A Restatement Of Economic Liberalism Prologue: Capitalism and the permissive society Introduction :: The Historical Context :: Reasons For Suspicion :: The Rise Of The Word Man :: The Dilemma Of The Economic Liberal :: The New Left Attack :: Poverty And Equality :: 'Alienation' :: Student Dissent :: Contemporary Radicalism :: A turn of the tide?

The economic liberal, who is prepared tojustify certain aspects of capitalism, has to face many drawbacks. Unless he is an apologist for business interests, or a party politician, he is bound to be highly critical of the particular forms of capitalism which prevail and of the policies of Conservative and Republican governments. To them he will appear as a far-out radical or, at best, an impractical theorist. Yet, among students and communication media which act as the middle-men for ideas, he will appear as a timid apologist for the 'system'.

A further difficulty is that the type of intellectual professionally qualified to explain the case for capitalism is the economist. Businessmen can usually be relied upon to defend the indefensible aspects of their activities while giving in to their collectivist opponents on all essentials. Nor is this a criticism; businessmen are paid to operate the system rather than to understand or expound it, and nothing is more pathetic than to see politicians of either party coming cap in hand to industrialists or bankers for advice that the latter are not qualified to give.

Unfortunately, partly as a result of growing specialisation and technicality within the subject, there has been, as Stigler has pointed out,⁴ a retrogression in the ability of economists to communicate with other intellectuals. The difficulty is not just that economists are bad popularisers or that their message is unwelcome. It goes much deeper. The real trouble is that economists are no longer sure what it is that they wish to communicate to a wider public. Individual economists feel passionately on particular subjects in opposition to other economists. But they are far less sure of what it is that they can put forward which would both reflect a professional consensus and also convey a relatively simple message to the educated layman.

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4. G. J. Stigler, The Intellectual and the Market Place, reprinted in Price Theory (Penguin Modern Economic Readings, 1971).
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