THE FREE MAN’S LIBRARY

Acton, Lord. Essays on Freedom and Power. Beacon Press. 1948. 452 pp.

Lord Acton (1834-1902) is chiefly remembered today through a single quotation: “All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But he was one of the most deeply learned men of his time, and recognized as few have ever done the true nature and value of liberty. It is, he declared, “not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.”

His lifelong object was to write a great “History of Liberty,” but he immersed himself so deeply in reading and research that he never lived to complete it. Only two essays resulted from all this laborious preparation: “The History of Freedom in Antiquity” and “The History of Freedom in Christianity.” Both are included in this collection selected by Gertrude Himmelfarb, who contributes an excellent introduction. In the opinion of F. A. Hayek, the tradition of true individualism is most perfectly represented in the nineteenth century in the work of Alexis de Tocqueville in France and Lord Acton in England.

Acton, Lord. The History of Freedom and Other Essays. Macmillan. 1907. 638 pp.

An earlier collection of Acton’s essays.

Adams, John. The Political Writings of John Adams. Edited by George A. Peek, Jr. Liberal Arts Press. 1955. 223 pp.

John Adams’ enduring title to fame was his grasp of the principles of republican conservatism. He “vindicated with vigor and consistency such basic ideas of the American Constitution as the balanced and limited powers of the government, the right of the minority to protection against the tyranny of the majority and the inseparable connection between liberty and property.... The heart of the second President’s political philosophy is summed up in one brief sentence in his Defense of the American Constitution. ‘Power is always abused when unlimited and unbalanced.’”—William Henry Chamberlin, in The Freeman.

Allen, C. K. Law and Orders. London: Stevens. 1946. 385 pp.

An inquiry into the nature and scope of delegated legislation and executive powers in England. “In this scholarly study Dr. Allen, who holds to the liberal view of the state, wrestles with the problem of how a proper balance between the legislative and executive powers in Britain’s government can be restored and maintained.”—Foreign Affairs. The book is valuable for Americans because this problem of balance has become even more serious for us than for Britain.

Allen, C. K. Bureaucracy Triumphant. Oxford University Press. 1931. 156 pp.

“This little collection of essays is highly instructive to both the lawyer and legislator and while its references are solely to the situation as it exists in England, its lesson is one that might well be heard in the United States.”—S. H. Hofstadter, in Columbia Law Review.

Anderson, Benjamin M. Economics and the Public Welfare. Van Nostrand. 1949. 602 pp.

An economic and financial history of the United States from 1913 to a little beyond the end of World War II. I take the liberty of quoting from my own foreword to the book: “[Anderson’s] The Value of Money [1917] is one of the classics of American economic writing.... The present work is destined to take a similar rank among American economic and financial histories. It is already the outstanding economic and financial history for the period it covers.... Few economic histories have ever interlaced theory and interpretation so completely and successfully with the record of the facts.... Its sense of drama, its unfailing lucidity, its emphasis on basic economic principles, its recognition of the crucial roles played by outstanding individuals, its realistic detailed description of the disastrous consequences of flouting moral principles or of trying to prevent the forces of the market from operating, combine to give this book a sustained readability seldom found in serious economic writing.”

Andrews, Matthew Page. Social Planning by Frontier Thinkers. Richard R. Smith. 1944. 94 pp.

A satire on social planning and planners by an historical scholar. It consists in large part of quotations from recent writings by so-called “advanced thinkers.”

Angell, Norman. The Great Illusion. Putnam. 1911.

Several years before the outbreak of World War I, Norman Angell challenged the then almost universally accepted theory that military and political power give a nation commercial and social advantages. He contended that the wealth of our modern world is founded upon credit and commercial contract which vanishes before an invading host and leaves nothing to reward the conqueror, but involves him in its collapse. His theme, in brief, was that nobody wins a modern war. “It may be doubted whether, within it entire range, the peace literature of the Anglo-Saxon world has ever produced a more fascinating or significant study.”—A. S. Hershey, in American Political Science Review, 1911.

Angell, Sir Norman. After All: The Autobiography of Norman Angell. Farrar, Straus and Young. 1952. 370 pp.

“Although Sir Norman is wholly unconscious of this, the picture is of a rarely elevated and noble life. Besides the record of that life, this book is enriched by Sir Norman’s reflections—veritable little essays in some cases—on a wide variety of topics ... [including] The Incredible Gullibility of Believers in Freedom under Socialism.”—Max Eastman, in The Freeman.

Angell, Norman. The Public Mind. Dutton. 1927. 232 pp.

“A stimulating book.... Its importance to Individualists lies in the emphasis it indirectly gives to the desirability of restricting State action to spheres in which popular passion and prejudice, and the ability of politicians to exploit them can have least effect.”—PI.

Anshen, Ruth Nanda (ed.). Freedom: Its Meaning. Harcourt. 1940. 686 pp.

A symposium in which forty-one contributors have expressed their views on what freedom means to them. The volume runs to over a quarter of a million words. The contributions reflect little consistency with each other in viewpoint or philosophy.

Arendt, Hannah. Origins of Totalitarianism. Harcourt. 1951. 477 pp.

A search by a German-born author and scholar for the deeper roots of anti-semitism, imperialism, and totalitarianism. Virginia Kirkus called it “a highly serious and commanding study.” One reviewer objected to it on the ground that “too much of her interpretation is taken from the particular experience of Germany”; and another reviewer on the ground that: “She attempts to give scholarly support to the increasingly widely held dictum that Soviet Communism is nothing but Red fascism.”

Aristotle. Politics. 330 B.C. Many editions. 337 pp.

In his introduction to the 1920 Oxford edition (translated by Benjamin Jowett), H. W. C. Davis reminds us that this classic embodies “theories of perennial value, and refutations of fallacies which are always re-emerging.” There is a brilliant answer to Plato’s proposals to abolish private property and to communize wives and children.

Ashton, E. B. The Fascist: His State and Mind. Putnam. 1937. 320 pp.

“Helps one to understand the system of ideas ruling our enemies and the differences which separate their minds from ours.”—F. A. Hayek.

Ashton, T. S. The Industrial Revolution. Oxford University Press. 1948. 167 pp.

For at least a century (in part under the influence of Karl Marx) most of the economic historians have portrayed the Industrial Revolution as a catastrophe which caused the working class untold misery and brought about a sort of economic and spiritual Age of Darkness. In this remarkable little book Dr. Ashton, professor of economic history at the University of London, with more careful scholarship presents the Industrial Revolution as what it was—an achievement which, through the application of science to industry and the increased use of capital, led not only to a rapid growth of population but to a rise in the real incomes of a considerable section of the working class. Dr. Ashton stresses the intellectual and economic as well as the technical aspects of the movement. (See also his contribution to Capitalism and the Historians, listed under F. A. Hayek.)

Austin, Bertram H., and Lloyd, W. F. The Secret of High Wages. Dodd. 1926. 124 pp.

In 1925, at a time of great industrial depression in Britain, the authors, two English engineers, came to the United States in an effort to discover the secret of our unprecedented prosperity. Their inquiry was mainly concerned with the causes of high wages in industry combined with low cost of production. The book was originally a confidential report, but was published following a suggestion from the City Editor of the London Times.

Backman, Jules. Wages and Prices. Irvington, N. Y.: Foundation for Economic Education. 1947. 88 pp.

An excellent statistical reference work on the levels and relationships of wages, prices, costs and profits in recent years. The author points out how these facts are ignored or misread by those who are trying to fix or change wages and prices by force. The evils of price-control, labor monopolies and currency inflation are dealt with incidentally.

Bagehot, Walter. Physics and Politics. 1869. Several editions. (Knopf. 1948.) 230 pp.

An original and penetrating study of the impact of science and invention on politics, and of political institutions on knowledge. Bagehot shows how in the early history of mankind blind obedience to usage and custom seemed necessary to social cohesion and survival, but after the transition from the principle of status to that of contract was finally achieved, it was liberty that ensured the greatest social strength and progress. “As soon as governments by discussion have become strong enough to secure a stable existence, and as soon as they have broken the fixed rule of old custom, and have awakened the dormant inventiveness of men, then, for the first time, almost every part of human nature begins to spring forward.... And this is the true reason of all those panegyrics on liberty which are often so measured in expression but are in essence so true to life and nature. Liberty is the strengthening and developing power.”

Bagehot, Walter. The English Constitution. 1867. Oxford University Press. 1933. 312 pp.

This classic work was the first to make clear the real nature of the British constitution in its modern development. That constitution is not based, as Montesquieu thought, on the “separation of powers,” but, on the contrary, on “the close union, the nearly complete fusion, of the executive and legislative powers.” In this respect Bagehot contrasted the British and American constitutions to the disadvantage of the latter. As the preservation of ordered liberty depends upon the existence of a sound political system, Bagehot’s book deserves the close study of Americans as well as Englishmen. He was a brilliant stylist as well as a brilliant thinker.

Bagehot, Walter. Economic Studies. 1880. Stanford, Calif.: Academic Reports. 1953. 236 pp.

The essays in this book mainly elaborate classical English laissez-faire economics. They deal with Adam Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, “the late Mr. Mill,” and such subjects as “The Postulates of English Political Economy” and “The Growth of Capital.” “Bagehot, Editor of The Economist, was one of the finest thinkers and writers of his time. He was always an advocate of individual and commercial freedom. His best known books are on the English Constitution and Lombard Street.”—PI.

Bailward, W. A. The Slippery Slope and Other Papers. London: Murray. 1920. 236 pp.

“A collection of essays and articles written over a period of twenty years during which the author was engaged in Poor Law and charitable administration. By ‘the slippery slope’ is meant the path of least resistance in dealing with social problems, that is, the path of pauperism and Socialism.”—PI.

Bailward, W. A., and Loch, C. S. Old Age Pensions. 1903.

“A well-argued case against old age pensions. Its interest is chiefly historical, but it might well be read by students interested in the history of ideas.”—PI.

Baker, John R. Science and the Planned State. Macmillan. 1945. 120 pp.

Dr. Baker, a lecturer in zoology at Oxford University, contends that central planning and direction of scientific research do more to inhibit than to promote the growth of true scientific knowledge and discovery.

Barber, Thomas H. Where We Are At. Scribner’s. 1950. 255 pp.

The author, who has been a lawyer, city official, and cowpuncher, describes his book as “a guide for enlightened conservatives.” He urges removal of all price-fixing, subsidies and special group privileges and return to a free market economy.

Bastable, C. F. The Theory of International Trade. 1897, etc. Macmillan. 197 pp.

This short book, which first appeared in 1897, long held the field as the standard exposition of the “classical” theory of foreign trade and policy. It is balanced, vigorous and lucid, and uncompromisingly defends freedom of trade. Bastable’s “principal conclusion as to conduct” is that “Governments in their dealings with foreign trade should be guided by the much-vilified maxim of laissez faire. To avoid misinterpretation, let it be remembered that the precept rests on no theory of abstract right, or vague sentiment of cosmopolitanism, but on the well-founded belief that national interests are thereby advanced, and that even if we benefit others by an enlightened policy, we are ourselves richly rewarded.”

Baster, A. S. J. The Little Less. London: Methuen. 1947. 161 pp.

A witty and well-informed little book on “the political economy of restrictionism.” It consists mainly of a satiric history of the “lunatic years” in Great Britain between 1919 and 1939, when various ingenious devices were introduced by which everybody expected to get a little more for producing a little less. The story is told under the separate chapter headings of Producing Less, Growing Less, Working Less, Transporting Less, and Trading Less. There are also chapters on The Politics of Restrictionism and The Political Economy of Freedom.

Bastiat, Frédéric. Economic Sophisms. 1843-1850. Many editions. 2 vols. 548 pp. 564 pp.

“Bastiat, a friend of Cobden, was opposed to all descriptions of public waste and government interference. Both by his writings and by his action as a politician, he waged unceasing war against Bureaucracy, Protection and Socialism. The book cited above gained a great reputation; it is very witty and written in an attractive style. The Petition of the Candlemakers against the sun, which interfered with their industry, is well known. Each short study attacks some economic error, or pleads for the removal of some restrictions. The truth to be brought out is often enforced by dialogue or some other lively method. Bastiat was an optimist. His view was that the various human impulses and activities would, under free competition and an honest and peaceful government, result in steady progress and increasing prosperity and happiness. This was the theme of his Harmonies Économiques, of which only the first volume appeared owing to his untimely death.

“His complete works with introductory biography were published in France in 1855 shortly after his death. They include many brilliant pamphlets and articles against the fallacies of State Socialism and Communism, which were rampart in Paris in the last years of Bastiat’s life.”—PI.

“In Sophismes Économiques we have the completest and most effective, the wisest and wittiest exposure of protectionism and its principles, reasonings, consequences which exists in any language. Bastiat was the opponent of socialism. In this respect also he had no equal among the economists of France.”—Encyclopedia Americana.

Bastiat, Frédéric. The Law. 1850. Irvington, N. Y.: Foundation for Economic Education. 1950. 75 pp.

A separate publication of a new translation (by Dean Russell) of one of Bastiat’s most famous pamphlets. “Law,” Bastiat maintains, “is solely the organization of the individual right of self-defense which existed before law was formalized. Law is justice.” But the law has been perverted, and applied to annihilating the justice it was supposed to maintain. Protectionism, socialism and communism are all forms of legal plunder.

Baudin, Louis. L’Aube d’un Nouveau Libéralisme. Paris: Librairie de Médicis. 1953. 220 pp.

An acute, scholarly, documented, but extremely readable account of “the dawn of a new liberalism”—a liberalism resting economically on faith in the free market and politically on individual freedom within a proper framework of law and morals. On pages 144 to 150 the author presents a useful survey of the literature of “neo-liberalism” and mentions several French-language works not included in the present bibliography.

Baudin, Louis. Les Incas du Pérou. Paris: Librairie de Médicis. 1947. 188 pp.

A shorter study of the same subject that Professor Baudin covered so thoroughly in his L’Empire Socialist des Incas, in 1928. When the Spaniards overcame the Incas of Peru they found that a socialist society had existed there in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries more totalitarian than perhaps any other known to history. Baudin analyzes this society and shows the consequences of that total socialization, many of which have remained with the native Indian population to the present day—the complete suppression of family sentiment, the immobilization of the individual, the disappearance of initiative and foresight, the complete petrifaction of life, the creation of a slave mentality. The book is written with great lucidity and vigor. Professor Baudin has a final chapter discussing the lessons of the empire of the Incas for our own time.

Beaulieu, P. Leroy. Collectivism. London: Murray. 1908. 343 pp.

“An important analysis and criticism of Collectivism. That progress has always followed the substitution of individual ownership for collective ownership is clearly brought out. The relatively simple example of collective ownership in land is first dealt with and industrial collectivism is then examined. Schäffle’s Quintessence of Socialism is taken as the only available source of information on the practical application of Collectivism, and yet Leroy Beaulieu succeeds in proving its inherent incapability of performing its duties mainly by quotations from the book itself.”—PI.

Beck, James Montgomery. Our Wonderland of Bureaucracy. Macmillan. 1933. 290 pp.

A study, by a former Solicitor General of the United States, of the growth of bureaucracy in the federal government, and its destructive effect upon the Constitution.

Benda, Julien. The Treason of the Intellectuals. Morrow. 1928. 244 pp.

This celebrated book first appeared in France under the title La Trahison des clercs. “That the intellectuals of the world have sold out to utilitarianism, leaving their proper devotion to truth and humanity, is the theme of Julien Benda’s scorching analysis of the current leaders of thought. By taking on political passions, the intellectuals have played the game of the state, espoused war and conflict and lost that universalism which is their true reason for existence.”—World Tomorrow.

Greatly needed today is a study with a title and theme similar to Benda’s, which would not only cover developments in the twenty-five years since his book appeared, and describe the intellectual and sometimes quite literal treachery of some present-day physical scientists, but would cover the whole drift of our litterateurs and other intellectual leaders over the last three-quarters of a century into a sentimental socialism—including Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and the Webbs in England, Anatole France in France, and the corresponding figures in Germany and America. It would be important to analyze not merely individual figures but the mob psychology of our modern intellectuals and the ease with which they were blown about by the fashionable winds of doctrine.

Benham, Frederic, and Boddy, F. M. Principles of Economics. Pitman. 1947.

A textbook intended for an introductory course, to provide “the simple tools of modern economic analysis.” Considerable attention is also given to the effects of government intervention upon a capitalistic system.

Benn, Sir Ernest. Confessions of a Capitalist. London: Hutchinson. 1925. 287 pp.

“A telling defense of individual initiative.”—London Financial News. “A book which is unique in economic literature. Sir Ernest’s pen is as vivid as his mind is fearless and independent.... He tells us the most intimate details of his business.... The whole is accompanied by a running line of argument on the fundamental problems of economics, which is set out so skillfully as to be as entertaining and arresting as the autobiographical details.”—Lionel Robbins.

Benn, Sir Ernest. The Return to Laisser Faire. London: Ernest Benn. 1928. 221 pp.

An argument against the extension of governmental activity and interference in England and a plea for a return to individualism. Public aid to housing and the growing burden of bureaucracy are special targets. Even reviewers hostile to the author’s thesis paid tribute to “the entertaining style, the caustic wit, the arresting illustration.”

Benn, Sir Ernest. The State the Enemy. London: Ernest Benn. 1953. 175 pp.

The author reviews the British experiment in state intervention and socialism all the way from Lloyd George, who inherited a budget of £100 million, to Attlee, who left it at £4,000 million, and sums up the record of failure: “Nationalization has not brought the expected smile to the face of the worker, full employment has not encouraged production, the management of money has not improved its quality; in fact, all the anticipations of the original Fabian Essays, the bases of modern Socialism, have proved disappointing, if not entirely fallacious.” The style is lively, witty and aphoristic.

Bentham, Jeremy. Works. Edited by John Bowring. 1838-1843. Edinburgh: Tait. 11 vols.

“A considerable amount of Bentham is still worthy of study. He may be considered as the philosophic founder of modern British democracy. He held that the State exists to promote the individual happiness of the citizens who compose it and that ministers are the servants of the electors. For our purposes, the more important works are: (1) A Fragment on Government (1776), (2) Defense of Usury (1787), (3) An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789). As a Utilitarian, an Individualist, and a reformer of laws and institutions, he deserves more attention than he now receives. Bentham is, like Locke, influential, but known chiefly through the work of his pupils and disciples.”—PI.

Bentham, Jeremy. Defense of Usury. 1787. Many editions. 232 pp.

Jeremy Bentham, whose reputation has hitherto been that of a moralist, a founder of Utilitarianism, a logician, a great political and legal philosopher and reformer, was also, it is now being discovered, an outstanding economist. Until very recent years, by far the greater part of Bentham’s economic work was completely unknown—locked up in chaotic and illegible manuscripts. The Royal Economic Society commissioned Dr. W. Stark to make a closer scrutiny of this material, which in 1952 was published in three volumes under the title Jeremy Bentham’s Economic Writings (London: Allen and Unwin).

The Defense of Usury, however, which is included in these volumes, was published in 1787 and acquired immediate celebrity. Bentham was a great admirer of Adam Smith, whom he called “the father of political economy” and “a writer of consummate genius.” But he was not an uncritical admirer, and in the Defense of Usury, which he published eleven years after the appearance of The Wealth of Nations, he ventured to take the master to task for his inconsistency in approving so-called anti-usury laws while opposing government price-fixing in practically every other field.

“The liberty of bargaining in money matters,” wrote Bentham, is “a species of liberty which has never yet found an advocate.” Yet “fixing the rate of interest, being a coercive measure, and an exception to the general rule in favor of the enforcement of contracts, it lies upon the advocates of the measure to produce reasons for it.” Examining the reasons that had been offered, Bentham rejected them as invalid, and proceeded to explain the positive “mischiefs” done by the anti-usury laws. He concluded that there is “no more reason for fixing the price of the use of money than the price of goods.”

Bentley, Elizabeth. Out of Bondage. Devin-Adair. 1951. 311 pp.

In this autobiographical account Miss Bentley, an American college girl, describes how she entered the Communist party, took part in its secret underground for ten years, and later collaborated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation after she left the party. Although her story on its appearance was ridiculed by some reviewers as “school-girlish” and “phoney,” many of her most startling charges have been confirmed by later investigation.

Berger-Perrin, René. Vitalité Libérale. Paris: Éditions SÉDIF. 1953. 93 pp.

M. Berger-Perrin is Secretary General of L’Association de l’Enterprise à Capital Personnel. “After a quarter of a century of the predominance of authoritarian and collectivist ideas,” he writes, “liberal thought today is reappearing with increased force and profundity.” To prove this he has put together a little anthology of excerpts from more than fifty writers—French, English, American, German, Norwegian, Swiss, Dutch, Mexican, etc. These include not only economists, but sociologists, historians, journalists, and businessmen.

Berlin, Isaiah. Historical Inevitability. Oxford University Press. 1954. 79 pp.

The main purpose of this lecture is to consider a tendency which has, in the West, been growing since the eighteenth century, to regard human history as the product of impersonal “forces” obeying “inexorable” laws; with the implied consequence that individual human beings are seldom responsible for bringing about situations for which they are commonly praised or blamed, since the real culprit is “the historical process” itself—which individuals can do little to influence. “A magnificent assertion of the reality of human freedom, of the role of free choice in history.”—London Economist.

Blum, Walter, and Kalven, Harry, Jr. The Uneasy Case for Progressive Taxation. University of Chicago Press. 1953. 107 pp.

“Progressive-tax theory has been due for an overhauling, and the authors do a highly competent job.... The work is distinguished by penetrating analysis, comprehensive coverage of sources, and excellent documentation.... Rates high honors in the field.”—Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen von. Karl Marx and the Close of His System. 1896, etc. London: Unwin. 221 pp.

Until the appearance of Socialism by Ludwig von Mises (q.v.), this was by far the best criticism of the economics of Karl Marx. For the points that it covers—chiefly the fallacies of the Marxian labor theory of value—it is still superb, unanswerable, and irreplaceable.

Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen von. The Positive Theory of Capital. 1888. (Macmillan. 1891.) 428 pp.

One of the most brilliant and original contributions—if not the most brilliant and original—ever made to the theory of capital and interest. Böhm-Bawerk, declares the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, “was at a very early age one of the first to accept the teaching of Karl Menger, giving all his powers to the development and the defense of the subjective theory of value: it is to him that both the success and the formulation of the theory are largely due.” According to Frank W. Taussig, The Positive Theory of Capital “is a landmark in the development of thought. As an intellectual performance, there are few books on economics in any language that can be ranked with it. One may not agree with all that is said, but the book bears the unmistakable impression of a great mind.”

Bowley, A. L. The Division of the Product of Industry. The Change in the Distribution of the National Income, 1880-1913. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1919. 1920. 60 pp. 27 pp.

“The Socialist case obtains support primarily through the existence of a widespread idea that wealth is so unfairly distributed that a large and permanent improvement in the material condition of the working classes could be obtained merely by means of a redistribution.... These two works attempt to determine, by a careful examination of all the existing relevant data, what the true position is. The following quotations, although not fairly indicating the nature of Professor Bowley’s conclusions, show the immense importance of these essays to those who believe that social amelioration is to be sought along the lines of redistribution.

“Discussing the problem of an advance in the scale of wages, he says: ‘In the majority [of industries] no such increase as would make possible the standards of living now urgently desired, and promised in the election addresses of all the political parties, could have been obtained without wrecking the industry.’

“As regards the change in distribution over the thirty-three year period analyzed, he says: ‘The constancy of so many of the proportions and rates of movement found in the investigation seems to point to a fixed system of causation and has an appearance of inevitableness.’—The Change in the Distribution of the National Income, 1880-1913.”—PI.

Bowley, A. L., and Stamp, Sir Josiah. The National Income. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1924. 1927. 59 pp.

“The general conclusion of this book is that comparing the years 1911 and 1924, the real Social Income of [Britain] was very nearly the same at the two dates, and that although real income per head had fallen a little, distribution had altered slightly in favor of the manual worker. After allowing for taxation, there was definitely less real income available in the hands of the rich for saving or expenditure, and whilst luxurious expenditure by the rich had diminished, a good deal of income was available for cheaper amusements. The standard of living of the employed working classes had clearly risen.”—PI.

Bowley, A. L. Wages and Income in the United Kingdom Since 1860. Macmillan. 1938. 151 pp.

“Professor Bowley is to be congratulated on publishing this short résumé of a lifetime’s research into wages and incomes.... A comprehensive and systematic guide.”—London Economist. “The best reference on wage and employment indices is to the outstanding work of A. L. Bowley.”—Joseph A. Schumpeter.

Bradford, Gov. William. Of Plymouth Plantation. 1622. (Knopf. 1952.) 448 pp.

When the Pilgrim Fathers landed on the shores of Massachusetts they established a communist system of land holding and cultivation, and were soon brought to a state of famine. The governor of the colony, in his contemporary account, describes how they finally decided that they “should set corne every man for his owne perticuler ... and so assigned to every family a parcell of land.” The result was an immediate transformation in their habits of industry; and at the next harvest, “instead of famine, now God gave them plentie ... so as any generall wante or famine hath not been amongest them since to this day.”

Brandt, Karl. Reconstruction of World Agriculture. Norton. 1945. 416 pp.

An exiled German scholar, now professor of agricultural economics at the Food Research Institute of Stanford University, surveys the history of world agriculture and food supply from the beginning of the first European war to the present, and offers suggestions and programs for libertarian agricultural policies in the postwar world. “This book, by one of the world’s foremost agricultural economists, should be required reading for all post-war planners.”—E. deS. Brunner, in the Political Science Quarterly.

Brant, Irving. Life of James Madison. Bobbs-Merrill. 1941. 1950. 4 vols.

“A very comprehensive biography; thoroughly reliable as well as readable.”—Felix Morley. “The third volume of Brant’s Madison is a magnificent study of one of our greatest statesmen at the climax of his career ... and a startlingly original account of that much-discussed document, the Constitution of the United States.”—Douglass Adair, in the New York Herald Tribune.

Bresciani-Turroni, Constantino. The Economics of Inflation. 1931. London: Unwin. 1937. 464 pp.

Inflation not only wipes out the purchasing power of savings but always constitutes a threat to economic liberty. This is the most comprehensive and authoritative account of the great German inflation from 1914 to 1923. As Lionel Robbins writes in his foreword: “It was the most colossal thing of its kind in history: and, next probably to the Great War itself, it must bear responsibility for many of the political and economic difficulties of our generation. It destroyed the wealth of the more solid elements in German society: and it left behind a moral and economic disequilibrium, apt breeding ground for the disasters which have followed. Hitler is the foster-child of the inflation.”

Bright, John. Speeches on Questions of Public Policy. Macmillan. 1878.

“Eloquent expositions of public policy on many subjects. The principles are Individualistic, favoring peace, free trade and public economy on the lines of his friend Richard Cobden.”—PI.

Bromfield, Louis. The Farm. Harper. 1933. 346 pp.

A novel, probably in part autobiographical, dealing with the fortunes of four generations of a family living on a farm in northern Ohio. It begins in 1815 and ends a century later. “Surpasses many sociological treatises in insight.”—Wilhelm Röpke.

Bromfield, Louis. Pleasant Valley. Harper. 1945. 302 pp.

Partly autobiographical reminiscence, and partly an exposition of the author’s theories of farming and farm life. He relates how, after many years spent abroad, he returned to his native Ohio and there built up a new home and a new way of life founded on the old ways of the pioneer American farmer. Mr. Bromfield puts great stress on the virtue of self-reliance in a climate of economic liberty.

Bromfield, Louis. A New Pattern for a Tired World. Harper. 1953. 314 pp.

“Vigorously written by an obviously sincere and devoted American, who is neither isolationist nor suspected on any other score, but who profoundly believes that the key to our future existence and our future happiness lies in improving our economic status and the economic status of our neighbors by achieving the ultimate in free trade.”—C. W. Weinberger, in San Francisco Chronicle.

Brookings, R. S. Industrial Ownership. Macmillan. 1925. 107 pp.

“The Economic Emancipation of Labor” is suggested by the author as an alternative title for this book. It deals principally with the remarkable tendency toward diffusion in the ownership of property taking place in the United States, a movement that Professor Carver regarded as “an economic revolution.”

Brookings Institution. Economics and Public Policy. Washington, D. C. 1955. 157 pp.

These are the Brookings Lectures for 1954 as delivered by four American economists, Arthur Smithies, Joseph J. Spengler, Frank H. Knight and Jacob Viner, and by two British economists, John Jewkes and Lionel Robbins. Two of the lectures bear especially on the subject of the present bibliography. Professor Knight’s lecture on “Economic Objectives in a Changing World” is instructive, but rather for the questions it raises than for those it answers. Professor Robbins’ lecture on “Freedom and Order” is lucid and illuminating.

Brutzkus, Boris. Economic Planning in Soviet Russia. London: Routledge. 1935. 234 pp.

An acute discussion, by an exiled Russian economist, of the difficulties and problems of central economic planning. It is especially valuable because the author combines theoretical insight with a wide factual knowledge of Russian conditions. He explains, for example, why the great Dnieprostroy dam and hydroelectric plant, the prewar pride of Soviet Russia, was not justified economically.

Bryce, James. The American Commonwealth. Macmillan. 1888, etc. 2 vols. 743 pp. 963 pp.

A classic work on the American political and social system, written half a century after de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and surpassed only by that work insofar as their fields overlap. Viscount Bryce declared that his purpose, unlike de Tocqueville’s, was less to discuss the merits of “democracy” than “to paint the institutions and people of America as they are.” In this he succeeded far beyond any native observer of the time. His interpretations are made from the standpoint of the liberal tradition.

Brynes, Asher. Government Against the People. Dodd, Mead. 1946. 265 pp.

“A scholarly and well written study of the growth and development of the police systems in Russia, Great Britain and the United States as illustrative of a basic factor making for war or peace in the modern world.”—F. R. Dulles. The author contends that where people are free, the police force is decentralized, limited in scope, and nonpolitical.

Buber, Margarete. Under Two Dictators. Dodd, Mead. 1951. 331 pp.

In 1925 the author and her husband, Heinz Neumann, deposed leader of the German Communist party, went to Moscow to translate for the Comintern. In 1937 her husband was arrested and she never saw him again. She herself was arrested the next year. Her book is the account of her sufferings in the Soviet slave camp of Karaganda, and in the Nazi concentration camp at Ravensbruck, where she spent five years. In 1945 she was liberated by the American Army. “This book can destroy the last outposts of the Soviet apologists in the West. It should be read by all the fellow-travelers, the Stalinoids, the double-standard ‘liberals’ and the phoney ‘progressives’ who have acted as Stalin’s stooges when humanity needed every decent man and woman to defend itself against the onslaughts of those who thirst for concentrated power.”—Peter Blake, in The New York Times.

Buckley, William F., Jr. God and Man at Yale. Regnery. 1951. 240 pp.

A recent Yale graduate examines and criticizes the teaching of religion and economics at his university. As John Chamberlain sums up in his Introduction, Mr. Buckley concludes that the values inculcated at Yale “are agnostic as to religion, ‘interventionist’ and Keynesian as to economics, and collectivist as applied to the relation of the individual to society and government.” Of the five chapters in the book, the most important for the purposes of this bibliography is the second, “Individualism at Yale,” in which the author takes telling quotations from the leading textbooks used in Yale undergraduate economics courses to prove his case that the teaching is dominantly collectivist. What broadens the significance of this chapter is the probability that a like case could be made out against the economics teaching in many other leading American universities today.

Budenz, Louis F. The Techniques of Communism. Regnery. 1954. 342 pp.

“The present book,” declares the author in his Introduction, “is an analytical and critical study of Communism. It deals with Communist ideology, strategy, and ‘movement’ as presented by the Marxist-Leninist classics themselves and by current Communist documents and directives.... It analyzes Communist activities as the Communist is instructed to carry them out.”

Various chapters deal with the communist philosophy and apparatus; communist phraseology (“Aesopian language,” involved “scientific” argumentation, double-talk, definitions turned on their heads, and the Big Lie technique); the strategy and tactics of communism; the training of communists; the role of the communist press; and various other methods of affecting public opinion and infiltrating unions, the schools, minority groups, and government agencies. There is a final chapter on “How to Fight Communism.” The book is vigorous, clear and carefully documented. Every Congressman, high government official, and newspaper editor ought to master the lessons it contains.

Budenz, Louis F. This Is My Story. Whittlesey. 1947. 379 pp.

The former managing editor of The Daily Worker, the American organ of the Communist party, describes how he joined the party in 1935, served in various editorial capacities, became for six of his ten years with the party a member of the Communist National Committee, broke and was converted to Catholicism in 1945.

Budenz, Louis F. Men Without Faces. Harper. 1950. 305 pp.

Here the former high-ranking communist, who returned to the Roman Catholic Church in 1945, discusses the operations of the Communist party in the United States, describes in detail the methods it employed, and accuses it of forming a fifth column directly under the control of Soviet Russia. In a chapter on “The Capture of the Innocents” he explains how “some of our best minds are moved around by the Communists like pawns.” “The master key to the Soviet conquest of the United States,” he concludes, “might well be our own complacency.”

Budenz, Louis F. The Cry Is Peace. Regnery. 1952. 242 pp.

An exposure of the Soviet “crusade for peace” and a criticism of American “appeasement” policies. “This is by all odds one of the best available books on the important subject of the Communist conspiracy against the United States.”—W. H. Chamberlin.

Buer, Mabel C. Health, Wealth and Population: 1760-1815. London: Routledge. 1926. 290 pp.

“A critical contribution to the study of economic history. Its importance is wider than the ... title would suggest, and it is a book with which all students of social history should be acquainted. Miss Buer holds that the Industrial Revolution has become the ‘villain of the drama of economic history’ through the habit of ‘writing history backwards’; she shows that the positive assertion at the end of the period by Francis Place that the habits and conditions of the working classes showed a great improvement on their condition half a century previously, was amply justified.... The period was one of enterprise and experiment in social betterment in many spheres, and one in which philanthropy and benevolence ‘were never more assiduously preached’ and practiced. This attitude is contrasted with the extreme callousness on the part of the governing classes in the previous century.”—PI.

Burckhardt, Jakob. Force and Freedom: Reflections on History. Pantheon Books. 1943.

Jakob Burckhardt (1818-1897), a Swiss historian and humanist, was one of the great individualist philosophers of the nineteenth century. His profound and searching mind foresaw the coming of collectivism. “People today,” he wrote in 1875, “feel lost and they shudder if they are not together in their thousands.” He predicted the coming of the Mussolinis, Hitlers and Stalins: “My mental picture,” he wrote in a letter in 1889, “of those terrible simplificateurs who will one day descend upon our old Europe is not an agreeable one. In my imagination I can visualize these ruffians in the flesh.” The present book is the first English translation of a collection of short pieces. It contains a valuable introduction by James Hastings Nichols. “It is a book which ranks among the classics of historico-political writing, comparable to Edmund Burke, de Tocqueville and Fustel de Coulanges.”—Karl Lowith, in the Journal of Philosophy.

Burgess, John W. The Reconciliation of Government with Liberty. Scribner’s. 1915. 394 pp.

A scholarly study of modern constitutional government in Europe and America. The author, who was dean of the faculty of political science at Columbia University, saw in the tendency to increase the authority and functions of those holding public office a very real menace to liberty. “We are further away today from the solution of the great problem of the reconciliation of government and liberty,” he wrote in 1915, “than we were twenty years ago.”

Burgess, John W. Recent Changes in American Constitutional Theory. Columbia University Press. 1923.

Dr. Burgess takes the position that any movement contrary to limiting the powers of government and defining and guaranteeing individual liberty is in the wrong direction. The book traces the development of constitutional law between 1898 and 1918.

Burke, Edmund. Works. Oxford University Press. 6 vols.

“The man who to me seems to be one of the greatest representatives of true individualism.”—F. A. Hayek. “To do Burke justice, it would be necessary to quote all his works; the only specimen of Burke is, all that he wrote.”—William Hazlitt. For individualists, however, the most important and most representative of his works are: Thoughts on the Present Discontents (1770); address To the Electors of Bristol (1774); the speech on Conciliation with America (1775); and Reflections on the French Revolution (1790). Even William Hazlitt, who was vehemently opposed to Burke’s stand on the French Revolution, said: “In arriving at one error, Burke discovered a hundred truths.”

Burnham, James. The Coming Defeat of Communism. John Day. 1950. 278 pp.

The author believes that communism can and will be defeated, and without large-scale war—if the western nations, and particularly the United States, follow some such plan of action as he presents. Even reviewers who refused to accept this plan acknowledged the skill and brilliance of Burnham’s writing.

Burnham, James. The Web of Subversion. John Day. 1954. 248 pp.

A study based on examination of the records of Congressional investigations since 1948 of communist underground networks in the U. S. Government. “It would be less than just to call Mr. Burnham’s new book a good digest of an enormous amount of material, deftly arranged, and neatly presented. It is indeed that, to begin with—but it is also a penetrating analysis which reveals the pattern of the fatal web spread for us by traitors and their associates.”—Joseph McSorley, in the Catholic World.

Bye, Raymond T. Principles of Economics. Crofts. 1941. 632 pp.

A well-known college textbook that presents the free enterprise point of view.

Cairnes, J. E. The Character and Logical Method of Political Economy. Macmillan. 1857. 229 pp.

John Elliott Cairnes (1823-1875) in his day held an authority in economics second only to that of John Stuart Mill, and is usually regarded as the last of the English classicists. The book here listed represents the part of his work that is still most alive; it deserves far more study than it gets. Another leading work was The Slave Power (1862), in which Cairnes expounded the inherent disadvantages of slave labor and helped to turn British opinion in favor of the North in the American Civil War. He accepted laisser faire in government economic policy “not as based on a scientific doctrine ... but as the surest and most practical rule of conduct.”

Calhoun, John C. A Disquisition on Government. 1851. (Included in Calhoun: Basic Documents. State College, Pa.: Bald Eagle Press. 1952. 329 pp.)

Calhoun (1782-1850) openly defended slavery as a positive good, and frankly repudiated the doctrine of human equality as expressed in the Declaration of Independence. This fact has thrown into undeserved neglect his brilliant defense of States’ rights and the rights of minorities. “Calhoun was concerned with one of the permanent problems of government; and whatever one may think of the practical results of his logic, it should be recognized that the theoretical analysis which he presented in his Disquisition on Government was a contribution to political theory of permanent importance. The protection of minority rights had been one of the main objectives of the American Constitution.... The powers of the Federal government must be limited, and a minority section must be allowed to block action detrimental to its interests.”—Henry Bamford Parkes, in The United States of America: A History.

Cannan, Edwin. Wealth. 1914, etc. Staples Press. 292 pp.

“One of the best expositions of the elements of economics ever published. It is much more than a textbook; it is the result of deliberate and original thought by a master economist able to see his subject in perspective and distinguish the most essential and relevant considerations.... It might well be made a sort of Individualist’s bible, more especially because it does not advocate Individualism or any other system of social organization.... It is nevertheless true that nearly all Collectivist proposals obtain support through the existence of misconceptions which an understanding of this book would dispel.”—PI.

Cannan, Edwin. History of the Theories of Production and Distribution. London: King. 1924. 422 pp.

“A critical account of the writings of the classical economists. The study of an acute history of economic theory such as this will prove useful to those who wish to acquire the ability to detect the many fallacies that lurk in discussions of economic problems by politicians and popular writers. Apart from this, the book is useful as a work of reference and the summing up in the last chapter should be read by all. The last sentence of the book is worth quoting as representing Prof. Cannan’s views in 1903, when the second edition was published. ‘[The economist] is certain to disagree frequently with both Socialist and Individualist fanatics, who support and oppose changes, not on their merits, but according to the opinion they have formed, often on wholly insufficient grounds, as to their being movements towards or away from their ideal.’”—PI.

Cannan, Edwin. Money. 1918, etc. Staples Press. 136 pp.

This little work was projected as a supplementary chapter to the same author’s Wealth. It is a model of lucidity and economic reasoning, and particularly good in explaining the connection between monetary policy and rising and falling prices. Although I would dissent from one or two of its conclusions, it seems to me to be still the best book on money of its length. It has gone through more than eight editions.

Cannan, Edwin. An Economist’s Protest. London: King. 1927. 438 pp.

A collection of papers written over fourteen years. “Nothing that has been published in recent years will do so much to clarify doctrine and promote a grasp of essentials in Economics; while amateurs of literature, who are commonly repelled by an economic title, will find in the collection much that will hold its own among the classics of controversial literature.”—London Times Literary Supplement.

Cannan, Edwin. A Review of Economic Theory. London: King. 1929. 448 pp.

A lively but authoritative history of economic theory. It begins with the ideas of ancient and medieval philosophers and discusses the doctrines of the classical economists and others up to the time of the book’s publication.

Cannan, Edwin. The Economic Outlook. London: Unwin. 1912. 312 pp.

F. A. Hayek writes of the essays in this book, as well as those in An Economist’s Protest (1927), that they “deserve, even now, renewed and wider attention, and translation into other languages. Their simplicity, clarity and sound common sense make them models for the treatment of economic problems, and even some that were written before 1914 are still astonishingly topical.” Among the pupils of Edwin Cannan who have since exerted considerable influence are Sir Theodore Gregory, Lionel Robbins, F. C. Benham, W. H. Hutt and F. W. Paish.

Cannan, Edwin. Coal Nationalisation. London: King. 1919. 36 pp.

“This is a précis of evidence given before the Sankey Commission. Only parts were read aloud by the Chairman, who obviously failed to grasp its importance and relevance. Professor Cannan concluded that nationalization would not benefit the taxpayer, the consumers of coal or the miners themselves. As he indicated, the Commission and the Government had ‘apparently decided “that something must be done” before finding out whether they knew of any remedy better than the disease.’”—PI.

Carlson, Oliver. Handbook on Propaganda. Los Angeles: Foundation for Social Research. 1953. 110 pp.

The purpose of this handbook is “To make available to alert citizens in all walks of life ... some basic facts about propaganda—what it is—how it functions—and how to combat it.” There is a discussion of the vehicles of propaganda, and separate chapters on nationalist and internationalist, racist, government, collectivist and communist propaganda.

Carr-Saunders, Sir Alexander M. The Population Problem. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1922. 516 pp.

“This is thought by some to be the most important book dealing with the problem of numbers of mankind that has appeared since the days of Malthus.”—PI.

Carver, T. N. The Present Economic Revolution in the United States. Little, Brown. 1926. 270 pp.

“Professor Carver foresees the beginning of a new economic revolution in the world, which appears to be developing first in the United States of America, as the Industrial Revolution came first in England at the close of the eighteenth century. R. Boeckel and R. S. Brookings had already called attention to this movement, but this is the work of the Professor of Political Economy at Harvard.... ‘It is just as possible [he writes] to attain equality under Capitalism as under any other system,’ and in consequence, ‘The apostles of discontent are being robbed of their thunder....’ This study of an Individualist society is one of the most suggestive writings on Individualism that exists.”—PI.

Carver, T. N. Essays in Social Justice. Harvard University Press. 1915. 429 pp.

——. Principles of National Economy. Ginn. 1921. 773 pp.

Other works which expound Professor Carver’s vigorous individualistic free enterprise philosophy.

Cassel, Gustav. From Protectionism Through Planned Economy to Dictatorship. London: Cobden-Sanderson. 1934. 26 pp.

This lecture, by an eminent Swedish economist who died in 1945, is included in this list (in violation of my general rule against including pamphlets) because it points out, with a persuasiveness, power and compactness surpassed by no other writer, how “planned economy,” long enough continued, must lead to despotism. “The leadership of the State in economic affairs which advocates of Planned Economy want to establish is, as we have seen, necessarily connected with a bewildering mass of governmental interferences of a steadily cumulative nature. The arbitrariness, the mistakes and the inevitable contradictions of such policy will, as daily experience shows, only strengthen the demand for a more rational coordination of the different measures and, therefore, for unified leadership. For this reason Planned Economy will always tend to develop into Dictatorship.” Cassel explains this process step by step. “If we allow economic freedom and self-reliance to be destroyed,” he goes on to point out, “the powers standing for Liberty will have lost so much in strength that they will not be able to offer any effective resistance against a progressive extension of such destruction to constitutional and public life generally.”

Catlin, George. The Story of the Political Philosophers. Whittlesey. 1939. 802 pp.

Reviewing this book in The New York Times (Jan. 7, 1940) I wrote: “In dealing with successive political philosophers it presents their biographies and their theories in judicious proportions. It is written with wit and humor and contains some arresting characterizations. It is learned, crowded, discursive, allusive, but it is not always clear.” Felix Morley calls it: “An encyclopedic study, gracefully written and useful to all who are interested in political theory.”

Cecil, Lord Hugh. Liberty and Authority. London: Edward Arnold. 1910. 70 pp.

“A brief and thoughtful plea for ordered liberty; the ideal is a society held together not by coercion, but ‘by the spontaneous cohesion of virtuous wills.’”—PI.

Chamberlin, William Henry. America’s Second Crusade. Regnery. 1950. 372 pp.

The author describes this work as an attempt “to examine without prejudice or favor the question why the peace was lost while the war was won.” It is a brilliant and well-documented history of the blunders and misconceptions that were responsible for Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam, and led to a “peace” that mainly realized the aims of Russian communism and totalitarianism at the expense of the aims, or of what should have been the aims, of a democratic and freedom-loving America.

Chamberlin, William Henry. Collectivism: A False Utopia. Macmillan. 1937. 265 pp.

“Mr. Chamberlin comes vigorously to the defense of democratic institutions, with all their faults. He regards fascism and communism as similar examples of a collectivist state, and argues that progress is possible in the long run only on the basis of political liberty and wisely controlled individual enterprise.”—Springfield Republican.

Chamberlin, William Henry. The Russian Revolution. Macmillan. 1935. 2 vols. 511 pp. 556 pp.

“What Mr. Chamberlin, Moscow correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor from 1922 to 1934, has done with admirable clarity and scrupulous objectivity is not so much to offer sensational new judgments as to knit and co-ordinate a positively staggering amount of information based on source material, much of which had not previously been examined by scholars in this field, and to marshal the confused events of 1917-1921 in orderly fashion, giving chapter and verse for every important statement of fact or opinion.”—Books.

Chambers, Whittaker. Witness. Random House. 1952. 808 pp.

This is Whittaker Chambers’ own account of his life, of the Hiss-Chambers trial, and of his connection with the Communist party and his repudiation of it. It is powerfully and eloquently written. Chambers joined the Communist party primarily for emotional and quasi-religious reasons and left it because of his religious conversion. This points to the one serious shortcoming of the book, which is its failure to understand or to explain adequately the economic case against communism and in favor of freedom.

“The name of the author, the theme of his work, the nature of our times all conspire to make this volume one of the most significant autobiographies of the twentieth century.”—Sidney Hook, in The New York Times.

“This is a great book; one of the greatest written by a contemporary American.... Whittaker Chambers has composed an ‘apologia pro vita sua’ ... [and] also one of the best and most readable accounts of life both in the ‘open’ Communist Party and in its auxiliary underground organizations.... The Communist Party, in America as in every non-Communist country, is a criminal conspiracy, with its members pledged to stop at nothing, espionage or sabotage, murder or treason, which will advance the interests of the foreign power, the Soviet Union, to which Communists everywhere are blindly subservient.”—W. H. Chamberlin, in Human Events.

Chance, Sir William. The Better Administration of the Poor Law. London: Sonnenschein. 1895. 260 pp.

“Sir William Chance has written several books on Poor Law administration, all from an emphatically Individualist standpoint. In the above he wrote: ‘The principles which underlie the grant of Poor Relief which it—the Poor Law Relief Report of 1834—lays down are good for all time. Had the Poor Law been administered since 1834 strictly on those principles ... pauperism would probably have been reduced to a negligible quantity.’”—PI.

Chodorov, Frank. One Is a Crowd. Devin-Adair. 1952. 176 pp.

Reflections of an individualist.

Clapham, J. H. An Economic History of Modern Britain. Cambridge University Press. 1926. 623 pp.

“An understanding of the laissez-faire and early industrial period is much needed. In this learned work Dr. Clapham, a leading authority, exposes ‘the legend that everything was getting steadily worse for the working man down to some unspecified date between the drafting of the People’s Charter and the Great Exhibition.’ This legend seems to have been largely responsible for a tendency to a kind of unconscious Socialist bias in economic and social thinking, and it has, with a few exceptions, been spread by economic history textbooks. Knowles’ Industrial and Commercial Revolutions in the Nineteenth Century is the most notable exception. Dr. Clapham’s contribution represents the culmination of a reaction which has come in recent years as a result of modern historical research. (See also: George. London Life in the 18th Century. Buer. Health, Wealth and Population (1760-1815). Talbot Griffiths. Population Problems in the Age of Malthus. Vaughan Wilkins. Sidelights on Industrial Evolution.)”—PI.

(See also in this bibliography T. S. Ashton, F. A. Hayek, etc.)

Clark, Colin. Welfare and Taxation. Oxford: Catholic Social Guild. 1955. 80 pp.

Dr. Clark, the eminent Australian statistician and economist, now Director of the Institute of Research in Agricultural Economics at Oxford, argues in this little book that the tax rate in Britain is reducing incentives, productivity, and national income, and points out that even those with lower incomes are really paying for their own “free” social services. He concludes that we should “give the State, not the maximum, but the minimum of powers and duties.... Concentration of political power is always dangerous.... We should realize that, if we go on building up the power of the State ... giving it more and more control over every detail of our lives ... we create a State which will not merely tax us to excess but eventually enslave us completely.”

Clark, Fred G. Magnificent Delusion. Whittlesey. 1940. 152 pp.

An analysis of present economic and social ills in America, based on the thesis that we are in danger of losing our democracy through over-insistence on humanitarianism, the idea that the government owes all of us a living. “Mr. Clark has made an effective case.”—Nicholas Roosevelt.

Clark, F. G., and Rimanoczy, R. S. How We Live. Van Nostrand. 1944. 39 pp.

A short, clear, and vigorous primer on how the capitalist system works. The authors emphasize the importance of capital accumulation—the constant need for more and better tools to increase man’s ability to utilize natural resources and so to increase his material welfare. The same authors have written other primers: Money, How to Be Popular Though Conservative, and How to Think About Economics.

Clark, John Bates. The Distribution of Wealth. Macmillan. 1899. 445 pp.

A work of epoch-making importance: a theory of wages, interest and profits which seeks to show that “free competition tends to give to labor what labor creates, to capitalists what capital creates, and to entrepreneurs what the coordinating function creates.” It is thus indirectly an answer to the socialist contention that under competitive capitalism labor is “exploited” and “workmen are regularly robbed of what they produce.” “It is not too much to say,” wrote the economist Henry R. Seager in 1900, “that the publication of Professor Clark’s Distribution marks an epoch in the history of economic thought in the United States. Its inspiration, its illustrations, even its independence of the opinions of others, are American; but its originality, the brilliancy of its reasoning and its completeness deserve and will surely obtain for it a place in world literature.”

Cobden, Richard. Speeches on Questions of Public Policy. London: Unwin. 1908. 2 vols.

“Cobden [1804-1865] was of all English statesmen the most powerful and persuasive exponent of the Individualistic view of Government. See his Life by John Morley.”—PI.

Cole, Franklin P. They Preached Liberty. Revell. 1941.

Significant excerpts from the sermons of New England ministers during the late Colonial period.

Collingwood, R. G. The Idea of History. Oxford University Press. 1946. 339 pp.

“With the death of R. G. Collingwood in 1943 British philosophy lost one of its most distinguished minds. His most original work grew out of his reflections on the special characteristics of historical thinking.”—Manchester Guardian.

Communist International. Blueprint for World Conquest. Washington: Human Events. 1946. 263 pp.

This is designed to serve as a warning to anti-communists of the plans and tactics that they must learn to combat. It contains the theses and statutes of the Communist International, as adopted at the second world congress at Moscow in 1920; the program of the Communist International as adopted by the sixth world congress at Moscow on Sept. 1, 1928, and the constitution and rules of the Communist International. There is an introduction by William Henry Chamberlin.

Constant, Benjamin. De l’Esprit de Conquête. 1813. Paris: Librairie de Médicis. 1947. 68 pp.

Benjamin Constant (1767-1830) was the author of a celebrated autobiographical novel, Adolphe. He was the lover of the famous Madame de Staël and later acquired an infatuation for Madame Récamier. The literary and amorous side of his career has unfortunately overshadowed his prophetic contributions in support of liberalism and freedom of the press, especially his De l’esprit de conquête et de l’usurpation, directed against Napoleon. In 1829 he wrote: “For forty years I have defended the same principle: liberty in everything, in religion, in philosophy, in literature, in industry, in politics; and by liberty I mean the triumph of individuality, as much over the authority that seeks to govern by despotism as over the masses who claim the right to enslave the minority to the majority.” An English translation of Conquest and Usurpation was published by Reynal & Hitchcock in 1941.

Constitution of the United States. 1787.

“The American Constitution,” wrote Gladstone, “is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.” The first ten amendments, which constitute the Bill of Rights, are a charter of human liberties which has served as a model to mankind. (See Hamilton, Madison, Farrand, Norton.)

Cooley, Charles Horton. Life and the Student. Knopf. 1927. 273 pp.

A volume of aphoristic wisdom on human nature, society, and letters which deserves to be far more widely known than it is. It recalls the notebooks of Emerson and Thoreau, and will stand comparison with them. It is not a systematic defense or exposition of the philosophy of individualism, but every page breathes the spirit of that philosophy. Some individual paragraphs alone would justify including the book in the present bibliography. For example: “There are three irrefutable reasons why views that seem dangerous, unpatriotic or otherwise abominable should be freely expressed. 1: Discussion is the only way to modify or control them. 2: It is the only way to mobilize conservative views in order to combat them intelligently. 3: They may be right.”

Cornuelle, Herbert C. Mr. Anonymous. Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers. 1951. 212 pp.

A biography of William Volker, who rose from a penniless German immigrant in 1871 to a millionaire businessman in 1906. What was most remarkable about him, however, was not his rise from “rags to riches” but his determination to live according to the Golden Rule. “A man with money,” he declared, “is to be pitied if he cannot give it away.” So firm was his attitude against any sort of public recognition of his many selfless charities that it was not until after his death in 1947 that “Mr. Anonymous” could be identified as William Volker. Mr. Cornuelle’s story is written with simple directness and has the readability and charm of an Horatio Alger novel. Indeed, the real hero of this story resembles in many respects—in diligence, industriousness, ambition, austere living, kindness, goodness, and belief in the American system of opportunity—one of Alger’s fictional heroes.

Cortney, Philip. The Economic Munich. Philosophical Library. 1949. 262 pp.

Philip Cortney is a prominent businessman (president of Coty, Inc., and of Coty International) who has been a life-long student of economics. This book falls into three main parts. The first is an analysis and a rejection of the International Trade Organization Charter (signed by the United States at Havana) on the ground that its ratification would restrict international trade and undermine the individual competitive system. The second part is an illuminating analysis of the causes of the 1929 depression. The final part is an incisive refutation of Keynesian fallacies. The author is not only an eloquent defender of economic liberty but reveals a rare skill in dissecting the specific policies and ideas that constitute the greatest threat to it.

Counts, George S., and Lodge, Mrs. N. P. Country of the Blind: The Soviet System of Mind Control. Houghton Mifflin. 1949. 378 pp.

A study of the way in which the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party controls Russian cultural and intellectual life by rigid surveillance and direction of literature, drama, music, science, and education. Its long quotations from the actual texts of Committee resolutions and directives make it heavy going at times, but supply the authentic source material.

Cowling, Donald J., and Davidson, Carter. Colleges for Freedom. Harper. 1947. 180 pp.

A study of the purposes, practices and needs, and an evaluation of the place of the private liberal-arts college in American life, and a program for its independent survival.

Cox, Harold. The Capital Levy: Its Real Purpose. Westminster: National Unionist Association. 1923. 71 pp.

“The Capital Levy has never been definitely renounced by the Labor Party as an item of its program. If a favorable opportunity arises in the future it may yet again become a live political issue. Mr. Harold Cox’s book is largely a criticism of what is perhaps the most formidable defense of the levy, namely, that by Dr. Hugh Dalton. There is also a very useful chapter summarizing the experiences of six foreign countries. The author’s conclusion is that ‘All six countries tell the same story. In each case the levy was tried as a means of escaping from a financial debt which threatened the nation with bankruptcy. In no case have the results achieved justified the departure from sound methods of finance.’”—PI.

Cox, Harold. Economic Liberty. Longmans, Green. 1920. 263 pp.

“A series of lucid essays by a thoroughgoing Individualist. The keynote is found in the preface. The essays, it is claimed, are all inspired by one purpose—the desire to defend economic liberty against the attacks made upon it by men and women who think they can secure progress by various schemes for curtailing freedom. ‘Liberty,’ it is admitted, ‘can be abused, but it is the business of the community to prevent this abuse, not to destroy the liberty.’ And ‘It does not follow that the best form of restraint is the employment of the power of the State.’”—PI.

Creel, George. Russia’s Race for Asia. Bobbs-Merrill. 1949. 264 pp.

A warning—which proved to be completely in vain—that if the United States, by sins of omission or commission, allowed the Chinese communists to gain a victory over the National government of Chiang Kai-shek, it would put Russia in a position of mastery over half the world’s population.

Croce, Benedetto. Historical Materialism and the Economics of Karl Marx. Macmillan. 1914. 188 pp.

A collection of essays on the philosophical aspects of Marxism. Marx borrowed a great deal from Hegel, and yet reacted from him. The distinguished Italian philosopher here tries to separate the true from the false in Marx’s particular form of Hegelianism and anti-Hegelianism.

Croce, Benedetto. Politics and Morals. Philosophical Library. 1945. 204 pp.

A collection of essays by a distinguished Italian philosopher. Included are: Liberalism as a Concept of Life, Free Enterprise and Liberalism, and The Bourgeoisie: An Ill-defined Historical Concept. The last, a critique of a German book The Bourgeois Mind in France, is particularly instructive.

Crossman, Richard (ed.). The God that Failed. Harper. 1949. 273 pp.

This is a collection of essays by former communists or communist sympathizers explaining the history of their disillusionment. The contributors include former “initiates”—Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone, Richard Wright—and former “worshippers from afar”—André Gide (presented by E. Starkie), Louis Fischer, and Stephen Spender. Some of the contributions are more interesting psychologically than for any light they throw on economic or political philosophy. Several of the disillusioned communists have remained socialists.

Crowther, Samuel. Time to Inquire. John Day. 1942. 353 pp.

This seeks to answer the question: “How can we restore the freedom, opportunity, and dignity of the average man?”

Cunningham, W. The Growth of English Industry and Commerce. Vol. 1: Early and Middle Ages. Fifth edition. 1922. Vol. 2: Modern Times. Sixth edition. 1922: Part 1, Mercantile System; Part 2, Laissez-faire. The Industrial Revolution. 1922. (A reprint of sections from the Mercantile System and Laissez-faire.) Cambridge University Press. 3 vols. 1,679 pp.

“Standard works on economic history. Archdeacon Cunningham was one of the founders of economic history as a regular branch of study in the Universities. The most important of his other works are: Progress of Capitalism in England (second impression, 1925); and Western Civilization in Its Economic Aspects. (1924. Fourth impression. 2 vols.)”—PI.

Curtiss, William Marshall. The Tariff Idea. Irvington, N. Y.: Foundation for Economic Education. 1953. 80 pp.

Dr. Curtiss carefully analyzes the principal arguments for protective tariffs and disposes of them. He also points out that the protective tariff philosophy is the source of a host of other political and economic errors.

Dallin, David J. The Real Soviet Russia. Yale University Press. 1944. 1947. 325 pp.

An acknowledged authority, who was himself a member of the Moscow soviet from 1918 to 1921, analyzes the communist tyranny. The first edition appeared in 1944, when Russia was still America’s “ally” in the war against Germany. Dallin tries to show the workings of the huge apparatus of government, of the secret police, of the Army, and of the party within the party of peasants and workers. He emphasizes the contempt of the Russian leaders for human life and suffering.

Dallin, David J. Soviet Espionage. Yale University Press. 1955. 558 pp.

“Undoubtedly the major work on Soviet spy activities.”—Igor Gouzenko, in The New York Times.

Dallin, David J., and Nicolaevsky, Boris I. Forced Labor in Soviet Russia. Yale University Press. 1947. 331 pp.

“A conscientiously documented and appalling report on slave labor in the corrective camps that the Soviet secret police runs for the government.”—New Yorker.

Dark Side of the Moon. Anonymous. With a preface by T. S. Eliot. Scribner’s. 1947. 299 pp.

An account, written anonymously, of what Soviet Russia did to the Polish people when, as a result of the 1939 pact with Germany, the NKVD entered Poland, arrested thousands, and deported them to labor camps in Siberia. “One of the most affecting and important books published in many years.... Revelation of how the Soviet pattern of life is imposed upon a conquered people.”—Harry Schwartz, in the Political Science Quarterly.

Davenport, H. J. The Economics of Enterprise. Macmillan. 1913. 544 pp.

“One may glean from this book only a moderate reflection of one of the greatest classroom teachers Cornell University ever had—one of those rare persons, able to use the Socratic method masterfully. Before concentrating on Economics, H. J. Davenport had first become accomplished in English, mathematics, law and logic—a rich background from which he taught.

“A jealous guardian of economic discipline founded in logic, his work strongly upheld the precepts of individualism. To him any such concept as the ‘social organism’ was anathema. And from that base he went on to develop the concept of the processes of the market at their best, in terms of human freedom. He defined the science of economics as ‘little more than a study of price and of its causes and its corollaries.’ Price was, to him, central to all economics. And that meant price freedom for individuals. Without freedom of pricing, therefore, economics was not operative. He therefore disclaimed all theoretical sympathies with the Socialists, whom he considered to be, in fact, the ultraconservatives.”—F. A. Harper.

De Jaegher, Raymond J., and Kuhn, Irene C. The Enemy Within. Doubleday. 1952. 314 pp.

An eyewitness account, by a Catholic priest, of the communist conquest of China, covering the period of their methodic climb to power in North China in the long years of war against Japan. “It makes a grisly story and will come as a surprise to those who have the notion that Reds of the Chinese species are less cruel than their cousins to the west; if anything, according to Father de Jaegher, they are worse. The book winds up with a discussion of the ill-fated Marshall mission to China, a chapter that is certainly as depressing as any in the book.”—New Yorker.

Dewar, Hugo. Assassins at Large. Beacon. 1952. 203 pp.

“This book sounds, in parts, like a collection of detective and mystery stories. Actually it is a well-documented, though far from complete, report on political murder and kidnapping cases perpetrated by Soviet secret agents all over the world that have become known during the last fifteen years.”—Vladimir Petrov, in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Dicey, A. V. The Law of the Constitution. Oxford. 1885.

“A classic study of English constitutional law. The eighth (1915) edition (Macmillan), with its comprehensive and luminous introduction, should be utilized. The chapter on ‘Parliamentary Sovereignty and Federalism’ is especially important for American readers.”—Felix Morley. “We are all servants of the laws,” wrote Cicero, “in order that we may be free.” Dicey called attention to the modern threat to freedom in the incursions that were being made into The Rule of Law.

Dicey, A. V. Law and Public Opinion in England. 1914. Macmillan. 1948. 506 pp.

“A work of fundamental importance. It traces the transition from the old Toryism or ‘legislative quiescence’ to Benthamism or Individualism, which was characteristic of the middle of the Nineteenth Century, and the subsequent gradual reaction to Collectivism, from about 1870 onwards.”—PI. It also discusses such questions as judicial legislation and the right of association.

Dodd, Bella V. School of Darkness. P. J. Kenedy & Sons. 1955. 262 pp.

The repentant ex-communist teacher, Bella V. Dodd, calls communism a “school of darkness.” “This volume of experiences and confession has more value than most books written by former Communists, because it gives the clearest picture yet of how communism was able to recruit intelligent, educated persons during the twenties and thirties.”—Irene Corbally Kuhn, in The Freeman.

Dos Passos, John. The Grand Design. Houghton Mifflin. 1949. 440 pp.

The final volume of a trilogy, the first two volumes of which were Adventures of a Young Man (1939) and Number One (1943). This novel tells the story of the New Deal years in American life. Some of the characters are evidently based on well-known figures. “The Grand Design is ... respectful of the inner core of New-Deal idealism, contemptuous of the politics, confusion, jealousy, corruption, and inefficiency which accompanied it.”—Orville Prescott in the Yale Review.

East, Edward M. Mankind at the Crossroads. Scribner’s. 1923. 360 pp.

An authoritative study of the population problem.

Eastman, Max. Reflections on the Failure of Socialism. Devin-Adair. 1955. 128 pp.

A lucid and brilliant analysis of the fallacies of Marxian and Fabian socialism. Mr. Eastman argues that socialism has failed over the last century in every nation and in every form in which it has been tried. He explains why political liberty depends upon a democratic competitive market and the price system. His arguments are all the more persuasive because of his personal history. He began as an extreme left-wing Socialist. As editor of the Masses and later of the Liberator, he “fought for the Bolsheviks on the battlefield of American opinion with all the influence my voice and magazine possessed.” This book explains the reasons for his gradual disillusionment. The most powerful chapter is “The Religion of Immoralism,” a devastating exposure of the peculiarly mystical but systematic rejection of morality which “is the one wholly original contribution of Karl Marx to man’s heritage of ideas.”

Eastman, Max. Marxism: Is It Science? Norton. 1940. 394 pp.

Mr. Eastman, once a Marxist, here argues that scientific socialism, so-called, is not science but religion. “Max Eastman’s book is, as readers of his earlier philosophical writings would expect, a work of art.”—A. N. Holcombe, in Books.

Ebon, Martin. World Communism Today. Whittlesey. 1948. 536 pp.

A useful reference work which attempts to give a survey of communism in every country in which it has been an important political factor.

Economic Principles Commission of the National Association of Manufacturers. The American Individual Enterprise System. McGraw-Hill. 1946. 2 vols. 1119 pp.

These two volumes were prepared by a committee of fifteen authors, about evenly divided between professional economists and business executives. They were asked to submit to the National Association of Manufacturers “a thorough analysis of the philosophy, operations and achievements of the American economic system.” There are chapters on the individual enterprise system, employment relations, agriculture, savings and capital formation, money and credit, profit and loss, the role of prices and price determination, competition and monopoly, government regulation, public finance, business fluctuations, etc. Among the authors were W. W. Cumberland, Willford I. King, Harley L. Lutz, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Shields, Bradford B. Smith, Rufus S. Tucker and Ray B. Westerfield.

Edmunds, Sterling. The Struggle for Freedom. Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co. 1946. 309 pp.

The history of Anglo-American liberty from the charter of Henry I to the present day. “The author was for many years a lecturer on constitutional law at St. Louis University. Professor Edmunds is convinced that the American people have been losing control over their lives and liberties. The Federal Government, in his opinion, with its increasing use of boards and administrative law, constitutes a threat to freedom.... Administrative boards rather than courts of law now direct the lives of the American people.... The background material which he presents in the field of constitutional law is perhaps unsurpassed by that found in any other book.”—The Commonweal.

Einaudi, Luigi. Greatness and Decline of Planned Economy in the Hellenistic World. Bern, Switzerland: A. Franke. 1950. 48 pp.

Luigi Einaudi, the former President of Italy, is a distinguished liberal economist. Out of a dozen books written by him, this is the only one, to my knowledge, that has been made available in English.

Ekirch, Arthur E., Jr. The Decline of American Liberalism. Longmans, Green. 1955. 401 pp.

The author, Professor of History at the American University in Washington, argues that the main trend since the American Revolution has been to augment concentration of economic and state power and thus whittle away individual freedom.

Elliott, W. Y., and McDonald, Neil A. The Western Political Heritage. Prentice-Hall. 1949. 1027 pp.

“An excellent work of reference.”—Human Events. “This book ought to find its way into the library of anyone who has any curiosity about the origins and development of the struggle between tyranny and freedom.”—San Francisco Chronicle.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Essays on Wealth and Politics. Many editions.

Emerson was not only a strong individualist in the broadest sense of the word, but a strong advocate of the free enterprise system (although it was not known under that name in his time) and a strong advocate of limited government. These two essays are outstanding illustrations, as the following excerpt from Politics will show:

“This is the history of governments—one man does something which is to bind another. A man who cannot be acquainted with me, taxes me; looking from afar at me ordains that a part of my labor shall go to this or that whimsical end—not as I, but as he happens to fancy. Behold the consequence. Of all debts men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere we think they get their money’s worth, except for these. Hence the less government we have the better—the fewer laws, and the less confided power.”

Erhard, Ludwig. Germany’s Comeback in the World Market. Macmillan. 1955. 276 pp.

An exposition by the German Economics Minister of Germany’s postwar economic policies. Dr. Erhard describes how the stabilization of the currency and the removal of price controls beginning in June of 1948 brought the “miracle” of German recovery. “It was the initiation of the market economy that awakened entrepreneurial impulses. The worker became ready to work, the trader to sell, and the economy in general to produce. In this way alone the conditions making possible a genuine foreign trade were provided.”

Ernst, Morris L., and Loth, D. G. Report on the American Communist. Holt. 1952. 240 pp.

“The stated purpose of this book is to provide a better understanding of Communism in America and to prevent the growth of party membership. The authors interviewed nearly three hundred former Communists, asking why they joined and why they left the party.”—Library Journal.

Eucken, Rudolph. Socialism: An Analysis. Scribner’s. 1922. 188 pp.

“A philosophical analysis of Socialism by an eminent German philosopher. This book is in two parts. The first consists of an extraordinarily fair statement and explanation of Socialist ideals, and the second part of an examination and rejection of those ideals. The whole spirit as well as the methods of Socialism are here opposed.”—PI.

Eucken, Walter. This Unsuccessful Age. London: Hodge. 1951. 96 pp.

The author, a German thinker of stature, integrity and courage, summarizes the experiences of the first fifty years of the age of economic experiments. He points out the lessons that can be learned, in particular, from the lengthy experiments in planning, government direction, and price-fixing in Germany. He concludes that we can now know at least how not to attempt a solution of the problem of economic power, how not to try to achieve social security, and how not to “plan.” He particularly stresses that a policy of full employment leads directly, through inflation, to a centrally planned and therefore totalitarian society. There is an introduction by John Jewkes of the University of Oxford.

Eucken, Walter. The Foundations of Economics. London: Hodge. 1950. 358 pp.

The late Walter Eucken was, among German economists, the foremost opponent of the Historical School. He contributed greatly to the revival in Germany of interest in economic theory. The first German edition of this book appeared in 1940; the present English translation is based on the sixth German edition. The central theme is the dual aspect of economic problems, which has led to a dual approach to them—one historical, the other theoretical. The author attempts to clarify the respective roles of these two methods. The excesses of Nazism and of the early stringent controls in Germany after World War II led Eucken to emphasize more and more the advantages and urgency of a free market system.

Fairchild, F. R., and Shelly, T. J. Understanding Our Free Economy. Van Nostrand. 1952. 589 pp.

Perhaps the best introduction to economics ever written for high school students, and certainly the best in existence now. Even many adults will find it an ideal elementary introduction to the subject. It is outspoken and unapologetic in its defense of free markets and free private enterprise as against government planning and socialism.

Fairchild, Fred R., Buck, W. S., and Slesinger, R. E. Principles of Economics. Macmillan. 1954. 780 pp.

A standard introductory college textbook. The 1954 edition has been “so thoroughly rewritten and revised that, in the opinion of the authors, it is virtually a new book.... It seeks understanding of the working of the modern free economy, while acquainting the student also with other economic systems and certain recent trends toward collectivism.” Especially noteworthy are two chapters on “Government in Industry.” These deal with such matters as price and wage controls, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and agricultural subsidies.

Faraday, W. B. Democracy and Capital. London: Murray. 1921. 314 pp.

“A popular and exhaustive exposure of Socialism. It is argued that Socialist movements are definitely retrogressive, as the trend of social progress has been, in a juristic sense, away from status and towards freedom of contract, and that ‘Our liberty has grown with the idea of the inviolability of property and the increased individuality of the man as opposed to the State.’”—PI.

Farrand, Max (ed.). The Records of the Federal Convention. Yale University Press. 1937. 4 vols.

“This is the definitive record of the Constitutional Convention, supplementing Madison’s reports and correcting them wherever later evidence warrants; indispensable for thorough study of American governmental origins.”—Felix Morley.

Fawcett, Henry. Manual of Political Economy. Macmillan. 1883. 631 pp.

“A textbook on the lines of Mill, but more severely individualistic.”—PI.

Federalist, The. (See Hamilton.)

Federici, Federico. Der Deutsche Liberalismus. Zurich: Artemis-Verlag. 1946.

A study of German liberalism.

Ferguson, Adam. An Essay on the History of Civil Society. 1767.

“The spontaneous collaboration of free men often creates things which are greater than their individual minds can ever fully comprehend. This is the great theme of Josiah Tucker and Adam Smith, of Adam Ferguson and Edmund Burke, the great discovery of classical political economy which has become the basis of our understanding not only of economic life but of most truly social phenomena.”—F. A. Hayek.

Ferguson, John M. Landmarks of Economic Thought. Longmans, Green. 1938. 295 pp.

A useful, readable and agreeable short history of economic thought, stressing the contributions of the leading thinkers. Reviewing it in The New York Times of Oct. 30, 1938, I wrote: “Professor Ferguson apparently intended his volume to serve both for the general reader and as a textbook.... It has the virtues of ... straightforwardness, balance, impartiality.”

Ferrero, Guglielmo. The Principles of Power. Putnam. 1942. 333 pp.

This is the last book of a trilogy by the eminent Italian historian of Rome. It contrasts “illegitimate” government, or government by fear (as represented by Bonapartism and Fascism), with “legitimate” government, or government in good faith (as represented by democracy and hereditary monarchy). Ferrero’s thesis is that the “illegitimate” government must seek to keep itself in power by military adventures, neurotic activity, and coercion. Wilhelm Röpke calls this book “a true legacy to us.”

Fetter, Frank A. Economics. Vol. I: Economic Principles. 523 pp. Vol. II: Modern Economic Problems. 498 pp. Century. 1915. Revised ed., 1922.

Of Frank Fetter, Joseph Schumpeter writes: “Professor Frank A. Fetter rose to a leading position in the first decade of this century. He was primarily, though not exclusively, a theorist.... At that time all serious theoretical endeavor had to start from the bases laid by Jevons, Menger, and Walras ... [but] Fetter erected a building that was his own, both as a whole and in many points of detail, such as the theory of ‘psychic income.’ The vivifying influence upon the American profession’s interest in theory of his critical exploits cannot be evaluated too highly.” Vol. II makes practical application of the theories treated in Vol. I to such matters as money, banking, international trade, labor organizations, agricultural economics, trusts, taxation, insurance, immigration, and similar topics.

Fisher, Allan G. B. Economic Progress and Social Security. Macmillan. 1945. 362 pp.

“Allan G. B. Fisher, well known New Zealand economist and professor at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, has set himself the difficult task of exploring the double impact of economic change and of the quest for security upon economic policy, national as well as international.... He shows that stability can be achieved amidst change and security without loss of freedom, but the stability as well as the security he offers are relative rather than absolute. He discards the security of slavery as well as the stability of immobility.”—Weekly Book Review. “A polished and mature effort in the art of political economy.”—John Jewkes, in the Manchester Guardian.

Fisher, Allan G. B. The Clash of Progress and Security. Macmillan. 1936. 234 pp.

“Professor Fisher’s thesis is briefly this: Material progress means change, involving inconvenience and suffering for certain classes even though it may benefit others. Resistance is generated among those who suffer from change, so that the adjustments necessary, if progress is to develop smoothly, are not made rapidly enough. In short, there is a clash between progress and security.”—Pacific Affairs. “An admirable and stimulating book, full of clear and concrete reasoning from start to finish.”—London Economist.

Fite, Warner. Individualism. Longmans, Green. 1924. 301 pp.

Four lectures which discuss the conception of the individual, the individual as a conscious agent, individuality and social unity, and individual rights and the social problem.

Fleming, Harold. Ten Thousand Commandments. Prentice-Hall. 1951. (Paper-covered edition: Irvington, N. Y.: Foundation for Economic Education. 1952.) 206 pp.

The story of the antitrust laws, their history, their administration, their complexities and contradictions, and the amazing court decisions handed down about them. Mr. Fleming does not directly question either past or present need for antitrust legislation, but he shows by the record that within the framework of these laws there has operated an administrative instrument of arbitrary power and hostility threatening the very life of competitive enterprise in America. “The essential purpose of all the variegated attacks has been to hamper the more successful business for the benefit of the less successful business.... What is left is merely a rule that the bigger companies almost invariably are wrong on some count or other and the little companies almost invariably right. The result is that nobody knows what is legal and what isn’t. The law is what the government lawyers say it is. And they are essentially interested not in what is done, but in who does it.”

Flint, Robert. Socialism. Lippincott. 1895. 1908. 512 pp.

Examining socialism in 1895, Professor Flint concluded that it “might prove the reverse of a blessing to working men although those who are pressing it on them may mean them well.” Reviewing the first edition, the London Athenaeum declared: “It is impossible for anyone to have tried harder to be fair than Professor Flint.” F. J. C. Hearnshaw declared it to be: “On the whole the ablest and most destructive criticism of socialism ever written. The two editions (first, 1895; second, 1908) differ considerably; both should be read and re-read.”

Flynn, John T. The Road Ahead: America’s Creeping Revolution. Devin-Adair. 1949. 160 pp.

John T. Flynn is one of America’s most powerful pamphleteers. The central thesis of this book is that economic planning, social insurance, deficit financing, and the nationalization of credit lead step by step toward mass enslavement and the totalitarian state. This tendency, he believes, has been shown empirically by the British experience; it follows that the preservation of American freedoms and institutions is inseparable from the preservation of a free capitalism. The Americans for Democratic Action, he holds, are the present equivalent of the British Fabians. They sincerely consider themselves to be anti-communist; but their efforts to achieve the socialized state through a process of gradualism must lead, if successful, to dictatorship and the police state.

Flynn, John T. As We Go Marching. Doubleday. 1944. 272 pp.

“Mr. Flynn’s thesis is that despite the many differences in the character, customs, laws, traditions, and resources of the people of Italy, Germany, and the United States, this country has been drifting on the same currents and experimenting with the same political and economic measures which resulted in the establishment of Fascism abroad. Two-thirds of his book is a scholarly, sober, valuable examination of the rise of Fascism in Italy and Germany, one-third is an attempt to support his thesis by trying to prove that it not only can happen here but already has happened.”—New Yorker.

Flynn, John T. The Epic of Freedom. Philadelphia: Fireside Press. 1947. 127 pp.

The story of the growth of freedom told simply and briefly for young people of high-school age.

Flynn, John T. The Decline of the American Republic. Devin-Adair. 1955. 224 pp.

The American Republic, as the Founding Fathers conceived it, has been declining with special rapidity, according to the author, since 1930. A large part of this decline he attributes to the sapping of the Constitution by a modern semantics that has distorted the plain meaning of crucial clauses—so that the federal power to regulate commerce between the states may be interpreted to mean the federal power to regulate the pay and hours of an elevator operator who never leaves New York City. “A very necessary book.”—John Chamberlain, in The Freeman.

Foerster, F. W. Europe and the German Question. Sheed. 1940. 474 pp.

An analysis of German history by a Prussian exiled from his native land long before World War I because of his unorthodox views. In his introductory chapter the author declares: “This book is above all intended to acquaint Germans living outside the Third Reich with Germany’s authentic tradition and with its European mission. But it also looks forward to a not too remote day when the Germans of the Third Reich ... may learn from it the chain of sin and doom in German history since Bismarck.”

Foundation for Economic Education. Essays on Liberty. Irvington, N. Y. Vol. I: 1952. 307 pp. Vol. II: 1954. 442 pp.

Essays on various aspects of liberty. The subjects include government, taxes, inflation, money, monopoly, price controls, subsidies, security, competition, etc. Among the authors are: Maxwell Anderson, Sir Ernest Benn, Arthur Bestor, Spruille Braden, Asa V. Call, Frank Chodorov, Russell J. Clinchy, W. M. Curtiss, Richard L. Evans, Ben Fairless, F. A. Harper, Henry Hazlitt, Bertrand de Jouvenel, Ed Lipscomb, Clarence Manion, Ludwig von Mises, Ben Moreell, W. C. Mullendore, Mario Pei, Sam Pettengill, Leonard E. Read, Dean Russell, Thomas J. Shelly, William Graham Sumner.

Fowler, Thomas. Locke. Macmillan. 1880. 205 pp.

“A concise biographical sketch. The author calls Locke, ‘Perhaps the greatest, but certainly the most characteristic of English philosophers.’”—PI.

Friedman, Wolfgang. Law and Social Change. London: Stevens & Sons. 1951. 322 pp.

A legal study from a libertarian point of view.

Gandil, Chr (ed.). Moderne Liberalisme. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde og Bagger. 1948. 132 pp.

In this Danish book, Mr. Gandil has attempted to reply to the question: “What is liberalism?” (in the sense of individual liberty, as the word is still understood on the European continent). “He himself has written an introduction. Thereupon follows a chapter written by Dr. Thorkil Kristensen, a former Danish Secretary of the Treasury. Then follows in reprint form two lectures which were broadcast by Professor Wilhelm Keilhau over the Norwegian radio immediately following the outbreak of the war. In the final chapters a number of young Danish political economists have taken extracts from neo-liberalist literature.... Mr. Gandil’s introduction rates as one of the best chapters of the book.”—Trygve J. B. Hoff, in Farmand (Oslo).

Garrett, Garet. The People’s Pottage. Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers. 1953. 174 pp.

Garet Garrett, because of the accuracy of his knowledge, the quality of his thinking, and the rare distinction of his style, was one of the outstanding pamphleteers of our time. The People’s Pottage is made up of three pamphlets bearing on the same theme. The Revolution Was, which appeared in 1944, propounded the thesis that under the New Deal the social revolution, depriving the individual of essential liberties and shifting power to the State, had already taken place. Ex America, which appeared in 1951, continued this thesis, and explained in particular how inflation is used to continue a statist regime in power, and how it affects the attitude of the people. Rise of Empire, which appeared in the following year, contends that the moral and constitutional restraints on political power which distinguish a republic from an empire have been all but obliterated. Despite this pessimistic theme, the author concludes: “The people know that they can have their Republic back if they want it enough to fight for it and to pay the price. The only point is that no leader has yet appeared with the courage to make them choose.”

Garrett, Garet. The Wild Wheel. Pantheon Books. 1952. 220 pp.

A fascinating but episodic account of the career of Henry Ford. The thesis of the book is that what Ford accomplished in the early decades of the twentieth century under a regime of laissez faire could not be duplicated today because of government interventionism.