The Labor Policy of the Free Society
6. Voluntary Associations and the State
The business of government is to see that no other organization is as strong as itself; to see that no group of men, no matter what their private business is, may come into competition with the authority of society.
—Woodrow Wilson
Free association is a property right of all men in the free society, and the voluntary associations which men form raise no insoluble problems of principle for such a society. Voluntary private associations create insoluble problems of principle only in unfree societies, or in free societies which are on the way to becoming unfree because they have lacked the intelligence or the courage to apply the principles of the free society.
In the free society voluntary associations differ categorically from the state as to function, composition, and authority. A tendency in the potentially unfree society is to confuse the attributes of private associations and the state. When this tendency drifts far, in accordance with the logic of its origins, a condition of minimum personal freedom prevails: private associations may continue to exist in form for a greater or less period, but in fact the compulsory attributes characteristic of the state alone, in the free society, extend to all associations. Really free trade unions, medical associations, bar associations, business associations, or other similar groups can exist only in the free society. In the unfree society they are administrative branches of the state, if they exist at all.
The long-run consequences of confusing the roles of voluntary associations with those of the state are to be expected from abandonment of any of the basic principles of the free society. If the free society is the society proper to the goals of men, to abandon the principles of such a society involves abandonment of the goals of men: universal personal freedom, well-being, and security must tend to disappear. In the miserable interim before their reappearance, slavery, suffering, and insecurity must prevail. And there is no assurance that the free society must ultimately reappear, for great areas of the world have never produced free, well-ordered societies; in the world today the vast mass of people have never known the free society, its comforts, its securities. No known law dictates that men will ultimately find their way back to the free society if it is once abandoned. One may with some justification assume that a concept so inherently congruent with the nature of men, so rationally appealing, must ultimately reassert itself, and yet those cognizant of the happy accidents and the peculiarities of history which helped account for the growth of the free society in the United States must be appalled at the odds against a recurrence of the phenomenon.
The place of voluntary associations and the role of the state in the free society are thus matters as central to adequate understanding of the free society as are the principles of private property and freedom of contract. They weigh heavily, too, in the project of formulating the labor policy of the free society. For these reasons, analysis of the respective functions, compositions, and authorities of the state and voluntary associations in the theory of the free society seems indispensable.
Functions
A striking feature of the free society is the diversity of the voluntary associations it tends to breed. A voluntary association is potential whenever two or more members of the free society decide that it would be mutually advantageous to pool their efforts, or a part of their efforts, in the achievement of a mutually desirable objective. Even a relatively ungregarious member of the free society may find himself belonging to more voluntary associations than he can enumerate off-hand. His associations may include economic, professional, educational, health, good-fellowship, sporting, and religious societies or associations, to mention only the possibilities which come to mind instantly.
Nor is there anything in the theory of the free society which confines a voluntary organization to any particular function. The functions of an association may be as various as its members wish them to be and can agree upon. The mutual interests of the membership define the objectives of the voluntary association. If the membership can agree upon diverse objectives, their mutual activities in the voluntary association may be aimed at more than one objective. If, on the other hand, a given member of a voluntary association is unable to induce his comembers to join with him in an objective different from those currently pursued by that association, he is free to try to form or to join another association, one which will pursue the objective he has in mind. There are several bar associations in the City of New York. Some lawyers belong to one, some belong to another, some belong to more than one—and some belong to none.
The only limitation upon the voluntary association in the free society is the standard limitation placed upon the activities of all men in such a society: the voluntary association as a separate entity may not invade the property rights of persons; it may not engage in violent, coercive, or fraudulent conduct.
While the function of the voluntary association in the free society is to advance the interests of its members, whatever those interests may be, the function of the state in such a society is to preserve the peace: to prevent and remedy expropriations, to establish and maintain conditions which insure the freedom of persons to go tranquilly about their business. The state establishes the conditions of peace and freedom; within that environment men cooperating singly or in groups are free to exercise all their ability, ingenuity, power, and imagination to improve the lot of man on earth.
Preservation of the peace involves insuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, and establishing an effective system of justice. These, in the free society, are the primary and essential functions of the state. They are the primary and essential functions because they are the things, desired by and necessary to free men, which an institution organized like a state can best do, which no other form of organization can do as well.
No other type of organization is in a position as naturally well adapted as the state to insure domestic tranquility by the prosecution of the criminals who would advance their own interests by expropriating others. The state is likewise the best designed of all organizations to promote domestic tranquility through the administration of justice in property and contract disputes between persons. The state alone may definitively resolve such disputes and put an end to them. To do so satisfactorily it must have a system of justice which works well. The legal system must be the most orderly and efficient one which can be conceived by the best professional minds. Judges must be selected in the manner most likely to secure disinterested, intelligent, and judicial minds and personalities. And there must be a sufficient number of judges to secure the reasonable dispatch of the business of the courts, for justice delayed is justice denied.
Securing the common defense is likewise a function which the state is naturally designed to perform well and which no other type of organization can perform as well. The requisite machinery is similar in general character to that just discussed. Just as the internal tranquility of a society requires police, so does the discouraging of invasions require armed forces. No organization other than the political agency of a society is in as good a position to understand the weight and nature of international threats to peace, and to command the necessary resources in defense.
It is always relevant, moreover, to consider what effects an indefinite proliferation of state activities may have upon the state’s performance of its central, essential functions. One must ask whether there is something about the state which naturally equips it to do well infinitely diverse and absolutely unrelated things, while every other type of organization known to man performs well only relatively few functions, and closely related ones at that. One must also ask whether governments have performed their few essential functions so excellently as to give promise of generally excellent performance in all other fields.
Of all the insights afforded by the theory of the free society none perhaps is more significant than the teaching that by its very nature and inner structure the state is an organization well designed to secure the peace of society, but rather poorly designed as regards the creative and productive functions. Appreciation of this teaching is enhanced by a comparison of the constitution and the authority of voluntary associations with those of the state.
Composition
In the theory of the free society, a voluntary association is composed of those who have freely chosen to form or join it, whereas every citizen is a member of the state and every person within the physical boundaries of the state is subject to its jurisdiction.
Membership in a voluntary association must be volitional for more than merely grammatical reasons. An association entitled to compel membership by violent, coercive, or fraudulent means would not only no longer be a voluntary association, it would have the privilege of destroying property rights. A voluntary association is a contractual arrangement among persons. To say that a person may be compelled to participate in such an arrangement is to deny him the right to refuse to make a contract which, in the exercise of his own choice, he would rather not make; and that, in turn, amounts to a deprivation of a basic property right.
As has appeared in connection with analysis of other corollaries of the theory of the free society, there is more than merely logical strength in this one. The practical consequences of permitting private associations to compel membership also are undesirable, if maximum freedom, well-being, and security provide the standards of measurement.
The strictly voluntary association prospers only if it performs a needed function relatively well. And whether or not its performance is good can best be judged by whether or not it survives the test of the free market. It does not matter what kind of private association we examine; whether it be a business enterprise, an association of such enterprises, a bar or medical association, a religious group, a charitable foundation—in every instance the best test of the effectiveness of the organization is whether or not it stands up in competition with other organizations engaged in like or competing functions, or with other methods of attaining the ends which it seeks. As noted earlier (Chapter 2, pages 10-13) the test is not necessarily absent merely because there does not happen to be another such organization in existence at any given time. The opportunity to compete is what really counts. There would be no test only if persons were not free to form competing organizations at will—only, that is, if “voluntary” organizations were permitted to practice compulsion, or if they were given a protected monopoly by the state.
Permitting compulsion by private associations would seem to presuppose that association is always superior to individual action. As a general proposition, however, such a presumption would certainly be inaccurate. Associations sometimes provide more effective methods of getting things done; but not always. One must bear in mind that society is itself an association designed for the common good. Within society, individual action is the only kind of action there can be. The question is whether individual action is always more effective within a private association. As is well known, some of the greatest products of mankind have been the creation of solitary workers, and could not have been otherwise.
Furthermore, on the probably valid assumption that some action is most effective within private associations, it still does not follow that any particular association should be allowed to practice compulsion; for the consequence would be to insulate that association from the selective and improving rigors of competition or to substitute competition in coercion for competition in excellence. In those instances in which associated efforts are more productive than individual effort, the ordinary effects of free competition between individual men and associations of men will make the point clear to all. Associations will be formed, for men well understand their own interests. But it serves no socially useful purpose, even in such circumstances, to give a private association the privilege to compel membership.
There can thus be no doubt of the validity of the proposition that compulsory membership in a private association is radically at odds with the theory of the free society. Furthermore, it would seem that rejection of this proposition leads to the same antisocial consequences which follow upon rejection of other principles of the free society.
But while compulsory membership in a private association conflicts with the theory of the free society, that theory holds it necessary for every person to be a member and subject to the rules of the state which has sovereign power in the territory in which he happens to be. This rule is dictated by the unavoidable necessities which confront a society intent upon establishing the conditions of maximum freedom for its members. George Washington left us, among other things, the insight that “the very idea of the right and power of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.” A society determined to establish the conditions of freedom must have the means of suppressing or discouraging attempts by any individual, group, or group of groups to invade the property rights of others. Nothing less than the full power of the society will adequately serve this end. In consequence, the society’s defender of property rights must be able to count upon the life and treasure of every member of the society; and the organization so constituted, the organization which is authorized to represent the greatest combination of power of the society, is called the state.
It is unrealistic to assume that the state can perform its basic functions without the power to compel the acquiescence of all in the measures designed to serve those functions. One may regret that violators of the peace and other invaders of property rights exist, or that superior force concentrated in that agency of society called the state is necessary in order to provide reasonable security against criminals. Yet political science must operate within the deficiencies of the other sciences; until biologists and other natural scientists demonstrate a better method of dealing with antisocial persons who would expropriate their fellow members of society, the compulsory powers associated with the state will continue to be necessary if the free society is to carry on. The state is not performing its proper functions when it practices expropriation, even if it does so in order to “forestall crime” or to “avoid revolution” through arbitrary redistribution of material wealth. Such action by the state is merely the consequence of gullible acceptance of the mistaken theory that private property is the cause of crime.
Compulsory and coercive powers are needed also if the state is to perform its function of settling definitively the civil disputes over property and contract rights which continually arise among members of a free society. The state does not fulfill this function merely by formulating and promulgating clear-cut rules of law concerning property and contract rights. A large job is left even if the rules are supplemented by the best judicial system that can be conceived. That job is the one of seeing to it that the decisions of the judges, in applying the rules to the disputes brought before them, are obeyed. If it became understood that no untoward consequences would flow from disregard of the judgments and decrees issued by courts, there can be little doubt that the judgments and decrees would not in all instances be respected. Men are not all angels. If they were, there would be no disputes in the first place. Without laboring this unfortunate point we may conclude by saying that unless men are aware that their liberty and property will be endangered more by disobeying the courts than by obeying them, the likelihood is that the peace of society will be precarious.
Force and compulsion are thus the characteristic instruments of the state. The state is the strong man, stronger than any other man or group of men in society, and it must be so constituted if it is to perform its basic function of preserving tranquility. These attributes of the state, however, as well as they may equip it for the performance of its essential functions, tend to limit its capacities in very much the same way that the features which contribute most to the effectiveness of a bull-dozer tend to make such a machine inappropriate on a pleasure trip or a race-course.
The compulsory, coercive characteristics of the state must be contrasted to the voluntary character of private associations in the free society. Compulsion and coercion are necessary to keeping the peace; but freedom is indispensable to the achievement of the great spiritual-material goals of men. To utilize an agency conceived in terms of compulsion and coercion in order directly to achieve those goals, rather than merely indirectly by establishing the conditions of freedom for individuals, is to choose the less intelligent way of doing things and to invite confusion and ineffectiveness, if not disaster. These observations gain in cogency when one considers also the nature of the authority and power of the state, as contrasted with the authority and power of voluntary associations.
Authority and Power
The authority and power of a voluntary association differ essentially from the authority and power of the state. Strictly speaking, a voluntary association is a contractual arrangement; but the state may be called a contractual arrangement only in loose terms. The membership of a voluntary association may not contract to do together that which the law would not allow to any member as an individual; but the state both may and can do anything which representatives of a large enough majority of the people will countenance (and this is true, as we shall see, even under the Constitution of the United States).
A precise formulation would have it, then, that in the free society the voluntary association has only such authority as its members may properly give it; and its members may not authorize their association to engage in conduct which invades the property rights of others, even though such conduct resembles that which, when done by an individual, does not invade property rights. Again, the rules lying within the authority of a voluntary association are rules applicable to and only binding upon members of the association; they cannot bind outsiders.
As a matter of history, the formation of some states has resembled in certain respects the methods of forming voluntary associations; and the fragmentary resemblance tends to lend color to the “contract theory” of the state. This theory holds that states generally are the product of a “social compact” among their members. Few careful students now accept the compact theory as a valid explanation of the actual genesis of states; there is therefore no need here to recount the historical researches and the analyses which have induced the virtually universal rejection of the compact theory. It does seem necessary, however, to establish the point that it can never be accurate to identify the kind of authority possessed by a state with that of voluntary, private associations.
In its origins, the government of the United States came about as close as any government in history to being the product of a deliberate contract among the men within its sovereign boundaries. Standard theory holds this government limited by the terms of the grant of power from the people expressed in the Constitution, and the Constitution did not take effect until approved by the people of the United States in the ratifying conventions.
Speaking loosely, one may call the United States a government by consent of the governed. One would speak entirely too loosely, however, if he should go on to say that the government of the United States is a contractual arrangement. The votes of a majority in the ratifying conventions determined the adoption of the Constitution in the first place; and a large enough majority can do just about what it wishes as regards amending the Constitution. Majority rule is the principle which governs in the United States in matters involving the action of the state. And it serves no useful purpose to confuse the principle of majority rule with the principle of contract. The two principles are distinct in all material points, and confusing distinct principles is never conducive to fruitful analysis and accurate conclusions.
Contract means that the parties mutually assent to the rule which is to govern their conduct for the duration of their agreement. Majority rule means that the conduct of some persons is governed entirely without regard to their desires. In recognition of the fact that majority rule does not necessarily insure the most desirable results in all cases, some societies have more or less explicitly adopted the so-called limiting principle of “minority rights.” In the nature of things, however, such a principle cannot mean very much, and no society today is really governed by that principle in any ultimate sense. It is open to a large enough majority in the United States to pass any kind of law it wishes, and it can do so entirely in accord with due process by amending the Constitution first if it wishes to pass a law which the Constitution presently forbids.
Doubtlessly, therefore, the principle of majority rule, rather than the principle of contract, defines the authority of the state, even in a society such as that of the United States. The fact that both historically and contemporaneously, some societies have defined the authority of the state on the basis of some principle other than majority rule (i.e., “divine right of kings,” or “dictatorship of the proletariat” as divined by such an agency as a politbureau) should not be allowed to obscure the central feature of the analysis: namely, that the contract principle does not define the authority of the state.
Nor should we allow ourselves to be confused by the fact that, even in the “western democracies,” it is true only in principle that majority rule governs. In the real world of action, it must be recognized, an actual majority is rarely responsible for the enactment of any law, even in countries which have relatively enlightened and interested electorates. What actually happens is that a majority of those voting in an election select representatives; and then, influenced in one way or another by pressure groups or leaders, the representatives legislate. The people in rare and relatively unimportant instances may be given the opportunity to vote directly by way of referendum on some proposals. Usually, however, the majority’s will regarding any specific item of legislation is unknown, unknowable, and, in fact, unsought.
Political parties offer the voters a congeries of related and unrelated policies. Even if elections turned upon reasoned understanding of the platforms of the various parties, such platforms never represent exactly what any voter wants. But it is doubtful that elections turn on any kind of reasoned understanding of real issues. Too many people vote for a particular party’s nominees only because of family tradition, or because they are a part of that party’s machine, or because they like the looks of the nominee, or for some other similar reason essentially unrelated to the issues. This is not to say that such motivations are senseless or irrational. It is only to insist upon recognition of the tolerably evident fact that the political process in even a relatively advanced representative government is inordinately complicated and ambiguous.
The theory of the free society does not clash with, nor does it even question the desirability of, the facts which have just been sketched; it merely accepts them as the established facts they are and accommodates itself accordingly. That majority rule, not contract, in principle defines the authority of the state, and that in the real world majority rule is more a principle than a fact are consciously taken into account in the theory of the free society. In fact, majority rule in matters concerning the state is a principle of the free society. By insisting upon a sharp distinction between voluntary associations and the state, the theory of the free society is largely influenced by the factors just considered; and the caution against entrusting diverse functions indiscriminately to the state is based upon a realistic understanding of the ambiguous and amorphous qualities of the authority of the state.
While the source from which the authority of the state derives is shrouded in ambiguity, the power actually exercised by the state is anything but ambiguous. The theory of the free society recognizes this fact, too. More than that, it insists upon universal recognition of the fact that the state is, potentially or actually, the repository of all the power which a society can command. To put this exceedingly complicated matter more extensively: the theory of the free society recognizes that sheer brute power exists in any society; that whatever persons manage to put together a preponderance of the brute force of the society are in a position to command the obedience of the rest; that peace may be preserved if this power is properly controlled; and that if the people are up to it, they have thus at hand a mechanism which can establish the peaceful conditions necessary to the free society.
But no government can operate effectively on the basis of powers limited in the manner appropriate to the voluntary association. To be a law, every law must be universally applicable to all who come within it. There is nothing wrong in having the rules of a voluntary association limited to the acquiescent membership of the association. But, as we have already seen, the state’s laws are futile if they are applicable only to those who favor them or only to those who have elected the legislators who have passed the laws. Those who disapprove of a law are at least as likely to violate it as those who ostensibly favor it. Hence the state must have the power to enforce its laws against every person, even though the laws meet with the approval of only a bare majority of the people.
It is true, of course, that there are some laws which a state simply cannot enforce or which it finds entirely impractical to enforce. Usually, however, this only means that majority rule has worked even more unsatisfactorily than normally—has produced a law so ill-advised, so contrary to the wishes of so many people, that not even the greatest authorized power of the community is able to enforce it. The proper significance of this kind of a situation lies in the emphasis it gives to the generalization that law and law-enforcement, like other precious commodities and services, ought to be economized; that they ought not to be squandered. The fact that some laws are unenforceable does not mean that all laws are subject to that deficiency, or that the power of universal enforcement is not necessary to the state.
There is no known way of absolutely confining the state to the enactment and enforcement of only “good” laws, or even of laws which are simply not “bad” laws. Those who understand the theory of the free society would not presume to predict for all time just which laws should be passed in order to preserve the free society. While confident that the basic operating principles, private property and freedom of contract, must be preserved intact if a society is to be free, they are aware that the particular kinds of laws necessary to preserve those principles may vary from time to time. Such being the case, the state must be free to adjust its legislation in accordance with circumstances. And if a state is to be free to make and enforce new laws, it must necessarily be free to make and enforce “bad” laws. The founding fathers went about as far as possible in giving the federal government the power to provide for the “general welfare.” The theory of the free society would identify laws maintaining the dynamic equilibrium of property rights with the “general welfare” and would therefore commend to the people and their legislators that they resist pressure for laws involving the negation of private-property rights.
Representative government—government by consent of the governed—is itself a principle of the free society; for no society can be really free, if indeed it can survive at all, which does not in one way or another, directly or indirectly, reflect the large consensus of its members. Representative governments may and often do enact and enforce measures which conflict with the theory of the free society. And yet representative government is essential to the free society because it is the best available method of changing governments without the disturbances and potential lawlessness that are inconsistent with the free society. Mises has put this matter definitively:
There are those who may regret some of the consequences of representative government, but there is really not very much that can be done about it. Mises’ remarks are relevant here, too:
Consequences of the Confusion of Roles
Everyone now has some understanding of specialization and exchange, and of how application of that principle has transformed the condition of men. Yet, perhaps the most portentous and most prevalent error in the world today grows out of the common failure to realize that the insights to be derived from it apply also to governments. There is nothing supernatural about the state. The state is only a human agency, created by human beings and manned by human beings. Whatever the totalitarian mystics may try to make it, the state is really, as Somerset Maugham might say, only a human institution like another. In the free society it differs from other associations only in that it is based essentially on the principle of majority rule and has the exclusive legal right to use compulsion, force, and violence.
These special characteristics equip the state particularly well to preserve the peace of society; indeed, as already noted, they are specifically designed to that end. But the trouble is that they also leave in the hands of the men in charge of the machinery of the state the power to try to do anything else they may wish to do—and the only limiting factor of any real significance lies in a proper popular understanding of the principle of division of labor, specialization, and exchange.
States characteristically take a hand today in a great number of activities unrelated to keeping the peace. Here in the United States, federal, state, and local governments engage in just about all the kinds of activities known to man. They run schools and hospitals; they operate golf courses, amusement parks, and other forms of recreation; they build and maintain roads and sewage systems; run production establishments of various kinds; generate and sell electric and other kinds of power; help farmers, small businessmen, and some tenants; subsidize such industries as aviation and shipping directly and others indirectly by way of tariffs. They do a virtual infinity of other little things related to the foregoing functions, but unrelated to the function of keeping the peace.
Of almost everything that governments in the United States do, one thing may be said: the means of accomplishment are derived from taxing the citizenry; that is, the governments’ activities proceed by way of compulsion. This is as true with respect to the functions associated with keeping the peace as it is with the interventionist measures of the kind just sketched. But there is one great difference. In preserving domestic tranquility, the state serves the whole society as such; every member of society owes everything he has or hopes to have to civilization, and therefore has no ground for objecting to equal taxes levied in order to preserve civilized society. But interventionist measures do not characteristically serve the whole society as such; instead, as a general rule, they serve one or another minority group at the expense of the society as a whole.
This is not, or need not be, necessarily true of every one of the interventionist measures mentioned here. For example, in undertaking to build and maintain streets and sewers, the government of a small town is not expropriating one group for the benefit of another where it adopts a rational method of taxing those who are benefited by the streets and sewers. But suppose the same local government should decide for one reason or another that it would be desirable to build and maintain a golf course. If the golf course is operated with funds derived from general taxation of both golfers and nongolfers, the latter are being expropriated or exploited for the benefit of the former. It is no answer to say that the golf course is available for the use of all. That contention fails to modify the fact that some persons have been forced—by means of taxes which they cannot refuse to pay—to subsidize the recreation of others.
When one properly understands the operation of the political process, even in a tolerably advanced representative government such as that of the United States, he is forced to concede that a tradition of government action for the benefit of anything less than the whole body of taxpayers invites chaos. It tends to lead to the pitting of group against group, or at least to the process of “group accommodation,” to use a current idiom. We may find ourselves once again fitting Maine’s definition of the primitive society: “It has for its units, not individuals, but groups of men.”
Interventionist legislation is always proposed by some group asking for a special privilege at the expense of the general tax-paying population. But if golfers get their golf course, how can one deny a similar benefit to bowlers, or chess-players, or aviation enthusiasts? If dairy farmers are subsidized, how can one resist a request for similar aid by peanut farmers or cotton planters? There is no rational basis for rejecting a subsidy request by people who would like to grow bananas under glass in New England, or orchids, or coffee; that is to say, no rational basis other than that dictated to legislators by the vagaries of politics and political alignments.
In the second place, contrary to some opinion, not even governments are omniscient and omnipotent; not even they can do the impossible; and there is a limit even to taxes. Interventionist government by pressure groups may be able reasonably to satisfy the demands of the most insistent seekers after special privilege; but when that has been done, there is little talent and less money left to perform the basic functions of the state.
The person who understands the theory of the free society will not take the position that a local government necessarily errs in establishing and operating schools, sewers, garbage collection, roads, and other such services. He will point out only that if government is effectively to perform functions having to do with the general welfare, it must refrain from giving special subsidies to anyone, no matter how persuasive ideologically or politically he may be. He will point out that the chronic discontent with the performance of the government schools and hospitals, for example, is only a natural and predictable consequence of the attempt to defy the principle of division of labor, specialization, and exchange. Residents of the City and State of New York are always complaining about the deplorable condition of their public schools and insane asylums. But if they expect their government not only to maintain civil order, schools, hospitals, roads, and so on, but also to subsidize both the users and the workers of the municipal transit system and a multitude of other pressure groups clamoring for special subsidies, what can they expect? Even the taxing power is limited.
On a still broader analysis, the problem may be said to arise as a result of confusing the role of the state with the role of private associations. The state seems to get into its worst troubles when it takes over the job of providing for the economic welfare of individuals and groups. In the free society, that is the job of individuals themselves, who are free to form voluntary associations when independent action seems inferior to association as a means of reaching desired ends. Few men are in a position to have a golf course of their own; but the free society recognizes a right in golfers to combine their resources in order to maintain a golf course. Not every person is able to make a suitable living through farming; but in the free society those who cannot make a living by farming alone are always free to join together into more efficient agricultural production units, or to try some other occupation, the product of which is in more demand than farm commodities.
Men are not tied to the soil in the free society. Nor does the free society compel men who wish to remain on farms to move to other areas or occupations. But at the same time, it will not permit a minority of farmers to force nonfarmers to subsidize them; for it must never be forgotten that no one has ever proved that anything like a majority of farmers insist upon the subsidies that a few demagogues are talking about so much. One hears often today that the proponents of the free society are telling farmers to starve, or commanding them to leave their beloved farms. Not much is to be gained by spending any time on this cheap insult to human dignity and unwarranted affront to the moral stature and good sense of the nation’s farmers.
Ultimately, if government by pressure group follows its inherent logic, there is no doubt that the ability of individuals to provide for themselves through their own action or through voluntary associations must be drastically impaired. All the talk we hear about “drawing the line” somewhere is merely wishful. There is just no line to draw. If the agency of force and compulsion assumes the functions allocated in the free society to persons and their voluntary associations, it must take from individual persons the wherewithal to do so. No great insight is necessary in order to realize that the individuals will then no longer have the wherewithal to provide for themselves and to forge ahead with creative plans for realizing their own potentialities.
Everyone has to pay for the projects which governments undertake for the few (or even for the many). Everyone, directly or indirectly, pays the taxes which governments exact. Simple good sense and the instinct of self-preservation then command those who pay but do not benefit to go themselves to the government, if they wish to survive in the dog-eat-dog system of interventionism. By and large that is what is going on in the United States today. Many who insist upon agricultural subsidies argue that the farmers have been discriminated against by a government which has been “doing things for” other pressure groups. There is really no satisfactory rebuttal of that contention. The argument can be met only with what the lawyers call a confession and avoidance.
The best and only way out of the vicious circle is to say to the farmers: let all men of good will and sound intelligence join together in order to put an end to a system which promises everything but which can and must deliver only the destruction of the free society. Leaders of thought among the trade unions, the farmers’ associations, the businessmen, and the professions can remake this society in the image of the free society any time they wish. They need only begin directing their efforts largely to improving their own performance and guarding against interventionist legislation, instead of running to Washington with all their problems and trying to make “deals” with other pressure groups to mulct the public, as some trade unions are doing today in their rapprochement to some farm groups.
It is to the credit of the National Association of Manufacturers and the United States Chamber of Commerce that they have devoted so much of their energies to resisting interventionist legislation. For this indomitable resistance they have earned the contempt of many, in this day when “accentuating the positive” is the fashion. But it is inaccurate to say that one who resists interventionist legislation is a “negativist.” It is such legislation which is properly to be called negativist, and in the most awful sense: for it negates personal freedom.
In resisting destructive legislation, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Chamber of Commerce have in the most critical and positive way been serving the cause of freedom and civilization. Their contribution ought to be recognized. Instead, they are constantly pilloried as “reactionaries.” Seventy-five per cent of the intellectuals would rather be dead than be caught voicing an opinion conforming to one expressed by the National Association of Manufacturers or the Chamber of Commerce. They may have their wish. For the free society is the only society in which the critical intellectual as such can survive. And there is nothing in the world which can more hasten the destruction of a society than the failure by its intellectuals to distinguish its friends from its enemies.
