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One of the author's cav il s a t bo th th e market and its public
surroga te, benef it-cost analys is, is tha t they are apparentl y neutral
mechani sms fo r solving mo ral p robl ems. "When commun al values
confli ct, hea lth y societi es deba te them until a reasonabl e range of
instituti onal compromi ses evo lves from the contest of ideologies and
interests. Less hea lth y societi es do their best to evade di scuss ion ,
preferabl y by the in venti on of some apparentl y neutra l technical
device." I doubt that thi s is a very useful social equivalent of a fever
thermometer. But more to the po int, I don 't know what it rea ll y means.
One way of interpreting the ma rket as a dev ice for all oca ting resources
is that, when indi viduals des ire different thin gs, confli ct is avoided by
letting each choose wh a t he wants.
Like Ha rrington , Lekachman emphas izes tha t sta te intervention is
a creator of p roperty a nd cas ti ga tes economi c theory fo r n ot recogniz–
ing this. Yet in stead o f ending up with a Chi cago homil y to curb the
power of the sta te, he holds tha t on the whol e a democra ti cally run
state is likely to crea te a more equal di stribution of income than the
market. T hi s is not necessa ril y an inconsistency, but it call s for
caution; perhap s all the interventi on decreases the equality of income
in a capitalist society.
For a fin a l captious comment on Lekachman 's book, let me
deplore an occasio na l lapse into mi sleading rheto ric. T o Keynes's
quotati on about the power ideas, referred to above, Lekachman adds
his own illustra ti on s: " Marx is beller remembered th an Mill a rd Fill–
more. Vebl en sends cl ea rer messages than Chester Arthur. Keynes will
be remembered when Stanl ey Baldwin and Ramsay MacDonald a re
forgotten. " Would these urbane sentences sound quite as impress ive if
Fillmore, Arthur, Baldwin and MacDonald were replaced by Abraham
Lincoln , T heodore Roosevelt, Ado lf Hitl er and Joseph Stalin , respec–
tively?
Lekachman 's book may be o f mo re interes t to the layma n, who h as
not heard these criti cisms befo re, than
to
the economi st, and my
remarks may therefore be biased.
It
must be stressed tha t, with a few
exceptions, the sta tements made a re factuall y accura te and well docu–
mented; it is the evalua ti on tha t is in ques ti on.
Drucker's book is in a to tall y different spirit. Lekachman cannot
complain that Drucker, a management consultant and prolific author,
neglects social and political considera tions. The book sta rts with a
proposition that we needn 't di scuss the coming of socialism; it is
already here in tha t pension fund s a re on their way to owning
Ameri can business, whi ch therefore no longer belongs to a class of
capitalists. I may as well say immed ia tely tha t I see no ev idence for thi s
