Why Not Try Freedom
Put yourself in one of Nature’s garden spots, but one suffering a dozen years from raw police force such as the people of Argentina endured under the dictator, Peron; where the morale and morals of the people have been seriously impaired; where the money has lost 73 per cent of its purchasing power during the past nine years; where wool or beef sold in foreign trade nets only one-third to one-half of the market price; where it takes 600 to 1,000 steers to purchase an ordinary car; where a two-year-old Buick sells for $10,000; where political opposition to foreign capital leaves unlimited reserves of oil in the ground while $317,000,000 was paid for imports of oil last year; where, for political reasons only, there isn’t enough electric power to properly light the streets of Buenos Aires or to adequately supply industry; where labor unions exert more oppressive influence than in the United States; where recently the bank clerks, as well as oil workers, were conscripted into the army to keep them on the job; in short, where interventionism is rife and where the politically proposed cure, as in the U.S.A., involves more of the same. Under these circumstances, what would you suggest?
This is the question I faced in these lectures, delivered in Buenos Aires during April 1958 under the sponsorship of Centro de Difusion de la Economia Libre. Centro was organized in 1956, patterned in many respects after the Foundation for Economic Education. The mutual objective of the two organizations is the iniproved understanding and practice of freedom.
I accepted the invitation from Centro with agreement that all lectures would be before the same small audience, numbering from 35 to 70 persons, with ample opportunity for discussion. The invitees were to be in sympathy with the philosophy of liberty; there would be no effort to reform anyone. To everyone’s amazement, the 160 seats in the lecture room were filled the first evening and 25 people were standing. The same was true for the entire series-testifying to an intense interest in liberty.
My introduction to the seminar group was made by Raul Lamuraglia, President of Centro, business leader and distinguished patriot of Argentina. Juan Domingo Peron, in the book he wrote after his fall from power, lists Senor Lamuraglia first among those responsible for his banishment.
Senor Lamuraglia summarized some of the material, cultural, and spiritual differences and similarities between AngloSaxon Americans and Latin Americans. These excerpts from his introduction may help the reader appreciate the setting in which the lectures were delivered:
Liberty is an outward creation of man which he has adopted for himself and whose use and enjoyment he reserves for mankind as a whole, for which he struggles and to which he dedicates consciously or unconsciously his highest efforts. But at the same time we must admit, without any exceptions, that “liberty” cannot be broken down into smaller or greater parts according to our own ideas or interests, nor can the word “libertarian” be applied to any of these parts while the remainder are denied or rejected.
Liberty must be taken as a whole, composed of different values that are inseparable because they all affect or refer to the individual and are reHected in the societies composed of individuals. We shall not be libertarians while upholding merely freedom of trade and at the same time being social or political planners. Neither shall we be libertarians if we attend to the needs of democracy and plan everything else.
The Centro de Difusion de la Economia Libre covers a wider field than its name implies. If it has chosen to defend freedom in the economic field, this does not mean that it denies the principle that freedom must be enjoyed by man as a whole, or at least that he should aspire to such enjoyment, to which all his efforts are directed. We, the members of this spirited group, know that the task is long and difficult, but we do not resort to mere opposition to the wrongheaded planning mentality to be seen everywhere or nearly everywhere, but rather to broadcasting the ideas of liberty that seem today to be rather a luxury for man than the inevitable necessity of the extraordinary development of his civilization.
The Spanish edition of this book is available through Centro de Difusion de la Economia Libre, Avenida Leandro Alem 36, Buenos Aires.
LEONARD E. READ
May 1958
(This foreward was taken from the original book)
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Why Not Try Freedom