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Social Responsibility
James H. Wiborg
Much has been said in regard to the social responsibilities of business, and businessmen have oftentimes risen to the defense of their businesses and the free enterprise system. I am not here today to defend the free enterprise system or what is done by responsible businessmen. Instead, I am here today to praise it. Too often we have been on the defensive where we should stand back in awe and admiration of the only economic system ever to function in the world to provide freedom and the right of free choice to each individual who will make an effort within that system.
Throughout all of the written history of the western world, men have strived to obtain individual freedom and a right of each person to ownership of his own property and to the enjoyment thereof. In the middle ages the world suffered from feudalism and serfdom but with the dawning of the industrial revolution and the concepts of individual freedom introduced in England and reaching their culmination in America, each man had the right to his own property and the rewards of his own effort. Freedom meant that no other man had a right to those rewards or to the sweat of another's brow. Slavery was abolished but with the insidiousness of a plague, slavery began to reappear in the form of Marxism so that today we are told each of us is obligated, not through enlightened self-interest and not through our own sense of consciousness but through Government mandate and taxation to give of our effort and our production and our capabilities to others who will not make this effort. In the Communist countries the pendulum has swung fullfold to slavery. Freedom has been so instilled in the western nations that those who would bring slavery back have not dared to use force, but we are permitting them to achieve the same result.
I think all of us must be conscious of our obligations to help those who are truly infirm, aged or incapable of providing for themselves. Beyond that, increasing taxation eventually becomes slavery through depriving one man who is willing to work and produce through his own effort of the rewards of that effort by transferring a portion of these rewards to another who is not willing to apply himself.
Freedom of the individual requires the right of self-initiative and of private ownership and the rewards that flow therefrom. It is incumbent upon all of us at every possible opportunity to speak of the glories and benefits of our free enterprise system rather than defend its weaknesses. There will always be those who abuse as there have been in business, labor and government but no other system has given so many people such a wonderful and prosperous way of life.
Our company last year fully carried its social responsibilities and beyond, as did the people who worked so productively in it. We contributed sizeable amounts to charity. We paid enormous amounts of taxes. We built fine plants and maintained them well. We created jobs through employment of capital and through ingenuity of management. We provided employee benefits and improved them. Our people individually gave of their time in their communities as well as through their own taxes earned by their productivity effort. What I am saying to you is that responsible businesses are not only carrying their load of social responsibility but beyond, and it is time to point the finger accusingly at those who want and expect to receive something in exchange for nothing, those who will not produce, although capable of doing so, and at governments who continue to burden the productive elements of our system with heavier and heavier loads until the golden wagon will surely break.
Rights, Law, and Morality
Douglas B. Rasmussen
Rights" are a moral concept, but they are different from other moral concepts. They have a unique function. Their function is not to secure directly the moral well-being of individuals. Rather, their function is to protect the self-directedness or autonomy of individual human beings and thereby secure the social condition under which individual human moral well-being can occur.
Rights provide guidance in the creation and interpretation of a legal system which protects individuals from being used by others for purposes to which they have not consented. Rights are used to determine what ought to be a law. They provide the normative basis of law but, unlike the moral virtues, they do not provide individuals with any guidance regarding what choices to make in the conduct of their daily lives. Regrettably, the unique function of the moral concept of "rights" is not recognized today, and there is much confusion regarding this concept. This confusion is especially manifested in the claim that people have "welfare" or "positive" rights - the claim, for example, that people have a right to a job, an education, a home, and medical care. There are no such rights. The concept of "welfare" or "positive" rights confuses the functions of law and morality and thus does damage to a proper understanding not only of rights, but of law and morality as well.
Law and morality are not entirely unconnected. Law must have a normative basis if it is ultimately to have authority, and so the attempt to make law entirely independent from morality is a mistake. But it is also a mistake to reduce the moral concepts that underlie law to those moral concepts which provide individuals guidance in the conduct of their lives. Yet, what is the fundamental difference between morality and law?
Morality and Law
There is a fundamental difference between the concerns of morality and law, and an examination of the character of human moral well-being will reveal the basis for this difference.
1. Morality. The moral life is concerned with choices that necessarily involve the particular and the contingent. Knowledge of the moral virtues and true human goods may tell all of us what, abstractly speaking, we ought to do; but in the real world of individual human conduct, where all actions and goods are concrete, moral virtues and goods involve the particular and the contingent. This is why prudence-the use of reason by the individual person to determine what ought to be done in the concrete situation-is the cardinal virtue.
Determining what moral virtue and goods call for in terms of concrete actions in specific circumstances can vary from person to person, and certain virtues can have larger roles in the lives of some persons than in others. Determining the appropriate response to the situation faced is, therefore, what moral living is all about. A successful moral life is by its very nature something that is highly personal.
This, of course, is not to say that any choice one makes is as good as the next, but it is to say that the choice must be one's own and involve considerations that are unique to the individual. One person's moral well-being cannot be exchanged with another's. The good-for-me is not, and cannot be, the good-for-you. Human moral well-being is something objective, self-directed, and highly personal. It is not something abstract, collectively determined, or impersonal.
2. Law. Law, on the other hand, is neither concerned with determining the appropriate course of conduct for an individual in a specific circumstance nor with teaching him what he ought to do. Rather, law is concerned with the protection of the self-directedness or autonomy of individuals when they live among others. An examination of the character of human moral well-being will reveal why.
Before addressing the question of what people ought to think or how they ought to conduct themselves, an analysis of human moral well-being shows that people ought to act according to their own judgments. This is true, however, not because of the consequences but because of the character of human moral well-being. Self-directedness or autonomy is a necessary condition for and an operating condition of the pursuit and achievement of human moral well-being. It is necessary for any person undertaking any right action. It pertains to the very essence of human moral well-being and is, therefore, right for any individual regardless of the circumstances. The protection of self-directedness or autonomy must, then, be provided if human moral well-being is to occur socially. This point, of course, is of no great importance for determining personal conduct. A normative ethicist could not get very far with this information, but it is crucial for understanding the nature of law.
Since the self-directedness or autonomy of individuals must be protected if there is to be any possibility of their choosing as they ought, there needs to be an institution which protects the possibility of individuals being self-directed, an institution which states and enforces what must be the case.
The appropriateness of self-directedness or autonomy for human moral well-being is grasped only in abstraction from the specific virtues and concrete goods that a particular human being's intelligence determines as needed for the circumstances in which he finds himself. Thus, the institution whose aim is to protect the possibility of self direction should not be concerned with what is good for some individuals relative to concrete situations.
Protecting the self-directedness or autonomy of individuals is a concern only of community life, and thus the institution that is concerned with protecting self-direction should be concerned only with establishing and enforcing rules of community life which prohibit forms of action that use people for purposes to which they haven't consented. It should not be concerned with teaching individuals how to attain their well-being.
An analysis of human moral well-being, therefore, shows that there needs to be an institution which is concerned with what must be the case for any and all individuals when they live together, an institution concerned with the protection of only those things that are universally and necessarily good for any and all people no matter what their concrete condition or circumstance. This institution is law. Its function is to protect the self-directedness or autonomy of individuals.
Confusing Law and Morality
Consider the claim that people have a right to a job, an education, a home, or medical care. These are goods or services which, when considered from an abstract perspective, are beneficial or appropriate for everyone. They ought to be created or achieved. Yet, this claim is not too helpful in providing guidance to the individual in a concrete situation. None of these goods exist in the abstract. How are they to be created or achieved? What kind of job, education, home, and medical care does one need? To what extent and in what amount are these to be pursued? How is the achievement of one of these goods to be related to the achievement of other goods? What is the proper "balance" or "mix"? These questions can be answered only by a consideration of the unique needs and circumstances of the individual, and the insight of the individual himself is crucial to determining the proper answer.
Yet, if persons have a right to these goods and services, then it is the responsibility of the administrators of the law to determine the answers to the foregoing questions. They must determine the type, extent, amount, and combination of these goods and services individuals are to have and how they are to be balanced with other goods. They must determine how individuals are to conduct themselves with respect to using these goods and services. Law, however, by its very character isn't suited for the task of determining what is good or appropriate for an individual in a concrete situation. Such specific knowledge cannot be a part of the law, or the law will lose its very nature.
Destruction of Morality and Law
Supposing that the law were to take on this function, what would be the effect on morality? What would be the moral worth of these goods and services" As every good parent knows, a child isn't mature unless he does what he ought to do in light of his own understanding of his wellbeing and what that calls for in the way of day-by-day conduct and behavior. Human moral wellbeing is active, not passive. Having the taw attempt to determine what an adult's well-being requires destroys the moral worth of the provided goods and services. Even if the administrators of the law should, by luck, determine what is appropriate for an individual, the individual's own hasn't been employed. Abstractly speaking, we may say that such goods and services are valuable, but in the real world of human conduct, they remain like works of art which have been provided to a man to enjoy at the price of him not using his senses.
An individual's judgment and effort are necessary not only for enjoying the values his well-being requires, but they are needed for the very existence of these values. The needed goods and services are to be created or achieved by an individual if they are to be morally worthwhile. Values and, more specifically, goods and services don't exist independent and apart from human cognition and effort. When we abstractly say that human well being requires certain values, we are speaking of what is to be created or achieved by the cognition and effort of an individual human being, not merely what is to be distributed and enjoyed. The goods of human well-being are not found lying about like manna from heaven. These values cannot be values for an individual unless he has achieved them himself. The idea that the moral life is a life of self-actualization refers to the manner of actualization as well as the object.
This last point also is important when we consider what the claim that individuals have "welfare" or "positive" rights implies. If an individual has a right to these goods and services, then, as a matter of law, others must provide them. Other persons are to be used without their consent for the purpose of providing these "rights." Self-directedness or autonomy - the very condition that all persons need to have legally protected in order for them to have the possibility of attaining their moral wellbeing - must be denied if these "welfare" or "positive" rights are to be enforced. When the law is used as an instrument for using persons for purposes to which they have not consented, when it is used to take the time and resources from persons without their consent, then, most truly, the rights of individuals are violated. The very reason for law is destroyed.
The claim that people have a right to a job, an education, a home, and medical care confuses law and morality. Trying to have the law provide what only the moral judgment and conduct of an individual can provide separates morality from the moral agent. It destroys morality and, as Frederic Bastiat noted, it perverts the law and makes it the destroyer of what it is to protect. Only by obtaining a clear understanding of the nature of law and morality, and by developing a proper concept of "rights," will this situation change.
典型例子:
Teachings of Soviet Experience
Mark Hendrickson
Of All the many lessons that the Free World can learn from the Soviet "experiment" of the last sixty-four years, the most urgent is that life under a socialist command system is far from the "workers' paradise" promised by Marxian ideologues. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn and many others have so thoroughly documented, the socialist order, trumpeted as the wave of the future, is maintained only by the most brutal measures. The fact that the socialist state depends upon force for its continued existence is powerful evidence that free individuals would promptly reject such an inhumane system.
Economically, poverty has been institutionalized in the Soviet Union.
Sociologically, a well-defined class structure has emerged, with special privileges accorded at the wish of the ruling elite. Politically, individual rights have been trampled upon and extinguished by ruthless despots. Spiritually and morally, the beliefs that the state is supreme and that the end justifies the means have taken human beings to the depths of depravity, as many have become willing to betray, enslave, and even torture any number of innocent victims. Is it any wonder, then, that "Whoever can 'votes with his feet,' simply fleeing from this mass violence and destruction"?
Economic Lessons
onomic laws, like the laws of physics, are discovered, not devised by men. The Communist rulers of the Soviet Union have tried to repeal those inexorable laws, and, in spite of their repeated failures, they persist in issuing bureaucratic decrees that attempt to revise the way the world works. In their self-deluding hubris, they act as though all action will conform to socialist planning.
It is a fact of life that human beings value more highly and will husband more carefully what they own than what they don't own. That is why the small, privately owned garden plots which have been permitted in the USSR account for 62% of the potatoes, 32% of fruits and vegetables' 47% of the eggs, and 34% of all milk and meat produced in the country, even though these private plots constitute less than one per cent of the country's agricultural land. 1 Yet, in spite of this impressive record and the chronic problem of food shortages in their country, the Kremlin refuses to heed the sound advice of Russian exiled dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn to "give up the forced collective farms and leave just the voluntary ones."
The productivity of industry also languishes under its socialist directors. One major reason is the lack of incentive for workers and managers when all profit goes to the state. "Technological improvements developed in costly research institutes are ignored because no one will profit directly by introducing them." Russians naturally want to profit as do all human beings. However, they don't stand much chance of profiting by honest means, so they sometimes resort to dishonest means for personal gain. Dishonesty, of course, occurs in all countries, but Yankee ingenuity would be hard put to duplicate this mind-boggling fraud reported in a recent article:
When senior party officials dedicated a long awaited, badly needed tractor-repair plant last year, "Pravda" (which means "Truth") extolled it as "not a factory (but) a beautiful work of art," and the responsible comrades awarded each other the usual round of medals. No such factory existed. 2
Soviet experience has conclusively demonstrated that socialist production is inherently inferior to capitalist production. Lack of incentive is a major reason. But even if workers were uniformly motivated around the world, the socialist countries would be poorer because economic calculation is outlawed (de facto if not de jure).
In a Capitalist Order
In a capitalist order, each individual demands what he values most in the marketplace. He indicates approximately how much he values different products by how much he is willing to pay for them. These approximate objectifications; of value called "price"-are the signals which communicate to producers what they need to produce, and at what cost, if they are to attract customers and stay in business. As consumers' hierarchies of values change moment by moment, these changes are transmitted through the pricing network. Entrepreneurs then seek to reorganize scarce factors of production so efficiently that they can offer a good that consumers want at a price which they are willing to pay, and still end up with a profit.
Because goods which are valued highly cost dearly (depending on the available supply) they tend to be conserved and used efficiently, and so greater satisfaction (greater prosperity) results than would be the case under socialism where the value sensitive pricing mechanism has been rejected. Production under socialism is grossly uneconomical because the decrees of state officials supplant and suppress the economic values of individuals as reflected in prices freely arrived at in the market.
Socialist planning is uneconomical also because it is totally unsuited for coping with change. Whereas the prices of commodities in the United States fluctuate moment by moment on the commodity exchanges, reflecting shifts in supply and demand, and so enabling each commodity to go to where it is most valued in the economy, in the Soviet Union, commodities are allocated by state officials who are incapable of perceiving what the most urgent needs for any given good are at any given moment. Politics supersedes economics. When considerations of value are supplanted by considerations of power, chaos in production ensues. The only reason why the blind planning of the socialist commissars in the USSR has not resulted in total chaos and much more severe poverty has been that the Soviet leaders have been able to observe the allocation of resources in the non-socialized economies of the world.
Copying Market Gains
Since Soviet industry is so notoriously unproductive, one may wonder why the USSR is nonetheless known as an industrial power boasting awesome military might and a leading role in space exploration. First of all, since the individual in the USSR has no rights, it has been relatively easy for the state planners to build up the military and space industries at the expense of consumer-oriented industries. Secondly, the Kremlin has imported vast amounts of technical equipment and knowledge from more productive (i.e., capitalist) countries, most notably, the United States. The Soviet rulers have purchased-often on credit, and on terms more favorable than Americans can obtain-everything from the miniature ball bearings which are essential for the accurate guidance of intercontinental missiles to the capital, technology, and managerial expertise used at the Kama River truck factory (the largest such factory in the world) where the tanks which have been used in Afghanistan were manufactured. Thirdly, Soviet agents have succeeded in pirating technology from the West.
Solzhenitsyn eloquently summarizes the pathetic performance of production under socialist planning in his homeland:
What kind of country is it, what kind of great power, with tremendous military potential, that conquers outer space but has nothing to sell? All heavy equipment, all complex and delicate technology, is purchased abroad. Then it must be an agricultural country? Not at all; it also has to buy grain. What then can we sell? What kind of economy is it? Can we sell anything which has been created by socialism? No! Only that which God put in the Russian ground at the very beginning, that's what we squander and that's what we sell. 3
Sociological Lessons
The social structure of the Soviet Union is an egalitarian's nightmare. Far from eliminating class distinctions, the socialist system deepens and perpetuates them. Observers differ as to how many strata or "ranks" (to use a term which is apropos for the militaristically regimented social order) but they are unanimous in acknowledging a class structure that is so rigid that Russian critics refer to "caste expediency" and a "boss class." Favors are bestowed by the state; favors are taken away by the state.
Tremendous tensions must inevitably exist because of the way the social organization, the USSR's body politic, is presently constituted. The idea of class exploiting class, which is little more than a fantasy in a capitalist system where individuals are free to excel in the competition of servicing the needs of their fellows, is a cruel, ugly reality in the USSR.
The elite minority plunders the masses, and the masses know it. Certainly, some of the victims are fatalistic about their plight, but many others bitterly resent their exploitation. The present system may endure, or it may not, but one way or the other, violence remains the central characteristic of the USSR's social organization.
The use of forced labor in Soviet Russia is as characteristic of socialism as is the impossibility of calculating value. If the 40% of the Soviet population which are forced to work the collective farms as virtual serfs cannot feed the Soviet Union's population, and managers will take credit for the construction of factories which don't even exist, one can scarcely imagine how unproductive, or even counterproductive, the labor of the zeks (the prison camp inmates) is.
In The Gulag Archipelago Two, Solzhenitsyn included several examples of the deliberate destructiveness of zek labor, and concluded, in something of an understatement, that the Soviet state (i.e., the people) is poorer as a result of using slave labor than it otherwise would have been. He also dispels the myth of the glory and honor of working in a socialist state, asserting, "The labor of the zeks was needed for degrading and particularly heavy work, which no one, under socialism, would wish to perform."
Special Privileges Granted the Ruling Elite
Many amenities which a citizen can procure in the marketplace in the West, a Soviet citizen can receive only through the state. The greatest perquisites are, of course, reserved for ranking officials of the Communist Party. Solzhenitsyn tells us that they have country estates and that they ban the noisy maneuvers of the Soviet Air Force over those estates.
Reporter David K. Willis writes in the Christian Science Monitor (January 14, 1981) of special stores stocked with imported treats, of party tailors, travel privileges, spacious apartments, private lanes on the highways for official cars (which are chauffeur-driven luxury models, of course) and an entire "network of exclusive polyclinics, hospitals, and health resorts" ("It's rather like living in the West, only you're still here," explains one client) which the average citizen never even sees.
The doling out of privileges has been one of the major Pavlovian tools-the "carrot" to go along with the "stick" of prison camps -used by the Communist rulers of the Soviet Union since the Bolshevik coup to further their designs. That they have been successful in winning allegiance (however precarious it may be in some cases) is apparent to all. Solzhenitsyn cynically writes of scientists who "are rewarded with a life of plenty and pay for it by keeping their thoughts at the level of their test tubes."
The antisocial (i.e., anti-individual) acts of plunder and robbery-of institutionalized class exploitation-have prevented a genuine society, based on voluntary cooperation, from developing in the USSR. The present social organization born and bred in violence, and maintained by violence - will ultimately perish in violence.
After decades of having their basic rights of life, liberty, and property restricted, attacked, and denied, the various ethnic groups - masses of angry, abused individuals -may very well over-react, lash out in a fury of pent-up resentment, and try to seize what they, in self-righteous rationalization, believe to be theirs. That is why Solzhenitsyn believes that the Communist dictatorship in his country needs to be succeeded by an authoritarian government, which would keep various elements of the population of the USSR from killing each other off. By keeping the peace-that is, by protecting the life, liberty, and property of all individuals- a strong government would protect those conditions which are necessary for the development of a true society comprised of individuals freely cooperating so as to promote their mutual well-being.
The most important sociological lesson to be gleaned from Soviet experience is this: when individuals band together with the intent of wringing natural individual inequalities out of the social structure by unequal applications of force, the inevitable result is a command system, a system which is necessarily ruthless to the degree that it insists on trying to undo what nature has done. Such a system destroys natural social cooperation, sows the seeds of future violence, and, in a perversion of its stated objective, eventuates in a social organization in which class divisions are more pronounced and less flexible than is the case in a free society.
Political Lessons
In a system of free men, any individual who excels at satisfying the needs of his fellowman is rewarded by an impersonal market for his achievements. In such a system, service to one's fellowman determines wealth and privilege. In a socialistic command system, on the other hand, the way to privilege is to help keep one's fellowman under the subjection of Caesar. Personal favor determines wealth and privilege.
"In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat." With those grim words, Leon Trotsky described the totalitarian grip which the communist rulers of the USSR hold on the populace of their vast territory. That is the reality of the political order in a socialist system - a system which Karl Marx viewed as progressive. As economist George Reisman has observed, "The complete and utter powerlessness of the plain citizen under socialism can hardly be exaggerated. Under socialism, the plain citizen is no longer the customer, 'who is always right,' but the serf, who must take his rations and like it." 4
In the Soviet Union, the individual citizen is virtually without rights. This has been so ever since the Communist takeover. What the state (i.e., the ruling elite) wants, it takes. Those who once resisted the expropriation of their property in Communist Russia were liquidated. Those who object too vocally today are banished to Siberia or otherwise silenced. That is the nature of politics in a socialist state.
The public ownership of the means of production includes the public ownership of labor. Solzhenitsyn writes, "We are slaves there from birth." The ultimate form of slavery in the USSR is the zek, who is subjected to treatment far worse than that endured by most of the slaves throughout history. Most slaves in ancient Greece and Rome, and in preCivil War United States were regarded as private property. As such, their owners at least had an incentive to keep them healthy. The zek, on the other hand, belonging to the state, is in a position in which none of his supervisors finds it in his self-interest to be concerned about the zek's well-being, and so millions of zeks have found their prison term tantamount to capital punishment.
People Are Expendable
The experience of applied socialism in the Soviet Union demonstrates that the welfare of the propertyless citizen is of little concern to the state authorities. Subjugation is all that matters to the bosses. This has always been the case. Solzhenitsyn relates that the Volga famine of 1921 illustrated "a typical Communist technique: to struggle for power without thinking of the fact that the productivity is collapsing, that the fields are not being sown, that the factories stand idle, that the country is sinking into poverty and famine." In other words, the people are expendable. What had been heralded as the "dictatorship of the proletariat" has in reality become a dictatorship over those proletarians who manage to survive.
For decades, the official rhetoric has assured Ivan that his grandchildren would enjoy unprecedented prosperity, yet that promise is still far from fruition, and the achievement of affluence remains in the ever-receding future. The modus operandi of the political leaders of the socialist state is to plunder its subjects in the present and offer them a rosy picture of a distant future as compensation.
The despotism of the Soviet rulers is not an esoteric matter for political scientists in the West to debate as an academic issue. Rather, it is a phenomenon of tremendous import to every single Westerner, for the objective of the Soviet Union's overlords is to extend their hegemony over the entire globe. Is it logical to suppose that tyrants who have shown no compunctions about brutalizing and enslaving their compatriots would respect the life and property of peoples of foreign lands?
Solzhenitsyn has repeatedly reminded Westerners of one of history's oft-repeated, seldom-learned lessons: that the evil of tyranny grows ever more aggressive until it is bravely confronted and defeated. Those who try to appease tyranny will eventually find themselves attacked by those very tyrants, and if they are fortunate enough to be able to vanquish the aggressors, it will only be at a cost far greater than would have been necessary had an unflinching moral stand been taken against the tyranny at the outset.
Of the present incarnation of tyranny known as Communism, Solzhenitsyn writes, ".. . a concentration of world evil is taking place, full of hatred for humanity. It is fully determined to destroy your society." That may sound like melodramatic hyperbole to the average American, but it corresponds completely with the stated nature and objectives of the Communist movement, and, more importantly, it corresponds to the anti-human reality of life in the USSR and other Communist-dominated lands. Any thought that this menace will go away if it is ignored is wishful and dangerous thinking. It must be confronted.
Moral and Spiritual Lessons
The well-documented villainies which characterize Communist rule are vivid examples of the destructiveness that results from accepting the relativity of morality. The essence of moral behavior between individuals is a reciprocal respect for rights, upon which basis free individuals may enter into voluntary associations (contracts) with others. On this moral basis, society and culture develop. Communist ideology claims to be a substitute for morality and rejects individual rights, traditional social bonds, and established cultural morés. The goal of communist ideology is to bring omnipotence to earth in the form of a socialist state.
Just as the Jacobins used appealing promises of liberty, equality, and brotherhood as an ideological justification for lawless violence, so also do the Soviet leaders use their ideology-that Communism will result in the "most radiant, most happy society" - as a justification for any act, including arbitrary mass murder.
Part of Lenin's ideology was that traditional rights must be violently eliminated. When Lenin encouraged the Russian peasants to seize land for themselves in the early months of his reign, he achieved his objective: to plunge the countryside into anarchy. This anarchy, of course, paved the way for Lenin and his cohorts to "save the day" and restore a sense of order. It is this divide-and-conquer technique (the destruction of social bonds and subsequent absorption of weak, isolated groups) which has been the Communists' primary method of enslaving the Russian people ever since the days of Lenin. This is what the Communist rulers must do if they are to achieve their goal of replacing a society of individuals with a collective. As Ludwig von Mises explained in his definitive work on Socialism (1922):
To make Collectivism a fact one must first kill all social life, then build up the collectivist state. The Bolshevists are thus quite logical in wishing to destroy the social edifice built up through countless centuries, in order to erect a new structure on the ruins.
The Marxian Religion
The ideology that asserts that morality is relative, that materialism is the only truth, and that the state is supreme, is a religion. This Marxist-Leninist ideology is not yet perceived as a religion, but that is what it is. Like Christianity, it preaches a Savior - -the socialist state - on the path to heaven - a stateless Communist world; it teaches that man's purpose in life and his present and future salvation depend on how well he serves this master, and it constantly appeals to faith, for many of its prophecies have not yet been fulfilled. Seen in that light, it is ironic that the thoughts of Jesus of Nazareth cannot be taught in the schools of the United States because of the separation of church and state, while the teachings of Karl Marx are subject to no such sanction.
The Soviet leaders do not tolerate any questioning of Marxian dogma. The official line is "He that believeth shall be saved." The problem is, when such major prophecies as: the workers of the West will sink steadily into total poverty; Communist revolutions will break out in the more advanced industrialized countries; wars occur only in capitalist countries-when all these major predictions are contradicted by the historical record of Soviet experience, nobody believes in the old Marxist-Leninist religion any more. However, the priesthood (the Central Committee of the Communist Party) retains the outward form of the religion, because it dares not relinquish its power and privilege. And so, like the Aztec priests of Tenochtitlin, who sacrificed human lives on the altar of the sun god, the Communist Party leaders sacrifice human lives on the bloody altar of Marxist-Leninist ideology, and so maintain their reign of terror.
In addition to teaching the West the nature of the Communist threat, Solzhenitsyn teaches us the most important lesson of all: how to triumph over it. He explains:
We, the dissidents of the U.S.S.R., have no tanks, no weapons, no organization. We have nothing. Our hands are empty. We have only our hearts and what we have lived through in the half century under this system. And whenever we have found the firmness within ourselves to stand up for our rights, we have done so. It is only by firmness of spirit that we have withstood. And if I am standing here before you, it is not because of the kindness or good will of Communism, not thanks to détente but due to my own firmness and your firm support. They knew that I would not yield an inch, not a hair's breadth. And when they could do nothing they themselves fell back.
Unceasing resistance is the lesson he would have us learn. And how, specifically, can the West resist the advances of Communism? Certainly by military means, but more importantly, by affirming a consistent moral position-practicing and promoting freedom of individual economic activity; not assisting the Kremlin through trade and aid; not signing treaties (such as the Helsinki accords) which legitimize Soviet aggression; refusing to live at the expense of one's fellow man; rejecting the insidious teaching that morality is relative and the end justifies the means; affirming in word and deed that all individuals have certain inalienable rights; being concerned with more than mere material ease, for liberty, if not vigilantly guarded, is lost. This is the message of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. If we heed his warning and emulate his courageous stance against Communist tyranny, the West shall indeed prevail against this aggressive, worldwide attack against individual liberty.
Moderation in All Things
Donald J. Boudreaux
Aristotle wisely advised moderation in all things. Gluttons and fanatics self-destruct by refusing to make the tradeoffs necessary to lead a good life. "Don't tell me that I can't drink and carouse every night and not succeed in my career!" insists the fool. "I can have it all."
Well, he can't. No one can.
That's the thing about tradeoffs. They're unavoidable. If you don't make your own tradeoffs, they will be made for you by nature, by chance, or by other people. And it's a sure bet that when you abdicate your ability to choose how your tradeoffs are made, the ways that nature, chance, or other people make them for you will displease you.
As I read it, Aristotle's counsel of moderation is no puritanical call for an austere life unadorned by intense sentiments, pleasures, and passions. Rather, he counsels personal responsibility and rationality in pursuing your sentiments, pleasures, and passions. You simply cannot enjoy limitless amounts of all the possible joys available in life. If you grasp unthinkingly at every pleasurable opportunity that passes your way, you will not be making choices. You will be reacting mindlessly. And your mindless pursuit of immediate pleasures will deny you access to other opportunities. You will enjoy fewer pleasures and much less happiness over the long haul than you would have enjoyed had you acted rationally.
Make whatever choices you wish, constrained only by your respect for the rights of others to make whatever choices they wish. But make your choices. Make them rationally and wisely. Your choices may differ substantially from mine. But as long as you choose your own tradeoffs rationally-without abdicating that responsibility to others or to fate-your prospects for a fulfilling life are promising.
The Aristotelian counsel of moderation is, thus, a plea to weigh tradeoffs mindfully. It has an important implication for public policy, which is this: true moderation (and its resulting happiness) is necessarily an individual pursuit and accomplishment. It cannot be achieved by a third party, whether that third party is a democratic majority or a dictator. The reason is that, in each instance, striking the right tradeoff requires assessing the relative merits of many different options in light of each person's unique circumstances, opportunities, and aspirations.
Because you cannot know my preferences, hopes, history, and opportunities, and because I cannot know yours, neither of us is well equipped to make sound decisions for the other. Were I to attempt, even with excellent intentions, to make your choices for you, the result would not be moderation for you. The result would be immoderation. My inability to know your aspirations and circumstances inevitably would cause me to foist on you too much of some things and to deny you too much of others. Your life would be imbalanced.
Indeed, to the extent that you as an individual are stripped of your right to choose, you are stripped of humanity. Whether you believe that your capacity for rational thought is Godgiven or the exclusive product of natural selection, the fact is that you possess this capacity. Your capacity to think and to choose is who you are. Exercising it is what makes you an individual. The very concept of individuality is empty absent each person's right to make his own life's choices.
Some readers might respond with an "Of course. Who denies that freedom to choose is necessary both for human happiness and for the flourishing of individuality?" To this response I say: While many people pay lip service to this fact, too few really believe it.
Consider, for example, the demonization over the past several years of tobacco companies. This demonization occurred only because it is widely believed that people are mindless fools who lack sufficient capacity to judge and choose wisely. If people so lack the capacity to choose wisely that the mere sight of a cigarette jutting from the chiseled chin of a cowboy impels them to smoke, then a solid case might be made that tobacco companies are predators seizing profit from a fundamental human weakness-namely, an inability to choose and act wisely.
But if most of us truly believe both that people are capable of making their own choices wisely and that people's freedom to choose ought not be throttled, then efforts to demonize tobacco companies would fail. It is today's presumption that smokers are helpless dupes-that people are mere reactors rather than actors-that is the source of the current hostility toward smoking and tobacco companies. And it follows almost inevitably from this despairing view of humans-as-foolish-reactors that ordinary men and women must be protected from themselves by the Wise and the Good-or, at least, by those who fancy themselves anointed because they've achieved political power.
Of course, it's true that even the most prudent amongst us sometimes make poor choices. It's also true that some of us persistently react childishly rather than choose wisely. But one of the beauties of a society governed by the impartial rules of private property rights rather than by government dictates is that the consequences-good and bad-that fall on each decision-maker correspond closely to the consequences that these decisions have on others. If I produce a $200 computer that has all of the features and reliability of a model that costs $2,000, 1 prosper. If, in contrast, I use resources to produce chocolate-covered pickles, I lose money. Likewise, if I use my energy and time to acquire productive skills and knowledge, I prosper. If, in contrast, I squander my energy and time pursuing nothing other than my own immediate gratifications, I personally pay the price.
But when politics replaces freedom and personal responsibility, people who make poor decisions-for example, domestic producers who don't invest as wisely as foreign firms-are often shielded from the consequences of their poor choices. Political favors enable such people to persist in their own immoderation, but only by taxing and regulating the rest of us in ways that compel us to support their immoderate behavior. In the end, society winds up with immoderately large amounts of the undesirable behavior protected by government and too little of the desirable behaviors necessary for a prosperous, free, and civil society.
To have moderation in all things requires freedom from immoderate government
Political Corruption
Allan C. Brownfeld
PEOPLE throughout the country are asking themselves the question: "Why are so many men in so many high places in Washington involved in so much corruption?" They observe huge cash payments, unreported, being made to national political campaigns and wonder why so many businessmen feel the need to involve themselves in politics. Unfortunately, the answers we receive to such questions miss the point entirely. We are told, in response, that we need more honest men in government, or stricter laws, or more Congressional control.
It may be true that we need more honest men in Washington, for politics, as President Eisenhower once reflected, "is too important for the politicians." It may also be true that we need stricter laws and additional control by the Congress. But the simple reason why so many businessmen are involved in politics is that politics is so involved in business. If government did not have the power to set wages and prices, no one would feel the need to bribe anyone for a favorable ruling. If government did not have huge contracts to bestow in a multiplicity of fields, no one would need to pay off politicians for a piece of the action. If government did not provide itself with the power to regulate, in the name of "safety" or "ecology" or whatever, no one would feel the need to bribe anyone for or against a particular ruling.
It is inevitable, as government becomes more and more powerful and controls more and more aspects of our lives, that Americans will seek to influence that government through campaign contributions and other forms of reward. It is similarly inevitable that men in political life, with such enormous power at their disposal, will be tempted to accept such bribery. Changing the men and keeping the system as it is will change very little.
Earlier Scandals
The trend toward government control of the nation's economy goes back to the latter part of the nineteenth century. Discussing the age of the "Robber Barons," Gustavus Myers, in his book, History Of The Great American Fortunes, places great stress upon the low level of political morality which was evidenced in the rush to accommodate the highest bidder from the business community. Describing the situation in New York State, Myers charges that, "Laws were sold at Albany to the highest bidder."
In an article prompted by the Credit Mobilier scandal, E, L. Godkin, editor of the Nation, warned that the only lasting answer to bribery and corruption would be an end to the power of congressmen to bestow great privileges upon private individuals or corporations. Godkin wrote: "The remedy is simple. The Government must get out of the 'protective' business and the 'subsidy' business and the 'improvement' business and the 'development' business. It must let trade and commerce, and manufactures, and steamboats and railroads, and telegraphs alone. It cannot touch them without breeding corruption."
The Bewildered Society
Discussing the tendency at this time to look at the scandals of the past - and present -and conclude from them that what we need is more and not less governmental authority, George Roche III, in his volume, The Bewildered Society, notes that, "Advocates of centralized authority and economic control in the twentieth century look back to the so-called era of Reconstruction and big business to point out its evils with great glee and to suggest that those evils are a prima facie case for the necessity of more political control of business. The very reverse is actually the case . . . All of the significant scandals of the nineteenth century were closely connected with the exercise of political power."
Dr. Roche points out that, there evolved the dichotomy which saw businessmen preaching laissez faire doctrine for everyone else, while asking for government assistance in their own particular case,"
The recent revelations with regard to the Nixon Administration - the Vesco funds, the contribution from the milk producers, the airlines, and so forth -are simply part of the ongoing reality of corruption in a society where government becomes the arbiter of all things. Similarly, the use of the Internal Revenue Service by those in power to punish opponents is only additional proof that those who argued that the power to tax is the power to destroy were quite right.
To Restore Integrity, Limit Government's Power
If Americans seek to restore honesty and integrity to government, the first step in the proper direction would be to begin divesting government of its power over the nation's economy, its schools, and its farms. A government which did not have favors to bestow would not be a recipient of secret cash contributions. Politicians, without life and death power to wield, could more easily maintain their honesty and integrity.
If the Watergate hearings have an additional long-range lesson for the American people, it may be the fact that the dire warnings over the years by distinguished statesmen and scholars about the danger of an all-powerful executive were quite correct.
In The Federalist Papers, James Madison declared that, "In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."
During the years when, under the New Deal leadership of Franklin Roosevelt, the role of the executive was increasing in scope and was less and less subject to control by either the legislative or judicial branches of government, it was conservative Republicans such as Senator Robert Taft of Ohio who warned of the dangers of executive power.
Discussing the manner in which we went to war in Korea, without a Congressional declaration, Senator Taft stated that, "If in the great field of foreign policy the President has the arbitrary and unlimited powers he now claims, then there is an end to freedom in the United States not only in the foreign field but in the great realm of domestic activity which necessarily follows any foreign commitments."
During those years, it was the liberal Democrats who supported executive power, who opposed measures such as the Bricker Amendment which sought to limit it, and downgraded the role of the Congress.
How Did It Happen?
Now, with Watergate and the spectacle of non-elected and ambitious men charged with illegal and unethical activities, many Americans wonder how it is that the executive branch came to possess so much power and to view itself as above and beyond the law. Ironically, the liberals, whose policies have led to this state of affairs, are most aghast; while many conservatives, who always recognized the danger of arbitrary executive power, now tend to apologize for it, for it is being wielded by their own party.
The noted historian, Daniel M. Boorstin, states that one of the most important lessons to be learned f rom Watergate relates to the growth of the government's executive branch:
"There are hundreds of people who write on White House stationery. This is a new phenomenon. In fact, it's a phenomenon which has astonished, and properly astonished, some senators who asked the counsellor to the President if he ever saw the President and he said he didn't. And I think there are something like 40 persons who bear some title such as counsellor to the President or assistant to the President or something of that sort. Now this is a relatively new phenomenon: the opportunity for the President to get out of touch with the people who speak in his name."
American political philosophy has always held that the legislative branch was to be the supreme branch of government. Philosopher John Locke, who profoundly affected the thinking of the Founding Fathers, is emphatic on the position of the legislative branch. In his Second Treatise he writes that, "There can be but one supreme power, which is the legislative, to which all the rest are and must be subordinate."
Departure from Tradition
Presidential dominance, which has been growing since the days of the New Deal, is inconsistent with the American political tradition. If men such as those involved in today's Watergate scandal, who are not elected by the people and cannot be voted out of office by the people, are unchecked in their exercise of power, the concept of representative and limited government is seriously challenged.
It is unfortunate that principle seems to play such an ambiguous role in American politics. The men who most feared executive power when the other party wielded it, are now becoming comfortable with it. Similarly, those who welcomed it when it was in their own hands, are now suspicious of it. This, of course, becomes argument from mere circumstance, and not from principle. The American people deserve something better from their elected officials.
If we learn from Watergate to be suspicious of centralized power, whether in the hands of Democrats or Republicans, we will have learned an important lesson. During the colonial period, the antiFederalists, men such as George Mason and Patrick Henry, opposed the ratification of the Constitution because they believed that even that limited and limiting document provided for too strong an executive. "Did we fight King George III only to have an elected king?" they would ask. Their question still bears asking, for we in America do not want an elected king, but an executive to carry out the laws passed by the Congress.
Hopefully, Watergate will mark the end of the trend toward centralized power started in the New Deal. If it does, all of us will benefit.
Morality in America
Norman S. Ream
Early in the nineteenth century the brilliant French observer Alexis de Tocqueville gave this estimate of America and Americans in his book Democracy in America: "There is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than America."
A similar assessment could not be made at the end of the twentieth century. That is not to say that the Christian religion exercises any great influence over the souls of men in any nation today, but the loss of its original influence is certainly as great if not greater in the United States than anywhere else. Substitute the words "morality" or "ethics" for the words "Christian religion" and their influence would still be seriously questionable. One might perhaps even put it this way and not be far from the truth: There is no country in the world where the Christian religion has lost more of its moral influence over the souls of men than in America.
The high moral principles of the Christian religion have been corrupted by greed and envy, and greed and envy have caused and been exacerbated by the very programs America's politicians have adopted in a misguided effort to eliminate poverty and inequalities of all kinds. It is impossible to have both liberty and equality, for the attempt to achieve the latter will always destroy the former. When government assures its citizens that they are entitled to be equal it does two things: It levels by pulling down those at the top, and it engenders greed and envy in those at the bottom.
There was once a commonly observed moral philosophy or moral culture in America, but that is no longer true. Today Americans have few generally held convictions concerning good and evil, right and wrong, morality and immorality. In part it is the consequence of our heterogeneous population resulting from the vast numbers of immigrants from countries of different cultures. Those who had been so anxious to come to America and enjoy its blessings have often brought with them philosophies and cultures inimical to those held by earlier settlers. As a consequence they have helped destroy the very blessings they sought. But the descendants of those earlier settlers have abandoned their forebears' beliefs, and this has been a major factor in the waning of Christianity and ethics in America.
The generally held moral principles which once guided human action in America had their roots in the Christian religion as Tocqueville pointed out. One can argue that the Founding Fathers did not always agree in their interpretation of that religion - some were deists - but the great majority of them drew their moral and ethical guidelines from the Ten Commandments and the teachings and example of Jesus of Nazareth. They were of one mind in their conviction that there should be freedom of religion for all.
Religious Beliefs of the Founders
The most orthodox and ardent believer among the principal figures urging freedom from the constraints of England and King George III was Samuel Adams, who with other Sons of Liberty dumped the tea into Boston Harbor. A stern Calvinist, he believed liberty was dependent on the moral and spiritual principles enunciated in the New Testament. In a letter to John Scollay in 1776 he wrote,
Revelation assures us that Righteousness exalteth a nation - Communities are dealt with in this world by the wise and just Ruler of the Universe. He rewards or punishes them according to their general character. The diminution of public virtue is usually attended with that of public happiness, and the public liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals.
At the other extreme, if it can be called extreme, was the deist Thomas Paine, whom Theodore Roosevelt is once said to have referred to as a "filthy little atheist." In 1797, however, Paine started a movement in Paris to combat atheism. He did not believe in revelation nor did he believe the Bible was divinely inspired, but in the Prospect Papers, published in 1804 by Elihu Palmer, he wrote: "It is by the exercise of our reason that we are enabled to contemplate God in His works and imitate Him in His way. When we see His care and goodness extended over all His creatures, it teaches us our duty toward each other, while it calls forth our gratitude to Him."
The idea that many if not most of the Founding Fathers were atheists or agnostics is incorrect. Not only were they devoutly religious, but they firmly believed that liberty and justice depended on an observance of the moral and ethical demands of the Christian religion.
Benjamin Franklin wrote to Ezra Stiles in 1790 that "As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of morals and His religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see ......
It was Franklin who urged the delegates to the Constitutional Convention to begin the sessions with prayer: "I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth-that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?"
Our first president, George Washington, rarely spoke of his religious beliefs but on one occasion wrote a letter to the Philadelphia-area clergy in which he stated his conviction that "Religion and morality are the essential pillars of Civil society. . . . " In his Farewell Address he declared, "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports."
When he took the oath of office in New York, Washington did so with his hand on the Bible and afterward bent down and kissed the book.
Washington's successor in office, John Adams, in an 1810 letter to Benjamin Rush wrote,". . . religion and virtue are the only foundations, not only of republicanism and of all free government but of social felicity under all governments and in all the combinations of human society."
Alexander Hamilton believed it was man's relationship to God that gave birth to man's natural rights: "The Supreme Being ... endowed him with rational faculties, by the help of which to discern and pursue such things as were consistent with an inviolable right to personal liberty and personal safety."
Thus did the Founding Fathers state in various ways their firm conviction that a nation desiring individual freedom and national prosperity must be guided by high standards of morality and ethics and that such a moral philosophy could only grow out of a strong religious faith.
The Dissolution of Moral and Ethical Standards
Something has happened to the soul of America and millions of Americans know that what has happened is not good. Even some politicians recognize it and try to convince the electorate that the answer lies in the political arena. The answer, however, is certainly not to be found there. Politics is merely a reflection of the moral and ethical principles of society at large.
We have been urged over and over again by certain individuals and groups to become a value-free society, and that in large part is what we have become. A recent candidate for high office in Colorado insisted, as have many others, that values should not be taught in the public schools. One is tempted to ask if cheating should be acceptable and whether the purpose of public schools is to dump graduates into the work force with no concern for their character and integrity.
Today, lacking any commonly held moral and ethical principles, the test for government activity is not "is it moral and right?" but "is it politically expedient?" Instead of applying the test of sound morality and sound economic principles, political activity is tested by the reactions and pressures of minority groups. There is little distinction any more between morality and legality. Politically inspired legislation makes something right or wrong merely because it is the law and not because it is in harmony with eternal principles tested by 2,000 years of history. John Quincy Adams voiced the truth held by the Founding Fathers:
This principle, that a whole nation has a right to do whatever it pleases, cannot in any sense whatever be admitted as true. The eternal and immutable laws of justice and morality are paramount to a legislation. The violations of those laws is certainly within the power of a nation, but is not among the rights of nations.
The late Leonard Read, founder of The Foundation for Economic Education, was fond of saying that "Economics is a branch of moral philosophy." He was right, of course, but he could have gone further. The attempt to separate economics, political activity, or any other field from sound principles of morality is to guarantee failure. No policy or program which fails morally can be ultimately successful. Take for example our huge national debt. It is immoral to foist upon future generations a burden caused by our own profligacy. We are now beginning to see the grave consequences of that immorality. The recent situation in California where employees of the state were being paid in IOU's is but a small foretaste of what will almost certainly happen elsewhere.
The Founding Fathers were strongly in favor of religious freedom for all citizens and wanted no religious test for those seeking federal office. Many of those early statesmen were indeed unorthodox in their religion, but they nevertheless were strongly of the opinion that without belief in a divine Creator and in the basic moral and ethical teachings of Jesus no lasting freedom in America could be achieved. They never rejected God nor lost their respect for religion. Moral man and religious man could not be separated.
As Washington, Adams, and Madison knew, morality springs out of religious faith and a people with little or no Christian theology will have a seriously impaired moral philosophy. That leaves us with an important insight regarding the direction in which America and Americans should go.
The crisis facing America and Americans today is not an economic nor a political one. It is a moral and spiritual crisis. It is a crisis of character which has produced a crisis of behavior. It is a poverty of values caused by a poverty of faith. We remove all value judgments from society and then wonder why we have a generation that is morally confused.
Our society has continually and increasingly dismissed the relevance of religion and as a consequence has for masses of people diminished its importance. If religion is ignored or banned then its components such as the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus are likewise made irrelevant and we arrive at the conclusion that "if there is no God then anything is permissible." It is difficult to believe there are many who will rejoice in such a culmination. |
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