Businessmen and the War of Ideas

Years ago as a college professor of economics, I posed a question to each crop of freshman students on or about the first day of class. “Can anyone tell me,” I asked, “what determines whether society is organized along socialist, centrally planned lines or as a free enterprise, private property order?” The answer to that query, I suggested, would be the same as the answer to this corollary question: “What causes societies occasionally to change from one economic system to the other?”

Rarely would I elicit the response I was looking for, in spite of all the hints I gave. The students’ answers included the following: “the President,” “the Congress,” “the news media,” “the unions,” “the schools.” Invariably, someone would suggest there was no determinant at all, that we were talking about mere random events—a kind of irrational and unexplainable ebb and flow of history.

At some point, the guesswork would come to an end and I would reveal the answer I was seeking. People or the institutions they establish play important roles, but neither one is fundamental enough because neither one explains why people behave the way they do. The correct answer is that which the French author Victor Hugo once said was more powerful than all the armies of the world: IDEAS!

People such as politicians, activists, clerics, and teachers can often be agents of change, but ideas are the instigators. In shaping public policy that includes the larger question of free enterprise or socialism, democracy or dictatorship, ideas are of decisive importance. What people believe says a great deal (maybe everything) about how they behave, for whom they vote, what laws and rules they embrace, what kind of system they’ll work to achieve. Change ideas, and you can change the course of history.

Ideas—both good and bad—can, indeed, be quite intoxicating. They evoke strong passions and spark revolutions. In the last century, we witnessed the rise of a world empire committed to the ideas of Karl Marx, followed by its dissolution and demise at the “hands” of a more powerful idea, that of freedom.

The British economist John Maynard Keynes put it well when he wrote, “The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”

I recall a revealing study about 25 years ago of network television in America: only 3 percent of business people depicted on television, the Media Institute found, were involved in “socially useful or economically productive” behavior.

The same study reported that more than half of all corporate chiefs on TV committed illegal acts ranging from fraud to murder. And a special PBS program entitled “Hollywood’s Favorite Heavy: Businessmen on Prime-Time TV,” declared around the same time, “By the age of 18, the average kid has seen businessmen on TV attempt over 10,000 murders.” It doesn’t appear to me that in the decades since these two reports, mainstream television has become any friendlier to men and women of enterprise. And you can always be assured that when a few business people misbehave, their faults will be presented as commonplace in the business world.

Make no mistake about it, these unfair but popular portrayals play into the hands of demagogues and political shysters, of which there is an endless supply. These generalizations and misrepresentations reflect and reinforce a body of opinion inimical to free markets and private enterprise. They speak volumes about a void in economic education. In a subtle but corrosive way they undermine the philosophical and institutional pillars of the free society. “Ideas,” author and philosopher Richard Weaver once famously said, “have consequences!”

Because the war of ideas is so important, businessmen and businesswomen simply cannot afford to be silent. If whether you live in a socialized economy or a free one matters to you (and it absolutely does, even if you choose not to think about such things), then failure to commit time and resources to help shape the climate of opinion around you is shortsighted and probably suicidal.

Many business executives may be quick to say, “But I am involved in such things. I give money to candidates, and so do the political action committees to which my company contributes.” That may be important, but it’s also like locking the barn door after the horse has already left. Politicians usually reflect opinion and seldom generate it; what they can accomplish in office is defined and circumscribed by prevailing majority opinion. If you really want to make a difference, then you should invest in ideas. Change public opinion and the politicians will fall into line accordingly.

Tragically, a sizable chunk of business funding of public policy research (or similar so-called “advocacy” groups) goes not to “free market” groups but to those of a very different bent. Too many people in business are funding the wrong side.

In his introduction to the first edition of Patterns of Corporate Philanthropy a quarter century ago, executive Robert H. Malott wrote, “Unfortunately, most corporations devote only a very small share of their contributions to public affairs. Worse yet, even these relatively small contributions often reflect a strategy of appeasement. Put more bluntly, many corporations actually reward the groups that most vigorously attack them.”

Business support of groups and people who advocate an ever more intrusive role in the economy for government amounts to nothing more than feeding the alligator in the hope that he’ll eat you last. As a stockholder, I feel betrayed when I see that happen. As a believer in the much bigger picture, the importance of a free society, I am outraged by it.

Businessmen and businesswomen need to take a hard look at where their philanthropic dollars are going and ponder the question, “Are we helping to preserve and strengthen private property, free enterprise, and individual initiative, or are we slitting our own economic throats by subsidizing groups that push for more centralized planning and control?”

Anyone in business who suffers from the illusion that ideas are too intangible to matter ought to wake up and smell the coffee. Ideas make all the difference in the world because they create the stage on which all of us perform.

Investing in ideas—the right ones, not just any ideas—is a long-term investment, but one which has a return every bit as tangible as the purchase of stock. The first priority for each individual business person is the same as that for anyone else who values freedom: educate yourself! Become as effective for freedom and free markets in both word and deed as you possibly can. Then, if your material means allow, consider investing in those groups committed to spreading those ideas. The return on that investment a stronger, free society—is the one yield that won’t raise your tax bill and will go a long way to assure that your children live as free and prosperous citizen.