CONCLUSION

The purpose of this book has not been to sketch a detailed programme of a desirable future order ofsociety. If with regard to international affairs we have gone a little beyond its essentially critical task, it was because in this field we may soon be called upon to create a framework within which future growth may have to proceed for a long time to come.

A great deal will depend on how we use the opportunity we shall then have. But whatever we do, it can only be the beginning of a new, long, and arduous process in which we all hope we shall gradually create a world very different from that which we knew during the last quarter of a century. It is at least doubtful whether at this stage a detailed blueprint of a desirable internal order of society would be of much use-or whether anyone is competent to furnish it. The important thing now is that we shall come to agree on certain principles and free ourselves from some of the errors which have governed us in the recent past. However distasteful such an admission may be, we must recognise that we had before this war once again reached a stage where it is more important to clear away the obstacles with which human folly has encumbered our path and to release the creative energy of individuals than to devise further machinery for “guiding” and “directing” them-to create conditions favourable to progress rather than to “plan progress”. The first need is to free ourselves of that worst form of contemporary obscurantism which tries to persuade us that what we have done in the recent past was all either wise or inevitable. We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.

If we are to build a better world we must have the courage to make a new start-even ifthat means some reculer pour mieux sauter. It is not those who believe in inevitable tendencies who show this courage, not those who preach a “New Order” which is no more than a projection of the tendencies of the last forty years, and who can think of nothing better than to imitate Hitler. It is indeed those who cry loudest for the New Order who are most completely under the sway of the ideas which have created this war and most of the evils from which we suffer. The young are right ifthey have little confidence in the ideas which rule most of their elders. But they are mistaken or misled when they believe that these are still the liberal ideas of the nineteenth century, which in fact the younger generation hardly knows. Though we neither can wish, nor possess the power, to go back to the reality of the nineteenth century, we have the opportunity to realise its ideals-and they were not mean. We have little right to feel in this respect superior to our grandfathers; and we should never forget that it is we, the twentieth century, and not they, who have made a mess of things. If they had not yet fully learnt what was necessary to create the world they wanted, the experience we have since gained ought to have equipped us better for the task. If in the first attempt to create a world of free men we have failed, we must try again. The guiding principle, that a policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy, remains as true to-day as it was in the nineteenth century.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The exposition of a point of view which for many years has been decidedly out of favour suffers from the difficulty that, within the compass of a few chapters, it is not possible to discuss more than some aspects ofit. For the reader whose outlook has been formed entirely by the views that have been dominant during the last twenty years this will scarcely be sufficient to provide the common ground required for profitable discussion. But although unfashionable, the views of the author of the present book are not so singular as they may appear to some readers. His basic outlook is the same as that of a steadily growing number ofwriters in many countries whose studies have led them independently to similar conclusions. The reader who would like to acquaint himself further with what he may have found an unfamiliar but not uncongenial climate of opinion, may find useful the following list of some ofthe more important works ofthis kind, including several in which the essentially critical character of the present essay is supplemented by a fuller discussion ofthe structure of a desirable future society.

W. H. Chamberlin. A False Utopia. Collectivism in Theory and Practice. (Duckworth) , 937. F. D. Graham. Social Goals and Economic Institutions. (Princeton University Press) , 942. 248 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE E. Halevy. L’Ere des Tyrannies. Paris (Gallimard) 1938. English versions of two of the most important essays in this volume will be found in Economica, February 1941, and in International Affairs, 1934· G. Halm, L. v. Mises, and others. Collectivist Economic Planning, ed. by F. A. Hayek. (Routledge) 1937. W. H. Hutt. Economists and the Public. (Cape) 1935· W. Lippmann, An Inquiry into the Principles of the Good Society. (Allen G{ Unwin) 1937. L. v. Mises. Socialism, trsl. by J. Kahane. (Cape) 1936. R. Muir. Liberty and Civilisation. (Cape) 1940. M. Polanyi. The Contempt ofFreedom. (Watts) 1940. W. Rappard. The Crisis ofDemocracy. (University ofChicago Press) 1938. L. C. Robbins. Economic Planning and International Order. (Macmillan) 1937· L. C. Robbi ns. The Economic Basis of Class Conflict and Other Essays in Political Economy. (Macmillan) 1939. L. C. Robbins. The Economic Causes ofWar. (Cape) 1939. W. Roepke. Die Gesellschaftskrisis der Gegenwart. Zurich (Eugen Rentsch) 1942 . L. Rougier. Les mystiques economiques. Paris (Librairie Medicis) 1938. F. A. Voigt. Unto Caesar. (Constable) 1938. The following of the “Public Policy Pamphlets” edited by the University of Chicago PressH. Simons. A Positive Program for Laissez-Faire. Some Proposalsfar a Liberal Economic Policy. 1934. H. D. Gideonse. Organised Scarcity and Public Policy. 1939. F. A. Hermens. Democracy and Proportional Representation. 1940. W. Sulzbach. “Capitalist Warmongers”: A Modern Superstition. 1942. M. A. Heilperin. Economic Policy and Democracy. 1943. There are also important German and Italian works of a similar character which, in consideration for their authors, it would be unwise at present to mention by name. To this list I add the titles of three books which more than any others known to me help one to understand the system of ideas ruling our enemies and the differences which separate their minds from ours, E. B. Ashton. The Fascist, His State and Mind. (Putnam) 1937. F. W. Foerster. Europe and the German Question. (Sheed) 1940. H. Kantorowicz. The Spirit ofEnglish Policy and the Myth ofthe Encirclement ofGermany. (Allen & Unwin) 1931. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 249 and that of a remarkable recent work on the modem history of Germany which is not as well known in this country as it deserves: F. Schnabel. Deutsche Geschichte im ‘9. Jahrhundert. 4 vols. Freiburg, i. B. ‘92 9-37. Perhaps the best guides through some ofour contemporary problems will still be found in the works ofsome ofthe great political philosophers ofthe liberal age, a de Tocqueville or Lord Acton, and, to go even farther back, Benjamin Constant, Edmund Burke, and the Federalist papers of Madison, Hamilton, and Jay, generations to whom liberty was still a problem and a value to be defended, where ours at the same time takes it for granted and neither realises whence the danger threatens nor has the courage to emancipate itselffrom the doctrines which endanger it.