BOOKS

Turning caviar into bread

Colin Welch

THE ETHICS OF REDISTRIBUTION by Bertrand de Jouvenel

Liberty Press, Indianapolis, $12, $5, pp. 99, also available at the Economists Bookshop, Clare Market, Portugal Street, London WC2, £3.35

Bertrand de Jouvenel was apparently a baron. This title adds nothing to his shining distinction. Indeed, it conjures up for me, I'm afraid, ludicrous figures — shady cronies of Harold Wilson, de Charlus, Ochs von Lerchenau and Baron Hardupp, another expert on redistribution. (His exact role in the redistributive process, incidentally, I can't now recall. Were the broker's men his agents, struggling to collect his rents? Or were they striving to foreclose on his own effects? My panto days are long past.) De Jouvenel has been aptly described as the least famous of the great political thinkers of the 20th century'. Great he certainly was, carrying on the noble French liberal-conservative tradition of de Toc- queville, Benjamin Constant and Taine, finding in this country much to interest, admire and love, bequeathing much of value to contemporaries of his and ours, like Hayek, James Buchanan, Charles Murray, Robert Nozick and even John Rawls — though his bequest to Rawls was only a warning that no state can ever know enough to be able to realise his (Rawls's) idea of social justice. This present volume consists of two long lectures. It was first published in 1952 by the Cambridge University Press and was well received. De Jouvenel cannot have thought over-much of it. Declining to sum it all up at the end, he referred to it disparagingly as 'rather a circumgyration around the concept of redistribution than an argument'. He repeatedly declined to reprint it. He tantalisingly mentioned much later thoughts on the same subject, spoke of the need 'to say not only what I then thought but what I have acquired since'. He never got round to saying it, alas, and died in 1987, aged 83. Reprinting he can no longer forbid. An excellent introduction by John Gray, fel- low of Jesus, Oxford, and author of books about Hayek and Liberalisms (sic), must do duty for what he himself would have liked to add. Has it been worth it? I'm sure it has. I underline in red what seems Important, stimulating or seminal. I find in this case I've underlined pretty well the lot. What defects can de Jouvenel have found in the book? One is perhaps implicit in the title — The Ethics of Redistribution. De Jouvenel strives to stick rather closely to these ethics, to the ethical arguments for and against the redistribution of wealth, of Which he finds the latter the more compell- ing.

No one is in fact more aware than he of the appalling disincentive effects of re- distribution gone too far, of its disastrous effects on the volume and growth of production. To be fair, as he habitually is, he also notes the incentive effects of redistributive taxation. It forces into the labour market possessors of reduced un- earned incomes, and also members of families once supported by one income, rendered inadequate by heavy taxation. Heavy taxation too has forced its middle- class victims to greater efforts in order to retain at least a part of their former standard of life.

Fair enough; but, for the purposes of argument, to concentrate on the purely ethical aspects, de Jouvenel does try inter- mittently to assume that redistribution has no disincentive (or presumably incentive) effects at all, which would be limiting if not absurd. That he failed is perfectly evident in views of his which I have already lifted from his pages. Had he succeeded, his book would I think have been much less rich and persuasive than it is.

His basic trouble was surely that the ethics of redistribution are indissolubly tangled up with the practicalities of the matter. The redistributor is faced with riches and poverty, both to him ethically scandalous, not to be tolerated. His first problem is to decide who is to be Peter, who Paul, who is to be robbed to pay whom. Alas, there are not nearly enough rich Peters to go round, not enough wealth, if redistributed, to meet Paul's assumed urgent needs. Thus Paul has to be robbed as well as Peter, may even be robbed more. Much redistribution is hori- zontal, some actually regressive. In prac- tice it is capricious, discriminatory, irra- tional and thus inimical to the rule of law, thus unethical.

More is robbed than is paid out. This surplus accrues to the redistributor, who may exempt himself and his class from the pillaging they inflict on others. Note the privileges enjoyed by politicians here and by international bureaucrats in Brussels and elsewhere. The power of the state continually expands, with consequences to de Jouvenel ethically evil. He speculates on the possibility that this aggrandisement of the state is the real rationale and motive force behind redistribution, rather than any desire to relieve poverty or to promote equality (which Hayek himself welcomed, so long as it is the result not of duress but of natural forces). An insatiable new class is rising and multiplying. Its aim is not equality, but rather the substitution of a new elite for the old.

All these developments raise problems, not all I think soluble within de Jouvenel's narrow ethical limits, if soluble at all.

Suppose there were enough rich Peters to go round. The most convincing arguments against robbing them beyond a certain point resides less in ethics than in the practical danger of destroyed incentives.

You can lay waste a given class only once. The next class to be pillaged may never arise: what then?

There is of course an ancient ethical prejudice against all enforced redistribition as simply theft. Interestingly, de Jouvenel does not uphold it. The thought of one man's yacht transformed into council houses for the many does not disgust him; nor does the prospect of caviar turned into urgently needed bread. He thus leaves unguarded a gateway through which re- distributors can pour.

What manifestly does disgust him is the amount robbed which is pocketed by the redistributing state. If the transfer of wealth could somehow be effected without cost, without any of it sticking, so to speak, what would he say then? Would he still object so strongly?

Well, the rich would still have lost their power to invest and to patronise the arts and culture. Most redistributors would agree that these functions cannot be left simply unperformed. The state must there- fore fill the gap, with money robbed from Peter and Paul, whether or not they know and approve of the investment contem- plated or give a fig for art or culture. The power of the state thus increases again, though no one watching Mr Luce answer- ing Arts questions in the House would think so. He appears cheerfully to subsi- dise, among other things, anti-social activi- ties and aberrant cliques profoundly hostile to the all-powerful state which he is sup- posed to represent.

Moreover, even if money were trans- ferred without cost, de Jouvenel would still note the impossibility of weighing the unhappiness of those robbed against the happiness of those relieved. True; but the impossibility of measuring exactly does not seem to me an ethically valid argument against making a reasonable guess, against noting surpluses here and misery there and acting accordingly. De Jouvenel notes with exceptional sympathy the 'great dissatisfac- tion' caused by major downward readjust- ments, by falls to another way of life. I understand perfectly; but there are those who accept such readjustments and falls with admirable courage and fortitude, re- garding them as manifestations of God's will, sent to try them. They presumably would not agree with de Jouvenel, would think a life without adversity incomplete.

De Jouvenel's sympathy at this point is perhaps fortified by his distinctive, lofty and romantic view of high incomes. Many of them are spent (and all of them seem in his view thereby sanctified) on socially desirable activities — on making homes, on rearing families, on education, on hos- pitality and charity, on culture and civilisa- tion. I think he suspects that money redistributed will all be blued on baser needs and pursuits. He even cites Marx as an example of private benefactions fruitful- ly used. Some might by contrast think it a pity Engels wasn't broke. They might suggest that, if de Jouvenel had access to private means, he had better have cited himself.

Yes, yes, but looking around me, look- ing even in the mirror, I get a less inspiring impression. I can't help wondering how many of us live as de Jouvenel thought we did and should do. He was certainly an enchanting man, true, but exceptionally so, not averagely or typically so, alas.