… is from page 9 of the original edition of Walter Lippmann’s sometimes deeply flawed but profoundly insightful and important 1937 book, The Good Society:
I realize that Mr. [Lewis] Mumford hopes and believes that the omnipotent sovereign power will now be as rational in its purposes and its measures as are the physicists and chemists who have invented alloys and harnessed electricity. But the fact remains that he believes the beneficent promise of modern science can be realized only through the political technology of the pre-scientific ages. For the whole apparatus of a politically administered economy, the fixed prices and fixed wages, … is a reversion to the political technic which had to be rejected in order that the industrial revolution could take place.
DBx: Today’s Progressives and NatCons – who are separated from each other only by superficial differences – will protest that they do not endorse the full degree of state control that was all the rage among intellectuals a century ago. And we liberals will agree with them. But we liberals will also point out that the reality noted here by Lippmann doesn’t kick in to being only with full-on socialism or communism.
Just as religious freedom is dangerously and unjustly restricted by government Y that prohibits the peaceful practice of only a handful of religions, leaving people free to practice those religions not expressly prohibited, economic freedom is dangerously and unjustly restricted by government Z that prohibits the peaceful practice of only a handful of capitalist acts among consenting adults, leaving people free to perform others not expressly prohibited. It’s true that government Y could offend even worse than it does against religious freedom; it’s true also that government Z could offend even worse than it does against economic freedom. But these latter truths don’t excuse the offenses that do occur.
And nor do these latter truths – or the pretenses of the powers-that-be – render the offenses any less primitive than they are.
