True Liberalism is Gone
but Hopefully Not Forgotten

Joseph Dana Miller

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, March-April 1928]

THE last outstanding Liberal leader in British politics passed away in the person of Asquith a few weeks ago. With his death British Liberalism ceased practically to exist. There is no longer a Liberal Party in Great Britain animated by the old Liberal traditions and able to appeal to great names like Cobden, Bright and Gladstone. To celebrate the demise of British political liberalism the party has issued its valedictory in a document of 500 pages which they call "Britain's Industrial Future" the report of the Industrial Inquiry Committee of the Liberal Party.

THE authors of this precious document do not call it a valedictory, of course. It is supposed to be a new political programme with recommendations to guide the party in its deliberations as to future policies. In putting forth this death warrant they ignore the fact that there is already a Socialist Party in Great Britain known as the Labor Party. As there is no room in British politics for two Socialist parties, members of the Labor Party must exult in this formal renunciation of nearly all the Liberal principles held by the party of Gladstone and Asquith.

We have not seen this voluminous Report. Our knowledge of its contents is gained from the New Republic and a few papers we have seen from England. It is said to have taken eighteen months of intensive study devoted to the task by such men as John Maynard Keynes, W. T. Layton, editor of the Economist, H. D. Henderson, editor of the Nation, and B. S. Rountree. Party leaders like Lloyd George, Sir Herbert Samuel and Sir John Simon assume responsibility for the Report, and so we are left in no doubt as to the eminence of the pallbearers officiating at the Liberal obsequies.

In his reply to James G. Elaine in the North American Review on the subject of Protection away back in 1890, Mr. Gladstone said:

"The argument of the free trader is that the legislator ought never to interfere, or only to interfere so far as imperative fiscal necessity may require it, with the natural law of distribution."

Evidently in the mind of Mr. Gladstone this truth did not solely apply to the question of Protection, but was of far more general application. But the Manchester Guardian, which is supposedly a Liberal organ and is a journal of high standing, refers to the Report approvingly as an attempt "to infuse into the mainly haphazard economic growth measures of control and co-ordination." It therefore proposes to interfere with the natural law of distribution, or to proceed as if it had been tested and failed.

We are told by the New Republic, which can always be depended upon to do its best to add to the cloudiness and complexities of economic thinking, that "the influential Liberal leaders have turned their backs on laissez faire." "They are in harmony," says the New Republic, "with the thought in this country which is stretching out toward social control of economic institutions." We had sensed this and deplore it as much as the New Republic exults in it. We are told by this organ of confused economic thinking that "the main task (of these new and strangely constituted Liberals) is the better organization of business." This, we are told, may require, in some instances, "the taking over by public authority of important enterprises that are not well adapted to private ownership through lack of profit or through the danger of monopoly."

We hope we are not unduly facetious in pointing out that there thus appear two reasons for taking over private enterprises one that they are not making profits, and another that they are, for surely a monopoly must be profitable. If government is to take over unprofitable enterprises presumably not without compensation it will have accumulated quite a large collection before many years quite enough, we should say, to bankrupt most governments. But the reader will observe that no principle is urged that should govern the acquisition by government of private industries, or any distinction beyond the broad one indicated, which, of course, is no rule of reason by any law of economics. Single Taxers agree that the distinction is between industries subject to the law of competition and others not so subject,, and requiring the use of land for their operation. The distinction may not be an exact one, but it is at least a roughly convenient approximation.

THE degree to which the new liberalism would go in increasing the functions of government is appalling. We are told: "Thorough publicity of accounts of all businesses is the basis of the remedies proposed." But the owners of privilege are reassured by the following from the New Republic's study of the Report: "All this looks in the direction not of preventing or breaking up monopoly but of substituting sound public regulation for the vanishing checks of competition." So land monopolists and monopolists of every other kind, most of which owe their existence to land monopoly, have nothing to fear.

The Report also proposes that the government interfere with the free flow of capital into the most profitable channels, if we understand correctly. These new Liberals believe that the national savings, estimated at 500,000,000, should be used less for investment abroad and more for industries at home. Whether this is merely advisory, or whether forcible steps are to be taken to keep these savings in the country, does not appear, but the latter procedure is an easy step in translating this glaring economic fallacy into action. Surely there must be many of the old-school Liberals still alive in Great Britain who will read this Report with stupefied amazement, not unmixed with a real sorrow in seeing a great political party forsake its most glorious traditions in a hodge-podge of ill-considered Socialistic recommendations. The only thing we miss is the Capital Levy, and we are grieved at the absence of an old friend.

Income and inheritance taxes are said in this Report to be the most scientific (sic) forms of taxation and should be made to bear a large portion of governmental burdens. We are still depending on second-hand information as to this Report, but have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the New Republic's statement of its contents. And again we cry, Shade of Gladstone! For Gladstone condemned the income tax as " overwhelmingly energetic in minutiae." Others of the great Liberal leaders would have relegated the income tax to periods of emergency. None would have advocated extensions of or substantial additions to it.

A proposal of this extraordinary Report which the New Republic calls "striking" is for the establishment of an "Economic General Staff working in close touch with the Prime Minister and Cabinet." No wonder this is called "striking." The mischief such a General Staff could do passes all imagination. The business of regulation and "snoop," after "the general statistics of all businesses" were in their hands, would give work to an uncounted clerical force, a great army of functionaries, and a department more extensive than anything in the Soviet government of Russia, and indeed in the history of any nation since time began. From mining operating companies and great department stores to peanut stands, the Economic General Staff would be kept pretty busy.

One thing this Report clearly shows. The economic thought of British politics has gone to seed; Liberalism is dead; the Liberal Party has no leaders. Every- thing advocated in this Report, which is the voice of the party's more influential spokesmen, the Labor Party will do better and more fully, and for those who like that sort of thing the Liberal Party cannot hope to compete. And another thing the Report shows: the confusion of thought is the child of the confusion that reigns in the economic, ordering of the country. Where the influence of land monopoly penetrates every nook and corner of the land, the disposition to evade this question of first importance leads to policies of makeshift of which this Report is the astounding culmination.