Excerpts from Yuri Maltzev's Requiem for Marx

Download this book at https://mises.org/sites/default/files/Requiem%20for%20Marx_2.pdf
or go to https://mises.org/library/requiem-marx-0

Yuri Maltzev's Requiem for Marx is a wonderful and engaging book edited by Yuri Maltzev who worked as an Economist for Gorbachev. Here are some fascinating excerpts:

The failure of socialism in Russia, and the enormous suffering and hardship of people in all socialist countries, is a powerful warning against socialism, statism, and interventionism in
the West. "We should all be thankful to the Soviets," says Paul Craig Roberts, "because they have proved conclusively that socialism doesn't work. No one can say they didn't have enough
power or enough bureaucracy or enough planners or they didn't go far enough."

If only.

A young man from a peasant family I knew had heard that market activity was legal, and decided to raise a pig to sell in the market. For six months, this hopeful entrepreneur devoted his time and money to caring for it and feeding it, hoping he would earn twice his money back by selling it. Never was a man so happy as when he took the pig to market one morning. That night I found him drunk and depressed. He was not a drinker, so I asked him what happened. When he arrived at the market, a health inspector immediately chopped off a third of the pig. The inspector said he was looking for worms. Then the police came and picked the best part of it, and left without even saying thank you. He had to pay bribes to the officials in charge of the market to get a space to sell what was left. And he had to sell the meat at state prices. By the end of the day, he earned barely enough to buy one bottle of vodka, which he had just finished drinking. This was Gorbachev's new market in a nutshell.

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Western academics and media pundits found his support for socialism charming, if a little outdated. But the people who lived under the system felt differently. They knew socialism had proven itself the most destructive ideology in human history-responsible for untold millions of deaths. For those populations onto whom socialism had been imposed, it had impoverished them, wiped out their cultural heritage, and in many cases, resulted in massive bloodshed.

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The sad legacy of Marxism is the mind set of certain people, both in the East and West, who believe that the state can cure all economic ills and bring about social justice. Yet a return to
central management under whatever label is not the solution, but neither is the status quo. What is needed in the former Soviet Union and Soviet-client states is a wholesale repudiation of the legacy of Marx. In the United States, too, Marx's ideas influenced a generation of reformers during the Progressive Era (out of which came modern central banking and the progressive income tax), the New Deal, the Great Society, and continues to infect departments of literature and sociology in major universities. Remarkable even after the fall of Soviet and East European social regimes, Marxism has not lost all its academic cache.

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The greatest irony regarding the massive amount of published attention that is squandered on Karl Marx is this: Engels was the indispensable partner in the history of Communism, not Marx. Engels was ahead of Marx conceptually from the beginning, although he was two years younger. He became a communist a year before Marx did. He became interested in the economic conditions of industrial civilization before Marx did; his Condition of the Working Class in England was the book that in 1845 converted Marx to the theory of the economic foundations of the revolution. There is at least a reasonable suspicion that he and Marx together worked out the idea of the materialist conception of history, although Marx is usually given credit for the discovery. Joseph Schumpeter, after dutifully doffing his intellectual cap to Marx's greater "depth of comprehension and analytic power," then observes that "In those years Engels was certainly farther along, as an economist, than
was Marx." Engels co-authored The German Ideology. He co-authored the Communist Manifesto (1848). He ghost wrote many of Marx's journalism pieces to help earn him some extra money. He had a lively writing style and the ability to turn a phrase. He also knew how to make and keep money. Marx possessed neither skill.

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Karl Marx's life serves as testimony to the failure of bad ideas. The only people who still take his ideas seriously are bourgeois intellectuals, heretical middle-class pastors, and power-seekers who want to become tyrants for life-the kind of people Marx despised, that is, people very much like himself. On the bourgeois dole for his entire life, he spent his days criticizing the very economic structure which permitted him his leisure time: capitalism....Had bourgeois London not given him a place to hide and work-we would never have heard of this third-rate materialist philosopher and fourth-rate classical economist.

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Karl Marx was the foremost hater and most incessant whiner in the history of Western Civilization. He was a spoiled, over-educated brat who never grew up; he just grew more shrill as he grew older. His lifelong hatred and whining have led to the deaths (so far) of perhaps a hundred million people, depending on how many people perished under Mao's tyranny. We will probably never know.

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Wilhelm Windelband devoted only two brief bibliographical entries and part of one paragraph to Marx and Engels in his 1901 History of Philosophy. The fact is, Marx had very little influence prior
to 1917, especially in the United States. Had it not been for Lenin, references to Marx would be limited to a series of obscure footnotes, rather than a library of books.

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Marx emphatically rejected those utopian socialists who sought to arrive at communism through a gradual and evolutionary process, through a steady advancement of the good. Instead, Marx harked back to the apocalyptics, the post-millennial coercive German and Dutch Anabaptists of the sixteenth century, to the millennial sects during the English Civil War, and to the various groups of pre-millennial Christians who foresaw a bloody Armageddon at the last days, before the millennium could be established.

Don’t Believe the Brexit Prophecies of Economic Doom

Don’t Believe the Brexit Prophecies of Economic Doom

The shock and horror at the Brexit vote has been loud and vociferous. Some seem to be revelling in the uncertainty that the referendum result has provoked. The pound falling in value, a downturn in markets – it lends credence to the establishment’s claims before the referendum that a Leave vote would lead to economic Armageddon.

When an “accepted consensus” is presented as overwhelming, it is a good time to consider the opposite.

But there are plenty of reasons to reject the consensus that Brexit will be costly to the UK’s economy. Even though markets appear stormy in the immediate aftermath of the vote, the financial market reaction to date has more characteristics of a seasonal storm than of a major catastrophe.

We were told that the consensus of economic experts were overwhelmingly opposed to a Brexit. Lauded institutions – from the IMF, OECD to the Treasury and London School of Economics – produced damning forecasts that ranged from economic hardship to total disaster if the UK leaves the EU. Yet 52% percent of the British electorate clearly rejected their warnings.

Something that my professional experience has taught me is that when an “accepted consensus” is presented as overwhelming, it is a good time to consider the opposite. Prime examples of this are the millennium bug, the internet stock frenzy, the housing bubble, Britain exiting the European exchange rate mechanism (ERM) and Britain not joining the euro. In each of these examples, the overwhelming establishment consensus of the time turned out to be wrong. I believe Brexit is a similar situation.

Downright Dangerous
The economic models used to predict the harsh consequences of a Brexit are the tools of my profession’s trade. Used properly, they help us to better understand how systems work. In the wrong hands they are also downright dangerous. The collapse of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1998 and the mispricing of mortgage backed securities leading up to the 2008 financial crisis are just two of many examples of harmful consequences arising from the abuse of such models.

The output of these often highly sophisticated models depends entirely upon the competence and integrity of the user. With miniscule adjustment, they can be tweaked to support or contradict more or less any argument that you want.

The barrage of dire economic forecasts that were delivered before the referendum were flawed for two main reasons. First, they failed to acknowledge the risks of remaining in the EU. And second, the independence of the forecasters is open to question.

Let’s start with the supposed independence of the forecasting institutions. While economists should in theory strive to be independent and objective, Luigi Zingales from the University of Chicago provides a compelling argument that, in reality, economists are just as susceptible to the influence of the institutions paying for their services as in other industries such as financial regulators.

Peer Pressure
Another challenge faced by economists is presented by the nature of the subject matter. Economics is a social science which, at its heart, is about the psychology of human social interactions. Many models try to resolve the difficulties that human subjectivity causes by imposing assumptions of formal rationality on their models. But what is and is not rational is subjective. In further recognition of this difficulty the sub-discipline of behavioural economics has evolved.

When you put the current level of volatility in context of other shocks, market conditions are not as bad as they might seem.

Herding is a concept that has been used to rationalise financial market bubbles and various other behaviour. It describes situations in which it seems rational for individuals to follow the perceived consensus. Anyone who has found themselves in a position where the majority of their company has a radically different view to their own will have experienced the difficulty of standing out from the crowd.

In 2005-06, various people (including myself) presented the view that house prices would crash. While some audiences were sympathetic, the majority view at the time was both hostile and derisory. Challenging the received wisdom exposes you to feelings of isolation.

Received wisdom among academia has been that the EU is a force for good that should be defended at all costs. Respected colleagues are incredulous that anyone with their education and professional insights could think otherwise and remain part of the academic “in” crowd. In such an environment, it is very difficult to challenge this orthodoxy.

I – and the bulk of the UK population – might have been convinced by the pro-Remain economists if they had been a little more honest about the limitations of their models, and the risks of remaining inside the EU.

Market Reactions
Despite reports of markets crashing following the Brexit result, when you put the current level of volatility in context of other shocks, market conditions are not as bad as they might seem. The FTSE 100 is still higher than it was barely two weeks ago and the more UK-focused FTSE 250 is currently higher than it was in late 2014. This is the kind of volatility that markets see two or three times a year.
The volatility index for the US S&P, known as the VIX or the “fear gauge”, is what is widely used to measure how uncertain global financial market participants are about the outlook for stocks. When the Brexit result was first announced, the VIX moved sharply, but has since settled in the mid-20s. To put this in context, the all-time average is 20.7, the all-time closing low is 8.5 and the all-time closing high on Black Monday in 1987 was 150. More recently during the financial crisis, it reached a closing high of 87.2 in November 2008.
VIX volatility chart. CBOE
Other financial indicators also moved rapidly as the referendum results came through. On the face of it, the Japanese market suffered a severe shock falling almost 8%. However, the 8% fall in the Japanese stock market is almost exactly matched by an 8% gain of the Japanese yen relative to the pound. Therefore, the net effect for UK-based investors in Japanese equities is close to zero.

The fall in the value of the pound following the Brexit result is also not as bad as it may first appear. The size of the fall was exacerbated by the previous day’s assumption that Remain would win. There is also precedent for a dramatic fall – after the ERM crisis – which proved beneficial for many British exporting companies and arguably helped sustain the economic recovery of the 1990s.

A lower pound benefits companies that add most of the value to their products inside the UK, and companies that sell their produce on international markets. This includes exporters like pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, drinks company Diageo and technology company ARM – all of which saw stock price gains on the morning after the vote. Companies that rely on imports and add little value within the UK will be hardest hit in the short term as they adapt to the exchange rate volatility.

There will undoubtedly be winners and losers from the UK’s decision to leave the EU. But indexes for volatility are already lower than they were in February this year, suggesting that markets are not abnormally worried about the outlook, and UK government borrowing costs are at an all time low. This is further reason to reject the pre-referendum consensus that Brexit would bring economic doom.

Reprinted from The Conversation.

Isaac Tabner

Isaac Tabner is a Senior Lecturer in Finance at the University of Stirling.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

The Weird Hobbesianism of Brexiphobes by Jeffrey A. Tucker

The Weird Hobbesianism of Brexiphobes

People who can't imagine order without imposition always end up favoring power over liberty.The UK "is part of Europe, and always will be,” says Boris Johnson, a leader of the Brexit campaign. Wait. How can you be part of something and not appoint a dictatorial, authoritarian, meddling, pillaging central state – a completely artificial creation having nothing to do with the real history of Europe – to manage it?

It's called freedom. That's how it works. It means the absence of external political restraint on shaping the future.

In the days following the British vote to leave the EU, we’ve seen apocalyptic panic among the opinion classes. The New York Times has published a long series of freak-out pieces about the end of the “postwar liberal order.” Except that there is nothing (classically) liberal about a distant bureaucracy that aspires to centrally plan every aspect of economic life.

Another writer worries that "we will have fewer people coming here, enriching our culture and our lives. There will be fewer opportunities. We will have less of a chance to explore the world for ourselves."

Huh? No bridges have been blown up. Britons can still buy plane tickets. People from abroad can still visit and work. It's not even clear that immigration will change that much. It really depends on what politicians in the UK do next. An untenable political union is under strain and that is all. Now Britain can actually make some political decisions for itself.

But here is the silliest thing I’ve yet seen. Try to wrap your brain around the claim in the Times that Brexit  “may just wipe out laissez-faire economics.” If there is no European-wide government authority, “where does capitalism go now?”

Capitalism? Does the Brussels bureaucracy really embody the essence of the capitalist spirit? What can the writer mean?

Well, you see, Reagan and Thatcher were “globalists,” and the global order was cobbled together in the postwar period under the influence of John Maynard Keynes, who had saved capitalism from being discredited by the Great Depression, and therefore laissez faire (which means leave it alone) owes its very existence to the man who wrote “The End of Laissez Faire.”

Or something like that. There’s no sense in trying to explain all these frenzied mind dumps because they make no sense.

Latent Hobbesianism

Having read a hundred articles warning of the coming Armageddon, I’m trying to understand the underlying source of the mania. True, there were plenty of unsavory types supporting Brexit, people who were driven to leave the EU by racist and xenophobic motives. They might imagine a new and more pure Britain is possible and desirable.

But, this is hardly news. It is not possible for democracy to function without an ugly underside. And people support good policies for bad reasons all the time.

That said, there is something deeper going on here. Some people just cannot imagine the possibility of order emerging without government planning. If there is no central state that can bind everyone, forcing good behavior and unity, surely the results will be an atavistic and chaotic mess. Life will become, in Thomas Hobbes’s words, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

There is a certain tradition of Enlightenment thought that imagined that government serves the one great purpose of cobbling together order in place of the war of all against all of the “state of nature.” Without Leviathan, we would be slitting each other’s throats, and unable to figure out any other way of living. The state, in this view, is the wise planner that can rise above the people’s base instincts and tell us what is best for us. In the most extreme rending of this story, all things must be either forbidden or mandated, with nothing left to chance.

(This same perspective explains so much of domestic politics. People who can't imagine order without imposition always end up favoring power over liberty.) 

Hobbes Was Wrong

Brexit doesn’t establish economic and civil liberty for Britain. But it gives those ideas a chance.But is this really the history of Europe? Remember that Hobbes wrote during the English civil war when vying for control of the state was indeed a violent undertaking. This was not because human beings are incapable of figuring out a better way, but because there was a state there to control in the first place. It was responsible for the moral hazard that unleashed the violence.

The bigger picture of the middle ages through World War I was of small states minding their own business, with people free to move, and trade relations growing ever more sophisticated. States were limited by borders in their geographic jurisdiction and in their internal political power by legal and cultural restraints. The right of exit and the decentralization of power made it all work.

F.A. Hayek was fond of quoting John Baechler: “The first condition for the maximization of economic efficiency is the liberation of civil society with respect to the state…The expansion of capitalism owes its origins and raison d'être to political anarchy.”

By anarchy, he didn’t mean everyone going bonkers. He meant a lack of a centralized authority. The result is not the end of laissez faire but its institutionalization in political habit. That doesn’t mean a turn against “globalization.” It makes international cooperation essential for survival.

Brexit doesn’t establish economic and civil liberty for Britain. But it gives those ideas a chance to escape the EU’s subversion of the classical idea of what Europe is all about. Yes, a post-Brexit Britain could screw it up, especially if the extremes of right and left prevail against an emergent libertarian third way. Brexit is a beginning, not an end.

At least one impediment is out of the way. That’s progress.

Jeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Content for the Foundation for Economic Education and CLO of the startup Liberty.me. Author of five books, and many thousands of articles, he speaks at FEE summer seminars and other events. His latest book is Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World.  Follow on Twitter and Like on Facebook. Email. Tweets by @jeffreyatucker

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Frederic Bastiat's Views on Socialism

Frederic Bastiat on Socialism

See also The History & Mystery of Money & Economics-250 Books on DVDrom and 300 Books on DVDrom for Libertarians, Objectivists and Voluntaryists

Were I called upon to mark the feature which distinguishes Socialism from Political Economy, I should find it here. Socialism boasts of a vast number of sects. Each sect has its Utopia, and so far are they from any mutual understanding, that they declare against each other war to the knife. The atelier social organisé of M. Blanc, and the an-archie of M. Proudhon,—the association of Fourier, and the communisme of M. Cabet,—are as different from each other as night is from day. Why do these sectarian leaders, then, range themselves under the common denomination of Socialists, and what is the bond which unites them against natural or providential society? They have no other bond than this, they all repudiate natural society. What they wish is an artificial society springing ready made from the brain of the inventor. No doubt, each of them wishes to be the Jupiter of this Minerva—no doubt each of them hugs his own contrivance, and dreams of his own social order. But they have this in common, that they recognise in humanity neither the motive force, which urges mankind on to good, nor the curative force, which delivers them from evil. They fight among themselves as to what form they are to mould the human clay into, but they are all agreed that humanity is clay to be moulded. Humanity is not in their eyes a living harmonious being, that God himself has provided with progressive and self-sustaining forces, but rather a mass of inert matter which has been waiting for them to impart to it sentiment and life; it is not a subject to be studied, but a subject to be experimented on.

Political Economy, on the other hand, after having clearly shown that there are in each man forces of impulse and repulsion, the aggregate of which constitutes the social impellent, and after being convinced that this motive force tends towards good, never dreams of annihilating it in order to substitute another of its own creation, but studies the varied and complicated social phenomena to which it gives birth.

Is this to say that Political Economy is as much a stranger to social progress, as astronomy is to the motion of the heavenly bodies? Certainly not. Political Economy has to do with beings which are intelligent and free,—and, as such, let us never forget, subject to error. Their tendency is towards good; but they may err. Science, then, interferes usefully, not to create causes and effects, not to change the tendencies of man, not to subject him to organizations, to injunctions, or even to advice, but to point out to him the good and the evil which result from his determinations.

Political Economy is thus quite a science of observation and exposition. She does not say to men, “I enjoin you, I counsel you, not to go too near the fire;” she does not say, “I have invented a social organization; the gods have taught me institutions which will keep you at a respectful distance from the fire.” No, Political Economy only shows men clearly that fire will burn them, proclaims it, proves it, and does the same thing as regards all other social or moral phenomena, convinced that this is enough. The repugnance to die by fire is considered as a primordial pre-existent fact, which Political Economy has not created, and which she cannot alter or change.

Economists cannot be always at one; but it is easy to see that their differences are quite of another kind from those which divide the Socialists. Two men who devote their whole attention to observe one and the same phenomenon and its effects—rent, for example, exchange, competition—may not arrive at the same conclusion, and this proves nothing more than that one of the two has observed the phenomenon inaccurately or imperfectly. It is an operation to be repeated. With the aid of other observers, the probability is that truth in the end will be discovered. It is for this reason, that if each economist were, like each astronomer, to make himself fully acquainted with what his predecessors have done, as far as they have gone, the science would be progressive, and for that reason more and more useful, rectifying constantly observations inaccurately made, and adding indefinitely new observations to those which had been made before.

But the Socialists,—each pursuing his own road, and coining artificial combinations in the mint of his own brain,—may pursue their inquiries in this way to all eternity without coming to any common understanding, and without the labours of one aiding to any extent the labours of another. Say profited by the labours of Adam Smith; Rossi by those of Say; Blanqui and Joseph Garnier by those of all their predecessors. But Plato, Sir Thomas More, Harrington, Fénélon, Fourier, might amuse themselves with organizing according to their own fancy a Republic, an Utopia, an Oceana, a Salente, a Phalanstère, and no one would ever discover the slightest affinity between their chimerical creations. These dreamers spin all out of their own imaginations, men as well as things. They invent a social order without respect to the human heart, and then they invent a human heart to suit their social order. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Socialist works are crammed with declamations against the rich.

I really cannot comprehend how these schools, so opposite in other respects, but so unanimous in this, should not perceive the contradiction into which they fall.

On the one hand, wealth, according to the leaders of these schools, has a deleterious and demoralizing action, which debases the soul, hardens the heart, and leaves behind only a taste for depraved enjoyments. The rich have all manner of vices. The poor have all manner of virtues—they are just, sensible, disinterested, generous,—such is the favourite theme of these authors.

On the other hand, all the efforts of the Socialists’ imagination, all the systems they invent, all the laws they wish to impose upon us, tend, if we are to believe them, to convert poverty into riches. . . . . . .
Morality of wealth proved by this maxim; the profit of one is the profit of another. . . .

For a list of all of my disks, with links click here

A Christian Speaks Up for Capitalism

A Christian Speaks Up for Capitalism

James D. (“Jim”) Gwartney is one of the best economists and finest gentlemen I know. I’m pleased to dust off and present below an essay he wrote for the Foundation for Economic Education 30 years ago.

A professor of economics and policy sciences at Florida State University and an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute, he is an expert on taxation, labor policy, and the economic analysis of government. He is co-author of Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know about Wealth and Prosperity; the college textbook, Economics: Public and Private Choice; and Economic Freedom of the World.

Jim holds the Gus A. Stavros Eminent Scholar Chair at Florida State University, where he directs the Stavros Center for the Advancement of Free Enterprise and Economic Education. Visit the Stavros Center’s web site and you’ll find a treasure of programs, publications and resources that promote “effective teaching and integration of free enterprise, financial literacy and economic education” into virtually every grade level.

In this August 1986 essay, “A Christian Speaks Up for Capitalism,” Jim points out that “capitalism does not force individuals to worship ‘the almighty dollar.’ A person is as free to be an ascetic Christian as to be a hedonist.”

Capitalism, in spite of the term’s origin as a Marxist pejorative, is the one economic arrangement most compatible with individual freedom of expression in matters of religion, politics, philosophy or anything else, for that matter.

Christians in particular should embrace capitalism — the real thing, not its bastardized version sometimes referred to with the adjective “crony”. Its opposite in so many ways, socialism, is at odds with the core principles Jesus taught, as I explained in my own essay, “Rendering Unto Caesar: Was Jesus a Socialist?”. ~ Lawrence W. Read, president of FEE 

* * * * * 

Christianity and Capitalism as Allies Rather than Enemies

Many Christian leaders—evangelical, mainline Protestant, and Roman Catholic—appear to have a feeling that capitalism is unfair and needs more government intervention to keep it humane. While many of us who are both Christians and economists consider this view misguided, we sometimes lack arguments to help change this view.
I’d like to offer a few.
What I am defending when I speak of capitalism is a social order that provides for the protection of one’s possessions as long as they are acquired without the use of violence, theft, or fraud; and that relies primarily on free-market prices to allocate goods and services—the fundamental social system of the United States.
Here are some reasons why Christians might think more charitably about it:
Capitalism rewards and reinforces service to others. Under capitalism, a person’s income is directly related to his or her ability to provide goods and services that enhance the welfare of others. Business winners are those who figure out what customers want and offer them a better deal than they can get elsewhere.
Moreover, such enterprises put pressure on other businesses to serve customers better—as you know if you have observed how retailers respond to the opening of a new discount store. Of course, people in business do not have to care about other people, as Christians are directed to do. But if they want to succeed, they must serve their customers better than the competition. In essence, competition forces business people to act as if they care about others.
Capitalism provides for the masses, not just the elite. To succeed in a big way under capitalism, you have to produce something that appeals to many people. Henry Ford became a multi-millionaire by bringing a low-cost automobile within the budget of mass consumers. In contrast, Sir Henry Royce died a man of modest wealth. He engineered a far superior car to Ford, the Rolls Royce, but he designed it for the rich. The market rewarded him accordingly.
Capitalism provides opportunity for achievers of all socioeconomic backgrounds to move up the economic ladder. It is no coincidence that poor people around the world flow toward capitalist countries rather than away from them. Poor Mexican laborers risk their lives for work opportunities in the U.S. In Europe, the Soviets built a wall to keep people from the capitalist West. In Southeast Asia, people are drawn to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and other capitalist countries. Why? Because capitalism provides opportunity for those who want to achieve.
In the U.S., previously poverty-stricken refugees are succeeding as restaurant operators, taxicab drivers, and business entrepreneurs. A recent study found that nearly half of the families in the bottom one-fifth of the U.S. income distribution in 1971 made significant moves up the income ladder by 1978. No other system provides more opportunity for advancement, with fewer built-in social rigidities.
Downward movement takes place, too: Riches today do not guarantee success tomorrow. Like the God of Christianity, capitalism is “no respecter of persons.”
Capitalism provides for minority views. When decisions are made politically, minority views are often suppressed. For example, in a public school system the political majority decides whether prayer will be allowed, whether sex education will be taught, and how much emphasis to give to basic skills. Those who do not like the decision must either give in or pay for education twice, once as a taxpayer and once in the form of private tuition.
A market system would allow each minority to get its way. For example, without interfering with others’ freedom, some parents could send their children to schools that allow prayer. Committed Christians, who often find themselves in the minority, should appreciate this aspect of capitalism, which permits people to pursue divergent goals without conflict or rancor.
Even those who accept these strengths may still feel that capitalism is too materialistic. It is true that this system enables people to attain prosperity, and some people get caught up in the pursuit of wealth. But capitalism does not force individuals to worship “the almighty dollar.” A person is as free to be an ascetic Christian as to be a hedonist.
Christians sometimes argue that capitalism promotes inequality, working to the advantage of the rich. Yet inequality is present under all economic systems. The people with better ideas, more creative minds, and more energy will tend to rise to the top in a socialist bureaucracy just as they will in a capitalistic system.
However, elites in a capitalistic system actually have less power than elites in a system where the government predominates. Even in a democracy, elected officials have more power over the lives of others than the wealthiest individuals do. Members of Congress have the power to take a portion of our earnings without our consent, something that David Rockefeller or the Hunt brothers cannot do, no matter how rich they are.
Furthermore, if wealthy individuals use their wealth unproductively—that is, for consumption rather than investment or to supply things other people reject—their wealth will shrink over time. Even a “fat cat” living off stock dividends receives those dividends only if the business provides things that people want.
Of course, capitalism does not impose the moral demands that Christianity does. But economic systems seeking to perfect human nature have more often led to tyranny than to bettering the human race. Christians would do well to settle for an economic system that reinforces Christian virtues, improves living standards, and provides for minority views. Capitalism is such a system.

James D. Gwartney

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

A Celebration of George Orwell

Great audio, I listened to this years ago and I never forgot it. Christopher Hitchens talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about George Orwell. Drawing on his book Why Orwell Matters, Hitchens talks about Orwell's opposition to imperialism, fascism, and Stalinism, his moral courage, and his devotion to language. Along the way, Hitchens makes the case for why Orwell matters.

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/08/hitchens_on_orw.html

Watch Animal Farm (1954 - Cartoon) George Orwell on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0pys7boNro

Read or download Animal Farm at https://archive.org/details/AnimalFarm-English-GeorgeOrwell

Listen to the entire audiobook of Orwell's 1984, something I recommend everyone read, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auwRj4Yru-E

Watch the old 1984 movie at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LiZnuRQmmM

Watch the 1984 version at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJL3pSiC1uc

Read or download 1984 at https://archive.org/details/Orwell1984preywo ("It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

Watch Christopher Hitchens on Why Orwell Matters at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY5Ste5xRAA

Watch also All Art Is Propaganda: Christopher Hitchens on George Orwell - George Packer Interview (2009) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W32BEjvU7QM

Watch George Orwell: A Life in Pictures Full Documentary at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuVYvkdTYWc

Read: 1984 The Book That Killed George Orwell By Robert McCrum

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/may/10/1984-george-orwell

Eric Arthur Blair aka George Orwell by Jeff Riggenbach (1903–1950) Audio at https://mises.org/library/eric-arthur-blair-aka-george-orwell-1903%E2%80%931950

(George Orwell presents us with yet another case of a writer who was not himself a libertarian as we understand the term today, but whose last two novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four, have earned him a place in the libertarian tradition.)

Read transcript at https://mises.org/library/brilliant-confused-radicalism-george-orwell

Orwell’s Big Brother: Merely Fiction? by Murray N. Rothbard

What was Ayn Rand’s stance on George Orwell’s famous novel 1984? by Leonard Peikoff (podcast)

http://www.peikoff.com/2010/09/20/what-was-ayn-rands-stance-on-george-orwells-famous-novel-1984/

My hero: George Orwell by John Carey

Orwell was a truth-teller whose courage and sense of social justice made him a secular saint By John Carey 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/28/my-hero-george-orwell-john-carey

The Connection Between George Orwell and Friedrich Hayek-A tale of two anti-authoritarians by Sheldon Richman 

http://reason.com/archives/2011/12/21/george-orwell-and-friedrich-hayek

Orwell's 1984 Still Matters, Though Not in the Way You Might Think

A Washington, D.C., readathon reminds us that the left once hated this anti-totalitarian classic. by Charles Paul Freund

http://reason.com/blog/2015/01/15/orwells-1984-still-matters-though-not-in

From Spencer's 1884 to Orwell's 1984 by Henry Hazlitt

https://mises.org/library/spencers-1884-orwells-1984

John Stossel: Orwell's Animal Farm & The Political Class

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rHHHz9lERc

5 Ways George Orwell's 1984 Has Come True Since It Was Published 67 Years Ago by Tyler Durden

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-09/5-ways-george-orwells-1984-has-come-true-it-was-published-67-years-ago

From 1944 to Nineteen Eighty-Four by Sheldon Richman

https://fee.org/articles/from-1944-to-nineteen-eighty-four/

From ‘1984’ to ‘Atlas Shrugged’: When the News Boosts Book Sales By Emily Temple

http://flavorwire.com/397422/from-1984-to-atlas-shrugged-when-the-news-boosts-book-sales

Ayn Rand and "1984"

http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/ObjectivismQ&A/0037.shtml

Discussion: Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell with Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW5FHCzsn44

The genius of George Orwell by Jeremy Paxman 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/5453633/The-genius-of-George-Orwell.html

“The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.” ~George Orwell

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Critique of Edward Bellamy's LOOKING BACKWARD by C.A.F. Lindorme 1890

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A Critique of Edward Bellamy's Socialist Science Fiction Book LOOKING BACKWARD by C.A.F. Lindorme 1890

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Modern science, in its application to moral philosophy, it would appear, stands again before the Sphinx of social life, missing the wand to make it speak the releasing word. But what in heathenish antiquity and in Christian revival the eccentricity of an ideal apotheosizing was inadequate to perform for the individual, our strictly scientific arguing accomplishes, by giving the individual its right place in society, and reflecting its responsibility upon the latter. The individual roots with its being in society, and society, as a matter of course, or of equity, enters with its share of responsibility. And as here, to the same degree as with the individual, the maxim obtains, that prophylaxis is preferable to cure, it is in the behaving of society towards the individual, by education, guidance, elevation, that the dire doom is mitigated to which the individual is exposed at the hands of unrelenting fate.

Thus socialism?

Never! Socialism is subjugation, and we want freedom. Socialism forces us into a system. We force unto the freedom of the will. The power by virtue of which socialism pretends to overcome all difficulties is discipline, outward compulsion. The power by which we aim to establish happiness is love, spontaneity. There is no human quality which by socialism is more utterly annihilated than independence. Than independence, mental selfhood, there is no human quality which by our proposition is more apt to develop into gratifying beautiful proportions.

Socialism is right enough in its negative critique. It is an absurdity in its positive propositions of reform. The socialistic theory complains of the actual fetters of society, and to release of these fetters it invents a system the very idea of which is fettering, binding all future development, in a mummification worse than ever were Egyptian castes, upon an invention of the present. The adherents to the socialistic dream revolt against the supremacy of privileged classes bearing down the poor, and the remedy, which their dream of happiness conjures up in their morbidly excited imagination, is an extension of the mental misery from which they suffer to all those who so far escaped the despotism of those privileged classes. The so-called laboring classes, by which illegitimate generalization a special branch, the laborers of manufactory, designate themselves, as though besides themselves laborers there were none on earth, suffer by a tyrannizing industrial system, in which all independence is stunted in the outset by an illimited sway of capital, and the remedy, which they devise against such tyranny, is a system where the very breakfast-table, to begin with, is never more subjected to individual will and pleasure. The industrial laborers rightly criticise the iniquities which are enacted by the power of legalised corporations, and the remedy they plan against these iniquities is, to make out of mankind one single corporation, pick out as the releasing form of human organisation the very organism which is known now as the moil of humanity.

Buy: The Rise of Socialist Fiction, 1880-1914 by H. Gustav Klaus

There is a book out with the title, “Looking Backward,” by Edward Bellamy, which by a superficial critique is considered to be an illustrative strengthening of the socialistic theory.

Nothing more illusory than this opinion. The book, if not explicitly, is implicitly an endorsement of our standpoint. The means of which Bellamy avails himself to make his narrative possible is, what in scientific literary language is called a petitio principii; in his book all the agencies which act toward the desired end are virtuous. Now, then, how do they get so; how is this most desirable of all ends brought about? Bellamy, in order to flatter the socialistic prejudice, gives as cause the taking of society to Socialism. But this is an absurdity, not to say sneaky psychology; it ignores willfully the weighty truth that the freedom of human will, in which and from which only moral reform can be borne, is not a gratis gift of nature, but a conquest of the mind; it lets morality, virtue, instead out of an individual effort of the mind, soul and intellect, result from the establishment of a mere outward form; the highest aim of striving humanity and the deepest intimacy of exerting man, from a petty arrangement of the more inferior points of human life.

There could not have been written a book more convincing, for those who want to see, of the fallacy of the socialistic hypothesis, than “Looking Backward,” by Edward Bellamy, and well may the socialistic leaders, with regard to it, say:

“May friendly fate preserve me of fair friends, 
And I don't fear to face my fiercest foe.”—(Schiller.)

It is an admirable talent which the author of “Looking Backward ” displays, in showing that the socialistic system of utter abolishment of individuality, and of the merging of the same into the uniformity of general equality, in want and affluence, in wealth and penury, in eating and drinking, working and loitering, studying and recreation, is impossible, except by complete elimination from among the springs in society of egoism, and the installation, as sovereign ruling powers, of love and virtue. But there is no greater fallacy than the one on which Bellamy's book rests, that there can be found a system, or that the socialistic system be one, which eliminate egoism from among the springs of society, and establish love and virtue as the ruling power, quite machinalement, without any moral leverage of man. The contrary is the truth. Eliminate egoism from society, establish love and virtue as the ruling powers, and we may leave it as a pastime for lunatics to make systems for society.

Reason Magazine looks at Looking Backward.

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How to Create Starvation in 2016 by Jeffrey A. Tucker

How to Create Starvation in 2016

Look around Venezuela and what you see is the end of everything we call civilization.One of the great achievements of the human mind is having produced a solution to the single greatest challenge of life on earth: getting enough to eat. Shelter and clothing are no brainers by comparison. You find a cave, you snag a pelt, and you are good to go.
But finding food to eat is a daily issue for human beings, never finally solved. You need more than a stock of food; you need a system that produces a continual flow.
In 2016, we finally have such a system in place, one capable of supporting 7.4 billion people. It’s so robust at this point that the developed world has the opposite problem of obesity, which, in the course of social evolution, is a nice problem to have.
The creation of this system – which you can see on display at any grocery store in your own neighborhood – defied the expectations of legions of doubters in the 19th century. Population was booming beyond belief. How would they be fed? Most intellectuals couldn’t imagine how it could happen.
And yet it did. So complex, well developed, and productive is the global market for food that it turns out to be extremely hard to break the system. To create starvation in 2016 requires extraordinary effort. It requires a comprehensive system of coercion that attacks all the institutions that make abundance possible: ownership, international trade, an adaptive price system, the right of commercial innovation.
Socialism Strikes Again 

Such a system does exist, however. It goes by the name “socialism.” It is being tried today in a country that was once wealthy, comfortable, and civilized: a country with the largest oil reserves in the world.
Yes, it seems like fiction. It’s not. In one country in particular, over the course of 16 years of unrelenting destruction of property rights and human rights, step by gruesome step, socialism has resulted in unthinkable scenes of human suffering.
That country is Venezuela. It began under the rule of Hugo Chavez and now continues under the rule of his successor Nicolás Maduro. As bad, grafting, and despotic as their intentions, it is not likely the case that they intended to create starvation. Rather, they sought to bring about all the promises of socialism: fairness, equality, an end to exploitation, justice, and so on. But you look around and what you see instead is the end of everything we call civilization.
I can do no better than to quote at length from the New York Times report from yesterday:

CUMANÁ, Venezuela — With delivery trucks under constant attack, the nation’s food is now transported under armed guard. Soldiers stand watch over bakeries. The police fire rubber bullets at desperate mobs storming grocery stores, pharmacies and butcher shops. A 4-year-old girl was shot to death as street gangs fought over food.
Venezuela is convulsing from hunger.
Hundreds of people here in the city of Cumaná, home to one of the region’s independence heroes, marched on a supermarket in recent days, screaming for food. They forced open a large metal gate and poured inside. They snatched water, flour, cornmeal, salt, sugar, potatoes, anything they could find, leaving behind only broken freezers and overturned shelves.
And they showed that even in a country with the largest oil reserves in the world, it is possible for people to riot because there is not enough food.
In the last two weeks alone, more than 50 food riots, protests and mass looting have erupted around the country. Scores of businesses have been stripped bare or destroyed. At least five people have been killed….
The economic collapse of recent years has left it unable to produce enough food on its own or import what it needs from abroad. Cities have been militarized under an emergency decree from President Nicolás Maduro, the man Mr. Chávez picked to carry on with his revolution before he died three years ago.
“If there is no food, there will be more riots,” said Raibelis Henriquez, 19, who waited all day for bread in Cumaná, where at least 22 businesses were attacked in a single day last week.
But while the riots and clashes punctuate the country with alarm, it is the hunger that remains the constant source of unease.
A staggering 87 percent of Venezuelans say they do not have money to buy enough food, the most recent assessment of living standards by Simón Bolívar University found.
About 72 percent of monthly wages are being spent just to buy food, according to the Center for Documentation and Social Analysis, a research group associated with the Venezuelan Teachers Federation.
In April, it found that a family would need the equivalent of 16 minimum-wage salaries to properly feed itself.
Ask people in this city when they last ate a meal, and many will respond that it was not today.
Among them are Leidy Cordova, 37, and her five children — Abran, Deliannys, Eliannys, Milianny and Javier Luis — ages 1 to 11. On Thursday evening, the entire family had not eaten since lunchtime the day before, when Ms. Cordova made a soup by boiling chicken skin and fat that she had found for a cheap price at the butcher.
“My kids tell me they’re hungry,” Ms. Cordova said as her family looked on. “And all I can say to them is to grin and bear it.”
Other families have to choose who eats. Lucila Fonseca, 69, has lymphatic cancer, and her 45-year-old daughter, Vanessa Furtado, has a brain tumor. Despite also being ill, Ms. Furtado gives up the little food she has on many days so her mother does not skip meals.
“I used to be very fat, but no longer,” the daughter said. “We are dying as we live.”
Her mother added, “We are now living on Maduro’s diet: no food, no nothing.”...
Sugar fields in the country’s agricultural center lie fallow for lack of fertilizers. Unused machinery rots in shuttered state-owned factories. Staples like corn and rice, once exported, now must be imported and arrive in amounts that do not meet the need.
In response, Mr. Maduro has tightened his grip over the food supply. Using emergency decrees he signed this year, the president put most food distribution in the hands of a group of citizen brigades loyal to leftists, a measure critics say is reminiscent of food rationing in Cuba.
“They’re saying, in other words, you get food if you’re my friend, if you’re my sympathizer,” said Roberto Briceño-León, the director of the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, a human rights group.
It was all a new reality for Gabriel Márquez, 24, who grew up in the boom years when Venezuela was rich and empty shelves were unimaginable. He stood in front of the destroyed supermarket where the mob had arrived at Cumaná, an endless expanse of smashed bottles, boxes and scattered shelves. A few people, including a policeman, were searching the wreckage for leftovers to take.
“During Carnival, we used to throw eggs at each other just to have some fun,” he said. “Now an egg is like gold.”...
At the same time, the government also blames an “economic war” for the shortages. It accuses wealthy business owners of hoarding food and charging exorbitant prices, creating artificial shortages to profit from the country’s misery.
It has left shop owners feeling under siege, particularly those who do not have Spanish names.
“Look how we are working today,” said Maria Basmagi, whose family immigrated from Syria a generation ago, pointing to the metal grate pulled over the window of her shoe store.
Her shop was on the commercial boulevard in Barcelona, another coastal town racked by unrest last week. At 11 a.m. the day before, someone screamed that there was an attack on a government-run kitchen nearby. Every shop on Ms. Basmagi’s street closed down in fear.
Other shops stay open, like the bakery in Cumaná where a line of 100 people snaked around a corner. Each person was allowed to buy about a pound of bread.
Robert Astudillo, a 23-year-old father of two, was not sure there would be any left once his turn came. He said he still had corn flour to make arepas, a Venezuelan staple, for his children. They had not eaten meat in months.
“We make the arepas small,” he said.
In the refrigerator of Araselis Rodriguez and Nestor Daniel Reina, the parents of four small children, there was not even corn flour — just a few limes and some bottles of water.
The family had eaten bread for breakfast and soup for lunch made from fish that Mr. Reina had managed to catch. The family had nothing for dinner.
It has not always been clear what provokes the riots. Is it hunger alone? Or is it some larger anger that has built up in a country that has crumbled?
Inés Rodríguez was not sure. She remembered calling out to the crowd of people who had come to sack her restaurant on Tuesday night, offering them all the chicken and rice the restaurant had if they would only leave the furniture and cash register behind. They balked at the offer and simply pushed her aside, Ms. Rodríguez said.
“It is the meeting of hunger and crime now,” she said.
As she spoke, three trucks with armed patrols drove by, each emblazoned with photos of Mr. Chávez and Mr. Maduro.
The trucks were carrying food.
“Finally they come here,” Ms. Rodríguez said. “And look what it took to get them. It took this riot to get us something to eat.”

Sometimes people wonder why people like me are so passionate about free markets and all that they imply. In the end, it is about the quality of life on earth. Will we thrive or will we starve? This is what economics is about. And it is not an abstract problem.
Any country on earth is capable of creating starvation. You only need to follow the path of Venezuela. Attack property rights and trade, pillage the rich, abolish the price system, jail dissenters, crush the opposition, dismantle the system of natural liberty that has fed the world. This is socialism. It is the path to Hell on earth.

Jeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Content for the Foundation for Economic Education and CLO of the startup Liberty.me. Author of five books, and many thousands of articles, he speaks at FEE summer seminars and other events. His latest book is Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World.  Follow on Twitter and Like on Facebook. Email. Tweets by @jeffreyatucker

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

In Loving Memory of Teddy Schmitz, Beloved Shih Tzu Dog

Why The Socialistic State Is Impossible, by Auberon Herbert 1906

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Why The Socialistic State Is Impossible by Auberon Herbert 1906

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1. Because it would presume to tell men and women how they shall employ their faculties, fixing for them the nature of their work, and how much they shall receive.

2. Because it would forbid a man to work in his own fashion, and to employ his faculties for his own best advantage; and as it would be the owner of all means of production and all wealth, it would be able to compel men to accept the terms offered by the State or to starve.

3. Because, if consistently and logically carried out, it would make a State crime of buying and selling; it would allow no man to work for another, or to hire the labour of another; it would do away with private property, or reduce it to the narrowest limits; and it would fight against the natural instincts of men by systems of spying, inquisition, and sharp repression.

4. Because it would consist of an enormous official class, exceeding in number and authority anything that the world has yet seen, with the workers supporting this most unnecessary multitude of privileged persons.

5. Because it would apply one universal system to all persons, good, bad, and indifferent, and would therefore be obliged to submit the good citizen to the same restrictions as were found necessary for the bad citizen.

6. Because, owing to the immense difficulty of feeding, clothing, and employing many millions of persons, and of undertaking to direct every part of their lives, the huge complicated machinery
required for such a purpose would be constantly breaking down and causing great suffering.

7. Because, when all responsibility was shifted from the individual to the State, home and family life would cease, and the State, for its own protection, would regulate marriages and the birth of children.

8. Because it could only be established by bitter fighting; and, if established, it would be destroyed by some form—such as dynamite—of the same force, which it had taught men that they might rightly employ against each other for securing their objects.

9. Because it is founded on an utterly servile and corrupt idea, which can bring neither happiness nor prosperity. It teaches men to give up liberty and self-guidance; to make themselves slaves of each other—under the name of the State; to consecrate the principle of universal compulsion, down to the smallest details of life, in order that they may at once get a larger share of the wealth and comforts which have been created under the system of freedom and private enterprise—wealth and comforts which are already beginning to pass by natural laws to those classes that hitherto have possessed the least, and which will pass far more quickly as we better understand the value of liberty, and get rid of officialism and meddlesome politicians.

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Degeneration Under Socialism by W.E.H. Lecky

The socialist remedies would only bring evils far greater than any they could possibly prevent. The desire of each man to improve his circumstances, to reap the full reward of superior talent, or energy, or thrift, is the very mainspring of the production of the world. Take these motives away; persuade men that by superior work they will obtain no superior reward; cut off all the hopes that stimulate among ordinary men ambition, enterprise, invention, and self-sacrifice; and the whole level of production will rapidly and inevitably sink. The essential differences of men in aptitudes, capacities, and character are things that can never be changed, and all schemes and policies that ignore them are doomed to ultimate failure.

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Socialism Is Not Progress, But Retrogression by Hippolyte Adolphe Taine

The logical creation of a curtailed type of humanity; the effort to adapt the living man to this type; the interference of the public authority in every branch of public endeavour; restrictions put upon labour, exchanges and property; upon the family and education; upon worship, habits, customs, and sentiments; the sacrifice of the individual to the community; the omnipotence of the State: such is the Jacobin theory. None could be more retrograde; for its object is to bring the modern man back to social forms which, for eighteen centuries, he had already passed through and left behind him.

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The Fallacy of Socialism by Guy M Walker 1921

The Fallacy of Socialism by Guy Morrison Walker 1921

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“The essential weakness of Socialism is that in destroying the incentive for improvement and progress, it destroys the possibility of improving the condition of the ignorant and mediocre and that in its efforts to cheat extraordinary ability out of a fair compensation, it robs itself of all benefit that it would derive from the exercise of the gifts of its most intelligent individuals.

Practically every law that has been passed in response to popular clamor against wealth has been to declare criminal some practice that was economically sound and morally just in an effort to handicap the efficient and economical operations of able men and give the incompetent, the little and the mean, an opportunity to live off the necessities of the poor.

Whether the law of competition be good or evil, it is here. Evolution is competition. We must recognize it and adjust ourselves to it. To attack wealth is to attack thrift. Equality is found only among savages."

       
In Praise of Guy Morrison Walker, excerpted from the Kentucky Law Journal 1922:

There was a time when a brave heart was needed to champion the cause of labor. Today organized labor has become a mighty force, emphatic in its demands, and of sufficient numerical power to enforce its determinations.

The modern iconoclast defends wealth. Such a stand denotes at least originality of thought. For that reason, aside from the merit of his work, Guy Morrison Walker's, "The Things That Are Caesar's" is especially interesting.

Most of us are surfeited with labor propaganda. Laborers, toilers ourselves, we are full of the food of our own thoughts. Compelled to work for our daily bread, taught to envy the holders of money bags, it is difficult for us to see the capitalist's side of the labor question. To such as we, Guy Morrison Walker's defense of wealth presents a new angle to an old problem, a clear challenge to thought and reflection. We may not agree with the book in its entirety; we must agree that it is timely, convincing, and absorbingly interesting.

The author has written a strong preface. He admits the difficulties in the path of one who would approach the problem of capital and labor. It is universal, omnipresent, and as yet unsolved. But the author believes he has found the solution and with the conviction of one who, as he says, "writes between successive operations with the fear of approaching death" he seeks to speak nothing but the truth. He asks us to consider his work in the nature of a dying declaration.

The book opens with a study of the beginning of wealth. Two men of the Stone Age kill, divide, and devour a wild fawn. One, gorged to capacity, seeks a nearby stream, drinks, and sleeps. The other, with the memory of his two-day hunger still upon him, hides the offal of his share in a neighboring tree-fork. Two days later, unfortunate in their search for game, they seek the scene of their former killing. As the older man, who has saved a portion of his meat, ravenously devours it, the younger begs for a share. "Give me half of the meat that you have saved and when my hunger is satisfied and my strength renewed, I will go hunting and give you half of my next kill." But the older man continues to satisfy his hunger. When he has finished, he pushes over the remainder of the meat to the younger man and strikes a bargain on these terms.

"The saving of the uneaten portion of the fawn was the beginning of wealth, and the use of it to save the starving young man, the beginning of capitalism, while the hunting of the younger hunter to repay the debt he owed to the older, who had fed him when he was starving, was the beginning of the wage system."

Thus did man begin to lay up the surplus of today's labor for tomorrow's rainy day. Gradually men found that by saving the fruits of summer, they could escape the pangs of hunger in winter, that by simple inventions, they could lessen their labors, that by increased exertion at certain seasons, they could have leisure at other times for study, thought, and pleasure.

But a certain part of the population of every tribe lived from hand to mouth, from day to day, from meal to meal. They accumulated no surplus. And they envied their betters. One man wanted the wealth that belonged to another. The same inequalities are with us today.

The author takes as his major premise the proposition that wealth is created "not by labor but by brains." "Social philosophers have ignored the most extraordinary thing that makes for human inequality and that is, the diversity of ability and quality in the human mind."

The most graphic illustration in the whole book is under this topic. The building of the tunnel under the Hudson is cited. A New York newspaper sent a reporter there to write a story of the work. "It was curious," he says, "to note the purely mechanical stroke of the crowbar and shovel, the workmen simply went faithfully through the motions that they were hired to make, not one of them worked as if he had an interest in the job, yet not one was lazy or shirking. The engineers, however, showed the intensest interest, a nervous, high-strung devotion, as if brain and heart were all in the enterprise." Not an ounce of energy did the laborers expend in thinking! The brains of the engineers were on fire! The most valuable element in the accumulation of wealth is not labor but brains.

The book throws aside the modern doctrine of socialistic, community wage systems, where each man works for a like wage, like hours, at a common speed, and reiterates the old doctrine of competition.

"Whether the law of competition be good or evil, it is here. Evolution is competition. We must recognize it and adapt ourselves to it. The law of competition has operated and will continue to operate to insure the survival of those who have best developed the habits of work."

The author closes with a pertinent question, "What did ignorance and poverty ever produce?" Wealth builds our railroads, erects our factories, it won the late war. It is the surplus laid aside by the provident of the race. It prevents famine and preserves stability. It insures progress!

What is the hope of Labor? What is the author's solution to the problem? Walker believes that Labor should create a surplus. Labor should add interest, education, and above all brains to its physical tasks. Laborers should not be automatons but thinking, planning, creators of wealth, always saving a surplus, that they too may become capitalists, each in his own ability.

The book is a notable achievement in a needed line of thought. It can be read in two hours; it will be remembered a [hundred years from now].

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