The Conservative Is Sometimes Right

by ARTHUR A. BALLANTINE

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PRIMARILY we Americans are fighting this war to conserve American institutions and values. We hear much discussion of better things to come with the peace, but the fact is that most Americans would not have the slightest hesitation about defending their existing institutions and values —with their lives if need be. And this is true simply because those institutions have held and still hold worth, irrespective of future change.

Many think of peace after the world-shaking war as furnishing opportunity and occasion for fundamental change in our domestic social structure, as well as in the international structure. For the purposes of discussion, let us imagine peace as wiping the domestic social slate absolutely clean: what would be the essence of the suggestions of the constructive American conservative?

Appropriate structure for the state is ordinarily the first requisite of any stable and satisfying individual life. The basic idea of the American conservative about the state would be that we should have a system under which the people control the rulers, instead of the rulers the people. This overriding freedom, coming down from the days of 1776 and 1789, was not mentioned with the famous four, — freedom of speech, of religion, from fear, and from want, — which the conservative would of course wish to respect.

Another freedom — the foundation of all freedoms in the American conception — which he would urge is economic freedom or its essence — not economic license, but economic liberty. That concept of the conservative means freedom to acquire an income — not merely to have it assigned by the government — and freedom to have the income fructify through industry, skill, and enterprise into property which helps to protect from want oneself and one’s children.

The conservative would advocate a program which provides for individual responsibility — not mere reliance upon government — as well as the correlative, economic opportunity. And be would urge the creation of a system of enforceable rights under which individuals can plan and conduct their affairs.

The system which he would urge of course bears striking resemblance to the system we have now. The American conservative readily acknowledges belief in the vitality of the conceptions of the founders of the Republic. In the words of Elihu Root, their Declaration “joined issue with all the theories of government in the past.” They sought to “establish the relation of individual citizenship to the State, on the basis of inalienable rights which governments are established to secure,” expressing in their state plan, after the long centuries of the Anglo-Saxon fight for freedom, “an enlarged conception of individual liberty and manhood, of individual right, of justice, of duty to the state, of the common good. ...”

As opposed to the conservative, the radical of today, at least if he shares what appears to be the preponderant view on continental Europe, would revert to enormously expanded il not complete control by the state, keeping out almost all vestige of constitutionalism.

With this control the state would undertake, as it did not of old, to provide for each individual at least a minimum living with some protection from the.hazards of life, and would either own or direct business enterprise. The state would conduct all education. It would brook little criticism. The state would become aknost a religion, if not the religion.

How the leaders of the state would be chosen is obscure, but once in power they would be difficult to dislodge by anything short of revolution. Instead of their being accountable to the people, the people would be accountable to them.

Even when war is uppermost in our minds, social planning demands attention. In his very stimulating article in the May Atlantic, President Conant with vigor and charm urged the value, in social planning, of contribution by the possible “American radical.” This radical, President Conant distinguished sharply from radicals of the more extreme European variety. The hypothetical views of ihc American radical, suggested but not advocated by President Conant, deserve earnest consideration and searching analysis.

But let not the American radical fondly imagine that he is the exclusive beneficiary of the teachings of American sages. Emerson, to whom President Conant refers, was somewhat more amenable to the demands of government than his thorny neighbor Thorcau; yet Emerson was hardly thinking of increased power for the state when he said, “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”

Emerson was far from exalting (he conservative, but in “Politics” he went so far as to declare: “The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness.” Indeed, Emerson said “the less government we have, the better, — the fewer laws, and the less confided power.”

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THE American radical’s views as portrayed by President Conant relate primarily to ’property. 11 is suggested treatment of property is the “kernel of his radical philosophy.” Broadly, that radical “will not place a higher value on property rights than on human rights.” On examination, however, that iridescent phrase yields lit tie more content than a soap bubble!

For there are no property rights contrasting with human rights. Property as such has no rights at all. One may quibble about the case of a dog or a horse, protected by laws against cruelty to animals, but not about the status of any inanimate thing. What are referred to as “property rights” are human rights — rights in things. Even the rights of the soulless (and by the same token guiltless) corporation are in essence the rights of men and women having claims against or through that figment of the law, the corporation.

What we really have here is not consideration of property as against human beings, but consideration of some rights of human beings as against some of their other rights. Recognition of this plain fact strikes all the drama from the cliche. Let us hope that the American radical will abandon it.

The American radical, as represented by President Conant, would “confiscate (by constitutional methods) all property once a generation,” and would use the power of the state to “reorder the ‘haves and the have-nots,’” keeping all on a truly democratic basis.

That keynote calls for some real thinking about the relation of rights in property to ordered freedom. To the conservative, property rights are far more than a particular freedom: they are the very basis of nearly all freedoms as we Americans have understood them.

By property, in this connection, we refer not so much to tangible things (horses, household goods, clothes) as to inst ruments of production and stocks, bonds, debts — all broadly claims on industry; also to debt claims against the state.

Now’ accumulated property of this nature, in private hands, represents the method of building up individual wealth, giving some measure of protection against want and also against subjection to the state. It also represents a basis for the development and control of industry. That basis has had manifest defects, but it has had the virtue of great inner impetus and great flexibility; it preserves invaluable initiative.

Private management contrasts with basic control in the hands of public officials, with the resulting aggrandizement of political power, the heaping up of bureaucracies, and the tendency to industrial paralysis.

“The magic of property turns sand into gold.” It also turns those who might be serfs into free men. Take away property and you substitute for the stimulus to economic effort the stimulus to political effort. True, the worker can still secure wages or a salary, but the tendency would be to make those uniform and uninspiring. Take away the spring of private interest in business — the stern demands of the balance sheet and income account — and, as we see more clearly than ever, you make business both dead and wasteful.

Most important of all, take away private property, and you put ihe citizen at the mercy of the state. Control of the purse strings, the historic method of controlling the ruler, is gone when the citizen has no purse. What then becomes of any freedom to criticize the heavy-handed operations of public officials? Of any real freedom to change rulers? The state becomes a strait jacket. Happiness may be pursued, but only along the path of petty politics. Private property is essential to government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

It is true that many of the virtues of property have to be sacrificed in waging war, as do many of the freedoms. We are, however, discussing institutions of peace, permanent institutions, not those of an emergency bringing into play unique considerations.

The American radical would not mean to go to the extreme of abolishing property—that he leaves for the European radical. Yet before he blithely leaps, he should look at the implications of his views. For he is carried very near to the extreme of abolition of property by his effort to redistribute property once a generation.

Redistribution of property could hardly be carried out as suggested. What is a generation to one man is not an anniversary date to another. Long ago in Russia holdings of land used to be redistributed among the peasant s once every seven years. I’lic plan did not seem to work very well, but at least it could be carried out. But how and on what principle would any periodic redivision of present forms of property between “haves” and “havenots” be made? Perhaps the idea underlying the suggestion is simply that, at death, taxes would take everything.

The social effect of a prospective deprivation of one’s property at some future date, by one method or another, would be much the same as that of present deprivation. One would have little reason to care for his property, to make it productive. The normal course would be to turn it into cash and splurge with the cash. It is not under such a stimulus that human beings or their enterprises are made fruitful and socially valuable.

The American radical should give some thought to the small property owner — the farmer who plants windbreaks (without subsidy), builds barns, and improves stock; the small merchant who by steady effort builds a business trusted by neighbors; the inventor; the lesser manufacturer. All these work for the future — work not merely for themselves but for their sons and daughters, building up enterprises their descendants may carry on. Their work is not done in a generation; and if its fruits were limited to a generation, much of it would not be undertaken.

The American conservative would stop short of any measure requiring the confiscation of property either at present or at prospective dates, periodical or irregular. Let not the radical think that heavy progressive income taxes and heavy death duties are new ideas! We already have such taxes in effect at the very limit of productiveness both fiscally and economically. The point at which the intelligent conservative would draw the line is the point at which such taxes become truly instruments of confiscation.

The constructive conservative would then urge that property, one of man’s most beneficent inventions, be preserved from destruction, present or threatened. This he would propose because he sees in it the very basis of human freedom. Not alone political freedom, not alone freedom of speech and of religion, but also freedom from want. Here he thinks not merely of individual freedom but of that community freedom which is to be attained and maintained only by the flow of production from industry — industry which gives play to normal American emotions and habits. He does not believe that the essential flow will be forthcoming from bureaucracies, which are inevitably composed of persons chosen, in Professor Thomas N. Carver’s phrase, “by the method of palaver.”

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TRUE conservatives arc not reactionaries; indeed, they are sometimes hard to distinguish from the liberals. They do not seek to restore a dead past or to repeat acknowledged error. But they do believe that the vital seeds that made America, as we can see better now, the land of the greatest plenty and the greatest freedom will still assure such fruit. Better supervision by the state, yes, but not state domination, not a nation of wards of the state. Nothing has developed yet to make them believe that the state can do a better job for the people than the people can do for themselves.

There are dangers from which the conservative would save us. Take, for example, the widely noticed “Statement of Nine Rights” issued by the National Resources Planning Board. That statement affirms “the right to live in a system of free enterprise, free from compulsory labor, irresponsible private power, arbitrary public authority and unregulated monopolies. ”

This is characteristically American. We have here rights which can be and are guaranteed and enforced by the state, without commitment of the state to a system of state enterprise.

Act the statement also lists as coordinate rights others, including: “(1) The right to work usefully and creatively through the productive years. (2) The right to fair pay, adequate to command the necessities and amenities of life in exchange for work, ideas, thrift, and other socially valuable service.”

Desirable as is the opportunity to work for fair pay, it is not a right capable of legal assertion, unless against the state. And to fulfill rights to such employment, the state would have to undertake the management of substantially the whole business structure. Only by such management could the state even attempt to assure to each citizen useful employment, at pay bringing the desired returns, with protection from economic hazards.

There is a fundamental conflict between the right to live under a system of free enterprise, such as built America, and the right to employment. Freedom is the greatest release for life-giving human energies, but it cannot live under regimentation and bureaucracies. In standing against state ownership and management of property, whether open or disguised, the constructive conservative believes that it is his plan which would truly preserve “the adventure, the opportunity to enjoy life and take part in advancing civilization.” Security and freedom do not go hand in hand; and like the pioneers, he still lays his wager on freedom.