Introduction
Leonard Read is not a household name; in fact, not many Americans even recognize it. That is unfortunate, because, according to his biographer, Mary Sennholz, “Leonard Read was one of the most notable social philosophers of our time. His name will forever be associated with the rebirth of the freedom philosophy” (Sennholz 1996). Largely because of his efforts, as observed by Bettina Bien Greaves, “the freedom philosophy and free markets are now more widely discussed and more respectable” (Greaves 1998). Or, more succinctly, in Gary North’s words, “the libertarian movement . . . can be traced to Read and Read’s vision” (North 2002).
This book is not a biography of Leonard Read. There is already an excellent one available—Mary Sennholz’s Leonard E. Read: Philosopher of Freedom (Sennholz 1993)—for those who wish to understand Read more fully. My purpose is to introduce or reintroduce some of Read’s best sustained arguments, on behalf of what he called the freedom philosophy, to an audience that might be receptive to the principles of liberty.
Still, a very brief biographical background is in order to set the stage. Read was born September 26, 1898, in Hubbardston, Michigan. He grew up poor and extremely hardworking, in part because his father died when he was ten. His hard work and talent led him to become manager of the Western division of the US Chamber of Commerce in 1932 and general manager of the Los Angeles branch—the largest in the country—in 1939.
Leonard Read vigorously represented the Chamber of Commerce’s policies. In 1933, he met with W.C. Mullendore, executive vice president of Southern California Edison, who had been critical of the Chamber’s positions. Read offered his defense of the Chamber’s approach and rationale, but Mullendore eviscerated it. He then taught Read “his best lesson ever”—the core of the philosophy that Read would promote for the rest of his life.
Read, who was largely self-educated, wrote a book to express his philosophy. The Romance of Reality, published in 1937, made the case for liberty—that is, self-ownership and the voluntary arrangements it enabled—that he would continue to develop for more than four decades.
During his time at the Chamber of Commerce, Leonard Read became a crusader for freedom. But he could not wholeheartedly promote his crusade within the Chamber due to its positions. So, Read left at a sizeable financial cost to himself—“putting everything on the line, and risking everything” (Gresham 1968), as Henry Hazlitt put it in his contribution to What’s Past Is Prologue, a collection honoring Read’s seventieth birthday—in 1946, a time when the prospects for freedom in the world were bleak, to create his own organization to promote freedom. It was named the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), which Gary North called “the granddaddy of all libertarian organizations” (North 2002) and which inspired the formation of many other free-market organizations (such as the Mont Pelerin Society, formed in 1947) and think tanks that have since arisen throughout the world. Lawrence Fertig, then vice-chair of FEE, describes Read’s resolve: “When Leonard Read heeded the call of conscience in 1946 and organized the Foundation for Economic Education, even his libertarian supporters and friends took a dim view of his chances of success. At that time it was plain that the tide of Statism was only beginning to rise. Pessimism was rife and many feared that freedom would be engulfed by the advance of Socialism in the United States. . . . But Leonard Read . . . kept a flicker of the freedom philosophy alive in what seemed to be the dark age of statist advance” (Gresham 1968).
According to Bettina Bien Greaves, Read’s purpose was “to counteract, through FEE, the anti-freedom, pro-socialist New Deal philosophy of post–World War II America. The problem was to reawaken in the people a belief in the morality of freedom. Since people cannot be forced to be moral, their ideas must be changed—through education. Read’s whole life became devoted to this task, to free-market education in the broadest sense of the word” (Greaves 1998).
Years later, Read discovered that his approach reflected an insight from Albert Schweitzer’s 1923 Civilization and Ethics:
Civilization can only revive when there shall come into being in a number of individuals a new tone of mind independent of the one prevalent among the crowd and in opposition to it. A new public opinion must be created. . . . The existing one is maintained by the press, by propaganda, by organization, and by financial and other influences at its disposal. . . . This unnatural way of spreading ideas must be opposed by the natural one, which goes from person to person and relies solely on the truth of the thoughts and the hearer’s receptiveness for new truth. (Schweitzer 1923)
In the role of not only FEE’s founder and leader but also its heart and soul, Read traveled widely, giving speeches, producing an array of pamphlets promoting freedom, and participating in hundreds of seminars to defend and advance individual liberty. As Gary North put it, FEE’s flagship publication, The Freeman (which I am proud to have written many articles for), “was the printed incarnation of Read’s philosophy.”
At FEE, Leonard Read wrote prolifically. In addition to speeches, presentations, and pamphlets, he wrote at least twenty-seven books (twenty-nine by some reports, depending on what is counted as a pamphlet and what is counted as a book). In fact, if there were a top-ten list for how many words someone had devoted to the cause of liberty, Leonard Read would likely be on it. The core of his message is described well by Bettina Bien Greaves:
Read was a moral philosopher, not an economist, though his principles made him a pretty good free-market economist. He reasoned that if it is moral to respect the life and property of individuals, then it is immoral to violate their rights to life and property; if it is moral to deal peacefully with others, then it is immoral to use force, fraud, or threat of force to impose one’s wishes on others; if voluntary transactions among private-property owners are moral, then to hinder or prevent voluntary transactions among willing traders is immoral. No one, neither private individual nor public agency, should take property by force or coercion from one person for the benefit of another. These principles led Read logically to believe in the morality of private-property rights, a free-market economy, and free trade, and to the conviction that government intervention that violates private property, hampers free markets, and interferes with free trade is immoral. His proverbial answer when asked how to solve any economic problem was: “Get the government out of it.” (Greaves 1998)
For Read, the difference between what was permissible and what was not was simple. Anything that’s peaceful (also the title of one of his many books) was permissible. The voluntary way was not only right but beneficial. But the use of force to coerce others against their will was wrong and immoral.
This book is an attempt to assemble an extensive collection of Leonard Read’s best, most powerful sustained arguments on behalf of liberty, edited for brevity, with brief introductory remarks, organizational additions, and commentary connecting them to current issues. The arguments come from his books, articles, notes, and speeches, and some span multiple sources. They cover a wide gamut of subjects, including the rhetorical and logical abuses that are used to misrepresent liberty, the meaning of good government, the central importance of integrity (which Read viewed as the foremost virtue), the necessity of recognizing what is unknown, the importance of markets in revealing information that is otherwise unknowable in a complex world, the differences between wants and rights and between justice and social justice, whether immoral means can achieve moral ends, how the redistributive state harms every participant, and many more.
Read believed that nothing should stand in the way of freedom’s power to change minds, including the morality and efficacy of “the free market and its miraculous performances” as the principle of social organization. This collection reflects, throughout, Jacob Hornberger’s description of him: “Leonard Read took an absolutely uncompromising approach to the principles of freedom. He argued that man’s purpose on earth, whatever it is, requires the widest possible ambit for human growth and maturation. Therefore, he believed, a person should be free to do whatever he wants in life as long as it is peaceful” (Hornberger 1991).
The selections here do not by any means exhaust Read’s insights or his ability to turn a phrase. They are intended to stimulate serious thought and further reading and, I hope, to begin “infecting” more people today with his deep-seated commitment to liberty. That, after all, was one of Leonard Read’s goals: to plant seeds of liberty, so that individuals, and thereby society, could blossom to their fullest potential. Hornberger even describes Read and his associates as “freedom’s ‘Johnny Appleseeds.’”
Read’s actions took real courage. Dan Sanchez recently wrote about how US Representative Frank Buchanan’s Select Committee on Lobbying investigated FEE with a fine-tooth comb in 1949, only a few years after its founding, spending a week “rummag[ing] through FEE’s offices” and summoning Read to appear before the committee (quoted in Sanchez 2023). FEE had criticized big-government policies, which Buchanan backed, for violating Americans’ liberties. Buchanan stretched mightily the definition of lobbying to include criticism and thus bring the issue under his committee’s sway.
Read’s words in front of the committee demonstrated his unwillingness to back down from defending liberty, even in the face of powerful opposition. Rather than be cowed, he noted that to call FEE’s work lobbying would require calling everything lobbying: “‘Lobbying’ . . . becomes synonymous with communication of thought—all thought. The Bible communicates ideas that might affect legislation. The words of every teacher, every minister of the gospel, of every person here or elsewhere, are communicated thoughts having possible effects on legislation. The list is endless” (quoted in Sanchez 2023).
Read proceeded to lay out how FEE was not a political lobbying organization by any sensible definition: “The organization which I represent is a non-profit research and educational institution. Its sole purpose is a search for truth in economics, political science and related subjects. It is that, and nothing more—an institution for learning” (quoted in Sanchez 2023).
The attack on Read and FEE for standing up for liberty did not result in the intimidation and silence Buchanan intended. As Bettina Bien Greaves summarized it, “The Buchanan hearings interrupted but did not deter FEE from its educational goal. The Foundation went quietly on its way trying to erode the rock of pro-government opinion with the written and spoken word” (Greaves 1996).
W.C. Mullendore, the source of Read’s “best lesson ever” and a trustee of FEE, wrote a letter to Buchanan which clearly laid out a recognition of what was really afoot and how important the issue continues to be today: “Those who seek to extend the power of Government try to close the mouths of citizens who dare to oppose or inform public opinion on the dangers involved, and one of the most effective means of accomplishing this subversive objective is to intimidate, through harassing investigations and smearing innuendos, the efforts of citizens to defend themselves. Your inquisitional and extremely burdensome demand for information which you have no moral right to demand is a most alarming example of the use of this means of intimidation” (96 Cong. Rec. H8339 (1950)).
Leonard Read’s insights are both valuable and durable. They address issues that still bedevil liberty and the blessings that come in its wake. Friedrich Hayek, in What’s Past Is Prologue, may have provided the most powerful endorsement of Read and his efforts that I have seen:
I believe that what the Foundation for Economic Education, with Leonard Read at its head, and all his co-fighters and friends are committed to is nothing more nor less than the defense of our civilization against intellectual error. . . .
. . . There is hardly anyone who at the same time sees the great issues of our time as intellectual problems and also is so familiar with the thinking of the practical man that he can put the crucial arguments in a language which is meaningful to the man of the world.
If Leonard Read’s position is probably unique today, it is precisely because he possesses both faculties. . . . I found not only that he knew much more than most of the rest of us about the opinions governing current policies, and was therefore much more effective in meeting the errors in them. . . . But I found also that he was a profound and original thinker who disguised the profundity of his conclusions by putting them into homely everyday language. (Gresham 1968)
Ben Rogge provides a further “amen” to Hayek’s appreciation of Read’s central role in both the defense and advance of liberty (reflected by the engraving on a silver bowl at the commemoration of his seventieth birthday: “Philosopher and Leader of the Free Society”): “Well may we be irritated when Leonard Read tells us again and again and still again that we must always look to ourselves, to self-improvement, not to reforming others, if we wish to serve the cause of freedom . . . but . . . somewhere in this world somebody is thinking or speaking or writing a word or taking an action under the direct or indirect influence of the life and teachings of Leonard Read. May the rest of us be one part as effective and the world will again turn its face to freedom” (Gresham 1968).
I hope my attempt to identify and lay out Leonard Read’s insights here is one part as effective as he was in advancing freedom. But given how far he is from public consciousness today, I am sure that anyone who prizes liberty will find here much new wisdom, although it is in fact not so new.
Gary Galles
Camarillo, CA
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Gary M. Galles is a Professor of Economics at Pepperdine University and an adjunct scholar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He is also a research fellow at the Independent Institute, a member of the Foundation for Economic Education faculty network, and a member of the Heartland Institute Board of Policy Advisors.
Henry Hazlitt, a great champion of liberty and Austrian economics, was born on November 28, 1894. His most famous book, Economics in One Lesson, remains a best seller thirty years after his death.
