Word Traps
The Guaranty Survey
This piece was published in The Freeman in July 1954. It ran with an editorial introduction stating that “Like democracy, the word “freedom” is used to describe everything from individual choice to complete government control.” The pursuit of freedom continues, over 70 years later. And this essay shows how easily words can mislead.
The decline in business since mid-1953 has been variously dubbed. One is dazed by the subtle distinctions implied in such terms as “rolling adjustment,” “disinflation,” “un-boom,” “readjustment,” “dip,” “deflation,” “boom and bust,” “recession” and “depression.”
The name in each case seems to depend mainly upon what the commentator is trying to prove. Government officials, naturally uneasy under the burden of the “full-employment commitment,” tend to use terms suggesting mildness of setback. At the other extreme, those who would like to hurry Congress and the Administration into drastic action show a preference for “depression,” a word which, since the disastrous experience of the 1930s, has assumed such fearful implications that it is usually avoided in dispassionate discussions of current economic conditions.
The fact is that none of the terms used in characterizing the recent course of business has precise meaning. No one can draw a line where a category of contraction signified by one word ends and another begins. The important differences between the terms do not lie so much in their expressed meanings as in the emotional responses which their connotations evoke in reader or listener. If these responses are subconscious, as they usually are (and are often intended to be), the reader or listener is allowing himself to be imposed upon. Those who wish to be informed rather than exploited by what they read or hear must be constantly on their guard against the hidden implications in words, especially at a time like the present, when specious ideologies are bidding for popular favor.
Students of language have always been troubled by the unbridgeable gap between words and what they stand for. Words mean different things to different persons. According to the Book of Job, the Lord inveighed against him “that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge.” Bacon lamented the tendency of words to “shoot back upon the understanding of the wisest, and mightily entangle and pervert the judgment.” Cynics have been led to define language as the art of concealing thought.
The difficulty of precise communication of ideas is made worse by the gradual transitions that occur in the meanings, and even more in the connotations, of words during the passage of time. Some words, like “democracy” or “liberalism,” take on such strong favorable colorations that they are used by both libertarians and Communists to describe their respective systems. Others, like “depression” and “dole,” fall into such disrepute that it is impossible to use them without creating an unfavorable emotional atmosphere. Whether favorable or unfavorable, these evocative properties of words, as semanticists call them, can so overshadow the original cognitive values as to make the words almost useless for purposes of straightforward exposition.
Intentional Implications
Men discovered long ago that the power of words to arouse feelings could be a strong instrument of persuasion as well as a barrier to the transmission of knowledge or thought. “It is worldly wisdom,” said Pope Gregory I more than thirteen centuries ago, “to conceal the mind with cunning devices, to hide one’s meaning with words, to represent falsehood as truth, and to prove truth to be falsehood.” In the hands of a skilled practitioner, language can become the art of preventing thought by substituting emotion for it. The established reaction patterns created by certain words tend to stultify thought while seeming to stimulate it.
Discussion of the present business situation in terms calculated to arouse fear or promote confidence is a case in point. Those who demand that the government take steps to prevent a “full-blown depression” do not advocate inflationary deficit financing—not in those words. They recommend public works and tax relief, which mean inflationary deficit financing but sound much better. “Inflation” and “deficit” are fear words. They suggest unsound fiscal practices, rising costs of living, and currency depreciation. “Public works” and “tax relief,” on the other hand, conjure up mental images of more money in everybody’s pocket along with fine new roads, schools, hospitals, and playgrounds.
Similarly, those who believe the government should pursue a long-term policy of injecting new money into the economy in order to exert a continual stimulating effect on demand are not found speaking of chronic inflation. That would imply a step-by-step descent into monetary debasement. Instead, they talk about a gradual rise in prices and wages, connoting large incomes and good times.
About a decade ago Sir William Beveridge, the British economist, wrote a book on Full Employment in a Free Society, an alluring double objective. An actual reading of the book reveals that the author’s program would probably involve price control as an inevitable consequence; that private as well as government investment would have to be regulated by political authority; that control over the location of industrial plants would be a central requirement; and that it would be necessary to maintain “organized mobility” of labor (not, of course, “compulsory allocation” of labor). Such civil liberties as the right to choose new public officials and alter public policies, freedom in the choice of occupations and in the management of personal incomes, and the right of labor to bargain collectively and to strike could not be exercised “irresponsibly.” Sir William declared also that the liberties essential to a “free society” do not include the liberty of a private citizen to own means of production and to employ others in operating them at a wage.
The author’s ability to apply the phrase “free society” to such a regime would seem to indicate that the magic of words can work its spell upon the user as well as upon his readers.
Glamour Words
The perennial controversy over the relation between the individual and the state has produced innumerable semantic traps for the unwary. One of these is the indiscriminate and often misleading use of such faith-inspiring words as “liberalism” and “democracy.” Historically, liberalism stood genuinely for the importance of the individual and his right to pursue his own aims with a minimum of interference by the state. During the past generation the label has been appropriated by the advocates of stronger governmental authority, the very school of thought that historical liberalism was formed to combat. It is strange that the historical liberals have not protested more vigorously against this perversion of meaning. “Democracy,” on the other hand, is claimed by both groups, with the unfortunate result that it is impossible to tell what the word means without first knowing who is using it and what his actual beliefs are.
Another word to conjure with is “welfare.” Authoritarians call their system the “welfare state,” as if those who oppose it were against welfare, or at any rate indifferent to it. Actually, of course, welfare is not the issue at all. Every good citizen favors welfare, as he understands it. The real question is not the desirability of welfare but the power of the state to tell its citizens what welfare is and how it shall be sought.
Politically determined “welfare” has its subdivisions. Among these are “fair” prices, a “living” wage, “adequate” housing, and “security.” What right-minded person could oppose such obviously desirable objectives? Only when one looks beneath the words at the actual things they stand for does one realize that these are merely glamorous catchwords for highly debatable public policies and programs.
One finds, for example, that buyers and sellers are likely to have very different ideas regarding what constitutes a “fair” price, and that political action is likely to settle the question on the basis of which side has the most votes. Since a wage is a price, the issue of the “living” wage also tends to develop into a scramble for political favor. “Adequate” housing turns out to be some official’s or board’s idea of what it would be desirable for people to have in the way of living quarters, without too much regard for costs on the one hand or competing needs and desires on the other. “Security” is found to mean an attempt at escape from the vicissitudes of life in an individualistic society, usually taking the form of compulsory savings or compulsory redistribution of income, with ultimate effects that may be far from desirable.
Words like “progressive” and “reform” fall into a similar category. Such words imply a change for the better, and they are especially effective in an age like the present when there is a too-general tendency to assume that change necessarily is for the better. A little reflection is enough to show that words of this kind, when applied to a concrete proposal, merely beg the question.
A particularly subtle form of economic quackery is the use of such terms as “rationalism,” “planning,” and the “scientific” approach to economic and social questions. Words like these imply profound understanding on the part of the speaker and impugn the intelligence of anyone who ventures to question his views. They suggest that society can assure its salvation only by placing its fate in the hands of the experts.
In human affairs, who can arrogate to himself the title of “expert”? No small part of the economic and political ills that afflict the world today can be traced to centralized “planning” of production and distribution in the name of “rationalization.” Planning at the level of the individual enterprise is, of course, universal in the business world, but planning at higher levels has proved a tragically inadequate substitute for the automatic regulatory action of prices in free markets. The “scientific” approach is only another name for bungling interference in human relations by those who have deluded themselves or others into believing that they are equipped to play a superhuman role.
“Capitalism,” once an acceptable descriptive term, has become, for many, a vituperative epithet. It suggests the Capitalist of the old cartoons, the fat plutocrat with the plug hat, the big cigar, and the full moneybags, ruthlessly trampling upon the widow and the orphan. Among those who have any knowledge of economic matters, this absurd myth has long since vanished into the limbo of exploded superstitions. Yet the mental image has become so odious that the friends of capitalism usually avoid the term, preferring such inoffensive expressions as “free enterprise.” But who ever heard of a Communist talking about “free enterprise”?
As the art of semantics rises to new heights, the importance of looking beneath words to realities grows more urgent. Language may be used to express, conceal, or prevent thought, but it cannot safely be allowed to become a substitute for thought. Truly, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance—vigilance against the beguilements of words.
