He would have seen, not the
strong doing the weak down, but the foolish doing the strong down. He
would have seen purposes, designs and forethoughts at work,
obstructing invention, obstructing enterprise, obstructing what he
would infallibly have recognized as the next move of Creative
Evolution.
Even now Mr. Shaw is none too eager for the guidance of any guiding
government he knows, but in theory he has turned a full loop against
laissez-faire. Most advanced thinking before the war had made the same
turn against the established notion that if you unloosed everything,
wisdom would bubble up, and establish harmony. Since the war, with its
definite demonstration of guiding governments, assisted by censors,
propagandists, and spies, Roebuck Ramsden and Natural Liberty have
been readmitted to the company of serious thinkers.
One thing is common to these cycles. There is in each set of
stereotypes a point where effort ceases and things happen of their own
accord, as you would like them to. The progressive stereotype,
powerful to incite work, almost completely obliterates the attempt to
decide what work and why that work. Laissez-faire, a blessed release
from stupid officialdom, assumes that men will move by spontaneous
combustion towards a pre-established harmony. Collectivism, an
antidote to ruthless selfishness, seems, in the Marxian mind, to
suppose an economic determinism towards efficiency and wisdom on the
part of socialist officials.
Pages:
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126