On the Origins and Goals of Public Choice: Constitutional Conspiracy?

• Author: Munger, Michael C.
• Position: Critical essay

This essay is a response to the recent book Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America by my Duke University colleague Nancy MacLean, a professor in our distinguished Department of History.

It is, let me say at the outset, a remarkable book.

At first, I misunderstood its method. MacLean has argued persuasively throughout her career for the historical method. For example, in Debating the American Conservative Movement: 1945 to the Present (coauthored with Donald T. Critchlow), she writes: "We hope this book will help students learn that the strongest, most tenable positions are arrived at through careful sifting of evidence and respectful encounters with opposing points of view" (Critchlow and MacLean 2009, viii).

So perhaps I can be forgiven for my misunderstanding of her method in this book. Early in Democracy in Chains, in a preface entitled "A Quiet Deal in Dixie," MacLean recounts an exchange, a conversation really, between two conservatives. One is the president of a major southern university, the other is an academic worker intent on reverse engineering a repressive sociopolitical order in America, working from the ground up, using shadowy methods and discredited theories.

The academic writes a proposal for a research center where these ideas can be given a pestilential foothold, a source of viral infection hidden in a legitimate academic setting. The goal, as MacLean tells of the exchange, is to begin a Fabian war to reestablish a repressive, plutocratic society ruled by oligarchs. MacLean has actually examined the founding documents, the letters in this exchange, and cites the shadowy academic as saying, "I can fight this [democracy].... I want to fight this" (p. xv, emphasis in MacLean's original).

In his proposal, the professor expands on the theme, which I quote directly from Democracy in Chains: "Find the resources, he proposed to [the university president], for me to create a new center on the campus of the University ... and I will use this center to create a new school of political economy and social philosophy" (p. xv, emphasis in MacLean's original). Wow! That's pretty big stuff".

Except ... there's something odd. The italicized text in the quotations is written in the first person and is also italicized in MacLean's book. But the italicized passage is not placed within quotation marks there, and there's no footnoted source citation.

I was curious about both omissions, so I tracked down the founding documents themselves: "Working Papers for Internal Discussion Only--General Aims" (1959) and "The Jefferson Center for Studies in Political Economy and Social Philosophy" (1956) (both in Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville). And it turns out that the reason there are no quotation marks and no footnote is that this exchange, in particular the first-person italicized portion, never took place. It's not a quote. No, seriously: It's not a quote. It's made up. Fabricated. Fictional.

MacLean, to her credit, never claims it is a quote, although a careless reader could be excused for thinking it is, given the first-person voice and the italics. Once I realized that this was the approach, the larger point became clear: Democracy in Chains is a work of speculative historical fiction. There is considerable research underpinning the speculation, and because MacLean is careful about footnoting only things that actually did happen, she cannot be charged with fabricating facts. But most of the book and all of its substantive conclusions are idiosyncratic interpretations of the facts that she selects from a much larger record, as is common in the speculative-history genre. There is nothing wrong about speculation, of course, but there is nothing persuasive about it, either, in terms of drawing reliable conclusions about history.

The reason that Democracy in Chains is remarkable is that it is such a great story. The evil mastermind of the secretive "public-choice" movement, James M. Buchanan, was the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986. MacLean is able to decode the true meaning of his bland, academicese writings, after which Buchanan achieves the status of a Bond villain. Buchanan sought nothing less than to bring down the America we all love and replace it with a plutocracy. The account is rendered plausible by MacLean's excellence as a writer.

The problem with history, of course, is that many narratives about a few cherry- picked events and documents are "plausible." The task of the historian is to try to distinguish among plausible accounts "through careful sifting of evidence and respectful encounters with opposing points of view." There is none of that here. Even a casual familiarity with the basic facts of James Buchanan's life and scholarship and of the growth and success of the public-choice movement, reveal far simpler and more likely explanations.

MacLean violates a fundamental principle of historical and philosophical biography: the principle of charity, which, according to the esteemed philosopher Simon Blackburn, requires that the analyst "maximize the truth or rationality in the subject's sayings" (2016, 62). There are several versions of this principle, analogous to Occam's Razor in the sciences. The principle of charity requires that you take the claims, words, and arguments of a subject at face value unless there is compelling direct evidence to the contrary.

So when Buchanan said he wanted to establish a center (quoting now from the actual founding document of the Jefferson Center at the University of Virginia) "to preserve a social order built on individual liberty, and ... as an educational undertaking in which students will be encouraged to view the organizational problems of society as a fusion of technical and philosophical issues," the researcher should not call this statement "code" and infer a desire for racial segregation. The words might just mean what they say.

But decoding and paraphrasing, rather than charitable quoting, is the organon of MacLean's book. Not of her other work, however, which as I have said is admirably academic and careful. Just this book. She examined some documents from the Buchanan archives, which by her own account (pp. xvii-xx) were so poorly organized that no systematic review was possible.

MacLean must have decided a systematic review wasn't necessary because she found what she needed. For example, on page 66 of Democracy in Chains, we learn of the attempt by segregationist forces to support school vouchers. MacLean says, "The economists made their case in the race-neutral, value-free language of their discipline, offering what they depicted as a strictly economic argument--on 'matters of fact, not values.'" MacLean quotes nothing that would support the claim that Buchanan advocated vouchers for the purpose of achieving segregation.

The problem is that this view does not withstand even minor scrutiny as an actual account of Buchanan or public choice. Buchanan's support for vouchers and for school choice arose from a deeply held concern for individual liberty. In fact, because the theme of Democracy in Chains is that Buchanan opposed majority will, the example of desegregation seems an odd choice for MacLean to emphasize.

The reason that it is odd for MacLean to accuse Buchanan of preferring segregation is that he was very explicitly worried about the possible segregating effects of vouchers. In a famous letter written to Arthur Seldon of the Institute for Economic Affairs in 1984, Buchanan said:

Given the state monopoly as it exists, I surely support the introduction of vouchers. And I do support the state financing of vouchers from general tax revenues. However, although I know the evils of state monopoly, I would also want, somehow, to avoid the evils of race-class-cultural segregation that an unregulated voucher scheme might introduce. In principle, there is, after all, much in the "melting pot" notion of America. And there is also some merit in the notion that the education of all children should be a commonly shared experience in terms of basic curriculum, etc. We should not want a voucher scheme to reintroduce the elite that qualified for membership only because they have taken Latin and Greek classics. Ideally, and in principle, it should be possible to secure the beneficial effects of competition, in providing education, via voucher support, and at the same time to secure the potential benefits of commonly shared experiences, including exposure to other races, classes and cultures. In practise, we may not be able to accomplish the latter at all. But my main point is, I guess, to warn against dismissing the comprehensive school arguments out of hand too readily. (1) Further, and more substantively, it was desegregation that was imposed, at the point of a bayonet, at the command of an antimajoritarian institution, the Supreme Court. The electoral majority in Arkansas, in rural Florida where I grew up, and in much of the South strongly preferred a repressive apartheid society where African Americans were denied the basic rights guaranteed to all U.S. citizens.

How might MacLean justify occupation by federal troops and forcible desegregation against the express will of democratic majorities? It's easy: forcible desegregation was justified because segregation had itself been achieved by force--the illegitimate force of majorities! Jim Crow was a majority-rule policy. The Constitution or at least the Bill of Rights and Amendments 13-15 exist precisely to suppress the murderous and racist impulses of majorities.

Of course, this leaves us to argue about which impulses of majorities pass constitutional muster and which must be forcibly suppressed, as in Little Rock, by heavily armed troops. That seems like an important debate. MacLean may disagree with Buchanan's position, and that disagreement would be useful. But MacLean's core claim throughout the...