Leonard Read's "Anything That's Peaceful"

Leonard Read may have been one of the most important, yet largely unknown, figures in modern libertarian history.  After failing in business in Michigan, he moved to California and became involved with the local Chamber of Commerce.  He moved up the ranks of the US Chamber of Commerce, and was eventually promoted to director of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.  He was a vocal opponent of FDR's New Deal.  In order to combat what he saw as a lack of understanding of economic principles among the public, which he saw as the cause of the growing move towards socialism, he founded the Foundation for Economic Education, or FEE.

Through FEE, Leonard Read became instrumental in connecting great libertarian, or classical liberal, thinkers and also instrumental in connecting common folks who were interested in these sorts of ideas with the material of these great thinkers.  And if that weren't enough, Leonard Read also wrote nearly 30 books in defense of free enterprise and limited government.  Probably his most famous was his essay "I, Pencil" in which he illustrates how the free market price system promotes cooperation, and how without it even the manufacture of such a trivial $0.10 pencil would be extraordinarily difficult if not impossible.  Milton Friedman famously borrowed the concept of this essay for his 1980 TV series "Free to Choose."

After reading this famous essay, and watching a very inspiring youtube video on how to best advance liberty (more on that in a future blog), I decided the next book I read should be one by Leonard Read.  I chose "Anything That's Peaceful," which he authored in 1964, because it happens to be the only one in print by the Mises Institute at the moment (although they have the pdf's of many more). 

Read begins this book by briefly deriving and expressing what he supposes to be the purpose of life:  To continue evolving one's knowledge and consciousness in order to become more like the "infinite consciousness" (God).  I don't often read books in search of the meaning of life, and I certainly didn't expect to find it expressed in a book about political philosophy, but I'm glad Read included it.  I think it says a lot about Read, as well as the libertarian movement.  Supporters of the free market are often derided as "greedy" and "materialistic" by proponents of the various socialist ideologies.  But I think the reality is much different.  It is the Marxists and socialists who look only at what is material and measurable.  Supporters of the free market, from Adam Smith to Charles Murray, try to understand and treat the "whole man" (as Barry Goldwater called it in his book "Conscience of a Conservative"), including not just his material circumstances and his animal instincts, but also his creative and spiritual aspects as well.

Moving on from his ambitious premise, Read moves uses the next few chapters to explain the folly of socialism.  He first explains that, behind the curtain of rational and scientific planners and benevolent overlords, it is only violence that holds up the socialist state.  It is men with guns commanding others, without guns, to do as they are told upon pain of death.  He demonstrates how even the most trivial law, backed up nominally by the most trivial fine, will ultimately lead to a man with a gun coming to your house to shoot you if you absolutely refuse to recognize the law.  He gives a couple of humorous, but tragic, real world examples to back up his demonstration.  And Read goes on to further demonstrate that socialism does not allow for creative solutions to human wants, harms the individual by removing his sense of self-responsibility (what Read argues is "the very essence of his being"), and does not produce products and labor which are the most valuable to the consumer because transactions take place only under duress.

The thesis of this book is that any peaceful activity should be allowed to take place, and only violent or fraudulent activity should be punished by government.  It is a total rejection of the "mixed economy" we have today (and really have had, in some form or another, back even to our founding).  In order to prove his thesis, Read spends the final five chapters of the book taking on two of the largest socialist enterprises in our mixed economy:  the post office and public education.

I really enjoy reading books by libertarians from this period of history.  I'm not sure what it is about them.  It might be the style and voice (they had a slightly different vocabulary, and a common literary reference point that, thankfully or unfortunately, we don't really have today).  It might also be the fact that they were being ideologically besieged from all sides; the fact that they were losing their grasp on liberty with alarming speed, and they were losing the arguments in the mind of the public.  The New Deal and the Great Society were the great socialist enterprises which came into being in the US around this time, but overseas as well you saw the rise of National Socialism and Communism. Even in largely capitalist countries you had governments moving in to nationalize this industry or that industry, to forcibly unionize people, and so on.  That had to have had an effect on the writers from this era. 

Today, fortunately, it is very rare to find someone who actually thinks that a state-run society can produce more or better products than a competitive capitalist market.  We still have to deal with those who wish to do good with other people's forcibly taken money, but only a few nuts suggest that the oil industry, for example, should be nationalized.  Or the car industry. Or most other industries.  The thought today is largely that there are a few exceptional industries (such as education, transportation, first class mail delivery, and a few others such as healthcare) that may be better run by the government, and many more that need to be "regulated," but wholesale socialism is largely rejected.

As a Christian and a minarchist, Leonard Read comes at libertarianism from a very similar place as I do.  I've downloaded a few more of his books, and I look forward to reading them.