Economic Controversies Rothbard_部分2精品管理.pdf

Section Five Trade and Freedom 32 Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor I. f men were like ants, there would be no interest in human free- dom. If individual men, like ants, were uniform, interchangeable, devoid of specific personality traits of their own, then who would I care whether they were free or not? Who, indeed, would care if they lived or died? The glory of the human race is the uniqueness of each individual, the fact that every person, though similar in many ways to others, possesses a completely individuated personality of his own. It is the fact of each person’s uniqueness—the fact that no two people can be wholly interchangeable—that makes each and every man irreplaceable and that makes us care whether he lives or dies, whether he is happy or oppressed. And, finally, it is the fact that these unique personalities need freedom for their full development that constitutes one of the major arguments for a free society. Perhaps a world exists somewhere where intelligent beings are fully formed in some sort of externally determined cages, with no need for internal learning or choices by the individual beings them- selves. But man is necessarily in a different situation. Individual human beings are not born or fashioned with fully formed knowl- edge, values, goals, or personalities; they must each form their own values and goals, develop their personalities, and learn about them- selves and the world around them. Every man must have freedom, must have the scope to form, test, and act upon his own choices, for any sort of development of his own personality to take place. He must, in s