Discussion

Discussion

Edited by Michael A. Walker

This is a symposium on economic, political and civil freedoms.

Each of them can be viewed either as ends or means. But if you look at them first as ends, they are by no means exclusive, they by no means cover the major ends that have moved people or societies. You would have to include in any such list, today at least, and earlier, egalitarianism or equality, which many people would regard as an ultimate end, with economic, political or civil freedom as means toward that end. You can look at the question of nationalism.

Nationalism has served a more important role in moving peoples and producing major changes and conflicts than has the search for economic, political or civil freedom! And prosperity or economic growth can be viewed something as an end in itself rather than as a means.

But I was going to limit my comments to the three we have chosen for topics for this session. And for us, each of these separately can be an end or a means, and I thought the papers illustrated that divergence quite well. For Rose and me, civil freedom is the end—a single end—and economic or political freedom are means toward that end. Our position is fundamentally that of the Declaration of Independence: that we hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (which of course should have been property, as it was in the original source); that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men. Well and good, but if governments are instituted among men to secure these rights, then political freedom or political arrangements can’t be an ultimate end; they are a means. Economic arrangements are more complicated, because economic freedom is part and parcel of civil freedom, as we have argued and everybody would agree. But in addition to that, economic arrangements are a means toward the end of civil freedom.

They are a means towards the end not only of economic freedom but of all other freedoms. From that point of view, we regard emphasis on market arrangements not as an end in itself but as a means toward a much greater end.

On the other hand, to Gastil and Wright, as I interpret their paper, political freedom is the essential component, and they regard civil freedom and economic freedom as means toward political freedom. For example, the freedom to speak is not an ultimate right at all; it is simply a necessary condition for achieving representation in political government, as I interpret their argument. In the same way, in their argument, economic freedom is not part of an ultimate end, it is purely a means. I think these two approaches lead to very different kinds of conclusions and very different ways of analysing the material.

Many people take economic freedom as an ultimate end in itself.

You want growth or prosperity, you want to have a great, wealthy country, or for that matter, prosperous people. Many of the people who live in the United States who are called conservatives belong in this category. They are strong believers in free markets and what is called capitalism, while not being concerned at all with maintaining a large number of other freedoms, particularly civil freedoms, or, for that matter, political freedoms. That draws a sharp line in which Gastil and Wright and we agree—that the issue is not capitalism, whatever that may mean, versus socialism.

Capitalism isn’t a guarantee of human freedom. It is only competitive capitalism that serves fundamentally as a means toward human freedom or civil freedom, which we regard as the ultimate objective. That is why in our book, Capitalism and Freedom, we almost never refer to capitalism alone—we refer to “competitive capitalism” in order to make the distinction. But again, the Gastil and Wright point of view is very different.

From their point of view, the only role of capitalism is as a means to permit sufficient decentralization of power in order to be able to have a political structure under which the leadership can change from time to time.

I am not going to come out anywhere. We were reminded, when we came to this point of thinking about what we would say, about that famous story about the high official who had a speech written for him. He read page after page, and he said, “Now the solution to all these problems is…” and the next page said, “Now you’re on your own!” (Laughter)

So now you are on your own.

Gordon Tullock I want to make two supplementary comments. The first is that that Declaration of Independence, which you read, was written by a man who was a very large-scale slave holder, and a large number of the people who signed it—and perhaps a majority, I don’t know—were also large-scale slave holders.

I had the good fortune to attend the Volker Fund Conference at Wabash College where Milton Friedman first presented the lectures which became Capitalism and Freedom. I can assure him that these lectures had a major impact on my thought. This impact was reinforced when I later read the book. The book, of course, was a major extension of the lectures, but so close in style and reasoning that I am unable to remember now what it was that I heard and what I only read. Nevertheless, as discussant, it is my duty to criticize.

Fortunately, as the Friedmans will no doubt be happy to hear, my criticisms are the same as for The Road to Serfdom, another book which had a major intellectual impact on me. The authors of both of these books, I now think, had cloudy crystal balls.

The basic problem with The Road to Serfdom was that it offered predictions which turned out to be false. The steady advance of government in places such as Sweden has not led to any loss of non-economic freedoms. This is particularly impressive because I doubt that any government before 1917 had obtained control of anything even close to the 65 percent of GNP now flowing through the Swedish government. I know many Swedes (and also Norse, Danes, Dutch and English) who are very upset with the sacrifice of control over so much of their earnings, but none who regard themselves as unfree in any other sense.

But let me digress to another point. The Friedmans say, “the great advances of civilization, whether architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.”

No one who has ever passed through the Gate of Heavenly Peace will deny that centralized despotism can produce brilliant architecture. There is, of course, the collection of churches in Byzantium, of Mosques in Isfahan and the great hypostyle hall at Karnak as further evidence. Indeed, if you are, as I am, an inveterate tourist, in Europe you will frequently find yourself in architectural gems that were put up by despotic governments.

It isn’t only architecture. El Greco lived in the Toledo of the high Inquisition. The French regard the period of Louis XIV as in many ways the high point of their culture. Chinese painting and poetry flourished over 2000 years of centralized despotism.

With respect to agriculture, the development of large centralized systems of irrigation supported most of the human race (Europeans were a small minority until recently). These systems either were developed by the government or their masters became the government.

As far as science is concerned, we believe that it began in Babylonia under the control of rather centralized despotic governments, but the early history is still rather poor. The flourishing of Greek science is of course well known. The later period of Greek science in which it was controlled by the despotic and centralized Ptolemid state was far from contemptible. Euclid, after all, wrote in Alexandria.

The revival of science after the Middle Ages occurred in Western Europe and originally in rather despotic states, although the trailing off of feudalism meant that they weren’t centralized. Galileo did a good deal of his work in Medici Florence, and indeed, the first scientific academy was founded there.

Further, with time, France and Spain became highly centralized. It would be extremely difficult to argue that science progressed more rapidly in the rather decentralized environment of England than in the highly centralized French monarchy. Lavosier, to name but one example, was a subject of Louis XVI who was executed by the Republic.

In general, in the 19th century most of Europe developed fairly strong democratic trends, although not necessarily decentralization, and this was a great scientific period in Europe. The regression to despotic governments in the 20th century, however, did not necessarily change that. Mussolini’s Italy retained its high scientific traditions, particularly in physics. Even in Hitler’s Germany, the two-thirds of the scientific community who stayed (the ones who were permitted to stay) continued to do distinguished and important work.

I suspect that both Friedman and Hayek have been very much affected by the Communist and Nazi dictatorships. It should be kept in mind, however, that these are extremely bizarre and unusual forms of government.