"Hayek wants no companies that are large enough to influence the prices at which they sell"?

Ben Jackson pointed out (referring to a 1937 letter to Walter Lippmann) there was a "Hayek as yet some distance from his later public persona as a defender of unhindered business activity."

"But the whole matter is one of extreme complexity and difficulty,
and I cannot say, that I have definitely made up my mind. My main
doubt is whether it really is the corporate law which has given rise
to corporations bigger than they would become under the . . . free
market, or whether it is not largely the greater influence on the
political machine, which the great corporation exerts, which has
favoured its growth."

Ben Jackson 2012. Freedom, the Common Good, and the Rule of Law: Lippmann and Hayek on Economic Planning. Journal of the History of Ideas  Jan Vol. 73 Issue 1, 47-68.

RL

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ric Holt" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Monday, 18 November, 2013 1:28:40 AM
Subject: [SHOE] Galbraith and individual freedom

I'm stretching my limit of messages on this list, but I thought some might
appreciate this letter Galbraith wrote in 1951 where he is starting to
develop his views on the corporation. Here he talks about individual
freedom. ( I have not done a final editorial job on the the letters I am
sharing with you. Each letter in the  Cambridge University volume will go
through three editorial cycles for accuracy).

Ric Holt




*In this letter Galbraith starts to develop ideas that we will see in his
later books like The New Industrial State (1967). He first points out that
those who are so concern with “individualism” need to include not just
their fear of big government or the “District of Columbia line,” but also
large corporations and their organization. He then goes on to argue that
having large organizations like the welfare state and large private
corporations might not be that bad for “free spirits.” In fact, they might
provide opportunities for the individual, which they might not have had “a
half century ago.”*





December 11, 1951



Mr. John Knox Jessup

Life Magazine

Time-Life Building

Rockefeller Plaza

New York City



Dear Jack:



            Some time in the next month or two I would like to write an
article for LIFE – it is for a LIFE and not a FORTUNE audience incidentally
– which might, though it shouldn’t be called a Memo to a Yale man. I want
to take up in the plainest possible terms the question of individualism in
out time. I am, of course, partly inspired by the work of Mr. Buckley but I
want to anchor the article to the ideas rather than to a rather
inconsequential young man. You, Harry and the rest are well enough
acquainted with my views to know where I will come out. I want to show that
individualism, in its serious tradition, is a highly compelling faith. But
I also want to show that, in the hands of those who are intellectually
faithful to the idea from Adam Smith to Hayek, it is a very different and
far more demanding thing than the bowdlerized version that is now being
traded around. It is not something which stops at the District of Columbia
line with a dismantling of government. It also goes on to both Standard Oil
Company of New Jersey and the C.I.O. I will doubtless remind my
individualist friends that Adam Smith’s strictures on Joint Stock Companies
were almost as severe as those on the mercantilist state and that Professor
Hayek wants no companies that are large enough to influence the prices at
which they sell. But I also want to argue not only that Washington, Jersey
Standard and the CIO are governing organizations to which individuals (not
excepting their leaders) are in varying measure subordinate but that each
makes the other in some degree inevitable.



            Then I would like to inquire, granting the premise of the *bona
fide* individualist, whether his end justifies the means – whether in fact
he wants to go through the hell that would be required to achieve his
goal.  Here I also want to argue that individual freedom and a great deal
of public and private organization are compatible, given always the
existence of men who are free in spirit or, anyhow, who are free spirits.
You have heard me on the fringes of this before. I always felt that I had
more freedom as a member of Time, Inc., popularly considered a big
organization indeed, than is enjoyed by the independent but bedeviled and
circumscribed publisher of the Brattleboro Reformer. I am quite persuaded
that the Department of Commerce and the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey
offer more real encouragement to the man of independent mind than did their
counterparts of a half century ago. It is the will, courage and especially
the energy to use independence that counts.



            I have experimented with this sufficiently so that I am
persuaded it can be made interesting and substantial without being unduly
highbrow. There will be overtones, I am sure, of a more lenient position on
the Welfare State than you wholly approve but you can always disavow your
authors (on points if not on thesis) in a sparkling editorial.




Sincerely,




J.K. Galbraith