Economic policy for a free society

The other essays of this volume deal mainly with special T problems of economic policy. Inviting readers' attention. to such discussion, one may offer at the start a candid state ment of the more general or ancillary persuasions which in form that discussion and in awareness of which the reader may, whether with agreement or dissent, best understand it.

A good Introduction would expound a coherent scheme of practical ethics, a political-economic philosophy, or, if you please, a clear-cut ideological position. Limitations of space and of competence, however, permit only rather naked display of fragmentary ideas and opinions. I hope that they are frag ments of one intelligible general position and that they do consistently inform or underlie the argument of the other essays.

The underlying position may be characterized as severely libertarian or, in the English-Continental sense, liberal. The intellectual tradition is intended to be that of Adam Smith, Herrmann, Thünen, Mill, Menger, Brentano, Sidgwick, Marshall, Fetter, and Knight, and of Locke, Hume, Bentham, Humboldt, Tocqueville, Burckhardt, Acton, Dicey, Barker, and Hayek. The distinctive feature of this tradition is emphasis upon liberty as both a requisite and a measure of progress. Its liberty or freedom, of course, comprises or implies justice, equality, and other aspectual qualities of the "good society."