Some terms and phrases are well suited to lucid discourse and even debate. This is generally the case when they have a commonly accepted meaning, when they are generally used–or are capable of being used–with some precision, and when they are not overloaded with connotations. The fact that people differ as to the value or desirability of what the terms signify does not disqualify them. Otherwise, debaters would have to employ different terminology, depending on which side they were on. For example, it seems to me that “free market” meets the criteria of a phrase well suited to discourse and debate.

That is, “free market” has a commonly accepted meaning, can be used with precision, and is not overloaded with meaning so as to be value-laden. A free market is a market open to all peaceful traders, one in which sellers are free to sell to the highest bidder and buyers are free to buy what they will from whatever seller they will. Or, to put it another way, it is a market in which buyers and sellers are free to contract without obstruction or interference from government.

Thus when government intervenes in the market so as to restrict the number of sellers or buyers, to set prices, or to prescribe quality, it is not a free market. It is possible to oppose or favor such a market while agreeing as to what constitutes a free market. Nor do differences as to the extent of freedom entailed necessarily rule out the use of the phrase in discourse.

In a similar fashion “free enterprise” and “private property” generally meet the tests as terms of discourse. Enterprise is free when all who can and will may produce and dispose of their goods to willing buyers. The opposite of free enterprise would be government-granted monopoly over any field of endeavor, or the restriction of it through franchises, licenses, or other devices which exclude some enterprisers. The phrase can be used both by those who favor and those who oppose it, though those who oppose it might prefer other language. Private property is simply property that is privately owned, and the owner is protected in his enjoyment of it by government. I have not, of course, exhausted the distinctions nor covered all the areas about which disagreement may exist for any of these phrases, but it was my purpose only to make a prima facie case for them as terms of discourse.

Capitalism: A Value-Laden Word

The same does not go, however, for capitalism. It does not have a commonly accepted meaning, proponents of it to the contrary notwithstanding. As matters stand, it cannot be used with precision in discourse. And it is loaded with connotations which make it value-laden. Indeed, it is most difficult for those who use it from whatever side not to use it simply as an “angel” or “devil” word, i.e., to signify something approved or disapproved. Meanwhile, what that something is goes largely unspecified because it is hidden beneath a blunderbuss word.

My considered opinion is that capitalism is not a descriptive word at all in general usage. Dictionary-like definitions may give it the appearance of being descriptive. One dictionary defines it as “a system under which the means of production, distribution, and exchange are in large measure privately owned and directed.” On the face of it, the meaning may appear clear enough. We can come in sight of the difficulty, however, if we turn the whole thing around and look at what is supposed to be signified, shutting out of our minds for the moment the word used to signify it. Suppose, that is, that we have a set of arrangements in which the means of production, distribution, and exchange of goods “are in large measure privately owned and directed.” I am acquainted with such arrangements, both from history and from some present-day actualities.

But why should we call such arrangements capitalism? So far as I can make out, there is no compelling reason to do so. There is nothing indicated in such arrangements that suggests why capital among the elements of production should be singled out for emphasis. Why not land? Why not labor? Or, indeed, why should any of the elements be singled out? Well, why not call it capitalism, it may be asked? A rose by any other name, Shakespeare had one of his characters say, would smell as sweet. That argument is hardly conclusive in this case, however, nor in others similar to it. Granted, when a phenomenon is identified it may be assigned a name, and in the abstract one name will do as well as another, if the name be generally accepted. In the concrete, however, the name should either follow from the nature of the phenomenon or be a new word. Otherwise, it will bring confusion into the language.

Marxist Derivations

Capitalism, as a word, does not conform to these strictures. Its root is capital, an already well established word in economics, used to refer to one of the elements of production. Moreover, capitalism gave a form to the word that already had a more or less established significance. When an “ism” is added to a word it denotes a system of belief, and probably what has come to be called an ideology. It is highly unlikely, if not linguistically impossible, for such a formulation to serve as a neutrally descriptive word for the private ownership of the means of production, and so on.

But we are not restricted to theory in our efforts to discover whether capitalism is simply a neutrally descriptive word. It was given currency in the highly charged formulations of Karl Marx and other enemies of private property. Marx’s fame hardly stemmed from any powers he may have had for neutral description. On the contrary, he is best known for his extensive efforts to reduce all of reality and all relationships to the point where they fitted within the ideological scheme of class struggle. He had the kind of mind that reduces everything to a place within a single dominant system. Thus, the private production of goods is a system, a system reduced in his scheme to capitalism.

In discussing the dictionary-like definition of capitalism, I dropped the word “system” used in the dictionary and substituted the word “arrangement” for it. I did so because it seemed to me that a society could have arrangements in which the production of goods would be privately owned without this constituting a system. Arrangements for distinguishing between claimants of property and protecting such claims are necessary in society. But “system” is ominous when linked to capitalism on the one hand and the production, distribution, and exchange of goods on the other.

Private ownership of the means of production does not dictate any particular mode of production. In point of fact, a great variety of modes of production do occur under private ownership. A man may own his own land and cultivating devices and produce what he will by his own efforts. Many have, and some do. Or, to take the other extreme, production may be organized in great factories by intricate division of labor and under extensive supervision and direction. Between these two extremes, there are in fact a great range of ways in which production and distribution have been and are carried on. Indeed, it is only where private property is the rule that this variety is possible.

In Marx’s mental world this variety and diversity could not exist, or, if it did, it could not last. It must all be finally reduced to a single system–capitalism. And capitalism led to greater and greater concentrations of wealth until all was in a few hands. Then, of course, the apocalypse must come, the revolution, in which an impoverished proletariat would rise up in its wrath and seize the instruments of production, and so on and on through the whole Marxian scenario. The word capitalism still carries the overtones of this Marxian analysis. For example, the dictionary from which was drawn the earlier definition gives as further definitions of capitalism: “the concentration of capital in the hands of a few, or the resulting power or influence,” and “a system favoring such concentration of wealth.” Another dictionary says, “The state of owning or controlling capital, especially when tending to monopoly; the power so held.”

The High Cost of Salvage

In sum, capitalism gained its currency from Marx and others as a blunderbuss word, misnames what it claims to identify, and carries with it connotations which unfit it for precise use in discourse. Even so, there has been a considerable effort to reclaim the word for discourse by some of those who are convinced of the superiority of privately owned capital in the production, distribution, and exchange of goods. It is a dubious undertaking. For one thing, Marx loaded the word, and when all that he put into it has been removed, only the shell remains. For another, linguistically, it does not stand for private property, free enterprise, and the free market. It is false labeling to make it appear to do so. Capitalism means either a system in which capital holds sway, which is largely what Marx apparently meant, or an ideology to justify such a system.

It is not my point, however, that it might not be possible to use capitalism as a label for private property, free enterprise, and the free market. Indeed, I think it has been done at what I call the bumper-sticker level of discourse in the United States. Undoubtedly, if enough effort were put into it the name of roses could be changed to “tomatoes.” But I doubt that the game is worth the candle. Moreover, there is no real discourse, nor discursive reasoning, at the bumper-sticker level. Bumper stickers assert; they do not reason or prove. So do titles of books, for example. But labeling is an inferior art, and name-calling is a form of propaganda. Thus the problem of discourse with a word such as capitalism remains.

It is not my intention, however, to suggest that we should discard the word capitalism. Far from it. Rather, I see the need for the use of the word in its inherent sense in serious discourse. A word, certainly a word formed with an “ism” suffix, is governed by and takes its meaning from its root. Granted, words sometimes slip their moorings in the course of time and lose all connection with earlier meanings. This is apt to happen, I suspect, when the root word has fallen into disuse. That has by no means happened in the case of capital. Capital itself is as important today as ever, and the word is still in widespread use to describe it with considerable precision. Moreover, something that I would like to see correctly identified as capitalism is widespread, if not rampant, in the world.

Keeping in mind that capitalism, because of the “ism,” is ideological in form, it means most basically an ingrained preference for capital over the other elements of production. That is, it means an imbedded preference for (or commitment to) capital over land and labor. Considered as a system, capitalism is the establishment of that preference by the exercise of government power. To put it into more precise economic terms, it is the forced transformation of some greater or lesser portion of the wealth of a people into capital. In political terms, it is the legalization and institutionalization of a preference for capital.

State Capitalism

Ironically, in view of Marx and socialist doctrine generally, capitalism is most rampant in communist countries. It is there that the most extreme measures are taken to accumulate capital. The Soviet Union, for example, has long used slave labor to mine gold in forbidding climes. It has done the same for cutting timber in the arctic cold of Siberia and for reaching other hard-to-get natural resources. The basic aim of much of this is capital accumulation to foster industrialization. There is perhaps no better way to visualize the preference for capital over labor than political prisoners (slave labor) working in gold mines. But it does take other forms. There is confiscatory taxation, in which most of the wealth of all who produce is taken away for use by the state. The capital hunger in Third World countries is ravenous today, as they reach out to try to obtain it from countries in which there is more wealth. The thrust is for industrialization, and the industries are usually owned by the government.

Some writers who have noted this penchant of socialist and communist countries for capital have called it state capitalism. While the phrase is not objectionable, it may well be redundant. If my analy-sis is correct, all capitalism is state-imposed capital-ism. Otherwise, it is most unlikely that there would be an established preference for capital over land and labor.

Granted, some people in their private affairs do evince a preference for capital over other sorts of expenditures. I have known men, for example, who were much more given to buying tools and various equipment than clothes. But then the same men often spend more on automobiles, not usually capital expenditures, than on either. Nor is it likely that businessmen, however enamored they may be with machinery or computers, will make so bold as to ignore the market for long in determining the mix of the elements of production. Only governments, because they spend what they have not earned, can afford to do that or have the power to require others to ignore the market. Capitalism is a will-of-the-wisp unless it is established by the state.

A Red Herring

The notion that the conflict in the world is between capitalism and socialism is a Marxian red herring. Whether Marx deliberately conceived a perverse term to designate the conflict or not, it has had remarkable success in confusing the issue. In Marxian terms, capitalism is not simply the private control over the instruments of production. It is the effective ownership and control over the instruments of production by a few men with vast concentrated wealth at their disposal. In Marxian terms, again, this great wealth was obtained by the ruthless exploitation of workers. To argue the opposite position is to risk falling into a fairly well-laid trap. At the most obvious level, it is to take on a variation of the old conundrum of whether or not you are still beating your wife.

Thus the defender of capitalism begins by granting that, sure, nineteenth-century capitalists were a hard lot. But that has all changed in the twentieth century, he maintains; humane legislation and genteel businessmen have changed all that. To sustain this argument, he grants more and more of the Marxist, or at least the socialist, case and justifies the increasing government control over private property. Those who argue in this wise have taken the socialist bait and rushed headlong into socialism with it.

But the heart of the difficulty is that the word capitalism as it is employed is a semantic trap. On the one hand, it makes it difficult to keep the issues in focus, because it is used in a confusing and misleading way. On the other hand, it blocks from our view a mass of phenomena which we need to see clearly and which capitalism used in its root sense would help to do. The issue is not between capitalism and socialism. There is an issue about private versus public ownership of the means of production, but there is no logical connection between that and capital or capitalism.

Whatever Marx may have thought about capital–all too little apparently–there is no substantial difference among the leaders in the world today over the necessity for and desirability of capital to aid in both agri-cultural and industrial production. If anything, socialist countries are more determined to get their hands on accumulated capital and concentrate it than what remains of so-called capitalist countries.

Every device, ranging from the most sneaky to the most openly confiscatory, is employed in this quest. I nominate as the most sneaky the monetizing of debt, by which wealth in private hands is sopped up by a process of monetary debasement. There exists now a vast series of banking-like mechanisms by which this money is sopped up and transferred to countries around the world where governments more or less own and control the instruments of production. Capital is what much of this is about, and if we could call it by its proper name, it would be called capitalism. As matters stand, however, we are denied the use of the very word that could help to bring all this into focus.

Freedom Versus Tyranny

The issue, I repeat, is not between socialism and capitalism, in any meaningful sense of the words. In the broadest sense, it is between freedom and tyranny. As regards capital, it is between whether men shall be able to keep the fruits of their labor and dispose of accumulations of it as they think best, or have it confiscated and used for politically determined ends. It is between the free market and the hampered market. It is between free enterprise and state-controlled activity under the direction of a vast bureaucracy. It is between dispersed wealth under individual control and concentrated wealth used to augment the power of the state. It is between the right to private property and the might of centralized government thrusting for total power. There are other dimensions, moral and social, to the contest, but the above are the major economic ones. Capitalism, as currently used, tends to act as a red herring to draw us off the scent and draw attention to largely extraneous issues.

So, I conclude, as regards the use of the word capitalism, sic et non, or, in English, yes and no. No, to take that part of the equation first, the word cannot be effectively used in discourse and debate in its Marxian or socialist sense. It cannot be used with precision because it is a loaded word, loaded with Marxian ideology. It has been severed from its root and made to connote what it does not clearly do. Nor does it have a commonly accepted meaning, or set of meanings, for Marxists and non-Marxists. Its use obfuscates the issues and conceals a major aspect of socialism (i.e., its capital hunger).

No, capitalism is not an apt word for the use of defenders of private ownership of the means of production. Linguistically, it does not mean private ownership, nor does the case for private property hinge upon its potential use as capital. The right to private property is grounded in the nature of life and labor on this earth, and it is, therefore, a gift of the Creator. Its use as capital is one of the possibilities of property. To defend private property from the perspective of the advantages of privately disposed capital is to approach the matter wrong end to. In any case, capitalism is still a misnomer for what the defenders are discussing; their flanks are exposed to the adversary because it is his chosen ground; and when the defenders have loaded the word with their own meanings it does not have a commonly accepted meaning for use in discourse.

Socialists Seize Capital to Achieve Industrialization

Yes, there is a place for the word capitalism in the language. There is an ideology and there are practices which cry out to have this word stand for and identify them. The ideology is the established preference for capital over the other elements of production. In practice, it thrusts to the use of government power to concentrate capital, to promote its accumulation, and to confiscate the wealth necessary to that end. Used in this way, the word capitalism helps to identify and bring into focus developments which are otherwise difficult to construe.

We can see clearly that capitalism is a disease of socialism, not the offspring of private property. It is not a system in which the instruments of production are privately owned, but one in which private property is taken to provide capital for publicly owned industries. Perhaps the most dramatic examples of it at the present time are the grants and loans to Third World and communist nations by which wealth from the United States and European countries is being appropriated for their industrialization. That, by my understanding, is capitalism, and it should bear the name and onus.

Vazsonyi was able to escape to the United States in 1959. A virtuoso pianist with a strong interest in philosophy, he has been a keen observer of the American scene ever since. He concludes that for at least 30 years a struggle (he terms it a war) has gone on between those who would transform the United States into a socialist nation and those who would preserve—or perhaps we should say restore—the principles of the Constitution. This book expresses his observations on the course of that war.

The frame in which he encloses his argument is original, and his insights into how the United States is being transformed (which is to say that the war is not going well) are worth studying. Vazsonyi’s early experiences with the twin evils of Nazism and communism make his book all the more compelling.

He argues that the war is really between two different ways of looking at the relationship between man and government: what he calls the “Anglo-American” view that individual rights are prior to government and that government must be constitutionally restrained to protect those rights, and what he calls the “Franco-German” view that government needs to be absolutist and wield enormous power to bring about the best possible society. These peoples are the only ones, in his view, who have produced political theories worth attending to.

This way of characterizing the opposing sides may well produce more heat than light. Neither the French nor the Germans are apt to be pleased at being credited with a series of disastrous, discredited ideas; nor have the Anglo-Americans been pure defenders of the ideas of individual liberty and limited government. England has as good a claim to the title “birthplace of evolutionary socialism” as any.

It is not at all clear to me that ideas have a native habitat and that there are national traits in political philosophy. We do ill, I think, to attribute the liking for or antipathy to various political arrangements to whole peoples. Vazsonyi would have done better to avoid pinning a national label on the contending theories.

That aside, Vazsonyi provides many clear insights into how socialist thought has mutated through hard experience to become more dangerous to America. He writes, for example, “The appetite to manage all corporations, large and small, has given way to the realization that a combination of threats, restrictions, and controls will provide access to the fruit, without ever having to plant the tree, buy the fertilizer, or perform any of the ongoing chores that go with production.” This is the triumph of the fascist (Nazi) side of socialism, the realization that you encounter less resistance and get “better” results by insinuating the state into a position to take key decision-making power away from private owners, rather than trying to expropriate those owners directly.

Having lived under the control of the commissars, Vazsonyi is able to clearly see current trends in the United States. He can see how our own bureaucrats are increasingly resembling those commissars in their control over our lives. Rightly, he understands that the environmental movement and its accompanying hordes of bureaucrats are erecting a structure for a vast expansion of government authority. Since almost every use of land or activity could be said to have some impact on the environment, we are moving toward a future in which government officials will have enormous control over us.

Vazsonyi also correctly sees that piecemeal opposition to the modified socialist program is a losing game. If we argue over the “right” amount of government control, each time hoping to negotiate a somewhat better deal from the socialists than they initially propose, we are certain to see a continuing erosion of our freedom. He argues strongly in favor of an uncompromising return to our original constitutional principles, and to that I shout “Bravo.”

Near the close of this book, the author quotes John Marshall speaking to the House of Representatives shortly after Washington’s death as saying: “Our WASHINGTON is no more! the hero . . . lives now only in his own great actions, and in the hearts of an affectionate and afflicted people.” Richard Brookhiser is concerned that Washington no longer lives in our hearts and our affections. “He is in our textbooks and our wallets,” Brookhiser writes, “but not our hearts.” This book is an effort to correct that situation, not by “humanizing” him down to the Oprah level, say, but by drawing our conception up to the level of his remarkable achievements. In the main, he has done a good job of that.

This is not a full-fledged biography, but more nearly a series of essays on the general subject of George Washington. It focuses upon Washington’s career, his character, and his place in the minds and hearts of Americans. Some of his emphases I especially liked and some I had not heard or thought of before. For example, his liking for the theater had never been brought out to me before, nor that he subscribed to ten newspapers. Washington was strong, courageous, brave, a good listener, a leader, had great dignity, was conscious of doing the honorable thing, and a patriot.

Many of the events of his life I had known before reading this book but it was good to read of them again, told, as they are, with zest and flair. For instance, Brookhiser gives the account of how insistent Washington was on secrecy at the Constitutional Convention. Someone had dropped a copy of some resolutions being considered where outsiders could have taken it. Washington retrieved the copy, lectured the Convention on the necessity for secrecy, then threw the paper down on the table, and invited whoever owned it to take it. The delegate was apparently so in awe of Washington that he never dared to claim it.

It is good to emphasize, too, as Brookhiser does, that Washington was a man of ideas as well as of action. I remember how impressed I was when I noticed Washington’s library. He had nearly a thousand volumes—not in Jefferson’s league, but then whose was? Not only was he familiar with the well-traveled ideas of his time, he was given to asking those about him for their opinions and understanding, such as the need to restrain government lest it trample individual rights. He listened and learned much. There was a balance to his ideas that set him apart from most thinkers.

The weakest section of the book is the one dealing with “The Founding Father.” That Washington was father of his country is a metaphor which captures some of the truth and much of my feelings about the matter. He did indeed tenaciously lead the country through the war which effected our separation from Britain and independence of her. He chaired the Constitutional Convention that produced the document on which our union stands. And he piloted us safely through the perilous and tenuous early years of the Republic. But the metaphor will not bear close and extensive analysis; it falls from so much weight.

But the whole is a worthy testament to the greatness of Washington. Anyone who is inclined with so many in this misbegotten age to believe that Washington is just a dead white male who kept slaves should read of his principled refusal to sell any of his slaves “down the river,” and the provisions he made for freeing those who were able to earn their own keep, and providing a fund to take care of those too old or infirm to provide for themselves. He was a man of his time, as all of us tend to be even in ways of which we are not aware, but he was much better than many of his contemporaries.

The theme of the book was that the whole world, to varying extents among countries, had come under the sway of an idea, the essence of which was expressed in the convergence of three ideals.

1. To achieve human felicity on this earth by concerting all efforts to achieve common ends.

2. To root out, discredit, and discard all aspects of culture which cannot otherwise be altered to divest them of any role in inducing or supporting the individual’s pursuit of self-interest.

3. Government is the instrument to be used to concert all efforts behind the realization of human felicity and the necessary alteration of culture.

This idea, when shaped as a political program, is called by a variety of names, among which are: socialism, collectivism, social democracy, democratic socialism, Fabianism, national socialism, and Communism. Or, it may not be given a generic name at all, but advanced or concealed under such vague terms as democracy or liberalism. Regardless of specific variations, there are essentially two roads to socialism, which is the generic name most commonly applied to the idea that has the world in its grip. Revolutionary and evolutionary socialism are the two approaches, and they form much of the organizational framework of The World in the Grip of an Idea.

Revolutionary Socialism

Revolutionary socialism had its foundations in the teachings of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in the nineteenth century. It came to power in Russia following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, led by V. I. Lenin and his cohorts and followers. The touchstone of revolutionary socialism is the violent overthrow of the existing government and system. Marx and Engels put it this way: “The immediate aim of the Communists is that of all the other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of the political power by the proletariat.”^[1] Beyond this political revolution, Marx declared the purpose to be “the forceful overthrow of all existing social conditions.”^[2] The ultimate aim was the transformation of man in a classless society, but “revolution” was a key idea in his ideology, and it distinguishes revolutionary socialism from evolutionary socialism.

The World in the Grip of an Idea gives in-depth treatment to revolutionary socialism in two countries: the Soviet Union and Germany. The Soviet Union was an obvious choice for at least two reasons. One, it was the first country to establish a totalitarian revolutionary socialist government. Communism came to power there first. Two, it became the center for the spread of Communism internationally. Germany was a less obvious choice but was chosen because Nazism was a different variety of revolutionary socialism, though it is not always discussed under that category. Nazism was shortlived, holding power for only 12 years, and its particular ideological mix of racism, nationalism, and socialism never spread elsewhere. But it was a dramatic case of revolutionary socialism whose totalitarian mode has stuck in the public mind.

Moreover, German Nazism made a major impact on the political power configuration in the world during and after World War II. The role of Nazism in World War II is highlighted in my book in a chapter entitled “A Socialist Conflagration.” The theme of the chapter is that World War II was at its heart a contest between two revolutionary socialist powers—the Soviet Union and Germany. It was a contest for dominance over the great Eurasian land mass at its center. The United States and Britain threw their weight on the side of the Soviet Union. The defeat of Nazi Germany wiped out what remained of the balance of power on the European continent. This set the stage for the Cold War, a long-term underlying struggle between revolutionary and evolutionary socialism.

The Evolutionary Road to Socialism

Socialists of the earlier nineteenth century either sought to build self-contained socialist communities or were revolutionaries. It was this latter that attracted Karl Marx and that eventuated in Soviet Communism, and its imitators. By the late nineteenth century, some socialists began to become enamored of the idea that socialism could be attained gradually by gaining influence and control over established governments. Theirs would be an evolutionary road to socialism that would not entail revolution, the violent seizure of power, or swift radical changes. It was more than a little influenced by biological evolutionary theories. Peaceful change could be wrought by democracy and labor unions, among other forces, many came to believe.

One of the early proponents of evolutionary socialism was Eduard Bernstein, a Marxist who saw a different road. He thought he saw signs of the peaceful movement toward socialism in developments in the latter part of the nineteenth century. He described them this way:

In all advanced countries we see the privileges of the capitalist bourgeoisie yielding step by step to democratic organizations. . . . Factory legislation, the democratising of local government. . . , the freeing of trade unions . . . from legal restrictions, the consideration of standard conditions of labour in the work undertaken by public authorities . . . are signs of the evolution.^[3]

Evolutionary socialism—whether it is called democratic socialism, social democracy, gradualism, Fabianism, or whatever— is gradualist, statist, interventionist, and collectivist. Its advocates and followers believe that man and society can be improved and transformed by the astute application of government power. The usual result of taking this route to socialism has been the welfare state, but that was more consequence than original intent.

My book deals with evolutionary socialism in depth in three countries: England, Sweden, and the United States. The English experience best shows what happened to the original intent. The English socialists were bent on nationalizing all major industries, that is, taking them from their owners and bringing them under government control. The Fabian Society was the spearhead of socialism in England. It consisted initially of intellectuals, who issued tracts, penetrated existing organizations, and attempted to permeate them with socialist ideas. The instrument they finally used to achieve power was the Labour Party. This party finally came into power with an effective majority in the elections in 1945. They moved with haste to nationalize banking, power and light, transport, and iron and steel, and to assert a government role in all areas of the economy. Nationalization, which had never been tried on a large scale in an advanced industrial country before, was given a major trial in England.

The measures were such an abject failure and wrought misery, suffering, and oppression so clearly that other countries were disinclined to imitate England, and, despite the tenacious efforts of the Labourites, the nationalization was eventually abandoned there as well. The welfare measures which the English introduced, such as socialized medicine, had a much longer life.

Sweden, however, was the earliest and most thorough example of the welfare state. The Swedes never showed any great enthusiasm for confiscating or appropriating private property. Instead, they taxed away a large portion of the proceeds from land, labor, and capital to maintain an extensive welfare state.

Evolutionary socialism did not for long go by the name of socialism in the United States. Those who ran for office under that name were overwhelmingly rejected by American voters. On the other hand, socialist ideas made increasing gains in the twentieth century as the underlying premises of political programs, initiatives, and legislation. They entered American political life by way of a series of “four-year-plans,” variously called the Square Deal, New Freedom, New Deal, Fair Deal, and New Frontier. The programs were at first called progressive and then liberal and were usually advanced as alleged solutions for various pressing problems. The mode of this gradualist road to socialism in the United States was to centralize and concentrate power in the general government and to make all organizations and people within the country dependent upon government.

The Destructive Impact of Socialism

The World in the Grip of an Idea makes clear with much history and numerous examples the destructive impact of socialism on institutions, societies, and the lives of people. Soviet Communism was oppressive and tyrannical from the outset and became much more so under Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, 1940s, and into the 1950s, and improved only marginally for the next three decades. Evolutionary socialism did not have so drastic an impact as Communism and Nazism, but it worked over the years to gain control of the material substance of the people under it, to undermine their beliefs, to take away much of their independence, and to impose systems that are spiritually, intellectually, politically, and economically bankrupt.

Even so, socialist premises were not usually challenged except by such organizations as the Foundation for Economic Education. Socialism spread around the world, especially in the middle fifty years of the twentieth century. World War II and the defeat of the Nazis, as already noted, provided the opportunity for the spread of Soviet Communism into eastern Europe. During the war, the Soviet Union forcibly annexed Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and a portion of Finland. By agreement with Hitler at the beginning of the war, they conquered and claimed part of Poland as well. During the closing year of World War II, as the Red Army moved westward into eastern Europe, the groundwork was laid for Communism in the countries there. In the mid and late 1940s Communist regimes were established in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and East Germany.

It was at this juncture, in the course of 1948, the Cold War began—an ideological and geo-political, occasionally military, struggle. The Soviet Union was fostering civil wars in Greece and Turkey, and bidding fair to come to power in Italy. The Soviet Union and the United States were the main belligerents in the Cold War, but the struggle encompassed much of the rest of the world at one time or another and in one way or another. It lasted from 1948 to 1989, or thereabouts. Ideologically, it was often described as a struggle between democracy and Communism. To describe it as a contest between democratic socialism and Communism is much more accurate. The prominent allies of the United States in this struggle were more or less openly socialist, and the United States had established a welfare state undergirded by socialist assumptions. Foreign aid became a major means for promoting and sustaining democratic socialism around the world.

The “Wave of the Future”?

The spread of Communism in power can be chronicled as Communist-controlled governments were established. The spread of Communism in eastern Europe has already been described, so we continue the chronicle elsewhere. In 1948, Communist rule was instituted in North Korea. In 1949, Mao Tse-tung proclaimed the People’s Republic of China, inaugurating Communism in the most populous country in the world. In 1955, Communism was established in North Vietnam. In 1960, a Council of Revolution seized power in Algeria. In 1965, Cuba became officially a one-party (Communist) state, and South Yemen became a “People’s Democratic Republic” (Communist). Guyana became a Communist-dominated country in 1970, and Communist Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile. In 1971, Syria got a pro-Communist dictatorship. In 1972, a revolutionary socialist government was formed in Benin. Communist dictatorship was established in Ethiopia in 1974. In 1975, North Vietnamese Communist forces conquered South Vietnam; the Khmer Rouge imposed Communism on Cambodia; the Pathet Lao organized Communist rule in Laos, and a People’s Republic of Mozambique came to power in Africa. Communists came to power in Angola in 1977. Communist-bent Sandinistas took over the government in Nicaragua in 1979, and the Soviet Union sponsored a coup in Afghanistan and installed a Communist regime.

Thus, when The World in the Grip of an Idea went to press in 1979, there were many signs that Communism might indeed be “the wave of the future,” at least in industrially undeveloped countries. But the story of Communists progressively coming to power is only a part of the story of the spread of Communist influence and socialist ideas. Communist parties were long in operation either openly or clandestinely in most countries of the world. Many countries in which Communists have never come to power have been deeply infected by Communism. Communists have infiltrated labor unions, churches, colleges, and other organizations, and have spread disinformation in many non-Communist as well as Communist publications. In sum, Communist influence has been worldwide. More openly, democratic (or evolutionary) socialist ideas have gained influence, often dominant, in many countries of the world. If there was a country in the world in 1980 not under the influence or in the grip of socialist ideas, it escaped the attention of this writer. Nor has anyone suggested to me since the release of the book that such a country existed in 1980, or in the decades preceding that date.

A Loosened Grip

Since that time, however, the idea has loosened its grip. The election of Ronald Reagan as President of the United States in 1980 signaled not only the loosening of the hold of the idea on Americans but also the widespread appeal of a countervision to that of socialism. Much the same could be said for the significance of Margaret Thatcher’s becoming Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1979. Reagan was re-elected in 1984 and became the first president to serve two full terms since Eisenhower in the 1950s. Mrs. Thatcher held the post of Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990. Their elections and tenure signified the considerable impact of conservative ideas on Anglo-American politics. More certainly than that, however, it was an augury of the declining appeal of the socialist idea or vision.

The most dramatic ideological development since 1980 has been the dissolution and disappearance of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was, after all, the centerpiece of Communism from its inception. It was the land, and Moscow was the city, to which admirers and supplicants came from around the world to study and learn about “the wave of the future.” The vision of Communism and its propaganda spread from the Soviet center around the world, provoking revolts, succoring imitative political parties, and breeding apologists for the Communist motherland. Many, many socialists in other lands never became Communists, or, if so, only briefly, but they still pinned much of their socialist faith on its purest exemplar, the Soviet Union. The unraveling of the Soviet Empire would surely be the precursor of the decline and demise of Communism, if not the socialist idea itself. Or, so it seemed.

At any rate, the Soviet Empire began to unravel in 1989. The unraveling took place first on the periphery. In March, the Red Army completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan. In August, the Baltic countries (absorbed into the Soviet Union during World War II)—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—demanded independence from the Soviet Union. In October, Hungary assumed independence from the Soviet Union. East Germans poured through Hungary into West Germany without interference. In November, the Berlin Wall crumbled as people tore it apart with no opposition from the authorities. In December, the long-time Communist dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu, was deposed and killed. The glue was giving way at the edges of the Empire.

The Gorbachev Years

Although the beginning strokes of the unraveling of the Soviet Union caught almost everyone by surprise, in retrospect we can see that events and developments were preparing the way for a change. Mikhail Gorbachev became the dictatorial head of the Soviet Union in 1985. He was 54 years old, the youngest man to come to this position since Joseph Stalin, and the first born since the Bolshevik Revolution, He tended to adjust to changes rather than dominate them by his will. At first, he continued the war in Afghanistan but eventually withdrew. Confronted by the rearming of the United States led by Ronald Reagan, he must have soon realized that the Soviet Union did not have the means to keep pace. Indeed, Gorbachev did initiate some changes which may have prepared the way for the unraveling. One was called perestroika, meaning to restructure or make structural changes in the Soviet Union. The main restructuring occurred in the government itself, which no longer supported without resistance the programs advanced by the party bosses. Glasnost was another idea advanced by Gorbachev: it means openness, or, perhaps, frankness. In practice, it involved the removal of censorship, the freeing of religious observance, the opening of the Soviet Union to outside observers and the publishing of information about other lands and peoples in the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union did not long survive perestroika and glasnost. It survived even more briefly the unwillingness of Gorbachev to use major force to maintain the Empire. The events of 1989 had not brought major reprisals from Moscow. In eastern Europe, the Soviet satellite countries began to operate independently in 1989-1990, forming their own governments, some non-Communist, and all reformed with greater freedoms. But what was much more striking in 1990, the Soviet Union itself split into its constituent parts. As a historian has said, “By the end of the year, all 15 of the constituent union republics had declared their sovereignty. . . . As the world watched, Gorbachev seemed destined to lose the contest with the powerful centrifugal forces tearing the mighty Soviet Union apart as the decade of the 1990s opened.”^[4]

In early 1991, Gorbachev continued to try to keep the Soviet Union intact by some sort of federal union. Instead of succeeding in this, in August, he was confronted with a coup whose leaders took him prisoner and demanded a return to the old Communist system. Boris Yeltsin, President of the Russian Republic, stood firm against the leaders of the coup; the rebellion dissolved and the leaders were imprisoned. Gorbachev resigned as Communist Party leader and in short order the Communist Party lost its preferred position. The Soviet Union continued to deteriorate, as republic after republic reaffirmed or declared its independence. “Gorbachev’s efforts to reconstitute the state in one form or another . . . all proved futile in face of the republics’ irrepressible nationalism and irresistible determination to seek their own paths to the future. By year’s end Gorbachev had become a superfluous president of a vanishing country. . . .”^[5] The Soviet Union was no more. A vast Russian Federation under Boris Yeltsin remained—still the largest country in the world—but many lands that had been part of the Soviet Union, such as the Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldavia, Armenia, and others, were now following an independent course.

Many symbolic changes were made in the wake of the official abandonment of Communism. Statues of Lenin that had dotted the land were removed. Lenin’s tomb ceased to be a shrine, and his remains were finally buried. Leningrad became St. Petersburg once again, by the will and vote of the inhabitants. Marx’s claim that “Religion is the opiate of the people” was obliterated or obscured where possible. By appearances, Communism had become the wave of the past in Russia.

While statues may be taken down, names changed, building space reassigned, and the physical relics from the past put away, ideas are not so readily discarded or displaced. They leave residues in the minds of people and practices in their ways that may continue after doctrines have been more or less publicly repudiated. I asked the question in 1989, when those events were only getting underway, what would happen “if Communism were to yield up the monopoly of power in those countries in which it now rules?” I see no reason now to alter significantly what I wrote then, which I now quote:

Would Communism simply wither away and disappear? That is not a very likely prospect. . . . It is unlikely not only because the immediate prospect is for some Communist rulers to cling to their hold on power for the foreseeable future but also because even if there were no longer rulers who claimed a monopoly of power by way of their position in the dominant Communist party there would still be a large residue of Marxism-Leninism around. Every country in the world is infected with at least the outcroppings of socialism of which Marxism was the most successful of the extremes.

For example, every government in the world today is making a greater or lesser effort to manage or control the economy over which it governs. . . . Most countries try to regulate and alter economic activity by their fiscal and monetary policies. . . . It is so widely accepted as to be virtually universal today that governments are responsible for the material well being of the populace that they govern. To that end, they are expected to manage and control the economy, tax and distribute wealth, and provide an assortment of welfare programs.^[6]

As expected, some Communist rulers have clung to power, most notably in China, North Korea, Cuba, but elsewhere as well. Even in lands where Communists no longer formally rule, many bureaucrats and members of the privileged nomenklatura still hold office and wield power. Former Communists often hold high or top offices. The parties change names; those who govern do not profess Marxism-Leninism, but they were Communists, quite often, and are still imbued with the ideas which they held then to greater or lesser extent.

This is not said to underrate the great significance of the disintegration of the Soviet Empire and Union and the adoption of many freedoms of the West in these countries. Undoubtedly, too, the tenacious hold of the idea that has had the world in its grip has been loosened somewhat. Ideas are being widely questioned that were once treated as settled once and for all. Few would be so bold today as to declare that socialism is the wave of the future. It is rather to affirm that the world is still to greater or lesser extent in the grip of the idea which has held sway for much of this century.

In the United States, this is still the case. Ronald Reagan could talk the talk of individual liberty, free enterprise, and constitutional government, but without support he could not walk the walk. He championed the reduction of taxes, but he could not advocate the removal of the welfare state at its core. He started out pledging to abolish two departments; instead, he ended up adding a Department of Veterans Affairs. President Bush did not even keep his pledge of no new taxes, much less considering the restoration of constitutional government. The votes may be out there to shake the idea that has the world in its grip, but thus far politicians tend to waffle when confronted with tenacious defenders of the status quo. The Republicans who mustered majorities in both houses in 1994 may, with block grants and audacity, foist upon the states the responsibility for determining the fate of the idea that has the world in its grip. Then again, they may not.

The idea that has the world in its grip has great attraction for peoples around the world. The notion that government is responsible for the material and intellectual well-being of populaces has great appeal, especially when it is accompanied by actual payments and subsidies from government. Many people become dependent upon government handouts, and even those who are not particularly dependent may lose confidence in their ability to provide for themselves. These feelings, attitudes, and practices are residues from the better part of a century of socialism in its several varieties. They have produced vastly overgrown governments and the politicalization of life. Governments and politicians are the problem, not the solution.

Sturdy individuals, stable families, vital communities, limited government, and faith in a transcendent God who provides for us through the natural order and the bounties of nature—these alone can break the grip of the idea. It is now a cliché that socialism is a failure; it now is the fullness of time to act upon the insight that gave rise to its fall.

1.   Z. A. Jordan, ed., Karl Marx: Economy, Class and Society (New York: Scribner’s, 1971), pp. 126-27.

2.   Ibid., p. 292.

3.   Eugen Weber, ed., The Western Tradition (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1959), p. 292.

4.   Robert Sharlet, “The Union Republics of the U.S.S.R.,” The Americana Annual (1991), p. 44.

5.   Robert Sharlet, “The Second Soviet Revolution,” The Americana Annual (1992), p. 32.

6.   Clarence Carson, Basic Communism: Its Rise, Spread and Debacle in the 20th Century (Wadley, Ala.: American Textbook Committee, 1990), p. 481.

It is doubtful that Thomas Jefferson could have been elected President in the twentieth century. It is almost equally doubtful that he could have been elected to that high office at any time past 1850. Now I do not draw these conclusions simply because, as we say, times change, and any person thrown suddenly into another era would be more or less out of place and unsuited to positions of power and prestige in the later era. It is rather that Jefferson did not have the temperament, character, and turn of mind to have won election in the later era.

The Man

Jefferson shrank from public debate as a young child does from going into the darkness alone. He avoided, so far as possible, all occasions for public speaking. He disliked pomp, ceremony, confrontations, and heated discourse. As President, he preferred written opinions from his department heads rather than to convene cabinet meetings in an attempt to reach conclusions. He was tall, gangly, freckled, sandy-haired, and some thought they detected a sneakiness about him. For this latter reason, especially, he would probably have been a disaster on television, where openness and straightforward honesty of appearance is essential, though actors can feign such looks with ease, while honest men with a squint might be thought scoundrels. Some thought Jefferson was being overly anxious for popular approval when he did not speak out on controversial matters. The truth may be otherwise; Jefferson loved the truth too much to see it traded casually in the marketplace.

In any case, Jefferson was retiring and what we would call “cerebral.” Possibly no man since Aristotle took more pleasure in observing, recording, and classifying or describing natural phenomena than did Jefferson. Indeed, when time permitted, he filled notebook after notebook with such observations. Jefferson had an active and innovative interest in every intellectual pursuit and activity of his day. He carried on a vigorous correspondence with European and American philosophers and scientists throughout much of his life. His talents were varied and his interests universal. He was trained in the law and admitted to the bar, served in the colonial legislature of Virginia and the Second Continental Congress, drafted the Declaration of Independence, was elected governor of Virginia, was a prolific writer, served as Minister to France, was first Secretary of State of the United States, and was elected second Vice President and third President of his country.

As if all that were not enough, he was a gentleman farmer, a manager of a large estate, a scientist, an inventor, and an architect. Of his inventions, “He invented a hempbeater, worked out a formula for a mold board plow . . . . devised a leather buggy, a swivel chair, and a dumbwaiter . . . . He was constantly studying new plows, steam engines, metronomes, thermometers, elevators, and the like, as well as the processing of butters and cheeses. He wrote a long essay for Congress on standards of weights and measures in the United States . . . . [and] conceived the American decimal system of coinage . . . .”[1]

Indeed, books could be written, and many have been, on Jefferson’s life and attainments. Several of his contributions, each on its own, might have earned him a secure place in American history. Almost certainly his authorship of the Declaration of Independence would have made him a fixture in the firmament of the Founders. His Virginia Bill of Religious Liberty was a classic statement even before it was adopted by that legislature. His two terms as President by themselves have earned him a place among America’s Ten Greatest Presidents.[2]His efforts in founding the Jeffersonian Republican Party would surely have been remembered, as would his architectural contributions for the University of Virginia, the magnificent concept of Monticello, and his background aid for the layout of Washington, D.C. Much more could be named, but surely his eminence has long since been established.

Jefferson himself wanted to be remembered for his authorship of the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia Bill of Religious Liberty, and his contribution to the founding of the University of Virginia. These are indeed enduring monuments, though his First Inaugural Address is no less one. Yet there is something else that he did for which he most needs to be remembered in our time. Jefferson was a vigorous and instructive advocate of the constitutional dispersion of powers of government—the separation of powers within the United States government and their dispersion between the central and state governments. He championed this aspect of the Constitution because it limited government, and limited government was essential to individual liberty.

Defender of Liberty

It is well known, of course, that Thomas Jefferson was an outspoken advocate of individual liberty. He defined it this way: “Of liberty then I would say that in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will, but rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.”[3]Moreover, Jefferson professed a passionate attachment to liberty. He wrote to Dr. Benjamin Rush that he had “sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”[4]His belief in liberty was based in the natural rights doctrine, itself grounded in natural law theory. Most proponents of natural rights maintained that natural rights were altered and reduced when man entered society. Jefferson, by contrast, argued that “the idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural right.”[5]In any case, Jefferson was a vigorous advocate of individual liberty.

There should be no doubt, either, that Jefferson believed that government was the greatest, if not only, threat to individual liberty. He wrote that “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”[6]This is so because those who gain positions of power tend always to extend the bounds of it. Power must always be constrained or limited else it will increase to the level that it will be despotic. Jefferson wrote to Judge Spencer Roane in 1819, “It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also. . . .”[7]With this principle of necessary limitation in mind, Jefferson declared “that a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest upon inference.”[8]

Nor did his many years in government service assuage his fears of government nor lead him to view it as any less a threat to liberty. If anything, it confirmed him in his earlier beliefs about not entrusting overmuch to those in power. But it was not so much Jefferson’s tenacious attachment to liberty nor especially his fear of government power that set him apart from many of his contemporaries. Most American leaders of the founding era expressed similar beliefs. It was also widely believed that the powers of government should be separated and balanced so that men in power, in their struggle with others for power, would be constrained and limited in their exercise of power. This was generally believed to be the necessary condition for the continuation of liberty.

Most of Jefferson’s contemporaries subscribed to the idea that the powers of government should be dispersed—at least so far as to divide them among the three branches. Many became persuaded, too, that dividing the powers of government between the general and state governments was a good thing. But few, if any, saw as clearly as Jefferson did how much effort had to be put into making such a system work and how far the effort had to be carried.

If the system of checks and balances is to work, he thought, it would be because those entrusted with power used their imaginations, wills, and determination to protect their interests and assert their prerogatives. Checks and balances entail tension, an ongoing and, above all, unresolved tension, and men are usually disinclined to live with unresolved tensions. The natural inclination is to establish some authority who, or which, has the assignment to settle the issues, once and for all, and resolve the tension. Jefferson understood more clearly than anyone else ever has, or at least discussed it more clearly, that the resolution of these tensions—arising from different claims to power among the branches or between the states and the United States—would be to remove the checks and balances.

Balances and Checks

For Jefferson, the preserving and working of the checks and balances in government depended upon where the authority was lodged to interpret the Constitution. The ink was hardly dry on the Constitution before some were asserting that the federal courts alone could interpret the Constitution and that the ultimate authority to do so was the Supreme Court. Indeed, that view was widely held and claimed by much of the federal judiciary before the end of the 1790s. (Judges have never been noted for being reluctant to extend their authority.) Jefferson was hardly alone in opposing this view, but he was almost certainly the most thorough in working out and asserting a counter-position.

While he was President, he asserted his position by his action (or inaction) rather than by theories, but after he had left office he made clear in letters and otherwise his position. For example, he wrote in a letter in 1820: “You [William C. Jarvis] seem . . . to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions, a very dangerous doctrine indeed and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy . . . . The constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that, to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party its members would become despots.”[9]

Several editors of newspapers had been found guilty of violating the Sedition Act of 1798 and sent to prison. When Jefferson became President, he pardoned and freed such of them as were still in prison. In correspondence with Abigail Adams in 1804, he justified his action this way:

You seem to think it devolved on the judges to decide on the validity of the Sedition Law. But nothing in the Constitution had given them a right to decide for the executive, more than to the executive to decide for them. Both magistrates are equally independent in the sphere of action assigned to them. The judges, believing the law constitutional, had a right to pass a sentence of fine and imprisonment, because the power was placed in their hands by the Constitution. But the executive, believing the law to be unconstitutional, were bound to remit the execution of it, because that power has been con-tided to them by the Constitution. That instrument meant that its co-ordinate branches should be checks on each other. But the opinion which gives to the judges the [sole] right to decide what laws are constitutional . . . would make the judiciary a despotic branch.[10]

Jefferson’s position was that neither the United States, nor any of the branches of the government, nor of the states, is the ultimate arbiter of the Constitution. Ultimate authority is not vested in the United States government. It is a limited government. On the dispersion of powers among the governments, he wrote to Joseph C. Cabell in 1816: “Let the national government be entrusted with the defence of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights, laws, police and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties . . . .” and so forth. “It is by dividing and subdividing . . . that all will be done for the best. What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body . . . .”[11]The ultimate arbiter of the Constitution, Jefferson explained, “is the people of the Union, assembled by their deputies in convention at the call of Congress or of two-thirds of the States.”[12]In short, if some issue of power so agitates the country, let the matter be settled and put to rest by constitutional amendment.

Jefferson rightly discerned that if any body in government could ultimately settle questions of the location of constitutional authority, it would tend to settle them in favor of the government to which it belonged, and ultimately its very own body. In short, the tendency would be to concentrate all authority in one body, and that body would have few or no restraints on its authority. Such a concentration of power would sooner or later be arbitrary and capricious and hence tyrannical. The greatest likelihood of such concentration would be in the general government at the expense of the state governments and the people.

No Judicial Supremacy

And, in the general government, the greatest danger of one branch usurping all power, Jefferson thought and feared, was the federal judiciary, and especially the Supreme Court. Lest it be thought that Jefferson was picking on these courts and denying them their constitutional authority, his full position on the division of power in the federal government should be explained. Jefferson understood that the federal courts had an important role in interpreting the Constitution. In determining which law to apply to particular cases, they must, of course, interpret and apply the Constitution. The Supreme Court would have the final say on the law—so far the courts and matters that properly concerned them were at issue. But its interpretations would have no sway over the other branches as to the meaning of the Constitution in matters that concern them. He explained it this way:

“My construction of the constitution . . . is that each department is truly independent of the others, and has an equal right to decide for itself what is the meaning of the constitution in the cases submitted to its action; and especially, where it is to act ultimately and without appeal. I will explain myself by examples, which having occurred while I was in office, are better known to me . . . :

A legislature had passed the sedition law. The federal courts had subjected certain individuals to its penalties of fine and imprisonment. On coming into office, I released these individuals by the power of pardon committed to executive discretion, which could never be more properly exercised than where citizens were suffering without the authority of law, or, which was equivalent, under a law unauthorized by the constitution, and therefore null. In the case of Marbury and Madison, the federal judges declared that commissions signed and sealed by the President were valid, although not delivered. I deemed delivery essential to complete a deed, which, as long as it remains in the hands of the party, is as yet no deed . . . . and I withheld delivery of the commissions. They [the courts] cannot issue a mandamus to the President or legislature, or to any of their officers.”[13]

In sum, he held that all the branches of government are independent of one another in the sources of their powers and the exercise of them, including each of the houses of Congress. In performing then’ constitutionally assigned duties, they are the judges of constitutionality. Thus, either house of the Congress may decide that a bill before it is unconstitutional, and refuse to pass it. The bill cannot become law, in that case, and the power of all the other branches are impotent to make it otherwise. In like manner, the President, acting within the frame of his office, may veto bills, refuse court orders, and pardon those convicted of crimes. The courts, too, are independent within their realms. Are, then, the members of the legislative and executive branches above the law? Jefferson would have denied that emphatically. They are presumably acting according to their interpretation of the Constitution within their departments as the courts are presumably acting in accord with their interpretation of the Constitution in theirs. The ultimate arbiters or judges of the propriety of acts of the legislative and executive branches are their electors, If in the judgment of those authorized to choose them they have behaved improperly, they may be turned out of office at the end of their terms.

But what about the federal courts? Who would rule on the propriety (or constitutionality) of their acts? There was the rub, as Jefferson saw it, and he was substantially correct. The courts, and especially (always) the Supreme Court, are a law unto themselves, in effect. The appointment of judges is for life during good behavior, if they so desire. They have no fixed term of office, no time when they must return to theft electors for re-election. True, a judge may be removed from office when impeached by the House of Representatives and convicted by two-thirds of the Senate present of “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Not only is it quite difficult to get a two-thirds vote from the Senate for conviction, but it is not at all clear that usurpation of power or misconstruing the power of the court under the Constitution is an offense by the above definition.

At any rate, Jefferson doubted that the fear of impeachment was little more than a paper tiger, or as he put it frequently in private correspondence, “not even a scarecrow.” He put the danger this way: “We already see the power, installed for life, advancing with a noiseless and steady pace to the great object of consolidation. [“The engine of consolidation,” he had said, “will be the federal judiciary . . . .”] The foundations are already deeply laid by their decisions for the annihilation of constitutional state rights, and the removal of every check, every counterpoise to the engulfing power of which themselves are to make a sovereign part.”[14]

“At the establishment of our constitution,” Jefferson wrote, “the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions . . . become law by precedent, sapping by little and little the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction . . . . In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life if secured against all liability to account.”[15]

Jefferson’s great concern, of course, was the preservation of individual liberty. He was opposed to oppression, whatever its source. The great danger to liberty is not simply government itself but concentrated and unrestrained government which can and will ride roughshod over the fights of individuals. “It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers,” he wrote, “but by theft distribution that good government is effected.” He could be equally concerned, or nearly so, whether the concentration was wrought by the legislative, executive, or judicial branches. For example, Jefferson complained vigorously in the 1780s about the concentration of powers in the legislative branch of the Virginia government. “All the powers of government,” he declared, “legislative, executive, and judiciary, result to the legislative body. The concentrating of these in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands and not by a single one. One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one . . . .” Nor was he in the least relieved that since the legislature was elected, it would be an “elective despotism,” so to speak,[16]What was wanted, he pointed out, was a balance of powers by which government would be restrained and limited and individuals would be free.

Even so, over the years Jefferson became ever more firmly convinced that the federal judiciary would be the instrument for concentrating power in the federal government and the reducing of the other branches to subordinate status. He may have been drawn to this conclusion by the long tenure of John Marshall as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, by his dominance of that body, and by his tendency to interpret the Constitution in such a way as to subordinate the states and enhance the power of the federal government. Be that as it may, Jefferson saw clearly and correctly that the potential of the courts for undermining the Constitution and tipping the flow of power toward themselves was there. He was right that the courts were potentially irresponsible, that it was very difficult, if not impossible, to hold the Supreme Court to account for vagrant opinions. He was right, too, in fearing that the states would be the first to have their independence undermined on the way to the concentration of power. He was on the mark as well in detecting an institutional flaw in the Constitution which gave lifelong tenure to federal judges.

Federal Supremacy

But if his pronouncements be taken as predictions, his timing was well off the mark, at least from our perspective. Actually, they were more like warnings and caution signs than predictions. In any case, it was well into the twentieth century, by my reckoning, before the concentration which he discerned as potentiality came to fruition. Granted, there was a major thrust toward the concentration of power in the Union government during the Civil War and Reconstruction. It was spearheaded by the executive, Abraham Lincoln, that is, and later taken over by Congress during the presidencies of Johnson and Grant. The courts figured hardly at all in this concentration of power. But the concentration did not last much past the end of Reconstruction. Neither Congress nor the Presidents nor the federal courts nor even the United States government was especially dominant over the next two decades or so. The states reasserted their roles and a kind of balance of power was restored to the Union.

The next full-fledged onslaught of the concentration of power came in the 1930s, though it was prefigured by developments just before and during World War I. The Seventeenth Amendment, adopted in 1913, stripped the state governments of their most effective restraining influence upon the federal government. The Sixteenth Amendment, ratified in 1913, and the Federal Reserve Act, passed shortly afterward, prepared the way for the federal government to control the money and banking system and gather the wealth with which to consolidate its dominance. The more or less permanent concentration of power in the federal government began in the 1930s.

Again, however, it was not the federal courts which led the way in thrusting aside the constitutional restraints on the consolidation of power in the 1930s. On the contrary, the courts, and the Supreme Court in particular, carried on a major rearguard campaign to preserve the integrity of the Constitution, down to 1938, at which point a reconstituted Court knuckled under but still did not take the lead in undermining the Constitution. It was the executive branch, led and prodded by Franklin D. Roosevelt, which pushed to consolidate and concentrate power during the 1930s. Congress became a pliant instrument of the executive branch, forgoing its responsibilities to observe and protect the Constitution, and passing whatever legislation the President thought fit to suggest. Congress did begin to stiffen its spine near the end of the decade, but its efforts were too little and too late.

All this is not to say that Jefferson erred about the consolidating potential of the federal courts. His timing was off but his analysis was right. Under the benevolent domination of Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Supreme Court took the lead in the 1950s and 1960s, and during those two decades it outconsolidated and outconcentrated the executive and legislative concentrators and consolidators of earlier decades. The high court planted its foot on the neck of the state and local governments, took away their independence of action, compelled them to perform their functions under its directives, and removed them entirely as an obstacle to federal power.

The substantive obstacles to the exercise of federal power, and especially by the Supreme Court, had been so far ignored, evaded, and misconstrued by the 1970s that the Constitution no longer served as a restraint on government. Instead, it had been largely reconstrued as the fount of a cornucopia of benefits bestowed upon a dependent people by a government ravenous for the wealth of America and bent upon directing the course of the lives of Americans. Is this oppression? Jefferson would have said so, for he said that concentrated power is by definition oppression. But Jefferson spoke in terms of essences, not existences, of reason, not feeling, and many Americans will not recognize oppression until they feel it. That, too, may come; for many, it already has.

The strange thing is that even though this vast consolidation and concentration of power has taken place in the twentieth century, the Constitution has been little changed since 1791, and then mainly by the Fourteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Amendments, and these were only made adjuncts of the concentration, they did not mandate it. The Constitution is still there to be recovered, if we but knew how and had the will to do it.

Since Jefferson thought that the federal courts posed the main threat to the Constitution, his suggestion for amending it addressed only that point. Jefferson proposed that judges have their tenure limited to a fixed term. He said, “Let the future appointments of judges be for four or six years, and renewable by the President and Senate. This will bring their conduct, at regular periods, under revision and probation, and may keep them in equipoise between the governments [state and federal].”[17]

A New Check

My own studies of how power became concentrated in the United States (to be published in the forthcoming book, Basic American Government) lead me to the conclusion that Jefferson’s proposal, which has never been adopted, falls far short of what is now necessary to restore the Constitution. In fact, he was not addressing that problem, for it retained its full vigor during his lifetime. He did foresee the corruption of the executive and legislative branches when the Constitution was undermined. That has indeed taken place. The legislative and executive branches no longer consider it any part of their duty to determine the constitutionality of their acts. They no longer consider much except how far they can go before the courts call a halt. As for the courts, they are more apt to consult the public temper than the Constitution.

It seems to me that in our present condition, the only means of getting judges, legislators, and executives to consult the actual provisions of the Constitution and to obey the oaths they take to observe its bounds and protect it is to adopt sanctions against its violation or evasion. In sum, it should be made a crime punishable by removal from office for any government officer, including members of Congress, to participate affirmatively in any act not authorized by or in violation of the Constitution. Trial for those accused should be in United States District Courts before a jury charged with determining whether a violation has taken place and a judge empowered to remove them from office. This proposal is more fully developed in my forthcoming book, though even that could benefit by fuller treatment.

At any rate, Thomas Jefferson’s insights are still capable of lighting a fire on the 250th anniversary of his birth. They shed a light on the Constitution, our system of government, and remind us that it was adopted to protect individual liberty from oppression, not to justify and sanction it by obfuscatory constructions. 

1.   Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition (New York: Vintage Books, 1955), pp. 23-24.
2.   This is the title of a book in which Jefferson is included.
3.   Edward Dumbauld, ed., The Political Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New York: The Liberal Arts Press, 1955), p. 55.
4.   Dumbauld, p. 76.
5.   Dumbauld, p. 55.
6.   Dumbauld, p. 138.
7.   Frank Irwin, ed., Letters of Thomas Jefferson (Tilton, N.H.: Sanbornton Bridge Press, 1975), p. 215.
8.   Irwin, p. 40.
9.   Dumbauld, p. 153.
10.   Dumbauld, pp. 154-55.
11.   Adrienne Koch and William Peden, ed., The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Modern Library, 1944), pp. 660-61.
12.   Dumbauld, p. 148.
13.   Irwin, pp. 215-16.
14.   Thomas Jefferson, “The Constitution . . . -Endangered by the Federal Judiciary,” Foundations of Liberty, James R. Patrick, ed., vol. I (1988), p, 26.
15.   Jefferson, p. 27.
16.   Quoted in Hofstadter, p. 29.
17.   Allen Ellery Burgh, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. XV (Washington: Jefferson Memorial Association, 1907), p. 331.

      The American farmer is in a situation today that can be solved. The solution is not one of governmental policies that create short-term “fixes” for the farmer. The best method to let the farmer prosper is the same solution that would let the other parts of the economy prosper. Government must remove the burdens placed upon the individual. The individual must be allowed to compete on an equal basis to become competitive with his peers.

—Edgar Terry, a fourth-generation
farmer in Ventura, California

“The Family Farm”

Probably, a goodly amount of the public sympathy for farmers arises from memories that extend backward into an era when farming was often not so business-like as it has now become. The “family farm” may call up visions of small farms on which growing produce for the market was only an aspect of the undertaking. Such farms often kept a variety of animals—cows, horses, chickens, hogs, perhaps sheep or goats, geese, ducks—for family or farm use. Fruit trees would often provide fruit in season, and a variety of nuts might be produced. All sorts of crops might be grown, some for animal consumption, some for the family, and only one or a few for sale in the market. Such farms would frequently have surpluses of fruits and vegetables to be shared in season with neighbors and relatives. According to lore, and sometimes in fact, these farms were refuges for children who lived in cities and towns, to which they would be sent during summer vacation to spend some time on a farm with relatives, perhaps learning something of ancient virtues and values.

Such farms have mainly gone with the wind, so to speak nowadays. Most farming for the market, whether on family farms or on company or corporation farms, is more or less highly specialized. Many farms today have no farm animals at all. The old-fashioned barn has often been dispensed with entirely. Vegetable gardens are probably no more common on large farms than they are in the suburbs. Machinery has long since replaced most animals for motive power on the farms, and the machinery has become much larger and usually much more highly specialized in function than it used to be. A family farm is distinguished from others, if at all, by the fact that most of the work is done by a single family and that the family lives on the land. Even when there is some diversity in the produce, it is still done on a commercial scale usually. In sum, farming for the market has become commercialized.

The great change in farming generally may have less bearing than might be supposed on government programs for farmers, except for its nostalgic role in promoting taxpayer support to “save the family farm.” Actually, most government programs enacted over many years have been devised to affect farming for the market. Almost none of the programs has either sought or been devised to reward or restrict farm production for the family. True, some of the New Deal programs did try to encourage diversification on farms, but to the extent that they succeeded (by restricting the land planted to crops grown for the market), they usually resulted in driving people from the farms. Some loan programs, notably the Farmer’s Home Administration, have enabled some people to buy houses on small plots of land, but these are rarely used for any significant farming.

Altering the Market

In any case, most of the agitation for government programs and most of the actual programs have been aimed at altering the market in some way. One of the earliest interventions was an attempt to control freight rates and the prices charged for the storage of grain. These were supposed to help farmers who shipped their goods to market or stored them in the anticipation of higher prices. Currency inflation was aimed almost exclusively at raising farm prices or providing cheaper and easier credit. Parity programs were exclusively market oriented. The same could be said for assorted price support or subsidy programs. The huge government supported loan and insurance programs have been mainly used by farmers to purchase more land, insure commercial crops, or purchase farm machinery needed for large operations. In sum, government programs have usually been for those farming for the market, not for those mainly producing food for the family on family farms.

To say that farming is a business is in no sense to downgrade its importance or to adversely criticize it. Nor do I mean to suggest that because farmers are businessmen, they are not entitled to a full measure of sympathy and understanding for the risks that they take and the benefit they provide for all of us. Farming is certainly a risky business, dependent as it is upon the elements, domestic prices, and changes in foreign markets. More risky than running a service station (or, for that matter, any number of other businesses)? That is by no means clear. Service stations have risks, some of which are different from those of farmers. For example, they are much more apt to be robbed, and location is very important. Beyond these things they are subject to all sorts of exigencies, and work always with highly explosive materials.

But to suggest that farmers deserve our understanding and appreciation should not he taken to mean that government should intervene either on their behalf or to restrict them. Farming is a business, and there is an abundance of evidence which suggests that not only is government intervention often harmful to consumers (that is, all of us) but also to those engaged in the particular businesses aimed at by the intervention. That farm programs over the years have benefited farmers is hardly self-evident. Undoubtedly, some farmers have benefited from some farm programs. There may even have been instances when farms generally have benefited, temporarily, from some particular programs. But that farmers generally have benefited in the long run from government programs could hardly be maintained (leaving out of consideration the cost to the rest of the population).

A Faulty Premise

Farm programs are based on a faulty premise. They are generally premised on the notion that farmers engaged primarily in producing similar sorts of goods constitute a class with common interests. This might be so if they were producing almost exclusively for their own families. But to the extent that they are producing for the market, i.e., to the extent that farming is a business, their interests crucially diverge. A farmer is in competition with all other farmers producing the same type of goods when they enter the market. Wheat farmers are in competition with one another, as are cotton farmers, cattle growers, sugar producers, chicken farmers, and so on through the whole gamut of agricultural production. Each farmer, so far as he is seeking a profit in the market, seeks to produce and sell as much as he can for the highest price at the lowest cost to himself.

Any government program premised on the notion that those farmers producing some one or combination of goods constitute a class with common interests is profoundly uneconomic. In order to work, it requires that each individual farmer act contrary to his own individual interest, that he regularly behave uneconomically. Undoubtedly, such behavior can sometimes be induced by large enough subsidies from taxpayers generally, but the program will nonetheless be a prescription for disaster. In any case, most farm programs range somewhere between subsidizing less than enough to induce uneconomic behavior and trying to alter market conditions sufficiently to keep farmers off the backs of politicians for a season. If farmers were paid enough from government revenues to induce them to behave uneconomically as a rule, the result would be starvation and bankruptcy for citizens generally. That is, farmers would cease to produce those goods that are most wanted in sufficient supply to feed us. On the other hand, government intervention in the market to increase farm income by higher production tends to produce a glut of goods at the subsidized prices.

Most commonly, over the years, government intervention has been concerned with price manipulation: to raise the price of farm products, to raise the price, i.e., wages, of farm workers, to lower the price of shipping, storage, and farm machinery (by encouraging cooperatives), and to lower the price of money, i.e., interest. These attempts at price manipulation have sometimes been accompanied by restrictions on land planted to particular crops, on amounts farmers could sell of a crop in the market, on numbers of cows, for example, that a dairy farmer could have in production, and so on. Raising the prices of farm goods tends to encourage farmers to produce more and to draw others into growing those crops. Raising the price of farm labor tends to encourage the greater use of machinery, as does a reduction in interest rates. Restriction of acreage tends to shift farmers to efforts to produce more on less acreage, and so on. Government intervention tends to produce an ever normal “Farm Problem.”

In fact, production for the market is a business. This is true whether the good produced is wheat or widgets. The rules of economy apply to farmers as much as they do to service station operators. We create the “Farm Problem” by lumping farmers together unnaturally and perpetuate it by government intervention. The solution lies in treating farming as a business and allowing those who can do it effectively to do so without interference.

Those who favor free enterprise are working to maintain or establish human freedom. They are on the side of the human spirit wherever efforts are being made to crush it. Those who stand for free enterprise have a noble cause, for it is the cause of freedom and of free men.

One of the lesser credit organizations sponsored by the United States government is entitled the Production Credit Association. I think the United States government has become a Credit Production Association. We need to get the government out of the business of credit production, allow the economy to be devoted to its appointed task of producing goods in terms of supply and demand, not pushed this way and that by credit expansion, and allow prices to signal the market conditions. To call what is going on credit expansion helps me to see that more clearly.

We can see clearly that capitalism is a disease of socialism, not the offspring of private property. It is not a system in which the instruments of production are privately owned, but one in which private property is taken to provide capital for publicly owned industries. Perhaps the most dramatic examples of it at the present time are the grants and loans to Third World and Communist nations by which wealth from the United States and European countries is being appropriated for their industrialization. That, by my understanding, is capitalism, and it should bear the name and onus.

The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes . . . .

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization.

The going assumption at the time of the drawing and ratification of the Constitution was that the general government had only such powers as were granted. But it was not left as an assumption; the 10th Amendment spells out the point. It reads, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

The second way the United States government is limited is by specific prohibitions. For example, taxation is limited in various ways in the Constitution. It required that all direct taxes be apportioned on the basis of population (altered later by the 16th Amendment). Other taxes must be levied uniformly throughout the United States. All taxation must be for the common defense and/or general welfare of the United States, which was not a grant of power but a limitation upon it. Section 9, Article I contains these among other limitations:

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

No Tax or Duty shall be laid on articles exported from any State . . . .

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States.

In addition to such prohibitions as these the Bill of Rights or first ten amendments to the Constitution consists of limitations on the United States government. As already noted, the fear of government generally, and especially of a central government, resulted in the move for a bill of rights. Many were emphatic about the need for such a list to limit the new government. Thomas Jefferson declared that it was a matter of principle with him “that a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government . . . . and what no just government should refuse.”^[10] Patrick Henry insisted that “If you intend to reserve your inalienable rights, you must have the most ex press stipulation . . . .”^[11]

Liberty, in its genuine sense, is security to enjoy the effects of our honest industry and labors, in a free and mild government, and personal security from all illegal restraints.

—Richard Henry Lee, 1787

At any rate, the Bill of Rights specifically restricts and limits the United States government. The first Amendment begins in a way to make that crystal clear: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech,” etc. (Italics added.) The others do not point to a specific branch of government that may not act, but it is clear from the language that government is being restricted by them. For example, the fourth Amendment states that “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause . . . .” Since governments are the only body that may legally do such things, the article clearly is limiting government. So it is with the other parts of the Bill of Rights.

Not only is the United States government limited by the Constitution, but the state governments are as well. They are limited, in the first place, by the grant of powers to the United States government, powers which, ordinarily, states may only exercise, if at all, with the approval of Congress. Second, some powers are absolutely denied to the states, e.g., “No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any . . . Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.”

The central feature of the United States Constitution, then, is the limitation of government.

Freeing the Individual

A major fruit of independence was the freeing of the individual from a variety of government compulsions. Governments were restrained that individuals might be free. That was the thrust of the making of constitutions during these years. The state constitutions were already limiting state governments before the United States Constitution was written. States frequently had their own bills of rights which had as their main purpose the protection of their inhabitants from government. Moreover, many of the restraints which had been imposed under British rule were removed as independence was achieved. Indeed, Americans used the occasion offered by the break from England to remove those restraints on the individual that did not accord with their outlook.

One of those restraints on the individual was compulsory church attendance and the associated taxation and other restrictions supporting an established church. In the main, these restrictions were removed by disestablishing churches. The establishment most readily dispensed with was that of the Church of England. While that church was established in several colonies, it was not popular in most of them, many of its clergy remained loyal to England, and dissenters were numerous in most states. The movement to disestablish the Church of England was greatly aided, too, by the fact that it was a national church; membership in it was tied to loyalty to the king of England. Since Americans could not accept that any longer, the church was speedily disestablished. Several states had no established churches: namely, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Even so, they used the opportunity afforded by independence to reduce religious restraints.

The established Congregational church was maintained for several decades in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. There was, however, some lightening of the load of religious restrictions in these states. The Massachusetts constitution of 1780 affirmed that every man had the right to worship in his own way, that all churches were equal before the law, and tax monies could be used to pay ministers of churches generally. However, attendance in some Christian church was still required, and people were still taxed to pay ministers. New Hampshire made much the same provisions as Massachusetts, but Connecticut clung to as much as the leaders dared of the established church. They did allow a dissenter from it to avoid payment of taxes if he could present a certificate from an officer of the church showing that he attended. But the days of formally established churches were ending in New England, too, though disestablishment in the last of these states was not completed until the 1830s.

The constitutions of New Jersey, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Delaware, and Pennsylvania provided that none should be compelled to pay taxes to churches nor attend any service except such as they chose. Virginia, however, made the most thorough-going effort to establish freedom of conscience. This might have been a reaction to the fact that Virginia had the oldest established church in English America and the most rigorously established. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Mason were leading advocates of religious liberty, but they did not succeed in getting their ideas into law until 1786. This was done by the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, which proclaimed religious liberty a natural right. The legally effective portion of the statute reads this way:

That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.^[12]

In large, this was what Americans were coming to think of as religious liberty.

The Constitution of the United States left to the states the power to determine as they would whether they would have an established church or to what extent religious liberty would prevail. The first Amendment simply prohibited Congress to establish a religion or interfere with its free exercise. The states did, however, move to disestablish churches and to reduce religious re strictions, as already noted, thus freeing people in the matter of conscience.

Many of the provisions in the state bills of rights, as well as the Bill of Rights for the United States, were guarantees of legal practices protecting the freedom of the individual that were a part of the British tradition. The Virginia Bill of Rights, adopted June 12, 1776, was both a model for such documents and illustrates the point. It guaranteed trial by jury in both criminal and civil cases, prohibited excessive bail and fines, declared general warrants to be oppressive, and acknowledged freedom of the press. The protections of persons accused of a crime were stated in detail:

That in all capital or criminal prosecutions a man hath a right to demand the cause and nature of his accusation, to be confronted with the accusers and witnesses, to call for evidence in his favour, and to a speedy trial by an impartial jury of his vicinage [the vicinity of where he lives], without whose unanimous consent he cannot be found guilty, nor can he be compelled to give evidence against himself; that no man may be deprived of his liberty, except by the law of the land or the judgment of his peers.^[13]

In addition to these protections, the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights of 1780 provided for the right to bear arms, the right of peaceful assembly, the prohibition of ex post facto laws and bills of attainder, among others. Most of the above provisions are also in the United States Constitution.

Property Rights

There were some major changes from British practice, however, particularly in the matter of ownership of real property. Several feudal restraints on property were removed. Primogeniture—the legal provision requirement that if the owner died without a will the bulk of the estate went to the eldest son—was abolished generally. The most general encumbrance on property was the quitrent, an annual payment due to king or proprietors on land. Such claims as still existed at the time of independence were speedily extinguished, and land thereafter was generally owned in “fee simple.” En-tail—legal provisions that estates could not be broken up—, where it existed, was abolished. Such royal prerogatives as the right of the monarch to white pines (for shipbuilding) on private land were, of course, nullified.

A part of the freeing of the individual, then, was making real property ownership free of government restraints and disposable at will by the individual. Indeed, property in general was carefully protected both in state constitutions and in the United States Constitution. Some later commentators have claimed that the Founders distinguished between what they call “human rights” and property rights and attached greater significance to the former. The evidence for that does not appear in the documents or pronouncements of the time. If anything, they placed more emphasis on property than on other rights of humans, but they certainly did not declare one variety higher than the other.

For example, the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights states:

All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.^[14]

The Declaration went on to provide that “No part of the property of any individual can, with justice, be taken from him, or applied to public uses, without his consent, or that of the representative body of the people . . . .”^[15] With even greater clarity, the Virginia Bill of Rights says that people “cannot be taxed or deprived of their property for public uses, without their own consent or that of their representatives so elected.”^[16]

Slavery

In any case, the tendency of the declarations and constitutions of these years was the freeing of individuals from governmental control of their affairs and protecting them in their rights. It has rightly been pointed out, of course, that where Negro slavery continued to exist it was a glaring exception to this tendency. Some have even gone so far as to accuse the Founders of hypocrisy in professing to believe in the equal rights of all men and acquiescing in the continuation of slavery. It strikes us as strange that Thomas Jefferson, who penned the stirring statement “that all men are created equal,” should have been himself a slaveholder. But even in the case of chattel slavery the trend of the 1780s was toward the freeing of the individual, and if the trend and sentiment in the direction of ending slavery had continued apace the apparent contradiction would have been resolved.

Some states began to act with the purpose of eventually ending slavery almost as soon as independence from Britain was declared. In 1776, Delaware prohibited the importation of slaves and removed all restraints on their manumission (freeing by the owner). Virginia stopped slave imports in 1778; Maryland adopted a similar measure in 1783. Both states permitted manumission. In 1780, Pennsylvania not only prohibited further importation of slaves but also provided that after that date all children born of slaves should be free. Similar enactments were made in the early 1780s in New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. In Massachusetts, the supreme court ruled that on the basis of that state’s constitution of 1780 slavery was abolished there. Even North Carolina (the greatest resistance to freeing slaves was in the lower South) moved to discourage the slave trade in 1786 by taxing heavily such slaves as were imported after that time. In order to protect free Negroes, Virginia made it a crime punishable by death for anyone found guilty of selling a freed Negro into slavery. As already noted, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery in the Northwest territory.

Jefferson had written a warning about the continuation of slavery, which he abhorred, in his Notes on Virginia. It was a violation of their most basic rights to keep some people in perpetual bondage. “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country,” he said, “when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever . . . .”^[17]

Madison, writing in defense of the Constitution, said that it would no doubt have been better if the slave trade had been prohibited by the Constitution rather than delaying action until 1808, but he looked forward to the time when “a traffic which has so loudly upbraided the barbarism of modern policy . . . may terminate forever . . . .”^[18]

There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of many of the Founders in wishing an end both to slavery and the slave trade. Moreover, at the earliest date that it could constitutionally Congress prohibited the importation of slaves. Although slaveholders in the lower South were still tenaciously attached to slavery, they were holding out against a tide running in the opposite direction in the 1780s. Even in the lower South, the crops which were so dependent on slave labor—rice and indigo—declined in importance once the break from England was made. Unfortunately, for the abolition of slavery, the cotton gin was invented in the 1790s; cottonbecame an important fiber; and slavery was revived by the expansion into the Old Southwest.

Free Trade

One of the fruits of independence was the freeing of trade both within the United States and with other peoples around the world. Independence from Britain removed British imposed mercantile restrictions in one swoop. That is not to say that Britain did not continue in various ways to limit American trade after the break. They did, well into the 1790s, at least. But British mercantilism was no longer legally binding on Americans; they could trade with whomever they could and would around the world. Initially, too, the states adopted various restrictions which limited trade within the United States. But the Constitution of 1787 put an end to that.

American belief and sentiments were tending more and more to favor free trade. The freedom of people to trade with whomever they would on mutually agreeable terms seemed to them to be of a piece with freedom for the individual in general. Benjamin Franklin said that “it seems contrary to the nature of Commerce, for Government to interfere in the Prices of Commodities. Trade is a voluntary Thing between Buyer and Seller, in every article of which each exercises his own Judgment, and is to please himself.”^[19] Pelatiah Webster, an American economic thinker of this period, declared: “I propose . . . to take off every restraint and limitation from our commerce. Let trade be as free as air. Let every man make the most of his goods in his own way and then he will be satisfied.”^[20] Jefferson said that “the exercise of a free trade with all parts of the world” was “possessed by the American . . . as of natural right . . . .”^[21]

Actually, the freedom to trade is a corollary of private property. The right to dispose of property on whatever terms he will to whomever he will is necessarily a part of the full ownership of property. At its fully extended development, it involves for the seller the right to find anywhere in the world that buyer who will make the best offer for his goods, his time, or his services. For the buyer of these, it involves his right to locate the most attractive goods at prices he is willing to pay.

Aside from the break from England, the greatest stride by Americans toward free trade was the ratification of the Constitution. The Constitution provided for a common market throughout the United States. The power to regulate commerce among the states was vested in the United States. Thereafter, the states could not obstruct commerce, and the whole country became in effect, a free trading area. Further, the Constitution provided that states may not tax imports or exports, except for carrying out inspection laws, without the consent of Congress. But to discourage any of that, all money collected had to be paid into the U.S. Treasury.

A Common Currency

The Constitution contains several other provisions promoting a common market throughout the country. Congress is empowered to pass uniform bankruptcy laws, set up standard weights and measures, and establish post offices and post roads. A common currency (or money) is also important for trade to take place easily. So far as the Constitution provides for a common currency, however, it does so by indirection. It authorizes the government to coin money and to regulate its value. It does not authorize the passing of any tender laws (laws making any currency or money legal tender or forcing its acceptance), and it prohibits states to make anything legal tender except gold and silver coins.

Paper money had a well deserved bad reputation at the time of the making of the Constitution. Not only did Americans generally have the recent unsettling experience with the Continental currency, which became worthless, but also several states had in the 1780s flooded the market with virtually worthless paper money. When the states, most notably Rhode Island, adopted laws to force the paper money into circulation, it not only obstructed trade but also endangered property in debts. The subject of paper money came up twice for extended discussion in the Constitutional Convention. It arose once over a proposal to authorize Congress to emit bills of credit (issue paper money). The delegates were overwhelmingly opposed to the proposal. The tenor of the opposition may be gathered from these delegate comments. Oliver Elsworth of Connecticut declared that he “thought this a favorable moment to shut and bar the door against paper money . . . . The power may do harm, never good.”^[22] George Read of Delaware “thought the words [emit bills of credit], if not struck out, would be as alarming as the mark of the Beast in Revelations.” John Lang-don of New Hampshire “had rather reject the whole plan [the Constitution] than retain the . . . words.”^[23] Voting by states, the delegates omitted the power by a vote of 9 to 2.

Paper money came up again in connection with a proposal to permit the states to emit bills of credit with the consent of Congress. That, too, was overwhelmingly rejected. The states are prohibited to issue paper money. Thus, the only provision for a common currency is in the power of the United States to coin money and the reserved power of the states to make those of gold and silver legal tender.

While the Constitution does not specifically provide for free trade with the rest of the world, its provisions lean in that direction. It does provide that “No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.” Thus, tariffs on exports are prohibited. Congress is authorized to levy tariffs on imports. In any case, the widespread sentiment in favor of freeing trade set the stage for low tariffs in the early decades of the Republic, and many Americans had come to dislike British mercantilistic restraints too much to wish to impose them on their own trade.

The Voluntary Way

The story of America after 1789, until well into the 20th century, is not so much the story of the doings of government as of people generally. It is the story of freed individuals working, building, growing crops, building factories, clearing the land for farms, organizing churches, providing for families, and doing all those things that make up the warp and woof of life. They did this singly as individuals, as families, and in voluntary groups. This is always to some degree true, of course. The world’s work is done by people generally and very little by governments. But governments often play a dominant role in the economic, social, religious, educational, recreational, and community lives of a people. This had been so in the European countries from which American settlers came. It has become the rule once again in most places in the world in the 20th century.

The constitution making cleared the ground for the triumph of the voluntary way in America in the late 18th century. Governments were restrained and individuals were freed to pursue their own devices alone or in voluntary cooperation with others. There is no need to exaggerate the extent of this change, however. The British colonists generally enjoyed considerable liberty, as a result of British tradition and law, of British neglect, and of the remoteness of many people from the oversight of government. The Americans continued much of what they considered to be the best of their British heritage under their new constitutions. Nor was everyone freed nor to the same degree under them. Slaves were still in bondage where slavery was continued and could hardly participate in the voluntary way. Children were, as they usually are, under the authority of their parents or other adults. Women generally were still under the protection and in some respects the authority of men—fathers, older brothers, and husbands—, partners, as adults, ordinarily to men, though in some ways subordinate ones. But these last were family matters, not things under the direction of government.

In large, then, the voluntary way triumphed. Governments still issued charters for some undertakings, but these more often confirmed some voluntary undertaking than initiating it. Even the registry of births and deaths was much more apt to be done in the family Bible than in some government office. As churches were disestablished, religion became a voluntary affair. Attendance, participation, the payment of the clergy, what structures would be built, what services would be held, were matters left to individual and family choice and voluntary cooperation. Education had never been firmly established by government in America. There had been some faltering attempts to do so in New England and New York, but not much came of them. The education of children was largely left to parents, and schools and colleges were set up, when they were, by churches or other voluntary associations or simply by some schoolmaster. So it was, too, in the matter of providing for those in temporary or some longer term need. Most often, extended families provided for orphans, for widows, for the sick, and for the disabled. Institutional charity, such as it was, was most apt tobe provided by churches or private gifts.

Under mercantilism, governments had attempted to direct economic activity for their own ends. The British had not only restricted and controlled economic activity but also granted monopolies to chartered companies to engage in specified production or trade. American colonies had sometimes imitated some of these mercantilistic practices. There were still residues of mercantilism at the time of the founding of the United States, but in general Americans preferred voluntary economic activity to that which was government directed. Mostly men started and operated businesses without asking the leave or aid or charters from government. They built ships and plied the seas in trade as they could and would. In short, they tended to follow the voluntary in their economic life.

How America flourished and grew by voluntary cooperation is a story to be told in detail elsewhere. Suffice it to say here that numerous voluntary societies came into being, that religious denominations multiplied and congregations were organized in virtually every community, that schools and colleges became commonplace, and that there were no more enterprising people in the world than were Americans in the 19th century. []

1.   John Dickinson, Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania in Empire and Interest, Forrest McDonald, intro. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962), p. 73.

2.   Edward Dumbauld, ed., The Political Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1955), p. 138.

3.   Lester J. Cappon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters, vol. I (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), p. 5.

4.   Jack P. Greene, ed., Colonies to Nation (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), p. 562.

5.   James Madison, Notes of the Debates in the Federal Convention of1787, Adrienne Koch, in- tro. (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1966), p. 398.

6.   Ibid., p. 48.

7.   Ibid., p. 53.

8.   Ibid., p. 76.

9.   Alexander Hamilton, et. al., The Federalist Papers (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, n.d.), p. 292.

10.   Alfred Young, ed. The Debate over the Constitution (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965), p. 49.

11.   Quoted in Moses C. Tyler, Patrick Henry (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1887), p. 290.

12.   Greene, op. cit., p. 391.

13.   Henry S. Commager, ed., Documents of American History, vol. I (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1962, 7th ed., 1962), p. 104.

14.   Ibid., p. 107.

15.   Ibid., p. 108.

16.   Ibid., p. 104.

17.   Greene, op. cit., p. 398.

18.   Hamilton, op. cit., p. 266.

19.   Quoted in Virgle G. Wilhite, Founders of American Economic Thought (New York: Bookman, 1958), p. 308.

20.   Ibid., p. 172.

21.   Dumbauld, op. cit., p. 19.

22.   Charles C. Tansill, ed., Formation of the Union of the American States (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1927), p. 557.

23.   1bid.