WEBVTT NOTE 16. Present-Day Trends and the Future 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.320 Chapter 16 Present-day Trends and the Future 2 00:00:06.320 --> 00:00:09.840 1. 3 00:00:09.840 --> 00:00:14.560 The Reversal of the Trend Toward Freedom 4 00:00:14.560 --> 00:00:20.400 From the seventeenth century on, philosophers, in dealing with the essential content of history, 5 00:00:20.400 --> 00:00:24.360 began to stress the problems of liberty and bondage. 6 00:00:24.360 --> 00:00:29.100 Their concepts of both were rather vague, borrowed from the political philosophy of 7 00:00:29.100 --> 00:00:33.820 of Ancient Greece and influenced by the prevailing interpretation of the conditions of the Germanic 8 00:00:33.820 --> 00:00:38.900 tribes whose invasions had destroyed Rome's Western Empire. 9 00:00:38.900 --> 00:00:44.260 As these thinkers saw it, freedom was the original state of mankind and the rule of 10 00:00:44.260 --> 00:00:48.500 kings emerged only in the course of later history. 11 00:00:48.500 --> 00:00:54.080 In the scriptural relation of the inauguration of the kingship of Saul, they found confirmation 12 00:00:54.080 --> 00:00:58.740 of their doctrine as well as a rather unsympathetic description of the characteristic marks of 13 00:00:58.740 --> 00:01:00.640 of Royal Government. 14 00:01:00.640 --> 00:01:03.300 Historical evolution, they concluded, 15 00:01:03.300 --> 00:01:07.740 had deprived man of his inalienable right of freedom. 16 00:01:07.740 --> 00:01:09.500 The philosophers of the Enlightenment 17 00:01:09.500 --> 00:01:11.420 were almost unanimous in rejecting 18 00:01:11.420 --> 00:01:14.700 the claims of hereditary royalty and in recommending 19 00:01:14.700 --> 00:01:17.300 the republican form of government. 20 00:01:17.300 --> 00:01:19.980 The royal police forced them to be cautious 21 00:01:19.980 --> 00:01:21.980 in the expression of their ideas, 22 00:01:21.980 --> 00:01:25.340 but the public could read between the lines. 23 00:01:25.340 --> 00:01:31.580 On the eve of the American and French revolutions, monarchy had lost its age-old hold on men's 24 00:01:31.580 --> 00:01:33.000 minds. 25 00:01:33.000 --> 00:01:39.180 The enormous prestige enjoyed by England, then the world's richest and most powerful nation, 26 00:01:39.180 --> 00:01:44.180 suggested the compromise between the two incompatible principles of government, which had worked 27 00:01:44.180 --> 00:01:47.420 rather satisfactorily in the United Kingdom. 28 00:01:47.420 --> 00:01:52.140 But the old indigenous dynasties of continental Europe were not prepared to acquiesce in their 29 00:01:52.140 --> 00:01:57.140 and a reduction to a merely ceremonial position such as the alien dynasty of Great Britain 30 00:01:57.140 --> 00:02:01.700 had finally accepted, though only after some resistance. 31 00:02:01.700 --> 00:02:06.660 They lost their crowns because they disdained the role of what the Count of Chambord had 32 00:02:06.660 --> 00:02:10.940 called the legitimate king of the revolution. 33 00:02:10.940 --> 00:02:16.440 In the heyday of liberalism, the opinion prevailed that the trend toward government by the people 34 00:02:16.440 --> 00:02:18.440 is irresistible. 35 00:02:18.440 --> 00:02:23.520 From the conservatives who advocated a return to monarchical absolutism, status privileges 36 00:02:23.520 --> 00:02:28.320 for the nobility and censorship were more or less convinced that they were fighting 37 00:02:28.320 --> 00:02:30.040 for a lost cause. 38 00:02:30.040 --> 00:02:35.680 Hegel, the champion of Prussian absolutism, found it convenient to pay lip service to 39 00:02:35.680 --> 00:02:41.480 the universally accepted philosophical doctrine in defining history as progress in the consciousness 40 00:02:41.480 --> 00:02:43.520 of freedom. 41 00:02:43.520 --> 00:02:49.800 But then arose a new generation that rejected all the ideals of the liberal movement without, 42 00:02:49.800 --> 00:02:54.640 like Hegel, concealing their true intentions behind a hypocritical reverence for the word 43 00:02:54.640 --> 00:02:56.300 freedom. 44 00:02:56.300 --> 00:03:01.320 In spite of his sympathies with the tenets of these self-styled social reformers, John 45 00:03:01.320 --> 00:03:06.520 Stuart Mill could not help branding their projects, and especially those of Auguste 46 00:03:06.520 --> 00:03:09.760 Kant, liberticide. 47 00:03:09.760 --> 00:03:15.840 In the eyes of these new radicals, the most depraved enemies of mankind were not the despots, 48 00:03:15.840 --> 00:03:18.800 but the bourgeois who had evicted them. 49 00:03:18.800 --> 00:03:24.320 The bourgeoisie, they said, had deceived the people by proclaiming sham slogans of liberty, 50 00:03:24.320 --> 00:03:28.380 equality under the law, and representative government. 51 00:03:28.380 --> 00:03:33.600 What the bourgeois were really intent upon was reckless exploitation of the immense majority 52 00:03:33.600 --> 00:03:36.400 of honest men. 53 00:03:36.400 --> 00:03:43.900 was in fact Pluto democracy, a blind to disguise the unlimited dictatorship of the capitalists. 54 00:03:43.900 --> 00:03:49.400 What the masses needed was not freedom and a share in the administration of government affairs, 55 00:03:49.400 --> 00:03:57.400 but the omnipotence of the true friends of the people, of the vanguard, of the proletariat, or of the charismatic Fuhrer. 56 00:03:57.400 --> 00:04:04.400 No reader of the books and pamphlets of revolutionary socialism could fail to realize that their authors 57 00:04:04.400 --> 00:04:11.840 Authors sought not freedom but unlimited totalitarian despotism, but so long as the socialists had 58 00:04:11.840 --> 00:04:17.440 not yet seized power, they badly needed for their propaganda the institutions and the 59 00:04:17.440 --> 00:04:21.240 bills of rights of plutocratic liberalism. 60 00:04:21.240 --> 00:04:26.080 As an opposition party, they could not do without the publicity the parliamentary forum 61 00:04:26.080 --> 00:04:31.000 offered them, nor without freedom of speech, conscience, and the press. 62 00:04:31.000 --> 00:04:37.160 Thus, willy-nilly, they had to include temporarily in their program the liberties and civil rights 63 00:04:37.160 --> 00:04:41.320 which they were firmly resolved to abolish as soon as they seized power. 64 00:04:41.320 --> 00:04:46.920 For, as Bukharin declared after the conquest of Russia by the Bolshevists, 65 00:04:46.920 --> 00:04:51.480 it would have been ridiculous to demand from the capitalists liberty for the workers' movement 66 00:04:51.480 --> 00:04:55.640 in any other way than by demanding liberty for all. 67 00:04:55.640 --> 00:04:57.800 In the first years of their regime, 68 00:04:57.800 --> 00:05:03.000 The Soviets did not bother to conceal their abhorrence of popular government and civil liberties, 69 00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:06.360 and openly praised their dictatorial methods. 70 00:05:06.360 --> 00:05:11.400 But in the later 30s, they realized that an undisguised anti-freedom program 71 00:05:11.400 --> 00:05:15.080 was unpopular in Western Europe and North America. 72 00:05:15.080 --> 00:05:21.320 As, frightened by German rearmament, they wanted to establish friendly relations with the West. 73 00:05:21.320 --> 00:05:26.680 They suddenly changed their attitude toward the terms, not the ideas, of democracy, 74 00:05:26.680 --> 00:05:30.180 Constitutional Government and Civil Liberties 75 00:05:30.180 --> 00:05:33.180 They proclaimed the slogan of the Popular Front 76 00:05:33.180 --> 00:05:36.680 and entered into alliance with the rival socialist factions 77 00:05:36.680 --> 00:05:40.680 which up to that moment they had branded social traitors. 78 00:05:40.680 --> 00:05:46.180 Russia got a constitution which all over the world was praised by servile scribblers 79 00:05:46.180 --> 00:05:48.680 as the most perfect document in history 80 00:05:48.680 --> 00:05:51.680 in spite of its being based on the one-party principle, 81 00:05:51.680 --> 00:05:54.680 the negation of all civic liberties. 82 00:05:54.680 --> 00:06:02.680 From that time on, the most barbaric and despotic of governments began to claim for itself the appellation People's Democracy. 83 00:06:02.680 --> 00:06:11.680 The history of the 19th and 20th centuries has discredited the hopes and the prognostications of the philosophers of the Enlightenment. 84 00:06:11.680 --> 00:06:21.680 The peoples did not proceed on the road toward freedom, constitutional government, civil rights, free trade, peace, and goodwill among nations. 85 00:06:21.680 --> 00:06:28.600 Instead, the trend is toward totalitarianism, toward socialism, and once more, there are 86 00:06:28.600 --> 00:06:33.640 people who assert that this trend is the ultimate phase of history and that it will never give 87 00:06:33.640 --> 00:06:36.920 way to another trend. 88 00:06:36.920 --> 00:06:38.920 2. 89 00:06:38.920 --> 00:06:44.140 The Rise of the Ideology of Equality in Wealth and Income 90 00:06:44.140 --> 00:06:49.800 From time immemorial, the living philosophy of the plain man has unquestioningly accepted 91 00:06:49.800 --> 00:06:54.620 the Fact of Status Differences, as well as the Necessity of Subordination to Those in 92 00:06:54.620 --> 00:06:56.620 Power. 93 00:06:56.620 --> 00:07:02.300 Man's primary need is protection against malicious onslaughts on the part of other men and groups 94 00:07:02.300 --> 00:07:03.960 of men. 95 00:07:03.960 --> 00:07:09.740 Only when safe from hostile attacks can he gather food, build a home, rear a family, 96 00:07:09.740 --> 00:07:12.780 in short, survive. 97 00:07:12.780 --> 00:07:18.220 Life is the first of all goods, and no price to be paid for its preservation appeared too 98 00:07:18.220 --> 00:07:22.420 to hide people harassed by predatory raids. 99 00:07:22.420 --> 00:07:28.460 To remain alive as a slave, they thought, is still better than to be killed. 100 00:07:28.460 --> 00:07:33.620 Lucky are those who enjoy the patronage of a benevolent master, but even a harsh overlord 101 00:07:33.620 --> 00:07:37.180 is to be preferred to no protection at all. 102 00:07:37.180 --> 00:07:39.820 Men are born unequal. 103 00:07:39.820 --> 00:07:41.540 Some are stronger and smarter. 104 00:07:41.540 --> 00:07:43.980 Some are weaker and clumsier. 105 00:07:43.980 --> 00:07:49.140 The latter had no choice but to surrender to the former and link their own destiny with 106 00:07:49.140 --> 00:07:51.260 that of a mighty suzerain. 107 00:07:51.260 --> 00:07:56.340 God, declared the priests, ordained it this way. 108 00:07:56.340 --> 00:08:02.020 This was the ideology that animated the social organization which Ferguson, Saint-Simon, 109 00:08:02.020 --> 00:08:08.880 and Herbert Spencer called militaristic and which present-day American writers call feudal. 110 00:08:08.880 --> 00:08:14.400 This prestige began to decline when the warriors who fought the warlords' battles became 111 00:08:14.400 --> 00:08:20.640 aware that the preservation of their chieftain's power depended on their own gallantry and, 112 00:08:20.640 --> 00:08:27.160 made self-reliant by this insight, asked a share in the conduct of the affairs of state. 113 00:08:27.160 --> 00:08:32.280 The conflicts resulting from this claim of the aristocrats engendered ideas which were 114 00:08:32.280 --> 00:08:37.880 bound to question and finally to demolish the doctrine of the social necessity of status 115 00:08:37.880 --> 00:08:43.120 and Cast Distinctions Why, asked the commoners, should the nobleman 116 00:08:43.120 --> 00:08:46.700 enjoy privileges and rights that are denied to us? 117 00:08:46.700 --> 00:08:51.400 Does not the flowering of the commonwealth depend on our toil and trouble? 118 00:08:51.400 --> 00:08:55.620 Do the affairs of state concern only the king and the barons and not the great majority 119 00:08:55.620 --> 00:08:57.100 of us? 120 00:08:57.100 --> 00:09:01.920 We pay the taxes and our sons bleed on the battlefields, but we have no voice in the 121 00:09:01.920 --> 00:09:07.600 councils in which the king and the representatives of the nobility determine our fate. 122 00:09:07.600 --> 00:09:13.120 No tenable argument could be opposed to these pretensions of the tiara ta. 123 00:09:13.120 --> 00:09:18.360 It was anachronistic to preserve status privileges that had originated from a type of military 124 00:09:18.360 --> 00:09:22.140 organization which had long since been abandoned. 125 00:09:22.140 --> 00:09:27.860 The discrimination practiced against commoners by the princely courts and good society was 126 00:09:27.860 --> 00:09:29.900 merely a nuisance. 127 00:09:29.900 --> 00:09:34.500 But the disdainful treatment in the armies and in the diplomatic and civil service of 128 00:09:34.500 --> 00:09:39.300 Of those who were not of noble extraction caused disasters. 129 00:09:39.300 --> 00:09:45.140 Led by aristocratic nincompoops, the French Royal Armies were routed, yet there were many 130 00:09:45.140 --> 00:09:49.700 commoners in France who later proved their brilliancy in the armies of the revolution 131 00:09:49.700 --> 00:09:51.380 and the empire. 132 00:09:51.380 --> 00:09:56.900 England's diplomatic, military and naval accomplishments were evidently due in part 133 00:09:56.900 --> 00:10:01.980 to the fact that it had opened virtually all careers to every citizen. 134 00:10:01.980 --> 00:10:06.300 The demolition of the Bastille and the abolition of the privileges of the French nobility were 135 00:10:06.300 --> 00:10:12.020 hailed all over the world by the elite, in Germany by Kant, Goethe and Schiller, among 136 00:10:12.020 --> 00:10:13.460 others. 137 00:10:13.460 --> 00:10:18.460 In Imperial Vienna, Beethoven wrote a symphony to honor the commander of the armies of the 138 00:10:18.460 --> 00:10:24.240 revolution who had defeated the Austrian forces and was deeply grieved when the news came 139 00:10:24.240 --> 00:10:28.740 that his hero had overthrown the republican form of government. 140 00:10:28.740 --> 00:10:34.980 The principles of freedom, equality of all men under the law, and constitutional government 141 00:10:34.980 --> 00:10:41.180 were with little opposition approved by public opinion in all western countries. 142 00:10:41.180 --> 00:10:46.980 Guided by these principles, it was held, mankind was marching forward into a new age of justice 143 00:10:46.980 --> 00:10:48.740 and prosperity. 144 00:10:48.740 --> 00:10:54.980 However, there was no unanimity in the interpretation of the concept of equality. 145 00:10:54.980 --> 00:11:00.300 For all of its champions, it meant the abolition of status and caste privileges and the legal 146 00:11:00.300 --> 00:11:05.820 disabilities of the lower strata, and especially of slavery and serfdom. 147 00:11:05.820 --> 00:11:11.340 But there were some who advocated the leveling of differences in wealth and income. 148 00:11:11.340 --> 00:11:17.060 To understand the origin and the power of this egalitarian ideology, one must realize 149 00:11:17.060 --> 00:11:21.860 that it was stimulated by the resumption of an idea which for thousands of years all over 150 00:11:21.860 --> 00:11:38.240 All the evils that plagued mankind were ascribed to the fact that some people had appropriated 151 00:11:38.240 --> 00:11:42.260 more land than they needed for the support of their families. 152 00:11:42.260 --> 00:11:48.160 The corollary of the abundance of the Lord of the Manor was the penury of the landless. 153 00:11:48.160 --> 00:11:54.320 This iniquity was seen as the cause of crime, robbery, conflict, and bloodshed. 154 00:11:54.320 --> 00:11:59.420 All these mischiefs would disappear in a society consisting exclusively of farmers who could 155 00:11:59.420 --> 00:12:04.660 produce in their own household what they needed for the support of their families, and neither 156 00:12:04.660 --> 00:12:07.660 more nor less. 157 00:12:07.660 --> 00:12:11.520 In such a commonwealth, there would be no temptations. 158 00:12:11.520 --> 00:12:16.540 Neither individuals nor nations would covet what by rights belongs to others. 159 00:12:16.540 --> 00:12:22.540 There would be neither tyrants nor conquerors, for neither aggression nor conquest would pay. 160 00:12:22.540 --> 00:12:25.300 There would be eternal peace. 161 00:12:25.300 --> 00:12:30.660 Equal distribution of land was the program that prompted the Grokai in ancient Rome, 162 00:12:30.660 --> 00:12:35.940 the peasant revolts which again and again disturbed all European countries, the agrarian 163 00:12:35.940 --> 00:12:40.940 reforms aimed at by various Protestant sects and by the Jesuits in the organization of 164 00:12:40.940 --> 00:12:45.700 their famous Indian community in what is now Paraguay. 165 00:12:45.700 --> 00:12:51.160 The fascination of this utopia enticed many of the most noble minds, among them Thomas 166 00:12:51.160 --> 00:12:57.060 Jefferson. It influenced the program of the social revolutionaries, the party which recruited 167 00:12:57.060 --> 00:13:02.820 the immense majority of the people in imperial Russia. It is the program today of hundreds 168 00:13:02.820 --> 00:13:09.520 of millions in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, whose endeavors meet, paradoxically enough, 169 00:13:09.520 --> 00:13:14.020 with the support of the foreign policy of the United States. 170 00:13:14.020 --> 00:13:19.400 Yet the idea of equal distribution of land is a pernicious illusion. 171 00:13:19.400 --> 00:13:25.200 Its execution would plunge mankind into misery and starvation and would in fact wipe out 172 00:13:25.200 --> 00:13:27.400 civilization itself. 173 00:13:27.400 --> 00:13:32.500 There is no room in the context of this program for any kind of division of labor, but regional 174 00:13:32.500 --> 00:13:38.760 specialization according to the particular geographical conditions of the various territories. 175 00:13:38.760 --> 00:13:44.100 The Scheme, when consistently carried to its ultimate consequences, does not even provide 176 00:13:44.100 --> 00:13:46.520 for doctors and blacksmiths. 177 00:13:46.520 --> 00:13:51.160 It fails to take into account the fact that the present state of the productivity of land 178 00:13:51.160 --> 00:13:56.120 in the economically advanced countries is a result of the division of labor which supplies 179 00:13:56.120 --> 00:14:02.020 tools and machines, fertilizer, electric current, gasoline, and many other things that multiply 180 00:14:02.020 --> 00:14:06.320 the quantity and improve the quality of the produce. 181 00:14:06.320 --> 00:14:10.140 Under the system of the division of labor, the farmer does not grow what he can make 182 00:14:10.140 --> 00:14:15.140 direct use of for himself and his family, but concentrates upon those crops for which 183 00:14:15.140 --> 00:14:20.540 his piece of soil offers comparatively the most favorable opportunities. 184 00:14:20.540 --> 00:14:26.260 He sells the produce on the market and buys on the market what he and his family need. 185 00:14:26.260 --> 00:14:31.460 The optimum size of a farm no longer has any relation to the size of the farmer's family. 186 00:14:31.460 --> 00:14:39.260 It is determined by technological considerations, the highest possible output per unit of input. 187 00:14:39.260 --> 00:14:44.900 Like other entrepreneurs, the farmer produces for profit, that is, he grows what is most 188 00:14:44.900 --> 00:14:50.020 urgently needed by every member of society for his use and not what he and his family 189 00:14:50.020 --> 00:14:54.020 alone can directly use for their own consumption. 190 00:14:54.020 --> 00:14:58.940 But those who desire equal distribution of land stubbornly refuse to take notice of all 191 00:14:58.940 --> 00:15:13.340 They would undo the whole of economic history, regardless of consequences. 192 00:15:13.340 --> 00:15:18.920 They disregard the fact that under the primitive methods of land tenure which they recommend, 193 00:15:18.920 --> 00:15:23.800 our globe could not support more than a fraction of the population now inhabiting it, and even 194 00:15:23.800 --> 00:15:27.600 this fraction only at a much lower standard of living. 195 00:15:27.600 --> 00:15:31.840 It is understandable that ignorant paupers in backward countries cannot think of any 196 00:15:31.840 --> 00:15:36.960 other way for the improvement of their conditions than the acquisition of a piece of land. 197 00:15:36.960 --> 00:15:41.600 But it is unpardonable that they are confirmed in their allusions by representatives of advanced 198 00:15:41.600 --> 00:15:47.220 nations who call themselves experts and should know very well what state of agriculture is 199 00:15:47.220 --> 00:15:50.500 required to make a people prosperous. 200 00:15:50.500 --> 00:15:55.480 The poverty of the backward countries can be eradicated only by industrialization and 201 00:15:55.480 --> 00:15:57.560 its agricultural corollary. 202 00:15:57.560 --> 00:16:02.280 The replacement of land utilization for the direct benefit of the farmer's household 203 00:16:02.280 --> 00:16:06.240 by land utilization to supply the market. 204 00:16:06.240 --> 00:16:10.640 The sympathetic support with which schemes for land distribution meet today and have 205 00:16:10.640 --> 00:16:15.840 met in the past from people enjoying all the advantages of life under the division of labor 206 00:16:15.840 --> 00:16:22.480 has never been based in any realistic regard for the inexorable nature-given state of affairs. 207 00:16:22.480 --> 00:16:25.840 It is rather the outcome of romantic illusions. 208 00:16:25.840 --> 00:16:32.380 The corrupt society of decaying Rome, deprived of any share in the conduct of public affairs, 209 00:16:32.380 --> 00:16:37.440 bored and frustrated, fell into reveries about the imagined happiness of the simple life 210 00:16:37.440 --> 00:16:40.500 of self-sufficient farmers and shepherds. 211 00:16:40.500 --> 00:16:46.900 The still more idle, corrupt and bored aristocrats of the ancien régime in France found pleasure 212 00:16:46.900 --> 00:16:51.120 in a pastime they chose to call dairy farming. 213 00:16:51.120 --> 00:16:56.560 Today, American millionaires pursue farming as a hobby which has the added advantage that 214 00:16:56.560 --> 00:17:02.520 its costs reduce the amount of income tax due. These people look upon farming less as 215 00:17:02.520 --> 00:17:09.020 a branch of production than as a distraction. A seemingly plausible plea for expropriation 216 00:17:09.020 --> 00:17:13.960 of the landholdings of the aristocracy could be made out at the time the civil privileges 217 00:17:13.960 --> 00:17:19.840 of the nobility were revoked. Feudal estates were princely gifts to the ancestors of the 218 00:17:19.840 --> 00:17:24.620 The aristocratic owners in compensation for military services rendered in the past and 219 00:17:24.620 --> 00:17:30.020 to be rendered in the future, they provided the means to support the king's armed retinue 220 00:17:30.020 --> 00:17:34.280 and the size of the holding allotted to the individual liegeman was determined by his 221 00:17:34.280 --> 00:17:37.300 rank and position in the forces. 222 00:17:37.300 --> 00:17:41.980 But as military conditions changed and the armies were no longer composed of vassals 223 00:17:41.980 --> 00:17:47.320 called up, the prevailing system of land distribution became anachronistic. 224 00:17:47.320 --> 00:17:52.320 There seemed to be no reason to let the squires keep revenues accorded as compensation for 225 00:17:52.320 --> 00:17:54.780 services they no longer rendered. 226 00:17:54.780 --> 00:17:59.200 It seemed justifiable to take back the fiefs. 227 00:17:59.200 --> 00:18:02.980 Such arguments could not be refuted from the point of view of the doctrine to which the 228 00:18:02.980 --> 00:18:07.880 aristocrats themselves resorted in defense of their status privileges. 229 00:18:07.880 --> 00:18:12.400 They stood on their traditional rights, pointing to the value of the services their forebearers 230 00:18:12.400 --> 00:18:14.640 had rendered to the nation. 231 00:18:14.640 --> 00:18:20.000 But as it was obvious that they themselves no longer rendered such indispensable services, 232 00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:24.700 it was correct to infer that all the benefits received as reward for these services should 233 00:18:24.700 --> 00:18:26.320 be cancelled. 234 00:18:26.320 --> 00:18:29.760 This included revocation of the land grants. 235 00:18:29.760 --> 00:18:35.460 From the point of view of the liberal economists, however, such confiscation appeared an unnecessary 236 00:18:35.460 --> 00:18:39.920 and dangerous disruption of the continuity of economic evolution. 237 00:18:39.920 --> 00:18:45.200 What was needed was the abolition of all those legal institutions that sheltered the inefficient 238 00:18:45.200 --> 00:18:50.240 proprietor against the competition of more efficient people who could utilize the soil 239 00:18:50.240 --> 00:18:53.000 to produce better and more cheaply. 240 00:18:53.000 --> 00:18:57.340 The laws that withdrew the estates of the nobleman from the market and the supremacy 241 00:18:57.340 --> 00:19:02.600 of the consumers, such as entails and the legal inability of commoners to acquire ownership 242 00:19:02.600 --> 00:19:05.800 by purchase, must be repealed. 243 00:19:05.800 --> 00:19:10.160 Even the supremacy of the market would shift control of land into the hands of those who 244 00:19:10.160 --> 00:19:17.680 know how to supply the consumers in the most efficient way with what they ask for most urgently. 245 00:19:17.680 --> 00:19:23.360 Unimpressed by the dreams of the utopians, the economists looked upon the soil as a factor 246 00:19:23.360 --> 00:19:25.080 of production. 247 00:19:25.080 --> 00:19:29.860 The rightly understood interests of all the people demanded that the soil, like all other 248 00:19:29.860 --> 00:19:35.820 and other material factors of production should be controlled by the most efficient entrepreneurs. 249 00:19:35.820 --> 00:19:41.020 The economists had no arbitrary preference for any special size of the farms. 250 00:19:41.020 --> 00:19:45.820 That size was best which secured the most efficient utilization. 251 00:19:45.820 --> 00:19:50.420 They did not let themselves be fooled by the myth that it was in the interest of the nation 252 00:19:50.420 --> 00:19:54.760 to have as many of its members as possible employed in agriculture. 253 00:19:54.760 --> 00:19:59.340 On the contrary, they were fully aware that it was beneficial not only to the rest of 254 00:19:59.340 --> 00:20:04.820 of the Nation, but also to those employed in agriculture if waste of manpower was avoided 255 00:20:04.820 --> 00:20:11.060 in this as in all other branches of production. The increase in material well-being was due 256 00:20:11.060 --> 00:20:16.480 to the fact that, thanks to technological progress, a continually shrinking percentage 257 00:20:16.480 --> 00:20:22.340 of the whole population was sufficient to turn out all the farm products needed. Attempts 258 00:20:22.340 --> 00:20:27.060 to meddle with this secular evolution which more and more reduced the ratio of the farm 259 00:20:27.060 --> 00:20:57.060 Mankind is the more prosperous the smaller the percentage of its total numbers employed in producing all the quantities of food and raw materials required, if any sense can be attached to the term reactionary, then the endeavors to preserve by special measures those small size farms which cannot hold their own in the competition of the market are certainly to be called reactionary. 260 00:20:57.060 --> 00:21:01.800 They tend to substitute a lower degree of the division of labor for a higher degree 261 00:21:01.800 --> 00:21:06.720 and thus slow down or entirely stop economic improvement. 262 00:21:06.720 --> 00:21:11.460 Let the consumers determine what size of farm best suits their interests. 263 00:21:11.460 --> 00:21:16.060 The economists' critique of the agrarian utopia was highly unpopular. 264 00:21:16.060 --> 00:21:21.020 Nevertheless, the weight of their arguments succeeded for a time in checking the zeal 265 00:21:21.020 --> 00:21:23.220 of the reformers. 266 00:21:23.220 --> 00:21:28.300 Only after the end of the First World War did the ideal of an agriculture, predominantly 267 00:21:28.300 --> 00:21:33.980 or even exclusively operated by small farmers, again attain the role it plays today in world 268 00:21:33.980 --> 00:21:35.880 politics. 269 00:21:35.880 --> 00:21:40.980 The great historical and political importance of the idea of equal distribution of land 270 00:21:40.980 --> 00:21:47.100 is to be seen in the fact that it paved the way for the acceptance of socialism and communism. 271 00:21:47.100 --> 00:21:52.420 The Marxian socialists were academically opposed to it and advocated the nationalization 272 00:21:52.420 --> 00:21:54.120 of Agriculture. 273 00:21:54.120 --> 00:21:59.020 But they used the slogan, Equal Distribution of Land Ownership, as a lever to incite the 274 00:21:59.020 --> 00:22:02.460 masses in the economically underdeveloped countries. 275 00:22:02.460 --> 00:22:07.780 For the illiterate rural population of these nations, the nostrum socialization of business 276 00:22:07.780 --> 00:22:09.500 was meaningless. 277 00:22:09.500 --> 00:22:14.580 But all their instincts of envy and hatred were aroused when politicians promised them 278 00:22:14.580 --> 00:22:18.820 the land of the kulaks and the owners of big estates. 279 00:22:18.820 --> 00:22:23.740 And during F.D. Roosevelt's administration, pro-communists in the United States government 280 00:22:23.740 --> 00:22:30.140 and the American press asserted that the Chinese leftists were not communists, but merely agrarian 281 00:22:30.140 --> 00:22:31.400 reformers. 282 00:22:31.400 --> 00:22:36.060 They were right insofar as the Chinese agents of the Soviets had adopted Lenin's clever 283 00:22:36.060 --> 00:22:41.580 trick of inaugurating the socialist revolution by resorting to the most popular slogans and 284 00:22:41.580 --> 00:22:45.100 concealing one's own real intentions. 285 00:22:45.100 --> 00:22:50.620 Today we see how in all economically underdeveloped countries, the scheme of land confiscation 286 00:22:50.620 --> 00:22:55.500 and redistribution makes the most effective propaganda for the Soviets. 287 00:22:55.500 --> 00:23:00.380 The scheme is manifestly inapplicable to the countries of Western civilization. 288 00:23:00.380 --> 00:23:05.360 The urban population of an industrialized nation cannot be lured by the prospect of 289 00:23:05.360 --> 00:23:07.740 such an agrarian reform. 290 00:23:07.740 --> 00:23:12.620 Its sinister effect upon the thinking of the masses in the capitalistic countries consists 291 00:23:12.620 --> 00:23:17.620 in its rendering sympathetic the program of wealth and income equality. 292 00:23:17.620 --> 00:23:24.060 It thus makes popular interventionist policies which must inevitably lead to full socialism. 293 00:23:24.060 --> 00:23:29.320 To stress this fact does not mean that any socialist or communist regime would ever really 294 00:23:29.320 --> 00:23:32.060 bring about equalization of income. 295 00:23:32.060 --> 00:23:37.000 It is merely to point out that what makes socialism and communism popular is not only 296 00:23:37.000 --> 00:23:42.320 the illusory belief that they will give enormous riches to everybody, but the no less illusory 297 00:23:42.320 --> 00:23:55.360 The American progressives, who are stirring up their countrymen as well as all foreigners 298 00:23:55.360 --> 00:24:00.960 to envy and hatred, and are vehemently asking for the equalization of wealth and incomes, 299 00:24:00.960 --> 00:24:06.040 do not see how these ideas are interpreted by the rest of the world. 300 00:24:06.040 --> 00:24:11.840 Foreign nations look upon all Americans, including the workers, with the same jealousy and hostility 301 00:24:11.840 --> 00:24:17.840 with which the typical American union member looks upon those whose income exceeds his own. 302 00:24:17.840 --> 00:24:23.200 In the eyes of foreigners, the American taxpayers have been motivated merely by bad conscience 303 00:24:23.200 --> 00:24:28.360 and fear when they spent billions to improve conditions abroad. 304 00:24:28.360 --> 00:24:34.080 Public opinion in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and many European countries views this system 305 00:24:34.080 --> 00:24:40.600 of foreign aid as socialist agitators do money laid out by the rich for charity, a pittance 306 00:24:40.600 --> 00:24:47.400 meant to bribe the poor and prevent them from taking what, by rights, belongs to them. 307 00:24:47.400 --> 00:24:51.640 Statesmen and writers who recommend that their nations should side with the United States 308 00:24:51.640 --> 00:24:56.400 against Russia are no less unpopular with their countrymen than those few Americans 309 00:24:56.400 --> 00:25:01.500 who have the courage to speak for capitalism and to reject socialism or with their fellow 310 00:25:01.500 --> 00:25:03.060 citizens. 311 00:25:03.060 --> 00:25:09.300 In Gerhard Hauptmann's play Die Weber, one of the most effective pieces of German anti-capitalistic 312 00:25:09.300 --> 00:25:10.300 Literature. 313 00:25:10.300 --> 00:25:15.060 The wife of a businessman is startled when she realizes that people behave as if it were 314 00:25:15.060 --> 00:25:17.860 a crime to be rich. 315 00:25:17.860 --> 00:25:22.940 Except for an insignificant minority, everyone today is prepared to take this condemnation 316 00:25:22.940 --> 00:25:25.180 of wealth for granted. 317 00:25:25.180 --> 00:25:29.240 This mentality spells the doom of American foreign policy. 318 00:25:29.240 --> 00:25:33.800 The United States is condemned and hated because it is prosperous. 319 00:25:33.800 --> 00:25:39.960 The almost uncontested triumph of the egalitarian ideology has entirely obliterated all other 320 00:25:39.960 --> 00:25:42.200 political ideals. 321 00:25:42.200 --> 00:25:47.640 The envy-driven masses do not care a whit for what the demagogues call the bourgeois 322 00:25:47.640 --> 00:25:53.360 concern for freedom of conscience, of thought, of the press, for habeas corpus, trial by 323 00:25:53.360 --> 00:25:56.140 jury, and all the rest. 324 00:25:56.140 --> 00:26:00.960 They long for the earthly paradise which the socialist leaders promise them. 325 00:26:00.960 --> 00:26:05.860 Like these leaders, they are convinced that the liquidation of the bourgeois will bring 326 00:26:05.860 --> 00:26:08.400 them back into the Garden of Eden. 327 00:26:08.400 --> 00:26:14.960 The irony is that nowadays they are calling this program the liberal program. 328 00:26:14.960 --> 00:26:17.600 3. 329 00:26:17.600 --> 00:26:22.500 The Chimera of a Perfect State of Mankind 330 00:26:22.500 --> 00:26:26.640 All doctrines that have sought to discover in the course of human history some definite 331 00:26:26.640 --> 00:26:32.440 trend in the sequence of changes have disagreed, in reference to the past, with the historically 332 00:26:32.440 --> 00:26:37.800 established facts, and where they tried to predict the future have been spectacularly 333 00:26:37.800 --> 00:26:41.120 proved wrong by later events. 334 00:26:41.120 --> 00:26:45.680 Most of these doctrines were characterized by reference to a state of perfection in human 335 00:26:45.680 --> 00:26:46.960 affairs. 336 00:26:46.960 --> 00:26:52.280 They placed this perfect state either at the beginning of history, or at its end, or at 337 00:26:52.280 --> 00:26:55.640 both its beginning and its end. 338 00:26:55.640 --> 00:27:02.120 Consequently, history appeared in their interpretation as a progressive deterioration or a progressive 339 00:27:02.120 --> 00:27:07.720 improvement or as a period of progressive deterioration to be followed by one of progressive 340 00:27:07.720 --> 00:27:09.520 improvement. 341 00:27:09.520 --> 00:27:14.260 With some of these doctrines, the idea of a perfect state was rooted in religious beliefs 342 00:27:14.260 --> 00:27:15.260 and dogmas. 343 00:27:15.260 --> 00:27:20.640 However, it is not the task of secular science to enter into an analysis of these theological 344 00:27:20.640 --> 00:27:22.900 aspects of the matter. 345 00:27:22.900 --> 00:27:29.260 It is obvious that in a perfect state of human affairs, there cannot be any history. 346 00:27:29.260 --> 00:27:35.240 History is the record of changes, but the very concept of perfection implies the absence 347 00:27:35.240 --> 00:27:41.620 of any change, as a perfect state can only be transformed into a less perfect state, 348 00:27:41.620 --> 00:27:46.100 that is, can only be impaired by any alteration. 349 00:27:46.100 --> 00:27:51.160 If one places the state of perfection only at the supposed beginning of history, one 350 00:27:51.160 --> 00:27:56.480 One asserts that the age of history was preceded by an age in which there was no history, and 351 00:27:56.480 --> 00:28:01.680 that one day some events which disturbed the perfection of this original age inaugurated 352 00:28:01.680 --> 00:28:03.840 the age of history. 353 00:28:03.840 --> 00:28:09.280 If one assumes that history tends toward the realization of a perfect state, one asserts 354 00:28:09.280 --> 00:28:12.920 that history will one day come to an end. 355 00:28:12.920 --> 00:28:18.040 It is man's nature to strive ceaselessly after the substitution of more satisfactory 356 00:28:18.040 --> 00:28:21.000 conditions for less satisfactory. 357 00:28:21.000 --> 00:28:25.840 This motive stimulates his mental energies and prompts him to act. 358 00:28:25.840 --> 00:28:32.000 Life in a perfect frame would reduce man to a purely vegetative existence. 359 00:28:32.000 --> 00:28:34.760 History did not begin with the Golden Age. 360 00:28:34.760 --> 00:28:41.480 The conditions under which primitive man lived appear in the eyes of later ages rather unsatisfactory. 361 00:28:41.480 --> 00:28:46.560 He was surrounded by innumerable dangers that did not threaten civilized man at all, or 362 00:28:46.560 --> 00:28:49.800 at least not to the same degree. 363 00:28:49.800 --> 00:29:12.680 The idea that a state of aimlessness and indifference is desirable and the most happy condition 364 00:29:12.680 --> 00:29:17.680 that mankind could ever attain permeates utopian literature. 365 00:29:17.680 --> 00:29:22.960 The authors of these plans depict a society in which no further changes are required because 366 00:29:22.960 --> 00:29:26.500 everything has reached the best possible form. 367 00:29:26.500 --> 00:29:31.720 In utopia, there will no longer be any reason to strive for improvement because everything 368 00:29:31.720 --> 00:29:34.000 is already perfect. 369 00:29:34.000 --> 00:29:37.040 History has been brought to a close. 370 00:29:37.040 --> 00:29:41.320 Henceforth all people will be thoroughly happy. 371 00:29:41.320 --> 00:29:45.720 In this sense, Karl Marx, too, must be called a utopian. 372 00:29:45.720 --> 00:29:50.620 He, too, aimed at a state of affairs in which history will come to a standstill. 373 00:29:50.620 --> 00:29:55.680 For history is, in the scheme of Marx, the history of class struggles. 374 00:29:55.680 --> 00:30:01.480 Once classes and the class struggle are abolished, there can no longer be any history. 375 00:30:01.480 --> 00:30:05.880 It is true that the Communist Manifesto merely declares that the history of all hitherto 376 00:30:05.880 --> 00:30:12.660 existing society, or, as Engels later added, more precisely, the history after the dissolution 377 00:30:12.660 --> 00:30:18.020 of the Golden Age of Primeval Communism is the history of class struggles and thus does 378 00:30:18.020 --> 00:30:23.140 not exclude the interpretation that after the establishment of the socialist millennium, 379 00:30:23.140 --> 00:30:26.140 some new content of history could emerge. 380 00:30:26.140 --> 00:30:30.920 But the other writings of Marx, Engels, and their disciples do not provide any indication 381 00:30:30.920 --> 00:30:35.580 that such a new type of historical changes, radically different in nature from those of 382 00:30:35.580 --> 00:30:40.220 the preceding ages of class struggles, could possibly come into being. 383 00:30:40.220 --> 00:30:45.100 But further changes can be expected once the higher phase of communism is attained in which 384 00:30:45.100 --> 00:30:47.700 everybody gets all he needs. 385 00:30:47.700 --> 00:30:52.500 The distinction that Marx made between his own scientific socialism and the socialist 386 00:30:52.500 --> 00:30:57.900 plans of older authors whom he branded as utopians refers not only to the nature and 387 00:30:57.900 --> 00:31:02.900 organization of the socialist commonwealth, but also to the way in which this commonwealth 388 00:31:02.900 --> 00:31:05.700 is supposed to come into existence. 389 00:31:05.700 --> 00:31:11.340 Those whom Marx disparaged as utopians constructed the design of a socialist paradise and tried 390 00:31:11.340 --> 00:31:15.980 to convince people that its realization is highly desirable. 391 00:31:15.980 --> 00:31:18.020 Marx rejected this procedure. 392 00:31:18.020 --> 00:31:21.980 He pretended to have discovered the law of historical evolution according to which the 393 00:31:21.980 --> 00:31:24.760 coming of socialism is inevitable. 394 00:31:24.760 --> 00:31:30.060 He saw the shortcomings of the utopian socialists, their utopian character, and the fact that 395 00:31:30.060 --> 00:31:34.900 they expected the coming of socialism from the will of the people, that is, their conscious 396 00:31:34.900 --> 00:32:02.140 A New, Sophisticated Version of the Image of the Perfect Society has arisen lately out 397 00:32:02.140 --> 00:32:10.780 In order to deal with the effects of changes in the market situation, the endeavors to 398 00:32:10.780 --> 00:32:16.220 adjust production to these changes and the phenomena of profit and loss, the economist 399 00:32:16.220 --> 00:32:21.820 constructs the image of a hypothetical, although unattainable, state of affairs in which production 400 00:32:21.820 --> 00:32:27.140 is always fully adjusted to the realizable wishes of the consumers and no further changes 401 00:32:27.140 --> 00:32:28.880 whatever occur. 402 00:32:28.880 --> 00:32:33.480 In this imaginary world, tomorrow does not differ from today. 403 00:32:33.480 --> 00:32:39.400 No maladjustments can arise, and no need for any entrepreneurial action emerges. 404 00:32:39.400 --> 00:32:43.160 The conduct of business does not require any initiative. 405 00:32:43.160 --> 00:32:48.980 It is a self-acting process unconsciously performed by automatons impelled by mysterious 406 00:32:48.980 --> 00:32:51.040 quasi-instincts. 407 00:32:51.040 --> 00:32:56.720 There is, for economists, and for that matter also for laymen discussing economic issues, 408 00:32:56.720 --> 00:33:02.280 No other way to conceive what is going on in the real, continually changing world than 409 00:33:02.280 --> 00:33:07.960 to contrast it in this way with a fictitious world of stability and absence of change. 410 00:33:07.960 --> 00:33:12.880 But the economists are fully aware that the elaboration of this image of an evenly rotating 411 00:33:12.880 --> 00:33:18.300 economy is merely a mental tool that has no counterpart in the real world in which man 412 00:33:18.300 --> 00:33:21.320 lives and is called to act. 413 00:33:21.320 --> 00:33:25.960 They did not even suspect that anybody could fail to grasp the merely hypothetical and 414 00:33:25.960 --> 00:33:30.960 Ancillary Character of Their Concept. Yet some people misunderstood the meaning and 415 00:33:30.960 --> 00:33:36.720 significance of this mental tool. In a metaphor borrowed from the theory of mechanics, the 416 00:33:36.720 --> 00:33:43.040 mathematical economists call the evenly rotating economy the static state, the conditions prevailing 417 00:33:43.040 --> 00:33:50.120 in it equilibrium, and any deviation from equilibrium, disequilibrium. This language 418 00:33:50.120 --> 00:33:55.240 suggests that there is something vicious in the very fact that there is always disequilibrium 419 00:33:55.240 --> 00:34:00.560 in the Real Economy and that the state of equilibrium never becomes actual. 420 00:34:00.560 --> 00:34:05.520 The merely imagined hypothetical state of undisturbed equilibrium appears as the most 421 00:34:05.520 --> 00:34:08.280 desirable state of reality. 422 00:34:08.280 --> 00:34:14.680 In this sense, some authors call competition, as it prevails in the changing economy, imperfect 423 00:34:14.680 --> 00:34:15.680 competition. 424 00:34:15.680 --> 00:34:20.160 The truth is that competition can exist only in a changing economy. 425 00:34:20.160 --> 00:34:26.080 This function is precisely to wipe out disequilibrium and to generate a tendency toward the attainment 426 00:34:26.080 --> 00:34:32.000 of equilibrium. There cannot be any competition in a state of static equilibrium because in 427 00:34:32.000 --> 00:34:37.080 such a state, there is no point at which a competitor could interfere in order to perform 428 00:34:37.080 --> 00:34:42.660 something that satisfies the consumer better than what is already performed anyway. 429 00:34:42.660 --> 00:34:47.360 The very definition of equilibrium implies that there is no maladjustment anywhere in 430 00:34:47.360 --> 00:34:53.280 in the Economic System and, consequently, no need for any action to wipe out maladjustments, 431 00:34:53.280 --> 00:34:58.480 no entrepreneurial activity, no entrepreneurial profits and losses. 432 00:34:58.480 --> 00:35:03.840 It is precisely the absence of the profits that prompts mathematical economists to consider 433 00:35:03.840 --> 00:35:09.720 the state of undisturbed static equilibrium as the ideal state, for they are inspired by 434 00:35:09.720 --> 00:35:17.000 the prepossession that entrepreneurs are useless parasites and profits are unfair lucre. 435 00:35:17.000 --> 00:35:22.280 The equilibrium enthusiasts are also deluded by ambiguous thymological connotations of 436 00:35:22.280 --> 00:35:27.320 the term equilibrium, which, of course, have no reference whatever to the way in which 437 00:35:27.320 --> 00:35:32.480 economics employs the imaginary construction of a state of equilibrium. 438 00:35:32.480 --> 00:35:38.360 The popular notion of a man's mental equilibrium is vague and cannot be particularized without 439 00:35:38.360 --> 00:35:41.800 including arbitrary judgments of value. 440 00:35:41.800 --> 00:35:46.440 All that can be said about such a state of mental or moral equilibrium is that it cannot 441 00:35:46.440 --> 00:35:49.560 Don't prompt a man toward any action. 442 00:35:49.560 --> 00:35:57.680 For action presupposes some uneasiness felt, as its only aim can be the removal of uneasiness. 443 00:35:57.680 --> 00:36:00.960 The analogy with the state of perfection is obvious. 444 00:36:00.960 --> 00:36:04.160 The fully satisfied individual is purposeless. 445 00:36:04.160 --> 00:36:05.400 He does not act. 446 00:36:05.400 --> 00:36:07.680 He has no incentive to think. 447 00:36:07.680 --> 00:36:11.480 He spends his days in leisurely enjoyment of life. 448 00:36:11.480 --> 00:36:22.480 It is certain that living men can never attain such a state of perfection and equilibrium. 449 00:36:22.480 --> 00:36:27.800 It is no less certain that, sorely tried by the imperfections of real life, people will 450 00:36:27.800 --> 00:36:31.920 dream of such a thorough fulfillment of all their wishes. 451 00:36:31.920 --> 00:36:37.240 This explains the sources of the emotional praise of equilibrium and condemnation of 452 00:36:37.240 --> 00:36:38.800 disequilibrium. 453 00:36:38.800 --> 00:36:44.640 However, economists must not confuse this thymological notion of equilibrium with the 454 00:36:44.640 --> 00:36:48.780 use of the imaginary construction of a static economy. 455 00:36:48.780 --> 00:36:54.640 The only service that this imaginary construction renders is to set off in sharp relief the 456 00:36:54.640 --> 00:36:59.920 ceaseless striving of living and acting men after the best possible improvement of their 457 00:36:59.920 --> 00:37:01.560 conditions. 458 00:37:01.560 --> 00:37:07.040 There is for the unaffected scientific observer nothing objectionable in his description of 459 00:37:07.040 --> 00:37:08.780 disequilibrium. 460 00:37:08.780 --> 00:37:15.040 It is only the passionate pro-socialist zeal of mathematical pseudo-economists that transforms 461 00:37:15.040 --> 00:37:21.260 a purely analytical tool of logical economics into an utopian image of the good and most 462 00:37:21.260 --> 00:37:24.340 desirable state of affairs. 463 00:37:24.340 --> 00:37:26.600 4. 464 00:37:26.600 --> 00:37:33.940 The Alleged Unbroken Trend Toward Progress A realistic philosophical interpretation 465 00:37:33.940 --> 00:37:39.220 of History must abstain from any reference to the chimerical notion of a perfect state 466 00:37:39.220 --> 00:37:41.220 of human affairs. 467 00:37:41.220 --> 00:37:47.380 The only basis from which a realistic interpretation can start is the fact that man, like all other 468 00:37:47.380 --> 00:37:53.280 living beings, is driven by the impulse to preserve his own existence and to remove, 469 00:37:53.280 --> 00:37:57.400 as far as possible, any uneasiness he feels. 470 00:37:57.400 --> 00:38:01.900 It is from this point of view that the immense majority of people appraise the conditions 471 00:38:01.900 --> 00:38:09.080 It would be erroneous to scorn their attitude as materialism in the ethical connotation 472 00:38:09.080 --> 00:38:10.660 of the term. 473 00:38:10.660 --> 00:38:16.400 The pursuit of all those nobler aims which the moralists contrast with what they disparage 474 00:38:16.400 --> 00:38:22.820 as merely materialistic satisfactions presupposes a certain degree of material well-being. 475 00:38:22.820 --> 00:38:28.280 The controversy about the monogenetic or polygenetic origin of Homo sapiens is, as 476 00:38:28.280 --> 00:38:32.880 As has been pointed out earlier, of little importance for history. 477 00:38:32.880 --> 00:38:38.520 Even if we assume that all men are the descendants of one group of primates, which alone evolved 478 00:38:38.520 --> 00:38:44.640 into the human species, we have to take account of the fact that at a very early date, dispersion 479 00:38:44.640 --> 00:38:51.200 over the surface of the earth broke up this original unity into more or less isolated parts. 480 00:38:51.200 --> 00:38:56.560 For thousands of years, each of these parts lived its own life with little or no intercourse 481 00:39:26.560 --> 00:39:32.820 Health and Decay, Progress and Retrogression, Improvement and Deterioration, if the historian 482 00:39:32.820 --> 00:39:38.040 or philosopher does not arbitrarily pretend to know what the end of human endeavor ought 483 00:39:38.040 --> 00:39:39.560 to be. 484 00:39:39.560 --> 00:39:44.080 There is no agreement among people on a standard by which the achievements of civilization 485 00:39:44.080 --> 00:39:49.840 can be said to be good or bad, better or worse. 486 00:39:49.840 --> 00:39:54.240 Mankind is almost unanimous in its appraisal of the material accomplishments of modern 487 00:39:54.240 --> 00:39:56.680 Western Capitalistic Civilization 488 00:39:56.680 --> 00:40:01.140 The immense majority considers the higher standard of living which this civilization 489 00:40:01.140 --> 00:40:04.880 secures to the average man highly desirable. 490 00:40:04.880 --> 00:40:09.480 It would be difficult to discover, outside of the small and continually shrinking group 491 00:40:09.480 --> 00:40:14.080 of consistent ascetics, people who do not wish for themselves and their families and 492 00:40:14.080 --> 00:40:19.280 friends the enjoyment of the material paraphernalia of Western Capitalism. 493 00:40:19.280 --> 00:40:24.800 If, from this point of view, people assert that we have progressed beyond the conditions 494 00:40:24.800 --> 00:40:30.280 of earlier ages, their judgment of value agrees with that of the majority. 495 00:40:30.280 --> 00:40:35.380 But if they assume that what they call progress is a necessary phenomenon, and that there 496 00:40:35.380 --> 00:40:40.960 prevails in the course of events a law that makes progress, in this sense, go on forever, 497 00:40:40.960 --> 00:40:43.180 they are badly mistaken. 498 00:40:43.180 --> 00:40:48.340 To disprove this doctrine of an inherent tendency toward progress that operates automatically, 499 00:40:48.340 --> 00:40:53.620 As it were, there is no need to refer to those older civilizations in which periods of material 500 00:40:53.620 --> 00:40:59.940 improvement were followed by periods of material decay or by periods of standstill. 501 00:40:59.940 --> 00:41:05.140 There is no reason whatever to assume that a law of historical evolution operates necessarily 502 00:41:05.140 --> 00:41:10.460 toward the improvement of material conditions or that trends which prevailed in the recent 503 00:41:10.460 --> 00:41:14.060 past will go on in the future too. 504 00:41:14.060 --> 00:41:19.380 What is called economic progress is the effect of an accumulation of capital goods exceeding 505 00:41:19.380 --> 00:41:22.140 the increase in population. 506 00:41:22.140 --> 00:41:27.180 If this trend gives way to a standstill in the further accumulation of capital, or to 507 00:41:27.180 --> 00:41:33.540 capital decumulation, there will no longer be progress in this sense of the term. 508 00:41:33.540 --> 00:41:37.980 Everyone but the most bigoted socialists agrees that the unprecedented improvement 509 00:41:37.980 --> 00:41:42.860 in economic conditions which has occurred in the last two hundred years is an achievement 510 00:41:42.860 --> 00:41:49.180 of Capitalism, it is, to say the least, premature to assume that the tendency toward progressive 511 00:41:49.180 --> 00:41:55.100 economic improvement will continue under a different economic organization of society. 512 00:41:55.100 --> 00:42:02.060 The champions of socialism reject as ill-considered all that economics has advanced to show that 513 00:42:02.060 --> 00:42:08.260 a socialist system, being unable to establish any kind of economic calculation, would entirely 514 00:42:08.260 --> 00:42:11.620 disintegrate the system of production. 515 00:42:11.620 --> 00:42:17.100 Even if the socialists were right in their disregard for the economic analysis of socialism, 516 00:42:17.100 --> 00:42:23.020 this would not yet prove that the trend toward economic improvement will or could go on under 517 00:42:23.020 --> 00:42:26.020 a socialist regime. 518 00:42:26.020 --> 00:42:28.580 5. 519 00:42:28.580 --> 00:42:30.780 The Suppression of Economic Freedom 520 00:42:30.780 --> 00:42:39.540 A civilization is the product of a definite worldview, and its philosophy manifests itself 521 00:42:39.540 --> 00:42:41.960 in each of its accomplishments. 522 00:42:41.960 --> 00:42:47.880 The artifacts produced by men may be called material, but the methods resorted to in the 523 00:42:47.880 --> 00:42:53.240 arrangement of production activities are mental, the outcome of ideas that determine what should 524 00:42:53.240 --> 00:42:55.920 be done and how. 525 00:42:55.920 --> 00:43:02.040 All the branches of a civilization are animated by the spirit that permeates its ideology. 526 00:43:02.040 --> 00:43:07.200 The philosophy that is the characteristic mark of the West and whose consistent elaboration 527 00:43:07.200 --> 00:43:14.160 Man has in the last centuries transformed all social institutions as been called individualism. 528 00:43:14.160 --> 00:43:19.560 It maintains that ideas, the good ones as well as the bad, originate in the mind of 529 00:43:19.560 --> 00:43:21.940 an individual man. 530 00:43:21.940 --> 00:43:27.820 Only a few men are endowed with the capacity to conceive new ideas, but as political ideas 531 00:43:27.820 --> 00:43:33.880 can work only if they are accepted by society, it rests with the crowd of those who themselves 532 00:43:33.880 --> 00:43:39.240 are unable to develop new ways of thinking to approve or disapprove the innovations of 533 00:43:39.240 --> 00:43:41.000 the pioneers. 534 00:43:41.000 --> 00:43:46.220 There is no guarantee that these masses of followers and routinists will make wise use 535 00:43:46.220 --> 00:43:48.480 of the power vested in them. 536 00:43:48.480 --> 00:43:53.440 They may reject the good ideas, those whose adoption would benefit them, and espouse bad 537 00:43:53.440 --> 00:43:56.280 ideas that will seriously hurt them. 538 00:43:56.280 --> 00:44:00.680 But if they choose what is worse, the fault is not theirs alone. 539 00:44:00.680 --> 00:44:05.120 It is no less the fault of the pioneers of the good causes in not having succeeded in 540 00:44:05.120 --> 00:44:08.780 bringing forward their thoughts in a more convincing form. 541 00:44:08.780 --> 00:44:14.220 The favorable evolution of human affairs depends ultimately on the ability of the human race 542 00:44:14.220 --> 00:44:21.180 to beget not only authors but also heralds and disseminators of beneficial ideas. 543 00:44:21.180 --> 00:44:27.220 One may lament the fact that the fate of mankind is determined by the, certainly not infallible, 544 00:44:27.220 --> 00:44:28.780 minds of men. 545 00:44:28.780 --> 00:44:31.580 But such regret cannot change reality. 546 00:44:31.580 --> 00:44:37.220 In fact, the eminence of man is to be seen in his power to choose between good and evil. 547 00:44:37.220 --> 00:44:42.140 It is precisely this that the theologians had in view when they praised God for having 548 00:44:42.140 --> 00:44:48.580 bestowed upon man the discretion to make his choice between virtue and vice. 549 00:44:48.580 --> 00:44:53.940 The dangers inherent in the masses' incompetence are not eliminated by transferring the authority 550 00:44:53.940 --> 00:44:59.660 to make ultimate decisions to the dictatorship of one or a few men, however excellent. 551 00:44:59.660 --> 00:45:06.320 It is an illusion to expect that despotism will always side with the good causes. 552 00:45:06.320 --> 00:45:10.860 It is characteristic of despotism that it tries to curb the endeavors of pioneers to 553 00:45:10.860 --> 00:45:13.740 improve the lot of their fellow men. 554 00:45:13.740 --> 00:45:19.100 The foremost aim of despotic government is to prevent any innovations that could endanger 555 00:45:19.100 --> 00:45:21.260 its own supremacy. 556 00:45:21.260 --> 00:45:27.560 Its very nature pushes it toward extreme conservatism, the tendency to retain what is, no matter 557 00:45:27.560 --> 00:45:32.060 how desirable for the welfare of the people a change might be. 558 00:45:32.060 --> 00:45:37.580 It is opposed to new ideas and to any spontaneity on the part of the subjects. 559 00:45:37.580 --> 00:45:42.720 In the long run, even the most despotic governments with all their brutality and cruelty are no 560 00:45:42.720 --> 00:45:44.860 match for ideas. 561 00:45:44.860 --> 00:45:50.300 Eventually, the ideology that has won the support of the majority will prevail and cut 562 00:45:50.300 --> 00:45:52.300 The Theory of Money and Credit 563 00:46:20.300 --> 00:46:23.060 not entirely wipe out. 564 00:46:23.060 --> 00:46:28.540 The main excellence and worth of what is called constitutional institutions, democracy and 565 00:46:28.540 --> 00:46:33.340 government by the people, is to be seen in the fact that they make possible peaceful 566 00:46:33.340 --> 00:46:37.100 change in the methods and personnel of government. 567 00:46:37.100 --> 00:46:41.500 Where there is representative government, no revolutions and civil wars are required 568 00:46:41.500 --> 00:46:45.020 to remove an unpopular ruler and his system. 569 00:46:45.020 --> 00:46:49.060 If the men in office and their methods of conducting public affairs no longer please 570 00:46:49.060 --> 00:47:01.360 In this way, the philosophy of individualism demolished the doctrine of absolutism, which 571 00:47:01.360 --> 00:47:05.940 ascribed heavenly dispensation to princes and tyrants. 572 00:47:05.940 --> 00:47:11.540 To the alleged divine right of the anointed kings, it opposed the inalienable rights bestowed 573 00:47:11.540 --> 00:47:14.040 upon man by his Creator. 574 00:47:14.040 --> 00:47:18.640 As against the claim of the state to enforce orthodoxy and to exterminate what it considered 575 00:47:18.640 --> 00:47:22.600 and Heresy, it proclaimed freedom of conscience. 576 00:47:22.600 --> 00:47:27.040 Against the unyielding preservation of old institutions become obnoxious with the passing 577 00:47:27.040 --> 00:47:29.760 of time, it appealed to reason. 578 00:47:29.760 --> 00:47:35.840 Thus, it inaugurated an age of freedom and progress toward prosperity. 579 00:47:35.840 --> 00:47:40.480 It did not occur to the liberal philosophers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries 580 00:47:40.480 --> 00:47:45.200 that a new ideology would arise which would resolutely reject all the principles of liberty 581 00:47:45.200 --> 00:47:49.800 and Individualism, and would proclaim the total subjection of the individual to the 582 00:47:49.800 --> 00:47:55.520 tutelage of a paternal authority as the most desirable goal of political action, the most 583 00:47:55.520 --> 00:48:01.320 noble end of history, and the consummation of all the plans God had in view in creating 584 00:48:01.320 --> 00:48:02.560 man. 585 00:48:02.560 --> 00:48:07.760 Not only Hume, Condorcet, and Bentham, but even Hegel and John Stuart Mill would have 586 00:48:07.760 --> 00:48:13.200 refused to believe it if some of their contemporaries had prophesied that in the twentieth century 587 00:48:13.200 --> 00:48:17.600 Generally most of the writers and scientists of France and the Anglo-Saxon nations would 588 00:48:17.600 --> 00:48:23.380 wax enthusiastic about a system of government that eclipses all tyrannies of the past in 589 00:48:23.380 --> 00:48:28.320 pitiless persecution of dissenters and in endeavors to deprive the individual of all 590 00:48:28.320 --> 00:48:31.760 opportunity for spontaneous activity. 591 00:48:31.760 --> 00:48:36.360 They would have considered that man a lunatic who told them that the abolition of freedom, 592 00:48:36.360 --> 00:48:40.920 of all civil rights, and of government based on the consent of the governed would be called 593 00:48:40.920 --> 00:48:41.920 liberation. 594 00:48:41.920 --> 00:48:45.720 Yet, all this has happened. 595 00:48:45.720 --> 00:48:51.000 The historian may understand and give theymological explanations for this radical and sudden change 596 00:48:51.000 --> 00:48:56.460 in ideology, but such an interpretation in no way disproves the philosophers' and the 597 00:48:56.460 --> 00:49:02.800 economist's analysis and critique of the counterfeit doctrines that engendered this movement. 598 00:49:02.800 --> 00:49:08.320 The keystone of Western civilization is the sphere of spontaneous action it secures to 599 00:49:08.320 --> 00:49:10.080 the individual. 600 00:49:10.080 --> 00:49:14.700 There have always been attempts to curb the individual's initiative, but the power of 601 00:49:14.700 --> 00:49:18.620 the persecutors and inquisitors has not been absolute. 602 00:49:18.620 --> 00:49:23.360 It could not prevent the rise of Greek philosophy and its Roman offshoot or the development 603 00:49:23.360 --> 00:49:26.180 of modern science and philosophy. 604 00:49:26.180 --> 00:49:32.320 Driven by their inborn genius, pioneers have accomplished their work in spite of all hostility 605 00:49:32.320 --> 00:49:34.060 and opposition. 606 00:49:34.060 --> 00:49:39.040 The innovator did not have to wait for invitation or order from anybody. 607 00:49:39.040 --> 00:49:44.160 He could step forward of his own accord and defy traditional teachings. 608 00:49:44.160 --> 00:49:50.700 In the orbit of ideas, the West has by and large always enjoyed the blessings of freedom. 609 00:49:50.700 --> 00:49:55.520 Then came the emancipation of the individual in the field of business and achievement of 610 00:49:55.520 --> 00:49:59.680 that new branch of philosophy, economics. 611 00:49:59.680 --> 00:50:04.080 A free hand was given to the enterprising man who knew how to enrich his fellows by 612 00:50:04.080 --> 00:50:06.600 improving the methods of production. 613 00:50:06.600 --> 00:50:11.200 A horn of plenty was poured upon the common men by the capitalistic business principle 614 00:50:11.200 --> 00:50:16.280 of mass production for the satisfaction of the needs of the masses. 615 00:50:16.280 --> 00:50:22.000 In order to appraise justly the effects of the Western idea of freedom, we must contrast 616 00:50:22.000 --> 00:50:26.960 the West with conditions prevailing in those parts of the world that have never grasped 617 00:50:26.960 --> 00:50:29.600 the meaning of freedom. 618 00:50:29.600 --> 00:50:34.640 Some Oriental peoples developed philosophy and science long before the ancestors of the 619 00:50:34.640 --> 00:50:39.560 The representatives of modern Western civilization emerged from primitive barbarism. 620 00:50:39.560 --> 00:50:44.400 There are good reasons to assume that Greek astronomy and mathematics got their first impulse 621 00:50:44.400 --> 00:50:48.160 from acquaintance with what had been accomplished in the East. 622 00:50:48.160 --> 00:50:51.880 When later the Arabs acquired a knowledge of Greek literature from the nations they 623 00:50:51.880 --> 00:50:57.560 had conquered, a remarkable Muslim culture began to flourish in Persia, Mesopotamia, and 624 00:50:57.560 --> 00:50:59.280 Spain. 625 00:50:59.280 --> 00:51:04.600 Up to the 13th century, Arabian learning was not inferior to the contemporary achievements 626 00:51:04.600 --> 00:51:10.760 of the West, but then religious orthodoxy enforced unswerving conformity and put an 627 00:51:10.760 --> 00:51:16.760 end to all intellectual activity and independent thinking in the Muslim countries, as had happened 628 00:51:16.760 --> 00:51:22.520 before in China, in India, and in the orbit of Eastern Christianity. 629 00:51:22.520 --> 00:51:27.840 The forces of orthodoxy and persecution of dissenters, on the other hand, could not silence 630 00:51:27.840 --> 00:51:33.880 the voices of Western science and philosophy, for the spirit of freedom and individualism 631 00:51:33.880 --> 00:51:39.260 was already strong enough in the West to survive all persecutions. 632 00:51:39.260 --> 00:51:45.560 From the 13th century on, all intellectual, political, and economic innovations originated 633 00:51:45.560 --> 00:51:47.260 in the West. 634 00:51:47.260 --> 00:51:53.140 Until the East, a few decades ago, was fructified by contact with the West, history in recording 635 00:51:53.140 --> 00:51:58.760 the great names in philosophy, science, literature, technology, government, and business could 636 00:51:58.760 --> 00:52:01.540 hardly mention any orientals. 637 00:52:01.540 --> 00:52:06.700 There was stagnation and rigid conservatism in the East until Western ideas began to filter 638 00:52:06.700 --> 00:52:07.700 in. 639 00:52:07.700 --> 00:52:14.260 To the Orientals themselves, slavery, serfdom, untouchability, customs like suddism or the 640 00:52:14.260 --> 00:52:20.500 crippling of the feet of girls, barbaric punishments, mass misery, ignorance, superstition, and 641 00:52:20.500 --> 00:52:24.420 disregard of hygiene did not give any offense. 642 00:52:24.420 --> 00:52:29.460 Unable to grasp the meaning of freedom and individualism, today they are enraptured with 643 00:52:29.460 --> 00:52:32.100 and the Program of Collectivism. 644 00:52:32.100 --> 00:52:37.380 Although these facts are well known, millions today enthusiastically support policies that 645 00:52:37.380 --> 00:52:42.620 aim at the substitution of planning by an authority for autonomous planning by each 646 00:52:42.620 --> 00:52:43.860 individual. 647 00:52:43.860 --> 00:52:46.360 They are longing for slavery. 648 00:52:46.360 --> 00:52:51.240 Of course, the champions of totalitarianism protest that what they want to abolish is 649 00:52:51.240 --> 00:52:59.020 only economic freedom and that all other freedoms will remain untouched, but freedom is indivisible. 650 00:52:59.020 --> 00:53:03.980 The distinction between an economic sphere of human life and activity and a non-economic 651 00:53:03.980 --> 00:53:07.380 sphere is the worst of their fallacies. 652 00:53:07.380 --> 00:53:12.620 If an omnipotent authority has the power to assign to every individual the tasks he has 653 00:53:12.620 --> 00:53:18.580 to perform, nothing that can be called freedom and autonomy is left to him. 654 00:53:18.580 --> 00:53:23.980 He has only the choice between strict obedience and death by starvation. 655 00:53:23.980 --> 00:53:28.200 Committees of experts may be called to advise the planning authority whether or not a young 656 00:53:28.200 --> 00:53:33.320 A young man should be given the opportunity to prepare himself for and to work in an intellectual 657 00:53:33.320 --> 00:53:38.840 or artistic field, but such an arrangement can merely rear disciples committed to the 658 00:53:38.840 --> 00:53:43.320 parent-like repetition of the ideas of the preceding generation. 659 00:53:43.320 --> 00:53:47.840 It would bar innovators who disagree with the accepted ways of thought. 660 00:53:47.840 --> 00:53:53.280 No innovation would ever have been accomplished if its originator had been in need of an authorization 661 00:53:53.280 --> 00:53:57.920 by those from whose doctrines and methods he wanted to deviate. 662 00:53:57.920 --> 00:54:02.600 Hegel would not have ordained Schopenhauer or Feuerbach, nor would Professor Rao have 663 00:54:02.600 --> 00:54:05.440 ordained Marx or Carl Menger. 664 00:54:05.440 --> 00:54:10.320 If the supreme planning board is ultimately to determine which books are to be printed, 665 00:54:10.320 --> 00:54:15.160 who is to experiment in the laboratories and who is to paint or to sculpture, and which 666 00:54:15.160 --> 00:54:20.680 alterations in technological methods should be undertaken, there will be neither improvement 667 00:54:20.680 --> 00:54:23.840 nor progress. 668 00:54:23.840 --> 00:54:29.400 All man will become a pawn in the hands of the rulers, who in their social engineering 669 00:54:29.400 --> 00:54:34.240 will handle him as engineers handle the stuff of which they construct buildings, bridges, 670 00:54:34.240 --> 00:54:35.960 and machines. 671 00:54:35.960 --> 00:54:42.480 In every sphere of human activity, an innovation is a challenge not only to all routinists 672 00:54:42.480 --> 00:54:48.040 and to the experts and practitioners of traditional methods, but even more to those who have in 673 00:54:48.040 --> 00:54:51.180 the past themselves been innovators. 674 00:54:51.180 --> 00:54:54.980 It meets, at the beginning, chiefly stubborn opposition. 675 00:54:54.980 --> 00:54:59.540 Such obstacles can be overcome in a society where there is economic freedom. 676 00:54:59.540 --> 00:55:03.060 They are insurmountable in a socialist system. 677 00:55:03.060 --> 00:55:08.140 The essence of an individual's freedom is the opportunity to deviate from traditional 678 00:55:08.140 --> 00:55:11.460 ways of thinking and of doing things. 679 00:55:11.460 --> 00:55:17.300 Planning by an established authority precludes planning on the part of individuals. 680 00:55:17.300 --> 00:55:19.340 6. 681 00:55:19.340 --> 00:55:23.740 The Uncertainty of the Future 682 00:55:23.740 --> 00:55:29.900 The outstanding fact about history is that it is a succession of events that nobody anticipated 683 00:55:29.900 --> 00:55:31.900 before they occurred. 684 00:55:31.900 --> 00:55:37.140 What the most far-seeing statesmen and businessmen divine is, at most, conditions as they will 685 00:55:37.140 --> 00:55:42.420 develop in the near future, in a period in which, by and large, no radical changes in 686 00:55:42.420 --> 00:55:46.740 ideologies and in general conditions will take place. 687 00:55:46.740 --> 00:55:51.700 The British and French philosophers whose writings actuated the French Revolution, and 688 00:55:51.700 --> 00:55:56.880 the thinkers and poets of all Western nations who enthusiastically hailed the first steps 689 00:55:56.880 --> 00:56:02.500 in this great transformation, foresaw neither the reign of terror nor the way Babiff and 690 00:56:02.500 --> 00:56:07.340 his followers would very soon interpret the principle of equality. 691 00:56:07.340 --> 00:56:11.960 None of the economists whose theories demolished the pre-capitalistic methods of restricting 692 00:56:11.960 --> 00:56:17.160 and Economic Freedom, and none of the businessmen whose operations inaugurated the Industrial 693 00:56:17.160 --> 00:56:23.800 Revolution anticipated either the unprecedented achievements of free enterprise or the hostility 694 00:56:23.800 --> 00:56:29.680 with which those most benefited by capitalism would react to it. 695 00:56:29.680 --> 00:56:35.600 Those idealists who greeted as a panacea President Wilson's policy of making the world safe 696 00:56:35.600 --> 00:56:40.460 for democracy did not foresee what the effects would be. 697 00:56:40.460 --> 00:56:45.380 The fallacy inherent in predicting the course of history is that the prophets assume no 698 00:56:45.380 --> 00:56:51.860 ideas will ever possess the minds of men, but those they themselves already know of. 699 00:56:51.860 --> 00:56:58.840 Hegel, Kant, and Marx, to name only the most popular of these soothsayers, never doubted 700 00:56:58.840 --> 00:57:01.180 their own omniscience. 701 00:57:01.180 --> 00:57:06.720 Each was fully convinced that he was the man whom the mysterious powers providently directing 702 00:57:06.720 --> 00:57:12.620 All Human Affairs had elected to consummate the evolution of historical change. 703 00:57:12.620 --> 00:57:16.280 Henceforth, nothing of importance could ever happen. 704 00:57:16.280 --> 00:57:19.720 There was no longer any need for people to think. 705 00:57:19.720 --> 00:57:25.800 Only one task was left to coming generations, to arrange all things according to the precepts 706 00:57:25.800 --> 00:57:29.060 devised by the messenger of providence. 707 00:57:29.060 --> 00:57:34.520 In this regard, there was no difference between Mohammed and Marx, between the Inquisitors 708 00:57:34.520 --> 00:57:36.800 and Auguste Kant. 709 00:57:36.800 --> 00:57:42.720 Up to now, in the West, none of the apostles of stabilization and petrification has succeeded 710 00:57:42.720 --> 00:57:48.360 in wiping out the individual's innate disposition to think and to apply to all problems the 711 00:57:48.360 --> 00:57:50.860 yardstick of reason. 712 00:57:50.860 --> 00:57:57.700 This alone and no more, history and philosophy, can assert in dealing with doctrines that claim 713 00:57:57.700 --> 00:58:05.700 Time to know exactly what the future has in store for mankind. 714 00:58:05.700 --> 00:58:09.940 The Ludwig von Mises Institute hopes you have enjoyed this audiobook. 715 00:58:09.940 --> 00:58:15.060 For a world of free market literature, media, and discussion, visit Mises.org.