Free To Choose: a personal Statement

The Tide ls Turning
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the past, it will be determined for opinion first and policy will then
follow suit.
IMPORTANCE OF INTELLECTUAL CLIMATE
OF OPINION
The example of India and Japan, discussed in Chapter 2, exem-
plifies the importance of the intellectual climate of opinion, which
determines the unthinking preconceptions of most people and
their leaders, their conditioned reflexes to one course of action or
another.
The Meiji leaders who took charge of Japan in 1867 were
dedicated primarily to strengthening the power and glory of their
country. They attached no special value to individual freedom or
political liberty. They believed in aristocracy and political con-
trol by an elite. Yet they adopted a liberal economic policy that
led to the widening of opportunities for the masses and, during
the early decades, greater personal liberty. The men who took
charge in India, on the other hand, were ardently devoted to po-
litical freedom, personal liberty, and democracy. Their aim was
not only national power but also improvement in the economic
conditions of the masses. Yet they adopted a collectivist economic
policy that hamstrings their people with restrictions and continues
to undermine the large measure of individual freedom and po-
litical liberty encouraged by the British.
The difference in policies reflects faithfully the different intel-
lectual climates of the two eras. In the mid-nineteenth century it
was taken for granted that a modern economy should be organized
through free trade and private enterprise. It probably never oc-
curred to the Japanese leaders to follow any other course. In the
mid-twentieth century, it was taken for granted that a modern
economy should be organized through centralized control and
five-year plans. It probably never occurred to the Indian leaders
to follow any other course. It is an interesting sidelight that both
views came from Great Britain. The Japanese adopted the policies
of Adam Smith. The Indians adopted the policies of Harold Laski.
Our own history is equally strong evidence of the importance
of the climate of opinion. It shaped the work of the remarkable
group of men who gathered in Independence Hall in Philadelphia

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FREE TO CHOOSE: A Personal Statement
in 1787 to write a constitution for the new nation they had helped
to create. They were steeped in history and were greatly influenced
by the current of opinion in Britain—the same current that was
later to affect Japanese policy. They regarded concentration of
power, especially in the hands of government, as the great dan-
ger to freedom. They drafted the Constitution with that in mind.
It was a document intended to limit government power, to keep
power decentralized, to reserve to individuals control over their
own lives. This thrust is even clearer in the Bill of Rights, the
first ten amendments to the Constitution, than in the basic text:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of re-
ligion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the
freedom of speech, or of the press"; "the right of the people to
keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"; "the enumeration in
the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny
or disparage others retained by the people"; "the powers not dele-
gated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by
it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the
people" (from Amendments I, II, IX, and X).
Late in the nineteenth century and on into the early decades of
the twentieth, the intellectual climate of opinion in the United
States—largely under the influence of the same views from Britain
that later affected Indian policy—started to change. It moved
away from a belief in individual responsibility and reliance on
the market toward a belief in social responsibility and reliance on
the government. By the 1920s a strong minority, if not an actual
majority, of college and university professors actively concerned
with public affairs held socialist views. The New Republic and
the Nation were the leading intellectual journals of opinion. The
Socialist party of the United States, led by Norman Thomas,
had broader roots, but much of its strength was in colleges and
universities.
In our opinion the Socialist party was the most influential po-
litical party in the United States in the first decades of the twenti-
eth century. Because it had no hope of electoral success on a
national level (it did elect a few local officials, notably in Mil-
waukee, Wisconsin), it could afford to be a party of principle.
The Democrats and Republicans could not. They had to be parties
of expediency and compromise, in order to hold together widely

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