Or so came the cry of the French Revolutionaries.  As anyone interested in history and liberty can attest, liberty requires a good deal of hard work.  I was especially struck by the relationship between liberty and work when reading French chef Jacques Pepin’s autobiography earlier this week.  The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen recounts his journey from inauspicious beginning to world-famous chef:      

Pepin spent his formative years in German-occupied France, during WWII.  In one chapter, he describes family life after his father joined La Resistance.  In order to support her family in her husband’s absence, Pepin’s mother, Jeannette, “earned money by working all day as a waitress. […] In the evenings, she sewed every article of clothing the family wore.  And on her one day off […] she shopped for our food, though hers was hardly a typical grocery run.  Early in the morning, she [bicycled] thirty-five or forty miles, going from farm to farm, filling the wicker basket with […] anything that she could find that would help feed us.”  Once France was liberated, the Pepins opened a family restaurant and worked countless hours.  The restaurant was a success.

As the book continues, Pepin recounts his experience as apprentice (at the young age of thirteen), then chef, in different restaurants throughout France, and his eventual move to the U.S.  His straightforward prose paints a portrait of a young man whose presupposition of life could be summed up in these few words: liberty rewards hard work.  You can’t have freedom without a free market, and ‘market’ assumes activity—humans in action, working in productivity towards prosperity.

 Liberty doesn’t guarantee success; rather, liberty allows the chance for individuals to try their hands at it.  In an intellectual climate where ‘progress’ is increased dependence on government ‘security,’ Mr. Pepin’s story is a not-so-subtle reminder that work is not only a necessary condition of freedom, but rather the privilege of it.  So, if you’re looking for a testament to the advantage of a free market, read The Apprentice.  You’ll learn some interesting history, get some excellent recipes, and see freedom in action.