinion polls; farmers, miners, and other plunderbundists uniting with the police force to siphon unto themselves the fruits of others’ labor; arrogance replacing humility; in short, surrender of principle appears to be the distinguishing mark of our time. . . .

. . . These ideas born of surrendered principles are the most dangerous vandals known to man. . . . Note the extent to which the organized police force—government—promotes and enacts plunder rather than inhibits it. . . .

. . . The danger lies . . . in settling for less than one’s best judgment.

Does it take courage to be honest? Does one have to be brave to express the truth as he sees it? Indeed, it is not dangerous to be honest, but rather a mark of intelligence. Being honest and adhering to principle requires intelligence more than courage. . . .

Finally, some may contend that even if everyone were a model of intellectual integrity, by reason of the great variety of judgments, differences would still remain. This is true. But differences lead in the direction of truth in an atmosphere of honesty. Honest differences are livable differences.

Life in a physical sense is a compromise. . . . But when vast numbers of people surrender living by what they believe to be right, it follows that they must then live by what they believe to be wrong. No more destructive tendency can be imagined.

Honesty—each person true to his highest conscience—is the condition from which revelation springs; from which knowledge expands; from which intelligence grows; from which judgments improve. It is a never-ending, eternally challenging—a thoroughly joyous process. Indeed, it is living in its highest sense.

Read recognizes the huge gap between market compromises and moral compromises. Offering more money or accepting less to consummate a transaction is a compromise that violates no moral principles. But unlike prices, which allow marginal adjustments, compromising moral principles means abandoning them. “Thou shall not steal” prohibits compromises between those who don’t want to steal and those who do. If government were not the very perpetrator of such compromises, it would punish them as criminal. No inalienable rights can be compromised without being abandoned.

Market compromises require secure property rights—that is, the power of the owner to determine an asset’s disposition. Anyone else who wishes to control that choice must come to an agreement with the owner, who is thereby protected from a vast range of extortion and expropriation. There are vast societal benefits in compromising with all whose rights are involved if involuntary burden is avoided.

The compromises that advance our well-being and improve social coordination are those that defend property rights and market mechanisms. Unfortunately, politicians typically propose compromises that violate the rights that benefit us all. But, as Read observes, such abuses demonstrate that the kind of compromise that can advance Americans’ interests are those we make for ourselves without violating others’ rights.