The Genius of Capitalism

In his foreword to John Chamberlain’s The Roots of Capitalism (Van Nostrand, $5.00), Claude Robinson has observed with fine understatement, “Books that expound the desirability of Government organization of the economy appear to be in full supply.” One thinks immediately of a great variety of works by such learned, urbane and utterly wrongheaded authors as Stuart Chase, Barbara Ward and John Kenneth Galbraith. The great bull market in left-wing economics apparently goes on and on. These days, one is tempted to add, a profit is without honor in its own country.

A few astute critics of ideas, however, refuse to concede that statism, the “mixed economy” or creeping socialism necessarily represents the wave of the future. One of the most eloquent of these is John Chamberlain, whose new book makes a vastly persuasive case for the theory and practice of private enterprise. Down through the ages, he shows, political liberty and freedom to “truck and barter” traditionally have repaired to the same philosophic standard. Both have made common cause against the tyranny of government, whether in the guise of the divine right of kings or the so-called welfare state. At the same time, capitalism has yielded mankind what even its critics concede to be an affluent society

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Robert M. Bleiberg

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In his foreword to John Chamberlain’s The Roots of Capitalism (Van Nostrand, $5.00), Claude Robinson has observed with fine understatement, “Books that expound the desirability of Government organization of the economy appear to be in full supply.” One thinks immediately of a great variety of works by such learned, urbane and utterly wrongheaded authors as Stuart Chase, Barbara Ward and John Kenneth Galbraith. The great bull market in left-wing economics apparently goes on and on. These days, one is tempted to add, a profit is without honor in its own country.

A few astute critics of ideas, however, refuse to concede that statism, the “mixed economy” or creeping socialism necessarily represents the wave of the future. One of the most eloquent of these is John Chamberlain, whose new book makes a vastly persuasive case for the theory and practice of private enterprise. Down through the ages, he shows, political liberty and freedom to “truck and barter” traditionally have repaired to the same philosophic standard. Both have made common cause against the tyranny of government, whether in the guise of the divine right of kings or the so-called welfare state. At the same time, capitalism has yielded mankind what even its critics concede to be an affluent society