Freedom in One Lesson

83.

On That Day Began Lies

Whether we are talking about city councils, state legislatures, the House of Representatives, the Senate, committees and subcommittees, or any group organized and designed to influence these, our lives are more and more dictated by government and less and less by our voluntary choices. The adverse consequences of that shift from self-responsibility to irresponsibility can be seen all around us.

One of the most insightful recognitions of these consequences comes from Leo Tolstoy. He observes a movement away from choices based on individual discovery of truth and toward group decisions based on misrepresentations of truth and morality. “From the day when the first members of councils placed exterior authority higher than interior, that is to say, recognized the decisions of men united in councils as more important and more sacred than reason and conscience; on that day began lies that caused the loss of millions of human beings and which continue their unhappy work to the present day.”

The Tolstoy quote heads Leonard Read’s “On That Day Began Lies” (Read 1952), from his 1952 book Essays on Liberty, which digs deep into the question of the “lies” that replace truth when the determinations of councils replace individual choices.

Accept Tolstoy’s statement as a hypothesis and examine . . . the idea that lies begin with “decisions of men united in councils as more important and more sacred than reason and conscience.” For, certainly, today, much of the decision that guides national and world policy springs from “men united in councils.” . . .

Persons advocate proposals in association that they would in no circumstance practice in individual action. Honest men, by any of the common standards of honesty, will, in a board or a committee, sponsor, for instance, legal thievery—that is, they will urge the use of the political means to exact the fruits of the labor of others for the purpose of benefiting themselves, their group, or their community.

Such legal thievery—what Franz Oppenheimer calls “the political means,” as opposed to “the economic means,” of mutually voluntary arrangements (Oppenheimer 1919)—occurs in large part because it goes unrecognized not only by councils but also by the public.

These leaders, for they have been elected or appointed to a board or a committee, do not think of themselves as having sponsored legal thievery. They think of the board, the committee, the council, or the association as having taken the action. . . .

It ought to be obvious that we as individuals stand responsible for our actions regardless of any wishes to the contrary, or irrespective of the devices we try to arrange to avoid personal responsibility. Actions of the group character . . . are lies for in no sense are they accurate responses to the highest judgments of the individuals concerned.

Read then illustrates the sorts of lies or misrepresentations involved.

[Consider] this not uncommon situation . . . of men honestly holding three irreconcilable beliefs. Yet, a report is expected and under the customary committee theory and practice is usually forthcoming. What to do? Why not hit upon something that is not too disagreeable to any one of the three? . . .

In this hypothetical but common instance the recommendation is a fabrication, pure and simple. Truth, as understood by any one of the three, has no spokesman. By any reasonable definition a lie has been told.

Another example. Three men having no preconceived ideas are appointed to bring in a report. What will they agree to? Only that which they are willing to say in concert which, logically, can be only the lowest common-denominator opinion of the majority! The lowest common-denominator opinion of two persons cannot be an accurate reflection of the highest judgment of each of the two. The lowest common-denominator opinion of a set of men is at variance with truth as here defined. Again, it is a fabrication. Truth has no spokesman. A lie has been told. . . .

. . . The true committee, the arrangement which calls for resolution in accordance with what a majority of the members are willing to say in concert, is but the instigator of fabrications yet more pronounced. The committee, for the most part, presupposes another larger body to which its recommendations are made.

These larger bodies have a vast, almost an all-inclusive, range in present-day American life. . . .

. . . Any one of the millions of citizens who participates in these associations has, by experience, learned how extensive these fabrications are. As a matter of fact, there has developed a rather large acceptance of the notion that wisdom can be derived from the averaging of opinions. . . . The quantitative theory of wisdom, so to speak!

. . . Observe how the lie is compounded.

. . . An association takes a stand on a certain issue and claims or implies it speaks for its 1,000,000 members. It is possible, of course, that each of the 1,000,000 members agrees with the stand taken by the organization. But, in all probability, this is an untruthful statement. . . .

. . . [Typically] the opinion of the members was not tested at all. The officers, or some committee, or some one person may have determined the stand of the organization. Then there is no certainty that more than one person (or a majority of the committee) favored that position. . . .

. . . As everyone who has had experience in associational work can attest, what really happens is a misrepresentation of concurrence, a program of lying about how many of who stands for what. Truth, such as is known, is seldom spoken. It is warped into a misleading distortion. It is obliterated by this process of the majority speaking for the minority, more often by the minority speaking for the majority, sometimes by one dishonest opportunist speaking for thousands. Truth, such as is known—the best judgments of individuals—for the most part, goes unrepresented, unspoken.

This, then, is the stuff out of which much of local, national, and world policy is being woven.

He then asks, “Is it any wonder that many citizens are confused?” There is a cognitive dissonance between, on the one hand, the common destruction of individual truth by group decision-making and, on the other hand, the presumption that such decision-making represents majority rule. The real troubles of society grow from that confusion.

First, there doesn’t appear to be any widespread, lively recognition of the fact that conscience, reason, knowledge, integrity, fidelity, understanding, judgment, and other virtues are the distinctive and exclusive properties of individual persons.

Somehow, there follows from this lack of recognition the notion that wisdom can be derived by pooling the conclusions of a sufficient number of persons, even though no one of them has applied his faculties to the problems in question. With this as a notion the imagination begins to ascribe personal characteristics to a collective—the committee, the group, the association—as though the collective could think, judge, know, or assume responsibility. With this as a notion, there is the inclination to substitute the “decisions of men united in councils” for reason and conscience. With this as a notion, the responsibility for personal thought is relieved and, thus relieved, fails to materialize to its fullest.

Read also sees that to voluntarily leave certain groups offers a way for individuals to escape the distortion of their views. If we respect the constitutional limits that are supposed to constrain government and protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then coercive councils will lose their ability to distort our views. But if we allow government to flood past constitutional levees against its power and reach, then distortions of truth and imposed burdens will multiply.

There is an almost blind faith in the efficacy and rightness of majority decision as though the mere preponderance of opinion were the device for determining what is right. This thinking is consistent with and a part of the “might makes right” doctrine. This thinking, no doubt, is an outgrowth of the American political pattern, lacking, it seems, an observance of the essential distinctions between voluntary and coercive agencies. It is necessary that these distinctions be understood unless the whole associational error is to continue. . . .

Government—organized police force—which according to best American theory should have a monopoly of coercive power, must contain a final authority. Such authority was not planned to be in the person of a monarch, in an oligarchy, or even in a set of elected representatives. The ultimate, final authority was designed to derive from and to reside with the people. Erected as safeguards against the despotism that such a democratic arrangement is almost certain to inflict on its members were (1) the Constitution and (2) the legislative, executive, and judicial functions so divided and diffused that each might serve as a check on the others.

When the concession is made that government is necessary to assure justice and maximum freedom, and when the decision is made that the ultimate authority of that government shall rest with the people, it follows that majority vote is not a matter of choice but a necessity whenever this ultimate authority expresses itself. No alternative exists with this situation as a premise.

Read extends that conclusion: when an authority need not enforce a law or policy—that is, when decisions are left to individuals in voluntary arrangements—then there is no need to rely on majority determination.

Conceding the limitation of the coercive power which was implicit in the American design, the really important matters of life, all of the creative aspects, are outside this coercive sphere and are left to the attentions of men in voluntary effort and free association.

The idea of citizens left free to their home life, their business life, their religious life, with the coercive power limited to protecting citizens in these pursuits presents, roughly, the duality of the American pattern. On the one hand is the really important part of life, the creative part. On the other hand is the minor part, the part having to do with constraint. Constraining and creating call for distinctly different arrangements. Constraint can stop the trains but it is not the force we use to build a railroad.

. . . Without raising questions as to the distinctions between creating and constraining we have taken a coercive-agency device and attempted its application in free association. . . .

The phase of activities here in dispute has to do with . . . a method by which reason and conscience . . . are actually turned into fabrications, and then represented as the convictions of persons who hold no such convictions.

To close his case on the importance of individuals making their own decisions about the most important matters, Leonard Read asks his readers to make a simple comparison. How much wisdom have we received from groups, and how much have we gleaned from insightful individuals?

One needs to reflect but a moment on the words of wisdom which have come down to us throughout all history, the words and works that have had the power to live, the words and works around which we have molded much of our lives, and one will recognize that they are the words and works of persons, not collective resolutions, not what men have uttered in concert, not the “decisions of men united in councils.”

In short, if effectiveness for what’s right is the object then the decision-of-men-united-in-council practice could well be abandoned. . . .

. . . Experience has shown that such perfection as there is exists in individuals, not in the lowest common-denominator expressions of a collection of individuals . . . not with the confusing announcement of verbal amalgams—lies. . . .

How to stop lies? It is simply a matter of personal determination and a resolve to act and speak in strict accordance with one’s inner, personal dictate of what is right. And for each of us to see to it that no other man or set of men is given permission to represent us otherwise.