LETTERS
Editor: In "Elegant Tombstones" (DISSENT, January – February 1969) Professor Macpherson's major contention is that a "moment's thought will show" Milton Friedman's view, that under...
...The rhetorical questions in his (2), insofar as they are relevant to the point I was making about Friedman's argument, are answered by Friedman's text...
...Editor: In "Elegant Tombstones" (DISSENT, January – February 1969) Professor Macpherson's major contention is that a "moment's thought will show" Milton Friedman's view, that under capitalism transactions are voluntary, to be wrong...
...Is the lack of this choice really due to capitalism—or to our expulsion frcm paradise...
...Certainly some (but never all) people under capitalism and socialism are favored and can avoid working...
...The rhetorical questions in his (3) look unbeatable...
...Homage to Norman Thomas Editor: I would like to pay my tribute to Norman Thomas and make it part of the record...
...He made contact with Roger Baldwin, Reverend Donald Harrington, and others, and in the course of the following weeks helped us to raise funds and reach members of the liberal community hitherto unapproachable for us...
...Our first meeting lasted about two hours during which we discussed the issues of the trial at great length...
...But those who have to sell their labor in order to buy food are coerced: their alternative of producing for themselves (either singly, using their own capital, as in Friedman's simple market model, or jointly, using socially owned capital, as in a socialist model) has been foreclosed by the power of other men, namely, those who have effectively cornered the land and capital...
...Coercion" does not refer to such boundaries— which always exist—but to available alternatives foreclosed, or imposed, by power...
...Are they coerced...
...without a choice as to whether to put its labor on the market or not...
...Van den Haag's brevity does this so effectively as to preclude equal brevity in disentangling it...
...Not once did Thomas utter a word of criticism of the abuse we had heaped on him for a decade...
...In my contact with Norman Thomas, I found him a man of extraordinary gentleness and dedication...
...Which is a confusing way to talk: inequality is not coercion...
...The fact that in Friedman's simple market model (as well as in some nonmarket models) we can refrain from buying, might have given him pause...
...Macpherson's argument seems more Marxistthan logical...
...Thomas in the postwar period...
...He represented as no other individual in the tumultuous epoch gone by, the social conscience of America...
...ERNEST VAN DEN HAAG C. B. MACPHERSON Replies: Editor: I admire brevity, except when it compresses illogic...
...It might have suggested, what is indeed the case, that coercion is not inherent in all exchange, but only in the kind of exchange we have to enter because we have no capital and no share in joint capital (that is, the exchange comprised in the sale of our labor) and in other kinds of exchange we have to enter because we have already entered that one...
...I came to solicit his aid in our defense...
...It was during the Smith Act trials, in the early fifties...
...and containing the simple fallacy that unless all inequality is due to coercion, then no inequality is due to coercion...
...Or is Professor Macpherson attempting to coerce logic...
...There is little doubt in my mind, having endured two trials, that his efforts contributed to ending government prosecution under the Smith Act...
...Who can deny that we must eat, and that therefore in any market model, except Friedman's simple model, we "cannot abstain from LETTERS buying on pain of starvation...
...But no socialist model requires, as any capitalist model does, that people put their labor on the market in Friedman's sense of market, that is a market which sets the price of labor, and sets it at an amount that yields part of the product to private owners of capital...
...1) Freedom is bounded under capitalism no more than under other systems...
...b) a parenthetical sentence which is irrelevant unless my "illogicalities" are demonstrated...
...I was the first Communist to meet with Mr...
...Friedman's "mistake" makes Macpherson "almost despair of logic," for "what distinguishes the capitalist economy . . . is the existence of a labor force...
...e) two sentences implying, wrongly, that I equate inequalities which are entirely or partly innate (health, beauty) with inequalities which are entirely or partly imposed by power (wealth, education...
...c) a sentence defining "coercion" (acceptably) as foreclosure of alternatives by power, and then asserting incidentally, as if it were self-evident, that this always exists, whereas in Friedman's simple exchange model it does not exist...
...As for socialism, the models now in operation do, typically, to some extent use market mechanisms (as devices subordinate to central planning) to allocate labor...
...Friedman's "attempted demonstration that capitalism coordinates without coercion therefore fails...
...It was an illuminating and moving experience for me and helped to alter his image in the minds of many of my associates, who had been affected by years of unremitting hostility...
...Italics supplied...
...But lack of this advantage is "coercion" only if any unequal distribution—of health, education, money, or beauty—is...
...For Macpherson argues "the proviso that is required to make every transaction strictly voluntary is not freedom not to enter any particular exchange [Friedman's view] but freedom not to enter any exchange at all...
...2) How would socialism (or any other system) give people the "choice as to whether to put their labor on the market or not...
...In time the appreciation and the applause grew, though the "hard core" continued to frown...
...Incidentally, Friedman's "negative income tax" would cut some of the factual ground under Macpherson's illogicalities...
...His (1) consists of: (a) a sentence which begs the question by simply asserting what has to he shown—that there is no less freedom in capitalism than in other systems (which cannot be shown, because one "other system" is Friedman's simple exchange model, where there is more freedom...
...d) a sentence asserting, in the guise of a concession, that in capitalism and socialism some people can avoid working, a statement which obscures the difference that this is inherent in capitalism and not inherent in socialism...
...3) Would we say that consumers are coerced in choosing food (and sellers in making it available) when they are able freely to select among alternatives, because consumers cannot abstain from buying on pain of starvation...
...Not all people who have to buy food are coerced, and none of them are coerced because they have to buy...
...They (and sellers too), no less than workers, lack "the freedom not to enter any exchange at all...
...In a later period Norman Thomas joined with James Wechsler and others in the campaign for the release of Junius Scales from prison...
...I recall the first occasion in which I spoke of his role at a mass meeting of the Communist party—the surprise, and yet the coolness, with a smattering of applause...
...The only "other system" that is directly relevant is Friedman's model of a simple exchange economy, which explicitly does give people the choice as to whether to put their labor on the market or not, and gives it to them by stipulating that every household has resources enabling it to produce on its own...
...To that extent, people do have to "put their labor on the market," though they do not do so in the collective farming sector, or in the cooperative enterprises...
Vol. 16 • May 1969 • No. 3
