Freedom and Economic Order
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[44] Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), U. S. President, Speech 1915.
[45] A privilege may be formally defined as a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people.
[46] Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont).
[47] Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Black Book of Communism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).
[48] George Santayana, The Life of Reason (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998 [1905].
[49] “The ultimate ends of the activities of reasonable beings are never economic. Strictly speaking, there is no ‘economic motive’ but only economic factors conditioning our striving for other ends. What in ordinary language is misleadingly called the ‘economic motive’ means merely the desire for general opportunity, the desire for power to achieve unspecified ends.” Hayek, Road to Serfdom, 125.
[50] Karl Marx, Das Kapital, in three volumes (London: Penguin Classics, 1992 reprint ed, [1861-1894]). The Communist Manifesto is the most frequently assigned reading in American universities at the present time.
[51] “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food . . . until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return." Genesis 3:19
[52] Marx, “The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophies of Nature” (1839-1841), The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, 1835-1843, Vol. 1 (NY: International Publishers, 1975).
[53] Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt (New York: Vintage, 1992 [1951]).
[54] Henri de Lubac, The Drama of Atheist Humanism (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996). Hereinafter cited as Drama.
[55] Communist Manifesto, 473-474.
[56] Robert C. Tucker, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961); Linda C. Raeder, “Marxism as Psychodrama” (Humanitas 7:2 (1994). Hereinafter cited as “Psychodrama.”
[57] Marx, “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,” in Marx-Engels Reader, 74.
[58] Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC): "Iustitia suum cuique distribuit" ("Justice renders to everyone his due.") De Natura Deorum, III, 38.
[59] This is a popular English paraphrase of the closing lines of the Communist Manifesto, where Marx says, “Working Men of All Countries, Unite!” (“Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt euch!”). Communist Manifesto, Marx-Engels Reader, 500.
[60] Such is true even if the buyer is altruistically aiming to raise the income of, say, impoverished women in Nepal. Such a consumer may purchase a handmade bracelet from a cooperative formed to assist such women, not because she desires the bracelet but because she deliberately aims to reward their painstaking labor and increase their income. In such a case, however, the value of the bracelet is nevertheless imputed to it by the altruistic consumer and not intrinsic to the item itself.
[61] Alternatively, the individual can maintain an even level of consumption but increase his productivity, that is, produce more with the same expenditure of resources. In other words, individual savings can be achieved either by reducing personal consumption or increasing personal productivity.
[62] Including Hayek, Mises, Friedman, Roepke, Boehm-Bawerk, Thomas Sowell, and others.
[63] See Raeder, “Marxism as Psychodrama.”
[64] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, cited in Cranston and Peters, eds, Hobbes and Rousseau (New York: Doubleday, 1972), 297.
[65] Raeder, “Psychodrama,” 12.
[66] We are again excluding the possibility of inheritance or gift. These are of course means of obtaining resources but they are not the general method of so doing in a market economy; they are the exception rather than the rule. Moreover, a person who inherits wealth simply benefits from the fact that his ancestors produced something of value to other people (provided they earned such wealth fairly, that is, through market exchange).
[67] The most recent studies indicate that the historical generosity of the American people may be declining. In 2013 the United States ranked thirteenth among the nations of the world in terms of charitable contributions; in 2010, it ranked in sixth place.
[68] Jung Chang and Jan Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story (Norwell, MA: Anchor, 2006).
[69] Panné, and Paczkowski, Black Book of Communism.
[70] Steve Coll, “North Korea’s Hunger, The New Yorker, Dec. 21, 2011, One study shows that the average North Korean solider is 10 inches shorter than those in the South Korean military—a sign of chronic acute malnutrition affecting an entire generation of young North Koreans.
[71]Jordan Weissman, “How Kim Jong Il Starved North Korea,” The Atlantic, Dec. 20, 2011.
[72] pleonexia (πλεονεξια), is a philosophical concept which roughly corresponds to greed, covetousness, or avarice. The term has been formally defined as "the insatiable desire to have what rightfully belongs to others” and otherwise described as "ruthless self-seeking and an arrogant assumption that others and things exist for one’s own benefit.” John W. Ritenbaugh, “The Tenth Commandment,” Forerunner (January 1998).
[73] Plato himself held a different view, identifying justice as a virtue to be applied to government of the individual psyche or soul. Indeed Plato employs the term justice in such a way that it becomes synonymous with virtue or morality itself. This is different from the manner in which justice is generally conceived throughout the later development of Western civilization.
[74] In the spring of 1776, in his first substantial (though anonymous) publication, A Fragment on Government, Jeremy Bentham invoked what he described as a “fundamental axiom: it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.” Summum bonum is a Latin expression meaning "the highest good,” introduced by Cicero to correspond to the Idea of the Good in ancient Greek philosophy. The summum bonum is generally regarded as both an end in itself and, at the same time, an end that encompasses all other goods.
[75] Cicero, De Natura Deorum, III, 38.
[76] Larry Siedentop, Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press),2014.
[77] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012 [1785]).
[78] F.A. Hayek, “The Errors of Constructivism," New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and the History of Idea (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978), 21. Within such a spatially extensive order, it is highly unlikely that either buyer or seller will possess any knowledge of his trading partner’s identity, let alone his moral qualities.
[79] Property comes into English from Anglo-Norman properté and Middle French propreté, with their own antecedents in Latin proprius and proprietas. . . . Adjectival proprius meant “particular” or “peculiar” and conveyed distinctiveness of the self, in contrast with alienus, meaning “other” or “foreign” (cf. English alienation), and with communis, “common” or “shared.” The noun proprietas conveyed an analogous sense of “characteristic” and was often combined with rerum (of things). But proprietas is also cited with an overt “ownership” sense and also commonly used to convey aptness or suitability (reflected in English proper and propriety).
[80] One possible exception is ancient Sparta. It has often been observed that even thieves do not want the goods they steal stolen from themselves.
[81] “. . . [M]en being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker . . . sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are. . . .” Second Treatise, 19, 9.
[82] Locke, Second Treatise, 21-22.
[83] Locke does initially limit the extent of private property by the provision that no individual may accumulate more than he can use without waste. Such a qualification, however, is overcome, he says, by the invention of money. The use of a durable medium of exchange, one that will not rot or otherwise deteriorate over time, means that those who produce more than they themselves
can personally consume can exchange their surplus for money, which in turn can be used to purchase the goods and services of others. The invention of money, then, removes the initial limit to individual accumulation established by the prohibition of waste.
[84] Thomas Aquinas, On Law, Morality, and Politics, ed with intro by William P. Baumgarth and Richard J. Regan, S.J. (Hackett Publishing Company: Indianapolis, 1988). Question 66, Second Article, “Is It Lawful for a Man to Possess a Thing as His Own?” 178-179. Hereinafter cited as Law, Morality, and Politics.
[85] F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism, ed, W.W. Bartley III (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).
[86] The term “social justice”’ is also used, vaguely and without clear definition, to connote various moral demands within certain Christian religious traditions, including the Roman Catholic Church, Methodism, and others. The term emerged in nineteenth-century Europe along with the widespread embrace of the “social” values championed by Marx and fellow travelers. Not all religious demands for social justice always and necessarily involve the forceful redistribution of wealth but the use of the term evidences once again the tremendous influence of socialist ideals on modern Western society. Moreover, its use to express moral demands apart from wealth distribution is unfortunate, obscuring rather than clarifying the meaning of justice. The very term “social justice” makes little sense, considering that justice is a virtue only applicable within the context of social (human) relations.
[87] Communist Manifesto, 484.
[88] Marx, The German Ideology (1845), in Marx-Engels Reader, 160.
[89] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Robert C. Tucker, ed, The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978 [1848], 486). Hereinafter cited as Communist Manifesto and Marx-Engels Reader.
[90] Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), vol 2, Ch. 2.
[91] J. S. Mill, On Liberty, Utility of Religion, in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963) Vol 10: 51, 422. Hereinafter cited as CW.
[92] Communist Manifesto, 475.
[93] Marx, The German Ideology, in Marx-Engels Reader, 172.
[94] “My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. . . . With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.” Marx, Afterword, Das Kapital, Second German Edition (1873).
[95] Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977 [1859]).
[96] Marx, German Ideology, in Marx-Engles Reader, 154-155.
[97] “. . . I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” Presidential candidate Barack Obama, Oct. 12, 2008, outside Toledo, Ohio.
[98] Regressive taxation is defined as a tax on income in which the proportion of tax paid relative to income decreases as income increases.
[99] “International Differences in Alcohol Use According to Sexual Orientation.” NIH study published in Substance Abuse 2011 Oct (32: (4): 210-219.
[100] Uses of the phrase dating back to the 1930s and 1940s have been found, but its first appearance is unknown. The "free lunch" in the saying refers to the nineteenth-century practice of offering a “free lunch” in American bars as a way to entice drinking customers. The phrase and the acronym were popularized by Robert Heinlein’s 1966 science-fiction novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and its later use as the title of a 1975 book by free-market economist Milton Friedman.
[101] Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, F.A. Hayek, Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle and other Essays (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2009.
[102] The Four Freedoms were goals articulated by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 6, 1941. In an address known as the Four Freedoms speech (technically the 1941 State of the Union address), he proposed four fundamental freedoms that people "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy: 1. Freedom of speech; 2. Freedom of worship; 3. Freedom from want; and, 4. Freedom from fear.
[103] Raeder, “Psychodrama.”
[104] Certain economists regard inflation, which decreases the value of money, as a form of taxation.
[105] Altruism, from French altruisme, coined by Auguste Comte in 1830, from autrui (“of or to others”) + -isme, from Old French, Latin alteri, dative of alter (“other”), from which also English alter. Apparently inspired by French Latin legal phrase l”autrui, from le bien, le droit d”autrui (“the good, the right of the other”).
[106] Linda C. Raeder, John Stuart Mill and the Religion of Humanity (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2002). Hereinafter cited as Religion of Humanity.
[107] The system of bribes to the selfish, according to J.S. Mill, “Utility of Religion,” CW 10:422-423).
[108] “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. . . nobody.” Elizabeth Warren, speech in Andover, Mass, Aug 11, 2011; “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Barack Obama, Campaign speech, Roanoke, VA, July 13, 2012.
[109] Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816, Founders’ Constitution, Vol. 1: 573.
[110] Attributed to Davy Crockett, “Not Yours to Give,” speech in Congress, James J. Bethune, Harper’s Magazine, 1867.
[111] Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Francis W. Gilmer, 7 June 1816. Published in “Jefferson Quotes & Family Letters,” Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc. http://tjrs.monticello.org, 2016.
[112] Ross Harrison, “Jeremy Bentham,” in Ted Honderich, ed, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 85-88.
[113] Tax Policy Center, Urban Institute – Brookings Institution.
[114] Irving Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1979).
[115] As Thomas Aquinas said, “. . .[V]oluntary is what proceeds from the will. . . a man may be dragged by force, but it is contrary to the very notion of violence that he be thus dragged of his own will. . . if this were by compulsion, it would no longer be an act of will . . . nor have external acts any measure of morality, save in so far as they are voluntary. . . if we speak of the goodness which the external act derives from the will . . then the external act adds nothing to this goodness. . . The involuntary deserves neither punishment nor reward in the accomplishment of good or evil deeds. . . .” Anton C. Pegis, ed., Introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas (New York: Modern Library, 1948), pp. 530, 542.