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The Vision of a Real Free Market
Society

Free market capitalism has created a divided American society. Conservative

economic and social policy thinking drove the Right’s Project from 1980 to
its collapse in 2008, leaving the world in ruins and fascism on the march.
The Vision of a Real Free Market Society challenges the Left to create
new forms of the market economy that promote efficiency and equality
while permanently thwarting concentrated power. Many recent commen-
tators have offered policy recommendations based on existing economic
institutions. By contrast, this book calls for root-and-branch changes to the
inherent structure of American capitalism.
The Vision of a Real Free Market Society: Re-Imagining American
Freedom presents a Left-egalitarian case for limited government that over-
comes the failures of conservatism while rescuing economic justice from
the weaknesses of tax and transfer liberalism. The book explains why the
system fails so many Americans in so many different ways, and outlines
how we can build a better economy that simultaneously promotes free-
dom and social justice while crippling the powers of America’s oligarchs.
Exploring the idea of a left-wing case for strong but small government, the
book makes the case for fundamental reforms that will lead to a truly free
and fair society.
This provocative book will be of great relevance to anyone with an
interest in politics, philosophy or economics, and will challenge readers to
rethink their assumptions concerning the prospects for combining justice
with fairness in the modern world.

Marcellus Andrews is Professor of Economics at Bucknell University,

USA, with research and teaching interests in: economic theory; economics
and philosophy; inequality; complex adaptive systems; and macroeconom-
ics. After earning a PhD in Economics from Yale, Andrews has taught at
Wellesley, the City University of New York and Barnard College.
Routledge Focus on Economics and Finance

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growth presents challenges for readers trying to keep up with the latest
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Individually, each title in the series provides coverage of a key academic

topic, whilst collectively the series forms a comprehensive collection across
the whole spectrum of economics.

1 International Macroeconomics for Business and Political Leaders

John E. Marthinsen

2 Ethics and Responsibility in Finance

Paul H. Dembinski

3 The Vision of a Real Free Market Society

Re-Imagining American Freedom
Marcellus Andrews
The Vision of a Real Free
Market Society
Re-Imagining American Freedom

Marcellus Andrews
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
 2017 Marcellus Andrews
The right of Marcellus Andrews to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-22897-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-39098-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
Contents

1 A map of the terrain 1

The predicament 4
Recipe for a real free market society 6
First argument: Principles 6
Second argument: Policy 8
Basic income and analytical economics 9

2 Real freedom versus American freedom 10

A really free society 10
Libertarianism: Right and Left 11
Liberty requires equality 16

3 What do markets do? 22

The market at work 22
Markets and knowledge 23
A Hayekian Left? 25
The case against raw capitalism 27
Market failure 29
Incentives and information 29
Efficiency wages 29
Mass unemployment 31
Risk and insurance 33
Monopoly and Big Business 35
Joining the debate 39

4 Taking conservative capitalism seriously 42

The Chicago School 42
In defense of capitalism 42
vi Contents
The problem with “social justice” 44
Incentives 47
The equality problem 50
Merit 52
The problem with capitalism 56

5 Conservative failure and the next capitalism 59

Quackery 59
Defining supply-side economics: Some
unpleasant facts 60
Basic economics to the rescue 62
Reverse Robin Hood 63
“Public choice” and conservative failure 64
Progressive supply-side economics 67
Schumpeter’s world 69
A street-smart Left 71

6 Universal capitalism and economic justice 75

Labor and wealth 75
Universal capitalism versus socialism 76
Universal capitalism: Pedigree and history 78
Basic income 81
The Social Trust Fund: A variant on the basic
income theme 84
Incentives and the trust fund 85
Work 85
Savings 87
Getting from here to there 89
International aspects of endowment-based justice 92

Conclusion: The road to real freedom 97

Bibliography 101
Index 104
1 A map of the terrain

This little book proposes a radical alternative to contemporary American

capitalism—a species of left-libertarianism—as an unorthodox yet pragmatic
reform of the American economic system, moving beyond the dead-end squab-
bles between a failed conservatism and an exhausted liberalism. My goal is to
open a new front in the fight about the proper balance between the State and
the market in economic life. This book shakes up the economic imagination of
citizens of liberal democracies everywhere, especially Americans, by exploring
how to combine markets with the public ownership—but not management—
of a large share of the nation’s private capital stock which is the antithesis of
socialism as usually understood.
This seemingly crazy idea is venerable, smart, and entirely practical. In
1964 Nobel laureate James Meade—an outstanding member of the ortho-
dox economist guild and an ardent liberal socialist—proposed a scheme for
what he later called “Topsy-Turvy nationalization” to create a new kind of
free market society, a property-owning democracy.1 Meade hoped that the
collective wealth of the working- and middle-class majority would provide
a decent income for everyone, not just those who owned great wealth or
had elite degrees. Meade also harbored a deep political desire, buried in
an appendix filled with complex mathematics, that a common capital fund
owned by the people might one day reclaim democratic control of economic
and political life in an otherwise private enterprise society.2 The time for
Topsy-Turvy nationalization has arrived.
The following pages are written in a strong belief that economics can
be used in the service of social revolution, to diminish one of the scourges
of our times: vertiginous degrees of economic inequality. If this sounds
crazy, consider the inspiring example of an economist who changed the
world by using economics to shake up the status quo. In 1960, Nobel lau-
reate Milton Friedman wrote a feisty little tome, Capitalism and Freedom,
challenging the then reigning New Deal liberalism of his day by showing
how orthodox economics supports a strong case for limited government
2 A map of the terrain
and lightly regulated markets. The current book follows Friedman’s exam-
ple, while completely overturning his prescription by proposing a better
form of capitalism that is much fairer and more efficient than incumbent
conservatism or the welfare state. Conservatism is a nightmare; liberalism
is a mess; and “socialism” as we know it is a quaint relic of the past. Time
to try something better.
The key move is to use a seemingly “conservative” budget policy
approach—a small but steady federal structural budget surplus—to save on
the behalf of the American people, thereby building a substantial common
capital fund that pays each citizen a guaranteed dividend income. This capi-
tal fund—here called the “Social Trust Fund”—is not a form of ordinary
redistribution wherein the rich and well-off are taxed in order to benefit the
poor. The Social Trust Fund is, instead, a common mutual fund, or set of
funds, that throws off its dividend and interest earnings to every adult citi-
zen in the form of a regular capital-income check. The Social Trust Fund is
not a method for Government to control the economy by having Uncle Sam
employ workers and tell people what to do in the marketplace. Ordinary,
everyday, profit-based business decisions in competitive markets will still
determine employment, wages, prices and products in our economic lives
under the Social Trust Fund concept. Indeed, this change in the nature of
American capitalism—or, for those who prefer a different name, a model
of competitive free market socialism—might, in the long term, cut the
size of the Federal Government in the economy while, at the same time,
aggressively promoting equality.
Radical problems usually require radical solutions. If you, dear reader,
think this is just more weird, leftist pie-in-the-sky daydreaming, let’s look at
some numbers. As these words are being written, the total level of income
generated by the US economy is roughly $17 trillion, earned by and spent
by a population of roughly 321 million people, or a bit over $53,482 per
family (as of the most recent data in 2015) by 82.199 million families.3
The top 1 percent of the income distribution—the top 1 percent of persons
that earn the highest incomes—earn 20 percent of all income generated by
production, and the top 10 percent of the distribution earns 50 percent of all
income, leaving the remaining 90 percent of the population with the other
half of the economic pie. Worse, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-
First Century4 tells us that the top 10 percent of wealth-holders own 50
percent of American wealth, whereas the bottom 50 percent of people at the
other end of the wealth spectrum possess nothing at all once we subtract the
value of what they own from the value of what they owe.
Arithmetic tells us what this means. If the economy in 2015 had grown by
2.5 percent over the course of the year—the historical average for the US—then
the total increase in the nation’s income would have been about $340 billion.
 A map of the terrain 3
Table 1.1 How economic growth is not shared (1980–2015)

Population 1980 2015 1980 2015 Percentage Ratio Ratio

share distribution distribution income income difference 1980 2015
(%) (%) gain ($) gain ($)

Top 5% 14.6 20.8 12,078 17,202 42.42 2.92 4.16

Fifth 41.1 48.9 8,500 10,113 18.98 2.06 2.45
quintile
Fourth 24.4 23.2 5,046 4,798 -4.91 1.22 1.16
quintile
Third 17.6 15.1 3,639 3,122 -14.21 0.88 0.76
quintile
Second 11.6 9.2 2,399 1,902 -20.72 0.58 0.46
quintile
First 5.3 3.5 1,096 723 -34.03 0.26 0.17
quintile

However, the gains from this bounty will be doled out in a very doleful fashion.
Table 1.1 shows how economic growth was shared among the top 5 percent of
the income distribution, as well as across all other families, in 1980 and in 2015,
if we divide the population of families into five equal groups (quintiles) and
arrange them from the highest to lowest level of income.5
Had the distribution of income and wealth in 2015 been more like that in
1980, when the conservative movement in the United States gained power
in politics and the public mind, that it then wielded for at least a generation,
the same 2.5 percent increase in real GDP would have had a very different
impact on society, as shown by the last three columns in Table 1.1. The
table tells us that the bottom 80 percent of all families have a much smaller
claim to the economic bounty that they created collectively in 2015 than they
would have had in 1980. In particular, the majority of families in the bottom
60 percent of the income distribution lost more the 14 percent of the benefits
they would have garnered from growth had distribution of well-being only
been as skewed as it was in 1980, compared to the even greater degrees of
inequality present in 2015. Further, inequality among the very well-off has
increased considerably over time: the top 5 percent of families in the income
distribution now claim more than 42.5 percent of income earned by the rich-
est families, as compared to only 35.5 percent of income.
Another way to understand how much inequality has grown between
1980 and 2015 is to consider how much a family in each category will earn
for every dollar that average family income grows. The last two columns
of Table 1.1 show the ratio of the average rise in income for families in
each category in 1980 and 2015 to the average rise in income across all
families if the economy in 2015 had grown by 2.5 percent, after adjustment
4 A map of the terrain
for inflation. Had the distribution of income and wealth in 2015 resembled
its counterpart in 1980, a family in the lowest quintile would have earned
roughly $0.26 for each dollar rise in average family income, whereas a fam-
ily in the most well-off quintile would have earned $2.06, and a family in
the richest top 5 percent would have earned $2.92. These glaring dispari-
ties are in and of themselves cause for concern, since social cooperation is
undermined when the benefits of cooperation are so badly skewed. But con-
temporary inequalities across families are so much worse than they were
more than three decades ago. Now the poorest family only earns $0.17 on
average for every $1 rise in average family income, whereas those in the
top 20 percent of families earn more than $2.45, and those in the top 5 per-
cent earn about $4.16. The richest 5 percent of families would have gained
more than 11 times as much from growth on average than the poorest fam-
ily, instead of an obscene multiple of 24 under contemporary economic
arrangements. In the intervening years the fable of “supply-side econom-
ics,” explored and exposed as the lie it is below, was the guiding principle
of economic policy for the dominant American Right, which recommended
this approach to the voting public, based on the claim that making the rich
even richer would benefit everybody else, especially the poor. Alas, the
bottom of society gains even less from growth than it did in 1980, and more
than 60 percent of us see less-than-a-dollar increases in our own family’s
well-being as the system grows for each dollar of family income growth,
with the lion’s share sucked up by the very richest families in society.
The supply-side fable told us that we can spur growth by making sure
that the rich got an even bigger slice of the expanding economic pie through
lower taxes, looser regulations, and a deliberate turn away against eco-
nomic justice—for the poor’s own good, of course. And so Americans were
seduced by the fable, and the results have been just nasty for most of us,
especially the people trapped at the bottom of the system. What happened?

The predicament
The reason for this dreadful state of affairs is simple: the wages and
incomes of ordinary workers, both those without college degrees as well
as many of the college-educated, did not and do not rise in step with the
growth of the economy, thereby leaving most Americans with smaller
gains from economic expansion, even as our combined efforts are required
to generate national well-being.
This state of affairs is due to the fact that capitalism has changed in
ways that necessarily harm the well-being of the working majority of
Americans, so long as we stay with stale conservative or liberal approaches
to economic policy. Economics tells us that a market economy is a special
 A map of the terrain 5
type of cooperative. Markets are effective devices for getting people to
cooperate with each other to produce what they need and want by tapping
the drive for individual gain. A market system is a subtle (and cleverly
hidden) cooperative wherein we help each other to have our needs met
through competition under the rule of law, on the promise that participation
in the system is the most reliable road to well-being. The statistics cited
on pp. 3–4 tell us that there is simply no way for an economy or society to
avoid escalating bitterness, anger, and social strife when the lion’s share of
growth accrues to those who are already earning astounding incomes and
own absurd stocks of concentrated wealth.6
The American capitalist cooperative has broken down because technology,
trade, bad policy, and social change have undermined all of the old deals that
held the system together. Although capitalism and modernity have always
been a violent “gale of creative destruction” that render all occupations, ideas,
and forms of business vulnerable to obsolescence, the speed and reach of
change threatens the vast majority of Americans right now, even though the
same instability and vulnerability threatens every worker, everywhere. Some
people in the American system are lucky enough to have skills and property
that protect them from the corrosive effects of changing technologies and eco-
nomic competition, allowing them to earn high and growing incomes. Others
among us are vulnerable to being ejected from our place in the system when
our employer leaves for another shore where labor is cheaper or better edu-
cated, or new software can direct a machine to do what once required human
intelligence, skill, judgment and craft. Then we are tossed out of the capitalist
cooperative because we are inefficient and therefore disposable people that
cost too much, or do not do things the rest of society values.
As I write these words, after the American presidential election of
2016, the incumbent American model of democratic capitalism is unraveling
because it is failing the people—particularly the modestly educated working-
class majority and the young. Donald Trump—seen by some as a clownish,
racist, vindictive but clever media star with dictatorial ambitions—says that
America can somehow remake the blue-collar road to middle-class pros-
perity, defeating a mild social democrat in Hillary Clinton, who promised
to improve on the middling achievements of the Obama presidency. The
mixture of nationalism and protectionism urged by Trump defies economic
good sense, but speaks to a frustrated working majority left behind by the
dramatic shift in the balance of power between owners and workers. Neither
Trump nor the weak Democratic program dismissed by the voters can
address the central problem of our era: people who own capital or receive
elite schooling thrive, while the rest of us flail about and fail.
This book advocates a radical restructuring of American capitalism along
lines that permanently undermine concentrated private power, by widening
6 A map of the terrain
wealth ownership beyond the small circle of plutocrats who buy and then
break democratic politics. I am proposing a method for paying the common
man and woman a decent basic income that is free of all the flaws of “wel-
fare,” because it is not a payment for being poor but is, instead, the income
from property we collectively own.
In short, this book calls for an economic revolution that is well within
our grasp if we can just pause long enough to heed basic, even orthodox,
economics. The idea that orthodox economics might actually contain the
seeds of revolution, and be a blueprint for how to get from where we are to
a much better place, may seem ridiculous. Doesn’t economic theory recom-
mend the old conservative program of limited government, low taxes, and
weak regulation, or the Clinton–Obama variations thereof? Sure, but only
in the same way that a cookbook or culinary tradition has many recipes
for, say, meat, fowl, fish and vegetables. What and how we cook depends
on what we want to eat, in the kitchen and in political economy. Economic
theory is an endeavor that tries to discover how economies work and fail,
making it a recipe book for how we can make our lives better by adjusting
our economies to better fit our needs. Economies are created by people,
not ordained by Nature. There are no economic “laws,” only regularities
that are associated with different ways of organizing our common economic
lives. Economic regularities are based on what people want and need and
can make compromises about, in that way making them the exact oppo-
site of physical laws, which are written into the fabric of space and time.
Economic theory is a sprawling recipe library about how we can make our
lives better, or worse, by crafting one set of deals with each other as against
another. This book uses economics in the service of peaceful social revolu-
tion, showing how we can make the United States a freer and fairer society.

Recipe for a real free market society

The argument for the economic theory recipe is divided into: (1) a Principles
section that presents the philosophical case for left-libertarianism, albeit in
an informal but analytically respectable fashion, to an audience too busy
with living to pay attention to developments in philosophy or analytical
economics; and (2) a Policy section that explores the nature of economic
and social policy in a left-libertarian society.

First argument: Principles

This section presents a sketch of a genuinely free society, where each
man or woman is free to do what he or she wants to do, and has the means
to make reasonable and responsible choices. The style of this section is
 A map of the terrain 7
reminiscent of a rollicking, at times loud, even lightly bawdy, but good-
natured bull session between thinkers who respect each other as persons,
but who are truly perplexed about how their intelligent, good-hearted and
honest opponents could be so wrong.
Readers are first introduced to the fundamental fight between left-
libertarians and their conservative adversaries by a review of the conserva-
tive case against equality, based on the ideas of the dominant theorists of
contemporary limited government conservatism: Milton Friedman, Friedrich
Hayek, and Richard Epstein.7 The point of this review is to show why ideas
matter in politics and policy, even if politicians and pundits do such bad job
of making sensible arguments in public. This review goes to great lengths to
show why the Left must pay close attention to the best part of the conserva-
tive mind if social justice is to have a future. This first section makes the
conservative case for a free society, scrubbing the argument clean of the taint
flowing from the practical compromises that conservative intellectuals have
made with predatory capitalists, racists, theocrats and sexual bigots that have
soiled the intellectual Right over the past four decades.
Readers are next introduced to left-liberal and left-libertarian think-
ers whose critiques of conservative thinking, though largely unknown to
the general public, have effectively destroyed the case for conservatism.
This portion of the book shows why conservatism fails by not understand-
ing the link between means and choice in its analysis of freedom, with the
consequence that the Right ignores the ways in which poverty and con-
centrated private power—both private monopoly power and the tyranny
of social majorities in markets and politics—can turn free market socie-
ties into systems of oppression, and the persistent degradation of the poor
and social outcasts. Readers are introduced to the ideas of Amartya Sen,
Ronald Dworkin, and Phillipe van Parijs, among others, who have slowly
and carefully undermined the intellectual case for conservatism over the
past four decades. This exploration demonstrates why substantive freedom
for all—the capacity to be self-supporting and make responsible choices—
is impossible in a conservative order.
The final arguments of the Principles section explore why a consist-
ent left-libertarian approach to freedom should make the Left an enemy
of Big Government. The key concept here is that the core functions of
Government—policing, education, national defense, law and the judici-
ary, public health, sustainability, and other public functions in a complex,
technology-driven society—are threatened by the twin evils of bureaucracy
and concentrated public power. This section of the book explores the com-
mon interests of conservatives and left-libertarians in limiting the reach
of the State in a diverse society, where Government can be captured by
powerful economic minorities, or intolerant and abusive social majorities.
8 A map of the terrain
Second argument: Policy
This section takes a left-libertarian look at the old and tough question about
the functions of Government in a free society. Two overarching operat-
ing principles guide public policy under the left-libertarian banner. First,
governments should arrange public policies to promote maximum equal
opportunity for all children to develop their capacities, thereby minimiz-
ing the hold of inherited wealth and social, as well as caste position on the
young. Second, Government should enlist competitive markets to provide
important public goods wherever possible—including health care, educa-
tion, and housing—in order take full advantage of the power of directed
self-interest to meet the needs of all citizens, not just those with inherited
wealth or high incomes. A key point of the Policy section is to show why
a commitment to radical equality is perfectly consistent with markets, pro-
vided that Government policy is carefully designed to undermine the hold
of class and caste inheritance on the life chances of each generation.
A left-libertarian political economy would supplement, and if possible
supplant, the modern welfare state with a social endowment system that
grants each member of society, upon maturity, a financial claim on the col-
lective wealth of society. This claim can take a number of forms, from a
guaranteed basic income paid to each citizen as a matter of right—so long
as each member participates in economic life through work, study, or a few
other sanctioned economic activities—or a citizen’s stake, wherein each
person is granted a sum of money, say $50,000, once he or she reaches the
age of 21, that can be used to purchase a home, start a business, or finance
college. Left-libertarians seek to maximize real equal freedom for all; to
promote maximum effective individual autonomy for everyone. But rights
mean nothing without the means to exercise those rights. The right to free
speech means nothing to someone who cannot express themselves, just as
contract rights mean nothing to people who cannot make or keep promises.
In the same way, the right to freely choose one’s course in life is without
much value unless one is able to make choices and has the means to make
choices. The economic foundation for equal real freedom in society requires
a substantial degree of economic redistribution to support the prospect of
equal real opportunity for each child to learn enough, be healthy enough,
and safe enough to develop the skills he or she will need to exercise their
freedom when adults, no matter their gender, race, color, religion, or the
economic resources of their parents.
Left-libertarians dispute the right-libertarian’s claim that freedom can
exist without means. Indeed, the left-libertarian argument against the right-
libertarianism is devastating because the critique takes seriously the real
brutality that poverty and inequality inflict on human beings, whereas the
conservative, in the end, is a daydreamer who wishes away the bloodiest
 A map of the terrain 9
aspects of the real world. Yet the left-libertarian is not a socialist, if by
that we mean a person who seeks to use the State to provide permanent
protections for all against the risks to life and limb posed by the economy
and the rough facts of life. Left-libertarians, being egalitarians and realists,
are all in favor of protecting the young from the risks of the soul-crushing
poverty and hierarchy that is the lot of those born to the bottom of society.
Left-libertarians are also good enough economists to see why collective
protections against life’s risks are sensible and just, though the modern form
of welfare systems can be much improved upon if we move toward either a
basic income or stakeholder system of the sort noted above and developed
fully later on. But left-libertarians do not seek to protect people from the
nasty consequences of their own choices, since each of us really is free
to harm ourselves. What we are not free to do is harm the well-being of
children, because the young are future citizens whose prospects for liberty
need to be guarded against the silliness, stupidity, cupidity, and bad choices
of adults, including an economy crafted by adults deluded by misguided
public policy.

Basic income and analytical economics

The concept of a basic income is quite controversial, in part because it smacks
of the claim that people will get “something” for “nothing,” thereby ruining
their character, or at any rate twisting economic incentives. A full technical
analysis of the economic consequences of a basic income as an alterna-
tive to more traditional approaches to social protection is quite beyond the
scope of this little book. However, an extensive and analytically rigorous
test of the ideas proposed here is developed in a companion website, which
uses neoclassical and heterodox mathematical and computational models,
including complex adaptive systems, to explore the benefits and pitfalls
of left-libertarianism in general, beginning with the basic income/social
endowment scheme. Interested readers should visit the companion website
(www.darkeconomist.com).

Notes
1 Meade (1993) and (1995).
2 Ibid.
3 US Census Bureau.
4 Piketty (2014).
5 US Census Bureau and Piketty (2014).
6 Piketty (2014).
7 The most important works include Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom,
Friedrich Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty and Richard Epstein’s The Classical
Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government.
2 Real freedom versus American
freedom

A really free society

A left-libertarian approach to economic policy seeks a market-based road to
equality and social justice that promotes efficiency, equality, and fairness more
effectively than existing welfare states. More, this free and fair society can be
realized without an intrusive, clumsy, wasteful bureaucracy, but instead by
a small, smart, nimble State. The well-known right-libertarian commitment
to individual liberty and faith, in the capacity of ordinary people to manage
their affairs through mutual self-interest, is based on a powerful critique of
concentrated and therefore unaccountable State power. A comprehensive
left-libertarian critique of authority extends to all forms of concentrated
power—public and especially private. The term “left-libertarian” will seem
an oxymoron to many, even though there is a long and venerable line of think-
ers whose views on the connections between equality and liberty put them on
the Left side of the political spectrum. A brief meditation on the nature of a
free society from a right- and left-libertarian perspective might make matters
a bit clearer.
A free society is not simply an arrangement where people can use their
property, including their bodies, in whatever way they choose, unencum-
bered by Government or the Church or a populist mob bent on imposing
its will. Limitations on the power of Government and “the people” to force
individuals to act against their own judgment are preconditions for genuine
liberty that must be protected against the theocrats, bureaucrats, and other
busybodies who love to tell other people what to do. But no society can be
really free if many of its members are unable to read, or work, or protect
themselves from the hatred of others because they are the “wrong” color or
gender, or pray to the “wrong” god, or make love to the “wrong” people.
A really free society knows that freedom can exist only if everyone has
substantive liberty in equal measure, which means that everyone has the
 Real freedom versus American freedom 11
economic means to act on their own ideas of what is best. As Phillipe van
Parijs notes in his path-breaking Real Freedom for All: What (If Anything)
Can Justify Capitalism?, “One is really free, as opposed to formally free, to
the extent that one possesses the means, not just the right, to do whatever
one might want to do.”1
Does real freedom require that everyone have the same economic means;
the same level of income; the same amount of wealth? Of course not. A really
free society promotes equal liberty, not equal welfare. Human diversity in
manners, morals, and desires is far too great for any simple or even single
standard or measure of equality. The best that we can hope for is a society
that allows each of us to pursue our dreams without the fear that our beliefs or
values put our lives, or our independence, at risk because we are out of step
with the crowd.
Equal liberty means the equal right to make choices. Classical liberals,
including Nobel economists Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, as well
as philosophers Robert Nozick and John Tomasi, have made a powerful case
for capitalism and markets as crucial economic institutions for the preserva-
tion of individual liberty, as well as the creation of wealth.2 These thinkers
see freedom as the purpose of political and economic life. For them, a good
society allows each person to realize their own goals and pursue their own
understanding of their good, unfettered by the coercion or interference of
others. Many right-libertarians, especially the economists among them, also
see capitalism as the best way to create wealth and thereby enhance lib-
erty; in that way, limiting conflict over scarce goods. Governments, in a
right-libertarian society, are supposed to only provide those public goods
that individuals or groups cannot provide for themselves through voluntary
exchange in markets, or through voluntary organizations. Further, gov-
ernments are specifically enjoined from favoring one set of values, social
groups, or social classes over another because such favoritism will inevita-
bly enhance the well-being of some by undermining the liberty of others.

Libertarianism: Right and Left

For right-libertarians, a competitive market economy is an ideal social
arrangement because economic outcomes are the unplanned result of the
free choices of millions of people on the basis of self-interest. Some peo-
ple are rich because they own valuable resources that other people value:
skills, ideas, money, land, or especially capital. The pattern of prices and
wages resulting from the free exchange and bargaining of millions of peo-
ple reflects the balance between a population’s desires and the realities
of limited resources, as well as the ownership patterns of these resources.
12 Real freedom versus American freedom
Bill Gates is rich because he created products that vast numbers of people
want to use and are willing to pay for, just as many professional athletes or
film stars are rich because they are beautiful, provocative, or have special
skills that others want to witness. Other people are poor because they do not
have labor, capital, or other assets that can command high or even adequate
prices and therefore incomes.
For right-libertarians, poverty and inequality may be a regrettable cir-
cumstance that society should try to remedy through charity, or by some
other voluntary means, rather than using Government to transfer income
or wealth from the rich to the poor. The right-libertarian approach to the
distribution of income and wealth can be summarized by the phrase “from
each according to his or her wishes; to each according to his or her market
value.” If we assent to the right-libertarian’s theory of justice, which gives
priority to social relations based on freedom from coercion, self-ownership,
and voluntary exchange, then there is no coherent idea of “equity” that can
be consistent with the principles of liberty. First, the State-based redistribu-
tion of income and property, on the basis of a politically determined idea
of social equity or merit, takes the property of some people and gives it to
others by virtue of their identity as “poor,” whatever that means, without
compensation. Second, the political determination of merit or desert is, in a
democratic society, based on the decisions of the majority of voters, or more
likely, the majority vote of their representatives in the legislature, which
may have little bearing on any intellectually or philosophically coherent
concept of desert that can earn the support of those whose property is con-
fiscated and redistributed to the “poor.” This is a clear case of the “tyranny
of the majority” that defines both the objects of social charity, as well as
the people who are forced to finance “societal” beneficence, in ways that
ride roughshod over the rights of those designated as better-off. The most
important matter at hand is not whether the well-off eventually benefit from
policy programs aimed at improving the condition of the badly off —such
as public health programs that reduce the incidence of communicable dis-
eases in society, or public education policies that improve the economic
capacities of all children, thereby boosting the pool of highly skilled
workers. The primary point is that the democratic use of public power
to pursue redistributive aims invariably sets aside the material freedom
of the well-off at the behest of any politically popular claims to desert in
favor of the poor, despite the fact that sharp disagreements about social
justice in society argues against any commonly supported idea of desert
being more important than liberty.3
Consider a very difficult case. Suppose poor children regularly suffer
terrible illnesses because their parents cannot afford to live in environmen-
tally safe places. The illnesses require immediate medical attention and then
 Real freedom versus American freedom 13
long-term care if recovery is to be possible. The children’s parents have lit-
tle by way of family or community resources: everyone they are related to,
or know, is as a poor as they are, and the required medical procedures cost
too much. Medical providers are quite sympathetic but severely hamstrung
by cost considerations. What should Government do in this case?
A logically and ethically consistent right-libertarian would, after taking
a couple of very stiff drinks, insist that governments should not tax anyone
to provide medical care for these children, based on the claim that they
“deserve” care by virtue either of their youth or their “innocence.” The
issue here is not whether poor kids “deserve” to die because their parents
can’t buy medical care, or afford to live away from deadly risks. A decent
classical liberal order would rely on compassion, or a sense of religious
duty, or even a sense of anarchist justice to create institutions to take care
of these kids. But governments cannot, at the same time, minister to the
needs of sick poor children and protect the property rights of all on the
basis of equal treatment before the law. According to the classical liberal
stance, a government using redistribution to offer solace or support to suf-
fering people by taking from the rest of us is erasing the freedom of some at
the behest of others. The State in a free society cannot be allowed to weigh
these rights against each other on the basis of its own calculations, or even
on the basis of democratic procedures, without the Government becoming
a tool by which the majority takes from the minority—even if the major-
ity’s ethics are commendable, and the minority’s wealth is so immense as
to be obscene.
Classical liberals are extremely wary of States for the simple reason
that Government is an incredibly powerful social agent that can slip free of
the people’s leash, and even place the leash upon them. Governments are
mechanisms with extraordinary powers beyond the capacity of individuals
or private organizations, because the State can transfer property from some
citizens to others without the original owners’ consent, on the basis of the
collective’s judgment about the best use of resources. Further, Government
is granted the power to block mutually beneficial commercial, social, intel-
lectual, recreational, or sexual activity on the basis of its authority, as the
agent of the people charged with enforcing their will. These powers are
exercised through the State’s presumed monopoly on the use of force; power
that can be used on the basis of the Government’s discretion to accomplish
the collective’s goals as established by a political process.
But this concentration of authority and overwhelming power makes Gov­
ernment an unreliable agent of the people; one that can pursue its own
purposes. Hayek’s most famous single work, The Road to Serfdom, is a dire
warning about how modern States present an extreme version of the principal-
agent problem to their publics that he feared would lead to totalitarianism.
14 Real freedom versus American freedom
Hayek’s mid-twentieth-century warnings about the weakness of democracy
and capitalism, and the tendency for governments to turn citizens into subjects,
written soon after the wreckage of fascism in Europe and in the shadow of
socialist collectivism in central Europe and the Soviet Union, seems extreme
now that State socialism has collapsed in ignominious failure. And Hayek’s
writings on the incompatibility of human freedom with redistribution wrongly
assumes that democratic and constitutional controls on State power will
always fail. The legitimate Hayekian claim, that markets are the most effective
means for the creation and dissemination of knowledge to solve the problems
of practical life, does not in any way justify the further claim that redistribution
invariably leads to centralized State economic control and the end of freedom.
Many right-libertarians also claim that an unregulated capitalist econ-
omy is the best-known system for creating wealth, and eliminating poverty
and want over the long span of history, if we have the patience and foresight
to let self-interest work. These thinkers claim that a market society without
a welfare state or a government that imposes regulations on business to pro-
mote a phantom “common good,” or take money from the better-off in the
interest of the “deserving” others, will eventually be very wealthy. In fact,
many of these writers claim that economic inequality is a necessary part
of wealth creation, so much so that attempts to reduce inequality will only
result in reducing the average standard of living for everyone. One purpose
of this book is to show why this claim is almost totally wrong, to the extent
that one wonders how so many otherwise intelligent and decent people keep
saying this sort of thing.
For the moment, though, we should note that the right-libertarians make
an important intellectual leap that has, until relatively recently, gone unchal-
lenged by the Left to the detriment of decency in politics and policies. The
right-libertarian argument for capitalism as the primary instrument for pro-
moting freedom limits the idea of freedom, as we’ve noted, to the formal
right of a person to use their property as they see fit. Yet, the old leftist claim
that formal freedom is meaningless if individuals lack the capacity to make
choices has gained renewed meaning in modern times, where millions of
men and women lack the means to be effective agents in economic life, by
virtue of low levels of education, poor health, or unemployment. It is sad
but correct to say that one of the “benefits” of the mass unemployment and
extreme inequality of the past few years is the reevaluation of the meaning
of the word “freedom” in our political and moral lexicon.
Consider the “freedom” of the homeless as an example of the empti-
ness of the right-libertarian vision of liberty without means. Someone who
is without a regular address, shelter, or a place to receive mail is “free,” if
we mean that he or she does not pay the rent or mortgage. They are with-
out so many of the small annoyances that go with maintaining a clean and
 Real freedom versus American freedom 15
comfortable living space, or living in some degree of harmony with one’s
neighbors. The homeless are “free” from the worry that their home may
burn down, or that the ceiling or roof may leak, or so many other mundane
things. On the other hand, it is hard to choose to work, or be clean, healthy,
or safe in body and one’s property without an address.
Of course, someone might object to this example by noting that so many
of the homeless in our cities are wounded people, who are unable to make
reasonable choices for themselves by virtue of mental or emotional illness,
which in turn requires the compassionate among us, no matter our philo-
sophical commitments, to respond to the plight of these people. But this
sort of response to the fictive liberty of the homeless gives the game away
by acknowledging that the problem for so many homeless people is that
they do not have the means to make reasonable choices. A person who has
been denied access to adequate schooling is barred from making responsi-
ble choices in a technology-driven economy—and can be as economically
inert as the homeless. For right-libertarians to say that a badly educated
man or woman is “free,” and should therefore live with the poverty that
is the unplanned outcome of competitive markets, is ethically obscene. A
person who deliberately chooses to not attend school in favor of, say, play
and partying is someone who we might say is responsible for his or her later
poverty if the choice results in a lack of income—though only if we take a
very restricted view of personal responsibility. A middle-aged adult who is
poor, or even destitute, because of bad choices made when they were young
is, in a very real sense, a prisoner to another person: their former, frivolous
self. A feckless person who deliberately chooses to bear a child without
the capacity to then raise the child in a way that promotes that child’s well-
being is attacking the child’s future liberty by depriving him or her of the
means to act in his or her own interest.
The left-libertarian stance on economic policy begins with the observa-
tion that the capacity to choose is as important as the right to choose, with
the consequence that a really free society is one where its members are
able to make reasonable choices. Left-libertarian approaches to economics
acknowledge one of the core strengths of the right-libertarian argument—
that markets, and therefore some forms of capitalism, are effective devices
for promoting the growth of wealth and a wide range of choices in employ-
ment, as well as lifestyles—while insisting that freedom is the result of
material investments in each person’s capacity to choose. The subject mat-
ter of economics—the creation and distribution of wealth—matters because
freedom is only possible if the material needs of men and women can be
satisfied. We are free beings—persons capable of creating and acting upon
plans that are rooted in our desires and imagination—only to the extent
that we can fashion reliable sources of food, shelter, and protection from
16 Real freedom versus American freedom
the ravages of disease, as well as from the savage side of human nature.
An economy is an expression of our collective determination to assert con-
trol over fate by guaranteeing the necessities of life, thereby liberating us
from the pain, toil, and drudgery associated with grinding destitution that
reduces all thought to the urgent task of survival. The anarchist thinker Peter
Kropotkin entitled one of his works The Conquest of Bread, because the
creation of abundance is among the most important creative acts in human
history. The freedom that we all cherish is born only after we have found a
way to release ourselves from the coercion inherent in penury.
The sin of the Right, from a left-libertarian point of view, is that the pov-
erty and underdevelopment of some is seen as the necessary price for the
wealth and freedom of others. This sacrifice of the well-being of some in the
interest of others is just as objectionable as the use of Government power to
favor some groups at the expense of others. Markets, like governments, are
social creations wherein rules of property, contract, and law are established
in the hope that society may achieve certain objectives and diminish suffer-
ing. The rules of the market game dictate the broad pattern of wealth and
poverty, growth, and decline that are the framework for individual fortunes
and failures in economic life. We are intelligent enough to know, at least in
broad outline, how one set of institutions fares relative to another, in terms
of the capacity of individuals to develop and exercise reasonable choice,
with the result that different patterns of income and wealth distribution are
a social choice (otherwise, economics is a completely worthless discipline).
Many on the Right sometimes claim that there is no choice to be made in
this matter: if one wants freedom, choose raw capitalism, and accept life
with a certain amount of poverty and suffering as the price of freedom.
Left-libertarians insist that there are many forms of the market economy,
some of which are better at promoting real freedom for all in the context of
competition and innovation than the radical and blood-stained version of
market capitalism that Americans live with.
The naivety of the right-libertarian is as curious as it is dangerous, because
he or she actually believes that liberty and equality are opposed. A brief medi-
tation on the nature of American freedom, informed by a realist understanding
of human need, and the connections between social hierarchy, poverty, and
violence, shows why right-libertarianism is either a delusion or a commitment
to social warfare.

Liberty requires equality

Libertarians, no matter their flavor, are, at the end of the day, liberals of
a sort.4 Liberals insist that the purpose of economic and political life is to
promote the well-being of individuals by gradually developing social rules
 Real freedom versus American freedom 17
and institutions that expand the range of individual autonomy to more and
more aspects of a person’s life. A liberal society sees individuals as the best
judge of their own well-being, because the incredible diversity of desires
and ideas among large groups of people makes it impossible for concen-
trated private or public power to promote the well-being of all, or even the
majority of, citizens at any point in time. No institution with concentrated
power can ever know the minds of millions of individuals.
Individuals, pursuing their own ideas of what is best for themselves and
their companions will organize their efforts and resources to reach their
own goals, whether those goals are as mundane yet sublime as creating a
meal, writing a novel, fixing a car, building a house, cleaning dirty babies,
driving a bus, preventing crime, putting out a fire, teaching a child to read,
easing the pain of the dying, or cleaning an office building at midnight.
Each of us cooperates with some people, competes with others, and either
ignores or retreats from contact with hated others, because that is the best
way we know to realize our own goals, on the basis of negotiations and
exchanges of property—whether in material or money form. Liberals of all
flavors understand that a society is a vast and complex network of individu-
als bound together by their self-interested choices. Economists study the
ways that this network of choices improves well-being, by fostering coop-
eration, innovation, and production to overcome mass poverty and scarcity
at the same time that the network also elevates some people into positions of
nearly limitless material wealth, while also locking others down into nearly
bottomless forms of avoidable suffering.
This network will be the source of great prosperity and connected mis-
ery if the rules governing property, work, deal-making and the limits on
individual and concentrated power in private and public life help each of
us realize our goals, without deliberately reducing the well-being of some
in the interests of others The right-libertarian’s insistence on the reign of
property and contracts over all else in society is an egalitarian demand; that
the law of the land treat all citizens equally, without favor to any one type
of person, region, belief or opinion, so that individuals can make whatever
deals they want to make on the basis of self-interest.
The idea that right-libertarians are egalitarians is going to shock some
people because the term “equality” is usually reserved for discussions about
how income, wealth, or opportunity ought to be distributed, in order to alle-
viate profound disparities in economic well-being. But equality is, first and
foremost, a principle that applies to the rights of citizens in a free society,
in the specific sense of a set of rules governing the exercise of autonomy
in personal and economic life, as well as the exercise of power and influ-
ence in politics. A liberal society is based on the idea of an equal zone of
autonomy for each citizen, where every person lives under the same rules as
18 Real freedom versus American freedom
any other. Individual property rights cannot exist if some citizens can own
property and others cannot. The deals between property owners must be
subject to the same rules, and similar cases before the courts must result in
similar outcomes on the basis of well-known rules, or else the protections
of property rights depends on the identity of property owners. Equality in
matters of civil and political rights is just as vital to the right-libertarian
case as equal property and contract rights. If a government that can choose
its voters, use police surveillance and brutality against some parts of the
population with impunity, and limit the right to free speech in politics, then
liberty does not exist.
But once right-libertarians have acknowledged that equality before the
law is an essential requirement for liberty, the claim that liberty and equality
are forever enemies becomes impossible to sustain. Equal treatment before
the law requires an equal capacity to understand and act within the param-
eters of the law. A society’s legal code, from an economist’s point of view,
is not just a list of rules that tells citizens what they can and cannot do in
the face of a vast system of punishment that inflicts penalties on those who
violate the rules. Such a system is both literally impossible and a principle
enemy of freedom. Liberty cannot live in an order that is so cynical and
corrupt that it must constantly threaten people if the rule of law is to exist.
The law is the skeleton of society, the structure that defines and protects
individual liberty by establishing the rules that govern our dealings with
each other. In a way the law puts a legal price on the violation of property,
civil, and political rights that inform citizens of the relative importance of
transgressions against the autonomy and property of others.5 A free society
is only possible if each person understands and consents to the purpose of
the law, as well as the legal rules themselves. Ignorance about the purpose
of the law is the gateway to cynicism and chaos, because the rule of law will
be seen as the hammer the privileged and the powerful use against the poor
and powerless.
Equality before the law has a further, far-reaching demand that directly
undermines the right-libertarian’s insistence that substantive economic
equality is the enemy of freedom. American freedom is based on the prin-
ciple of the Democratic–Republican determination of the law. The people
of the nation, through their representatives, establish and enforce the rule
of law to create and protect vast zones of individual freedom and initiative,
against the incursions of concentrated private or public power that whit-
tle away at a person’s desire to live life as he or she sees fit. The process
of selecting, supervising and, when need be, replacing our representatives
through the political process requires an intellectually acute citizenry that
not only understands the Constitution that establishes the machinery of
Government but, more importantly, understands the way that our economy
 Real freedom versus American freedom 19
and society emerge out of our individual efforts and, in turn, is the environ-
ment in which our pursuit of happiness takes place. The ordinary business
deals that are the basis of our economic lives are not just trades of money for
goods, labor, and assets, but are parts of a complex web of connections that
makes our shared prosperity possible. The routines of scientific investiga-
tion, based on the principles of free inquiry, free speech, and competition
via the scientific method, are the basis for our ever-growing capacity to
know about the physical universe and to act upon it (and to protect ourselves
when it acts upon us), both building on and, in turn, enhancing our economic
well-being. But our robust scientific culture depends on a system of law that
protects speech and inquiry from the claims of religion and politics to forbid
certain forms of knowledge. We can only understand the law once we learn the
language of the law, which thus requires us to not only understand the meaning
of the words of the Constitution and the language of politics but to also com-
prehend the human world that both defines, and is defined by, the law. Law
and Government—what we called above the “scaffolding of freedom”—can
only protect and expand liberty if the people understand how power works and
fails to work for them, which in turn requires citizens to be very well edu-
cated, and to be capable of absorbing the new knowledge created by scientific
advance and social innovation in a free society.
The right-libertarian’s insistence on equal property and contract rights
brings with it a powerful demand for equal political rights in our democratic
republic that, in turn, requires each citizen to have an equal capacity to par-
ticipate in choosing and supervising the activity of the Government, by
being well informed about all aspects of our common life—particularly the
areas of life affected by the use of Government power. The American prin-
ciple that individuals are equally free from the coercion of others and have
equal rights to own property and to participate in politics not only requires
citizens to be equally capable of exercising rights, but further requires an
equal opportunity to acquire these capacities through education and the
basic needs of human development. Right-libertarianism completely dies
once the demands of American freedom are combined with a basic fact
of human life: citizens are made, not born. We are not born with knowl-
edge of how our society works and fails, much less of the interconnections
between our laws and rules, and the collective, and frequently unintended
and unwelcome, consequences of our individual actions. Our capacities to
act on our own behalf, in accordance with the rule of law, as well as to act
as self-governing citizens competent to shape our common life through
politics, is the work of parents, neighbors, and teachers over many years.
In turn, our minds and hearts can only accept the lessons about the world
of human understanding—from art, history, and mathematics to physics
and Government—if we are granted access to decent food, housing, and
20 Real freedom versus American freedom
opportunities for safe play as children; if we are protected from the threat
and actuality of soul-shattering violence and most forms of illness that
destroy our capacity to learn; if our parents and guardians can earn a good
enough living, and are themselves sufficiently secure that they can care
for us in ways that promote our well-being and therefore our capacity to be
future citizens. The right-libertarian’s picture of the world ignores all of
these facts of human development, particularly the basic fact that citizens
are human beings whose capacities to govern themselves, to recognize and
act on their interests, and to cooperate with others under the rule of law are
all the end result of an ongoing cycle of care and growth, wherein adults
literally tend to the growth of the young in the interests of the young.
In this way the analytically consistent right-libertarian is pushed, against
his or her will, to become a strong proponent of the idea that equality is the
foundation for liberty. The system of liberty we have described as American
freedom brings with it a very strong commitment to economic equality of
the chance to develop a real equal opportunity for good schools and decent
health for all children, reasonable levels of parental and guardian care,
and protection against violence, as well as natural and industrial pollutants
(and perhaps cultural pollution as well; the unintended but very damaging
effects of materials and ideas that are intended for adults but which spill
over onto the young). This is a complete disaster for the utopian right-
libertarian—the sort that pretends that Ayn Rand is something other than
a monster—because he or she must bend before the developmental needs
of children and find ways to engage in economic redistribution in the name
of equal real freedom for all. The fact that the young must be schooled and
fed and cared for if freedom is to exist, and the rule of law is to be possible,
pushes the right-libertarian to be a radical egalitarian in certain matters, so
much so that he or she must have complete disdain for any argument against
redistribution that begins with the claim that liberty is inconsistent with any
form of redistribution. To be sure, the right-libertarian is still a determined
enemy of concentrated public power and therefore of Government, and will
try to find ways to meet the basic requirements for the creation of citizens
in a free society, without resorting to the use of public power. The worldly
right-libertarian (a rare breed in this country), particularly an American who
has lived in the shadow of poverty and violence in American cities, knows
that a regime where a privileged class can become ever better at beating
the bottom into submission will, in time, destroy itself. The use of prisons
and police to manage the poor only turns the law into the enemy of the
poor, thereby creating the conditions for permanent social warfare, kill-
ing off freedom in favor of control. At that point the right-libertarian has
a choice: support the use of Government as a weapon that society wields
against the bottom of the system, or admit that equal real freedom requires
 Real freedom versus American freedom 21
a commitment to marrying some degree of economic equality with realist
American liberty—a vision of liberty tempered by the realities of human
development and schooled by the blood, broken bones, and shattered lives of
the poor. The fight between right- and left-libertarians then gets very inter-
esting, precisely because the rightist gives up on the defense of privilege and
social hierarchy in favor of the defense of real freedom.

Notes
1 Van Parijs (1995), pp. 32f.
2 Tomasi (2013).
3 Hayek (1978b), pp. 231–233.
4 Sen (1979). Sen’s analysis points to the complicated connections between a per-
son’s zone of authority as a matter or rights, as recognized by the law and social
convention, against their capacity to convert rights into actions, developed further
in his analysis of capability justice, which then requires us to make connections
between capability and means.
5 Lawrence Friedman’s Crime and Punishment in America contains a brilliant his-
tory of criminal law and punishment policy in the United States since the Founding,
that makes the vital point that the idea of freedom brings with it the companion
idea of un-freedom and punishment. Law is not just the codification of the social
contract, but also a sort of price list that shows the value of different infractions
of the rules, in that way guiding the behavior of both citizens and the State. The
Introduction to Friedman (1993) is worthy of careful study all by itself.
3 What do markets do?

One of the most dangerous and damaging intellectual mistakes left-leaning

people make is to confuse capitalism and markets. It is easy to see how these
ideas are conflated, but we must be mindful of the difference if we want
to promote economic, and especially social, justice in a free society. One
reason for the American public’s acceptance of the deplorable record of
poverty, inequality, and suffering under capitalism is that too many on the
Left believe that existing American capitalism is the only kind of capitalist
market society. This belief has diminished the intellectual energy of the
Left in the face of a once-triumphant Right, whose insistence that capital-
ism, freedom, and inequality are of a piece once induced resignation in the
face of what looked like fate. So much of the modern Left’s intellectual
weakness is due to its acceptance of the claim that freedom and equality are
incompatible, despite an impressive body of argument and evidence to the
contrary. The next two chapters present arguments about the compatibility,
even the necessity, of combining markets with genuine equality, in order to
shake up the Left’s economic imagination.

The market at work

One of the most important lessons that economists teach is that all societies
must coordinate the brains and brawn of millions of people in ways that
lead to the satisfaction of as many needs as possible. Societies must find
ways to produce food, shelter, medicine, clothing, culture and knowledge
by using the resources of nature, as well as the power of our minds and bod-
ies. If each of us can achieve our individual goals by making something that
someone else values, we just might have our needs met. If we each become
adept at performing a few tasks and trading with other people to get what we
need, then we are collectively better-off than we would be if we had to make
everything we needed by ourselves. A market economy is just a system of
trades between people who try to produce as much as they can at the lowest
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Capm. xv. O quam virginitas prior omni laude refulget,
Agnum que sequitur cuncta per arua poli;
Splendet et in terris deitati nupta, relinquens
650 Corporis humani que genus acta docet.
Fetet vt incasta, fragrat sine labe pudica,
Ista deum retinet, illa cadauer habet.
Centeno trina fructu cumulata perornant
Virginis ante deum florida serta caput:
Angelicas turmas transcendit virginis ordo,
Quam magis in celo trina corona colit.
Iura sequens aquile mens virginis alta cupiscens
Celsius ante deum, teste Iohanne, volat.
Vt rosa de spinis oriens supereminet illas,
660 Sic superat reliquos virginis ille status;
Vt margarita placet alba magis preciosa,
Sic placet in claustro virgo professa deo.443
Talis enim claustris monialis dignior extat
Sanccior et meritis, dum sua vota tenet.
Set quecumque tamen sub velo claustra requirit,
Regula quam seruat sanctificabit eam:
Si fuerit mulier bona, reddit eam meliorem,
Moribus et mores addit vbique magis;
Si polluta prius sit quam velata, que caste
670 Ammodo viuat, erit preuia culpa nichil.
Non licet ergo viris monachas violare sacratas,
Velum namque sacrum signa pudica gerit.
Alterius sponsam presumens deuiolare,
Quam graue iudiciis perpetrat ipse scelus!
Crede tamen grauius peccat, qui claustra
resoluens
Presumit sponsam deuiolare dei.

Postquam tractauit de illis qui in religione

possessoria sui ordinis professionem
offendunt, dicendum est iam de hiis qui errant
in ordine fratrum mendicancium; et primo dicet
 de illis qui sub ficte paupertatis vmbra terrena
lucra conspirantes, quasi tocius mundi
dominium subiugarunt.

Capm. xvi. Dum fuit in terris, non omnes quos sibi legit
Cristus, erant fidi, lege nouante dei:
Non tamen est equm, quod crimen preuaricantis
680 Ledat eos rectam qui coluere fidem.
Sic sterilis locus est nullus, quod non sit in illo
Mixta reprobatis vtilis herba malis;
Nec fecundus ita locus est, quo non reprobata
Mixta sit vtilibus herba nociua bonis:
Tam neque iustorum stat concio lata virorum,
Est quibus iniusti mixtio nulla viri.
Sic excusandos, quos sanctos approbat ordo,
Fratres consimili iure fatetur opus:
Non volo pro paucis diffundere crimen in omnes,
690 Spectetur meritis quilibet immo suis;
Quos tamen error agit, veniens ego nuncius illis,
Que michi vox tribuit verba loquenda fero.
Sicut pastor oues, sic segregat istud ab edis
Quos opus a reprobis senserit ordo probos:
Que magis huius habet vocis sentencia scribam
Hiis quos transgressos plus notat ordo reos.
Crimina que Iudas commisit ponere Petro
Nolo, ferat proprium pondus vterque suum.
Ordinis officia fateor primi fore sancta,
700 Eius et auctores primitus esse pios;
Hos qui consequitur frater manet ille beatus,
Qui mundum renuens querit habere deum,
Qui sibi pauperiem claustralis adoptat, et vltro
Hanc gerit, et paciens ordinis acta subit:
Talis enim meritis extat laudabilis altis,
Eius nam precibus viuificatur humus.
Set sine materia qui laruat in ordine formam,
Predicat exterius, spirat et intus opes,
Talibus iste liber profert sua verba modernis,
710 Vt sibi vox populi contulit illa loqui.
Ordine mendico supervndat concio fratrum,
De quibus exvndans regula prima fugit:
Molles deveniunt tales, qui dura solebant
Ordinis ex voto ferre placenda deo.
Acephalum nomen sib i d a n t primo statuendum,
Seque vocant inopes fert quibus omnis opem:
Cristi discipulos affirmant se fore fratres,
Eius et exempli singula iura sequi:
Hoc mentita fides dicit, tamen hoc satis illis
720 Conuenit, vt dicunt qui sacra scripta sciunt.
Sunt quasi nunc gentes nil proprietatis habentes,
Et tamen in forma pauperis omne tenent.
Gracia si fuerit aut fatum fratribus istis
Nescio, set mundus totus habundat eis.
In manibus retinent papam, qui dura relaxat
Ordinis et statuit plura licere modo;
Et si quas causas pape negat ipsa potestas,
Clam faciet licitas ordo sinister eas.
Nec rex nec princeps nec magnas talis in orbe est,
730 Qui sua secreta non fateatur eis.
Et sic mendici dominos superant, et ab orbe
Vsurpant tacite quod negat ordo palam.
Non hos discipulos, magis immo deos fore dicam,
Mors quibus et vita dedita lucra ferunt:
Mortua namque sibi, quibus hic confessor adhesit,
Corpora, si fuerint digna, sepulta petit;
Set si corpus inops fuerit, nil vendicat ipse,
Nam sua nil pietas, sint nisi lucra, sapit.
Baptizare fidem nolunt, quia res sine lucro
740 Non erit in manibus culta vel acta suis.
Vt sibi mercator emit omne genus specierum,
Lucra quod ex multis multa tenere queat;
Sic omnes mundi causas amplectit auarus
Frater, vt in variis gaudeat ipse lucris.
Hii sunt quos retinens mundus non horruit, immo
Diligit, hiisque statum tradidit ipse suum:
 Istos conuersos set peruersos magis esse
Constat, vt ex factis nomina vera trahant.
Transtulit a vite se palmes sic pharisea,
750 Eius et in gustu fructus acerbus olet.

Hic loquitur de fratribus illis, qui per

ypocrisim predicando populi peccata publice
redarguentes, blandiciis tamen et voluptatibus
clanculo deseruiunt.

Capm. xvii. Seminat ypocrisis sermones dedita fratris,

Messis vt inde sui crescat in orbe lucri.
Horrida verba tonat, dum publica per loca dampnat
Vsum peccandi seruus vt ipse dei;
Seruus et vt Sathane, priuatis cum residere
Venerit in thalamis, glosa remittit eis;
Et quos alta prius stimulabat vox reboantis,
Postera blandicies vnget in aure leuis:
Et sic peccator aliis peccata ministrat,
760 Namque fouens vicium percipit inde lucrum.
Hoc bene scit frater, peccatum cum moriatur,
Tunc moritur lucrum tempus in omne suum.
Dic vbi ter veniet frater, nisi lucra reportet,
Est vbi sors vacua, non redit ipse via.
De fundamentis fratrum si crimina tollas,
Sic domus alta diu corruet absque manu.
O quam prophete iam verificantur Osee
Sermones, qui sic vera locutus ait:
‘In terris quedam gens surget, que populorum
770 Peccatum comedet et mala multa sciet.’
Hancque propheciam nostris venisse diebus
Cernimus, atque notam fratribus inde damus,
Ad quorum victum, fuerit quodc u m q u e
n e c e s s e,
Sors de peccatis omne ministrat eis.
Delicie tales non sunt, que fratribus escam,
 Si confessores sint, aliquando negant.
Aspicis vt veniunt ad candida tecta columbe,
Nec capiet tales sordida turris aues:
Sic nisi magnatum dat curia nulla modernis
780 Fratribus hospicium quo remanere volunt.
Horrea formice tendunt ad inania numquam,
Nec vagus amissas frater adibit opes:
Immemores florum gestaminis anterioris,
Contempnunt spinam cum cecidere rose;
Sic et amicicie fratres benefacta prioris
Diuitis aspernunt, cum dare plura nequit.
Nomine sunt plures, pauci tamen ordine fratres;
Vt dicunt aliqui, Pseudo prophetat ibi.
Est facies tunice pauper, stat cistaque diues,
790 Sub verbis sanctis turpia facta latent:
Sic sine pauperie pauper, sanctus sine Cristo,
Eminet ille bonus, qui bonitate caret.
Ore deum clamant isti, venerantur et aurum
Corde, viam cuius vndique scire volunt.
Omnia sub pedibus demon subiecit eorum,
Ficta set ypocrisis nil retinere docet:
Sic mundana tenet qui spernit in ordine mundum,
Dum tegit hostilem vestis ouina lupum;
Et sic ficticiis plebs incantata putabit444
800 Sanctos exterius, quos dolus intus habet.
Vix est alterius fraudem qui corripit vnus,
Set magis vt fallant auget vterque dolos:
Sic magis infecti morbo iactantur eodem,
Inficiuntque suis fraudibus omne solum.
Comprimat hos dominus saltem, quos nouit in isto
Tempore primeuam preuaricare fidem.
Non peto quod periant, set fracti consolidentur,445
Et subeant primum quem dedit ordo statum.

Hic loquitur de fratribus illis, qui propter

huius mundi famam, et vt ipsi eciam, quasi ab
 ordinis sui iugo exempti, ad confessiones
audiendum digniores efficiantur, summas in
studio scole cathedras affectant.

Capm. xviii. Est qui precessor fiat velut ipse minister,

810 Cuius in exemplum Cristus agebat idem:
Set qui discipulum Cristi se dicit, ad altum446
Cum venit ipse statum, non tenet inde modum.
Quamuis signa tenet mendici pauperis, ecce
Frater honore suum spirat habere locum:
Appetit ipse scolis nomen sibi ferre magistri,
Quem post exemptum regula nulla ligat:
Solus habet cameram, propriat commune, que
nullum
Tunc sibi claustralem computat esse parem.
Vt latriam statuis claustrales ferre magistris
820 Debent et pedibus flectere colla suis:
Sic tumor et pompa latitant sub theologia,
Ducere nec duci dum fauet ordo sibi.
Tunc thalamos penetrat sublimes, curia nulla
Est cuius porta clauditur ante virum.
Aspiciens varias species variatur et ipse
Camelion, et tot signa coloris habet:
Frater ei similis, perpendens velle virorum,
Vult in consimili par sit vt ipse pari;
Et quia sic similem sibi sentit curia fratrem,
830 Eius in aduentu presulis acta vacant.
Circuit exterius, explorat et interiora,
Non opus occultum nec locus extat ei:
Nunc medicus, nunc confessor, nunc est mediator,
Et super et subtus mittit ad omne manum.
Spiritus vt domini, sic frater spirat vbique,
Et venit ad lectum quando maritus abest:
Sic absente viro temerarius intrat adulter
Frater, et alterius propriat acta sibi:
Sic venit ad strati capitata cubicula lecti,
840 Sepius et prima sorte futurus erit.
 Sic genitus Salomon est hac que nupsit Vrie,
Dum pius intrusor occupat inde locum:
Sponsi defectus suplet deuocio fratris,
Et genus amplificans atria plena facit.
Verberat iste vepres, volucrem capit alter; et iste
Seminat in fundum, set metet alter agrum:
In stadio currunt ambo, brauium tamen vnus
Accipit iniuste longius ipse retro:
Sic intrat sponsus aliorum sepe labores,
850 Ac vbi non soluit in lucra, vana tamen.
Credit et exultat prolem genuisse maritus,
Vngula nec prolis pertinet vna sibi.
Predicat ypocrita cum sponso carmina sancta,
Vt deus ex verbo staret in ore suo:
Cum sponsa Veneris laudes decantat, et eius
Officium summe suplet honore dee:
Sic opus in basso tenementum construit altum,
Cuius egens nocte fabrica poscit opem.
O pietas fratris, que circuit et iuuat omnes,
860 Et gerit alterius sic pacienter onus:
O qui non animas tantum, set corpora nostra,
In sudore suo sanctificare venit.
Hic est confessor domini non, set dominarum,447
Qui magis est blandus quam Titiuillus eis:
Hic est confessor quasi fur quem furca fatetur,
Sic quia ius nostrum de muliere rapit.
Hic est confessor in peius qui male vertit,
Sordida namque lauans sordidiora facit:
Pellem pro pelle, quod habet sibi frater et omne
870 Pro nostri sponsa, se dabit atque sua.
O condigna viro tali quis premia reddet,
Aut deus aut demon? vltima verba ligant.
Peccati finis fert namque stipendia mortis,
Est dum culpa vetus plena pudore nouo:
Horum, viuentes qui tot miracula prestant,
In libro mortis nomina scripta manent.
Inter apes statuit natura quod esse notandum
 Sencio, quo poterit frater habere notam.
Nam si pungat apis, pungenti culpa repugnat,
880 Amplius vt stimulum non habet ipse suum;
Postque domi latebras tenet et non euolat vltra,
Floribus vt campi mellificare queat.
O deus, in simili forma si frater adulter
Perderet inflatum, dum stimularet, acum,
Amplius vt flores non colligat in muliere,
Nec vagus a domibus pergat in orbe suis!
Causa cessante quia tunc cessaret ab ipsis
Effectus, quo nunc plura pericla latent.

Hic loquitur qualiter isti fratres inordinate

viuentes ad ecclesie Cristi regimen non sunt
aliqualiter necessarii.

Capm. xix. Vna michi mira res est, quam mente reuoluens
890 Nescio finali qua racione foret.
Quam prius ordo fuit fratrum, quoscumque
necesse
Congruit ecclesie fertur inesse gradus.
Papa fuit princeps, alios qui substituebat,
Vt plebem regerent singula iura dedit:
Ius sibi presul habet, sub eo curatus, et ille
Admittens curas pondera plebis agit:
Proprietarius est presul qui proprietatem
Curato tribuit, qua sua iura regat:
Presulis inde loco curatus iurat, vt ipse
900 Tempore iudicii que tulit acta dabit.
Est igitur racio que vel tibi causa videtur,
Alterius proprium quod sibi frater habet?
Inter aues albas vetitur consistere coruum,
Quem notat ingratum quodlibet esse pecus;
Inter et ecclesie ciues consistere fratrem,
Qui negat eius onus, omnia iura vetant.
Caucius in rebus dubiis est semper agendum,
 Causa nec est mundi talis vt ipsa dei:
Si tamen vsurpet mundi quis iura, refrenant
910 Legis eum vires nec variare sinunt.
Que mea sunt propria mundo si tolleret alter,
Taliter iniustum lex reputabit eum:
In preiudicium partis lex non sinit equa,
Possit vt alterius alter habere locum:
Que bona corporea sunt alterius, nequit alter
Tollere, ni legum condita iura neget:
Set que sunt anime frater rapiens aliena,
Nescio qua lege iustificabit opus.
Si dic a t, ‘Papa dispensat,’ tunc videamus,
920 Est sibi suggestum, sponte vel illud agit.
Papa mero motu scimus quod talia numquam
Concessit, set ea supplicat ordo frequens:
Papa potest falli, set qui videt interiora,
Est hoc pro lucri scit vel amore dei.
Lingua petit curas anime, mens postulat aurum,
Bina sicque manu propria nostra rapit:
Defraudans animas, talis rapit inde salutem,
Et super hoc nostras tollere temptat opes.
Non ita Franciscus peciit, set singula linquens
930 Mundi pauperiem simplicitate tulit.
Gignit humus tribulos, vbi torpet cultor in agris,
Quo minus ad messes fert sua lucra Ceres:
Pungitur ecclesia, fratrum quos sentit abortos
Inuidie stimulis lesa per omne latus.
Quilibet ergo bonus tribulos extirpet arator,
Ne pharisea sacrum polluat herba locum.

Hic loquitur qualiter isti fratres inordinate

viuentes ad commune bonum vtiles aliqualiter
non existunt.

Capm. xx.Fratribus vt redimant celum non est labor Ade,

Quo sibi vel reliquis vina vel arua colunt;
 Corporis immo quies, quam querunt forcius, illos
940 Iam fouet, et mundi tedia nulla grauant:
Hiis neque perspicuus armorum pertinet actus,
Publica quo seruant iura vigore suo:
Sic neque milicies neque terre cultus adornat
Hos, set in orbe vagos linquit vterque status.
Nec sunt de clero f r a t r e s, quamuis sibi temptent
Vsurpare statum, quem sinit vmbra scole:
Non onus admittunt fratres cleri set honorem,
In cathedra primi quo residere petunt.
Non curant animas populi neque corpora pascunt:
950 Ad commune bonum quid magis ergo valent?
Vt neque ramosa numerabis in ilice glandes,
Tu fratrum numerum dinumerare nequis:
Immo, velut torrens vndis pluuialibus auctus,
Aut niue, que zephiro victa tepente fluit,
Ordo supercreuit habitu, set ab ordine virtus
Cessit, et in primis desinit ire viis.
Si racio fieret, famulorum poscit egestas
Tales quod sulcus posset habere suos.
Hos Dauid affirmat hominum nec inesse labore,
960 Nec posite legis vlla flagella pati.
Regia i u r a n i c h i l aut presulis acta valebunt,
Excessus fratrum quo moderare queant.
Que sua sunt mundus ea diligit, fratribus ergo
Attulit vt caris prospera queque suis:
Non sulcant neque nent, falcant nec in horrea
ponunt;
Pascit eos mundus non tamen inde minus.
Pectora sic gaudent, nec sunt attrita dolore,
Anterior celo dum reputatur humus:
Cordis in affectum sic transit frater, et illum
970 Quem querit cursum complet in orbe suum.
Dic quid honoris habet, si filius Hectoris arma
Deserit et vecors predicat acta patris?
Aut quid et ipse valet, si frater Apostata sanctum
Clamat Franciscum, quem negat ipse sequi?
 Fictis set verbis mundi sine lumine sensum
Obfuscant, que sua sic maledicta tegunt:
Sic vbi non ordo, manet error in ordinis vmbra,
Et quasi laruatus stat sacer ordo nouus.
Hiis qui Francisci seruant tamen ordine iusto
980 Debita mandata, debitus extat honor.

Hic loquitur de fratribus illis, qui incautos

pueros etatis discrecionem non habentes in sui
ordinis professionem attractando colloquiis
blandis multipliciter illaqueant.

Est michi suspectum de fratribus hoc, quod

Capm. xxi.
eorum
Reddere se primo nullus adultus adest:
Non sic Franciscum puerilis traxerat etas
Ordinis ad votum, quando recepit eum:
Sic nec eum pueri primo coluere sequaces,
Nec blande lingue fabula traxit eos.
Estimo maturos Franciscus sumpserat annos,
Dum per discreta viscera cepit opus;
Et puto quod similes sua dogmata sponte
sequentes
990 Nec prece nec precio reddidit ordo deo.
Set vetus vsus abest, nam circumvencio facta
Nunc trahit infantes, qui nichil inde sciunt;
Et sic de teneri tener ordo mollia querit,
Vmbraque sola manet atque nouerca quasi.
Vt vocat ad laqueos volucrem dum fistulat
auceps,
Sic trahit infantes fratris ab ore sonus:
Vt laqueatur auis laqueorum nescia fraudis,
Sic puer in fratrem fraude latente cadit:
Et cum sic poterit puerum vetus illaqueare,
1000 Debet ob hoc frater nomen habere patris.
Sic generata dolis patrem sequitur sua proles,
 Addit et ad patrios facta dolosa dolos;
Solaque sic radix centenos inficit ex se
Ramos, qui fructus fraudis in orbe ferunt.
Nam puer a veteri deceptus fratre per illud
Decipit exemplum, quando senecta venit:
Sic post decipiunt qui primo decipiuntur,
Et fraus de fraude multiplicata viget:
Sic crescit numerus fratrum, fit et ordo minutus,
1010 Dum miser in miseris gaudet habere pares.
‘Ve, qui proselitum vobis faciatis vt vnum,
Mundum circuitis,’ dixerat ipse deus:448
Illud erat dictum phariseis, et modo possum
Fratribus hec verba dicere lege noua.

Hic loquitur de apostazia fratrum ordinis

mendicancium, precipue de hiis qui sub ficta
ypocrisis simplicitate quasi vniuersorum curias
magnatum subuertunt, et inestimabiles suis
ficticiis sepissime causant errores.

Vt bona multa bonum fratrem quocumque

Capm. xxii.
sequntur,
Sic mala multa malum constat vbique sequi.
Sunt etenim domini tres, quorum quilibet vni
Seruit homo, per quem se petit ipse regi:
Est deus, est mundus, est demon apostata, cuius
1020 Ordine transgressus fert sibi frater onus.
Regula namque dei non nouit eum, neque mundi
Dat sibi milicies libera nulla statum:
Non habet ipse deum, nec habere valet sibi
mundum,
Demonis vt proprium sic subit ipse iugum:
Omnis enim vicii viciosus apostata motor
Aut fautor nutrit quod videt esse malum.
Testis erit Salomon, vir talis invtilis extat,
Et peiora sue crimina mentis agit:
 Arte vel ingenio, quo talis in orbe frequentat,
1030 Ducit in effectum plura timenda satis.
Non obstat paries illi, non clausa resistunt,
Invia consistunt peruia queque sibi:
Per mare, per terras, per totum circuit orbem;
Vt sibi plus placeat, cernere cuncta potest.
Nititur in fraudes, componit verba dolosa,
Auget et accumulat multiplicatque dolos;
Proponit lites, rixas accendit in iram,
Liuores nutrit invidiamque fouet;
Vincula disrumpit pacis, socialis amoris
1040 Federa perturbat, dissociatque fidem;
Suggerit incestum, suadet violare pudorem,
Soluere coniugium, commaculare thorum;
Vsurpando fidem vultum mentitur honestum,
Caucius vt fraudem palleat ipse suam.
In dampnis dandis promissor vbique fidelis,
Comoda si dederit, disce subesse dolum:
Sub grossa lana linum subtile tenetur,
Simplicitas vultus corda dolosa tegit;
Lingua venenato dum verba subornat in ore,
1050 Mellificat virus melque venena facit.
Vt sub virtutum specie lateat viciorum
Actus, et vt turpis Simea fiat homo;
Ipse tumens humilem mentitur sepe professum,
Quem fugit occulto spiritus ille dei.
Ordinis ipse sacri quicquid Franciscus honeste
Virtutis statuit, hic viciare studet:
Cuncta colore tamen operit, facieque decora
Fallit, dumque latent viscera plena dolo.
Invenies scriptum quod pennas strucio gestat
1060 Herodii pennis ancipitrisque pares;
Set non tam celeri viget eius penna volatu,
Ypocritamque notat, qui similando volat.
Aurea facta foras similans ypocrita fingit,
Set mala mens intus plumbea vota gerit:
Sunt etenim multi tales qui verba colorant,
 Qui pascunt aures, aurea verba sonant,
Verbis frondescunt, set non est fructus in actu,
Simplicium mentes dulce loquendo mouent:
Set templum domini tales excludit, abhorret
1070 Verborum phaleras, verba polita fugit.
Scripta poetarum, que sermo pictus inaurat,
Aurea dicuntur lingua, set illa caue:449
Est simplex verbum fidei bonus vnde meretur,
Set duplex animo predicat absque deo.
Despicit eloquia deus omnia, quando polita
Tecta sub eloquii melle venena fouent:
Qui bona verba serit, agit et male, turpiter errat,
Nam post verba solet accio sancta sequi.
Quos magis alta scola colit, hii sermone polito
1080 Scandala subtili picta colore serunt.
Sepius aut lucrum vel honoris adepcio vani450
Fratrum sermones dat magis esse reos:
Sub tritici specie zizannia sepe refundunt,
Dum doctrina tumens laudis amore studet:
Sepe suis meritis ascribere facta, mouere
Scisma, peritorum mens studiosa solet.
Phiton siue Magus est scismaticus, quia turbat
Verum quod credis et dubitanda mouet;
Set contra voces incantantis sapienter
1090 Aures obtura, ne cor adheret eis.
Non sunt hii fratres recti nec amore fideles
Ecclesie Cristi, sicut habetur ibi;
Inperfecta magis Sinagoga notabit eorum
Doctrinam, plene que neque vera docet:
Multociens igitur aliis nocet illa superba
Copia librorum quos Sinagoga tenet.
Non sunt ecclesie recti ciues, Agar immo
Parturit ancilla, perfida mater, eos:
Ergo recedat Agar, pariat quoque Sarra fidelem
1100 Ecclesie clerum, det Sinagoga locum.
Plantauit pietas et amor primordia fratrum,
Quos furor ad presens ambiciosus agit:
 Frater adest Odium, qui federa pacis abhorret,
Cuius ab inferno cepit origo viam;
Ille professus enim claustralia iura resoluit,
Nec fore concordes quos sinit ipse pares.
Qui tamen in culpa frater se sentit, et illam
Non delet, tali talia verba loquor:
‘Culpa mali laudem non debet tollere iusto,
1110 Nam lux in tenebris fulget honore magis:
Quisque suum portabit onus, culpetur iniqus,
Laudeturque suis actibus ipse bonus.’

Hic loquitur qualiter isti fratres mendicantes

mundum circuiendo amplioresque querendo
delicias de loco in locum cum ocio se
transferunt: loquitur eciam de superfluis eorum
edificiis, que quasi ab huius seculi
potencioribus vltra modum delicate
construuntur.

Iudeos spersos fratrum dispersio signat,

Capm. xxiii.
Quos modo per mundum deuius error agit;
Iste nec ille loco stabilis manet, immo vicissim
Se mouet, et varia mutat vbique loca.
Sic in circuitu nunc ambulat impius orbis,
Nec domus est in qua non petit ipse locum;
Pauperis in specie sibi sic elemosina predas
1120 Prebet, et ora lupi vellere laruat ouis:
Absque labore suo bona nemo meretur, et ergo
Omne solum lustrant, idque piamen habent.
Nescio si supera sibi clauserit ostia celum;
Dat mare, dant ampnes, totaque terra viam.
Hoc lego, quod raro crescit que sepe mouetur
Planta, set ex sterili sorte frequenter eget:
Non tamen est aliqua quin regula fallit in orbe,
Mocio nam fratris crescere causat eum;
 Nam quocumque suos mouet ille per arida
gressus,
1130 Mundus eum sequitur et famulatur ei.
Vt pila facta pilis solito dum voluitur ipsis
Crescit, et ex modico magnificatur opus,
Sic, vbi se voluit frater, sibi mundus habundat,
Quicquid et ipse manu tangit adheret ei:
Federa cum mundo sua frater apostata stringit,
Sic vt in occulto sint quasi semper idem.
Multis set quedam virtutes esse videntur,
Qui nil virtutis nec bonitatis habent;
Ista dabunt vocem, set erunt deformia mente,
1140 Multaque dum fiunt absque salute placent.
Ad decus ecclesie deuocio seruit eorum,
Et veluti quedam signa salutis habent:
Eminet ecclesia constructa sibi super omnes,
Edificant petras sculptaque ligna fouent;
Porticibus valuas operosis, atria, quales
Quotque putas thalamos hic laberintus habet:
Ostia multa quidem, varie sunt mille fenestre,
Mille columpnarum marmore fulta domus.
Fabrica lata domus erit, alta decoraque muris,
1150 Picturis variis splendet et omne decus;
Omnis enim cella, manet in qua frater inanis,
Sculpture vario compta decore nitet:
Postibus insculpunt longum mansura per euum
Signa, quibus populi corda ligare putant.
Fingentes Cristum mundum querunt, et in eius
Conspirant laudem clamque sequntur eum:
Talis sub facie deuocio sancta figure
Fingitur, et testis fit magis inde domus:
Qui tamen omne videt, rimatur et intima cordis,
1160 Scit quia pro mundo tale paratur opus.
Set docet exemplis historia Parisiensis,
Quod contentus homo sit breuiore domo.
Non sibi de propriis habet vlla potencia regis
Illorum thalamis tecta polita magis:
 Non ita fit vestis fratrum nota simplicitatis,
Quin magis in domibus pompa notabit eos.
In fabrice studio vigilat conuentus eorum
Ecclesie, prompti corpore, mente pigri:
Sic patet exterius fratrum deuocio sancta,
1170 Vana set interius cordis ymago latet:
Sunt similes vlno tales, qui sunt sine fructu,
In quibus impietas plurima, pauca fides.
Dic, tibi quid, frater, confert, tantas quod honestas
Cum feda mente construis ipse domos?
Esto domus domini, quam sacris moribus orna,
Virtutem cultor religionis ama.
Omnia fine patent, tibi fingere nil valet extra,
Per quod ab interius premia nulla feres:
Si tibi laus mundi maneat furtiua diebus,
1180 Cum celum perdis, laus erit illa pudor.
Ordinis es, norma tibi sit, nec ab ordine cedas,
Est aliter cassum quicquid ab inde geris.

Hic loquitur qualiter, non solum in ordine

fratrum mendicancium set eciam in singulis
cleri gradibus, ea que virtutis esse solebant a
viciis quasi generaliter subuertuntur: dicit
tamen quod secundum quasdam Burnelli
constituciones istis precipue diebus modus et
regula specialius451 obseruantur.

Diuersat fratres tantummodo vestis eorum,

Capm. xxiiii.
Hii tamen existunt condicione pares:
Regula nulla manet, fuerat que facta per ante,
Set nouus ordo nouum iam facit omne forum.
Sicut enim fratrum nunc ordo resoluitur, ecce
Ecclesie norma fit quasi tota noua;
Set sacer ordo tamen remanet, quem sanxerat
olim
1190 Frater Burnellus, crescit et ille magis.
 Hec decreta modo, Burnellus que statuebat,
Omnia non resero nec reserare volo;
Set duo iam tantum que iussit in ordine dicam,
Et sunt presenti tempore iura quasi.
Mandatum primum tibi contulit, omne iocosum,
Quicquid in orbe placet, illud habere licet:
Si vis mercari, sis mercenarius, autem452
Si vis mechari, dat tibi, mechus eris:453
Que magis vlla caro desiderat, illa beato
1200 Sunt fratri nostro debita iura modo.
Precipiens vltra statuit de lege secunda,
Quod nocuum carni sit procul omne tibi:
Omne quod est anime reputatur in ordine vile,
Et caro delicias debet habere suas:
Cor dissolue tuum, te nullus namque ligabit,
Quo vis vade tuas liber vbique vias.
Mollibus ornatus sic dignior ordo nouellus
Restat Burnelli, vult quia velle viri.
Nil michi Bernardus, nichil ammodo seu
Benedictus454
1210 Sint, set Burnellus sit Prior ipse meus;
Quo viget en carnis requies, quo lingua precantis
A prece torpescens fit quasi tota silens:455
Ordoque sic precibus dum vult succurrere nobis,
Linquo choax ranis et nichil inde magis:456
Si veniantque michi mala tempora, credo quod
isti457
De clero causam dant nimis inde grauem;
Quis poterit namque nobis bona tempora ferre,
Ordine claustrali dum perit ordo dei,
Et fugit a reliquo deuocio celica clero?
1220 Sic fugit a nobis vndique nostra salus.
Nam quia sic medii fallunt discorditer ipsi,
Ignaui populi stamus in orbe vagi.
Quid sibi corpus habet in eo, nisi spiritus extet,
Quid nisi nos clerus suplet in orbe pius?
 A planta capiti set qui discernere cleri
Vult genus aut speciem, vix sciet inde bonum.
Sic vbi lux, tenebre, sic mors, vbi normula vite
Instrueret sanam gentibus ire viam.
Vt dicunt alii de clero, sic ego dixi,
1230 Quo creuit reliquis error in orbe magis:
Nam sine pastore grex est dispersus, et ecce
Pascua peccati querit vbique noui.

1221-1232. Text STH₂ As follows in CEHGDL,

Nunc quia sic Cleri sors errat ab ordine Cristi,

Vsurpat mundus que negat ipse deus.
Dum tua, Burnelle, scola sit communis in orbe,
A planta capiti fallitur omnis ibi:
Sed cum Gregorii scola fulsit in orbe beati,458
Vera fides viguit, cunctaque pace tulit.
Nunc tamen est Arius nouus, est quasi Iouinianus,
Doctor in ecclesiis scisma mouendo scolis.
Sic vbi lux, tenebre, sic mors, vbi regula vite
1230* Instrueret rectam gentibus ire viam.
Quilibet ergo bonus, sit miles siue Colonus,
Orans pro Clero det sua vota deo.

FOOTNOTES:
424 14 subtrahet CE
425 52 erat ... vrbe DL
426 72 esse SG ipse CEHDL
427 79 dum CE
428 103 No paragr. S
429 177 oculis T oculus SCEHGDLH₂
430 216 rara CE
431 273 vt (ut) CEHGDLT et S
432 295 sibi om. S (p. m.) vir inserted later bona qui sibi D
433 Cap. vi. Heading 2 f. religionis sibi CE
434 315 No paragr. S
435 336 iam CEHGDLTH₂ non S
436 404 ghemendo SH gemendo CEDL
437 489 fomes est res C fomes res est L
438 Heading 1 quasi om. D
439 587 Marginal note ins. SCG om. EHDLH₂ Nota quod Genius
secundum Ouidium dicitur sacerdos Veneris G
440 593 ibi SE
441 635 qui CE
442 645 perextra SHGTL per extra CED
443 662 placet CEH patet SGDL
444 799 putabit CEHD putabat SGL
445 807 pereant CEL
446 811 ad CEHGDL et S
447 863 sed non D
448 1012 margin Nota C
449 1072 lingua SH₂ verba CEHGDLT
450 1081 adepcio CEHGDL adopcio S
451 Heading 5 specialiter S
452 1197 autem STH₂ et si CEHGDL
453 1198 Text STH₂ Mechari cupias dat tibi GDL Mechari cupias
ordine CEH
454 1209 seu] uel C
455 1212 Text STH₂ Auribus alma sonat menteque vana petit
CEHGDL
456 1214 Text STH₂ Folia non fructus percipit inde deus
CEHGDL
457 1215 Text STH₂ Si veniant mundi CEHGDL
458 1225* fulscit HG