Worried but Right

The Philadelphia Society held its 1974 Eastern meeting in the New York Sheraton on November 22 and 23. I had long yearned to attend one of its conventions—it regularly arranges symposiums featuring some of the most distinguished conservative thinkers in America—but this was the first time I had been able to do so, courtesy of the Society (which invited me) and NR (which assigned me to cover it). I was not disappointed.

The first symposium was more nearly a debate, as the University of Rochester’s Henry Manne accused Irving Kristol of irresponsibility, and Kristol defended himself, both contestants taking a few good-natured jibes from referee Ernest van den Haag. The topic of their discussion was “Cooperation, Consumers, Economists, and Real People,” and Manne argued that Kristol’s basic error was ascribing the same kind of reality to all kinds of collectivities. A corporation, Manne said, is not an entity but a contract, and as such has no social responsibilities, contrary to Kristol’s assertions. Kristol is irresponsible, he concluded, in making the corporations, which are purely market functions, the object of his attacks, when he should be attacking instead mass democracy itself for its arrogant and destructive interference with the free market.

JS

About the Author

Joseph Sobran

The Philadelphia Society held its 1974 Eastern meeting in the New York Sheraton on November 22 and 23. I had long yearned to attend one of its conventions—it regularly arranges symposiums featuring some of the most distinguished conservative thinkers in America—but this was the first time I had been able to do so, courtesy of the Society (which invited me) and NR (which assigned me to cover it). I was not disappointed.

The first symposium was more nearly a debate, as the University of Rochester’s Henry Manne accused Irving Kristol of irresponsibility, and Kristol defended himself, both contestants taking a few good-natured jibes from referee Ernest van den Haag. The topic of their discussion was “Cooperation, Consumers, Economists, and Real People,” and Manne argued that Kristol’s basic error was ascribing the same kind of reality to all kinds of collectivities. A corporation, Manne said, is not an entity but a contract, and as such has no social responsibilities, contrary to Kristol’s assertions. Kristol is irresponsible, he concluded, in making the corporations, which are purely market functions, the object of his attacks, when he should be attacking instead mass democracy itself for its arrogant and destructive interference with the free market.