Americans have, of late, heard a lot about “common good” capitalism. However, as with most political adjectives and modifiers, the term is misleading, and as a result, a false premise on which to build one’s understanding.
As Donald Boudreaux has recently written, “If all that ‘common good capitalism” means is capitalism as understood and championed over the past 250 years by liberal scholars… this new name serves no good purpose…it suggests (what I’ll call) ‘true capitalism’…doesn’t promote the common good…Yet…advocates of true capitalism (including me), do indeed believe that true capitalism promotes the common good. And to back our case, we’ve got lots of sound theory and solid evidence.”
Leonard Read, founder and guiding light of the Foundation for Economic Education, “the granddaddy of all libertarian organizations,” was one of the strongest voices for there being no difference between true capitalism and capitalism that advances the common good for decades. He most directly addressed such issues in his “Exalting the Common Good,” Chapter 13 in his 1982 The Path of Duty, the last book he published.
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Read started with an inspirational quote, at least for those who believe in freedom, from George Sutherland, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1922 to 1938:
To sustain the individual freedom of action contemplated by the Constitution is not to strike down the common good, but to exalt it; for surely the good of society as a whole cannot be better served than by the preservation against arbitrary restraint of the liberties of its constituent members.
Unfortunately, Justice Sutherland’s wisdom is a far cry from what most people today, or when Read wrote, seem to believe.
Most citizens in today’s U.S.A. haven’t the slightest understanding of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Sutherland, on the other hand, understood these writings as well as did the authors of these politico-economic, spiritual documents: the greatest in all history! The basic premise that separates the American experiment in Man-Government relationships from all others is contained in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
So how much did those who signed that document believe in the freedoms it enshrined? What were they willing to put on the line as a result?
Reflect on the fact that these signers were, for the most part, men of means…signing their own death warrant, so contrary to popular opinion were their glorious intentions!
They were willing to trade their well-being to bring about, at best, the birth of a nation with unprecedented freedom principles; or a dangerous hangman’s rope, at worse!
Almost to a man, they paid a heavy price…Few survived to live out natural lives. They pledged–and they paid–and in doing so they gave birth to your and my freedom. Would you have signed the Declaration? Your answer is affirmative—provided that you are trying, regardless of opposition and unpopularity, to regain the liberty our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us Americans. Hail to their wisdom, courage and exemplarity.
But what has that got to do with “common good” capitalism?
Justice Sutherland insisted that we should exalt the common good, his reference being the good set forth in our Constitution.
Why do so few approve, accept and abide by the freedom way of life?…The truth as I now see it? No one can or ever will be able to explain the miracle of freedom. Were clear, lucid and persuasive explanation a requirement, some one or more of us would need to understand and explain every facet of human action–creativity at the human level. No individual is or ever has been graced with such wisdom. Nor is such omniscience necessary for a belief in freedom.
Many individuals have looked upon freedom, not as a miracle, but as an explainable way of life. Being unable to explain it themselves and knowing of no one who can, they hold it in far less esteem than socialism which they find easier to explain.
[Consequently] All but a few are blind to freedom’s miracles…[because] the more one knows the more awareness of how little he knows…is the beginning of such wisdom as is within mortal man’s domain.
There are reasons galore as to why freedom is not believed to be a miracle. Here is one: Our everyday life is crowded with miracles, so many that they have become commonplace…taken for granted.
Does the inability of anyone to recognize and explain the entirety of the miracle of freedom, which is the miracle of the private property and voluntary relationships of “ordinary” capitalism (not common good capitalism nor crony capitalism nor dog-eat-dog capitalism) mean freedom, clearly in many ways in retreat today, is beyond recovery?
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Is it practical to believe in the unexplainable miracle, freedom?
The answer is an unequivocal “Yes.” Why? Because the individual’s freedom to act creatively as he pleases is materially, morally and spiritually sound.
At our down-to-earth level, more miracles than anyone can count result from freedom, the greatest demonstration in all history being the American miracle..[resulting because] When our tiny bits of expertise are free to flow, they configurate…these bits make the miracle.
Some nations have freedom in the blood and are ready to face the greatest perils and hardships in its defense…Other nations, once they have grown prosperous, lose interest in freedom and let it be snatched away from them without lifting a hand to defend it, lest they should endanger thus the comforts that, in fact, they owe to it alone. It is easy to see that what is lacking in such nations is a genuine love of freedom, that lofty aspiration which, I confess, defies analysis. For it is something one must feel.
Let us then believe that the miracle of freedom will rise again!
*Excerpted from Freedom in One Lesson: The Best of Leonard Read (2025), Edited with Commentary by Gary Galles.
