The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Foreword
• Part I: Can Capitalism Survive?
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Can Capitalism Survive?
• Part II: The Philosophy of Freedom
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Case For Economic Freedom
• Chapter 2: The Libertarian Philosophy
• Chapter 3: Who’s to Blame?
• Chapter 4: Paradise In Posey County
• Part III: On the Nature of Economics
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Adam Smith: 1776-1976
• Chapter 2: Christian Economics: Myth Or Reality?
• Chapter 3: College Economics: Is It Subversive of Capitalism?
• Part IV: On the Business System
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Profits
• Chapter 2: The Businessman
• Part V: On Labor Markets
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Labor Monopoly
• Part VI: On Money and Inflation
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Long-run Economic Outlook
• Chapter 2: Alleged Causes of Inflation: Corporate Monopolies
• Part VII: On the Problems of Cities
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Problems of Cities
• Part VIII: On Education
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Financing Higher Education In the United States
• Chapter 2: The Promise of the College
• Part IX: On What to Do
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Businessman and the Defense of Capitalism
• Chapter 2: Reflections On the Election of 1964
• Chapter 3: The Foundation For Economic Education: Success Or Failure?

Introduction

If you have stuck with me up to this point, you may be weary of one paragraph of despair after another, of one diagnosis after another of the ailments of present-day capitalism. If you share, in whole or in part, my conviction that capitalism is the only economic system consistent with the civilized life, you are probably anxious to move on from diagnosis to therapy. “What can I, as one person or as part of an organization, do about it? What would you have us do?”

As I say in the first paper of this section, “Frankly, I feel more at ease as the diagnostician than as the therapist.” At the same time, I have discussed the question of what to do on various occasions, and three such discussion papers are presented here. The first paper was presented as an explicit follow-up to the Schumpeter-based “Can Capitalism Survive?” Various groups who were exposed to Schumpeter’s analysis of things to come insisted that I come back with a message on how to keep those things from coming to pass. In Marxian language, in this paper I am trying to tell the bourgeoisie how to avoid being expropriated.

The second paper was written approximately a month before the presidential election of 1964. It is now clear that, at that time, I overestimated the damage that would be done to the conservative cause by a crushing defeat of Goldwater. At the same time, the course of events seems to me to have left my general conclusions on what to do largely untouched.

The final paper was given as a tribute to one man and the organization he created—to Leonard Read and the Foundation for Economic Education. It is with pleasure that I make public payment of my great debt to this man, but the paper is presented here because in writing it I found some ways of saying certain things on the practice of freedom that I have not been able to improve upon elsewhere.