Freedom and the Law. Bruno Leoni

or the United States were “constraining” the Italians and the Germans to be content with their poor material resources and their comparatively narrow territories, although not even one single square mile of German or Italian territory had been taken by Canada or by the United States. In the same way, after the last World War we were told by many people—especially by those belonging to the Italian “intelligentsia”—that the rich landowners of Southern Italy were directly responsible for the misery of the poor workers there or that the inhabitants of Northern Italy were responsible for the depression of the deep South, although no demonstration could be seriously supplied to prove that the wealth of certain landowners in Southern Italy was the cause of the workers” poverty or that the reasonable standard of living enjoyed by the people of Northern Italy was the cause of the absence of such a standard in the South. The assumption underlying all these ideas was that the “haves” of Southern Italy were “constraining” the “have-nots” to make a poor living, in the same way as the inhabitants of Northern Italy were “constraining” those living in the South to be content with agricultural incomes instead of building industries. I must point out too that a similar semantic confusion underlies many of the demands made upon the peoples of the West (including the United States) and the attitudes adopted toward them by the ruling groups in certain former colonies like India or Egypt.

      This results in occasional mutinies, riots, and all kinds of hostile actions on the part of the people who feel “constrained.” Another no less important result is the series of acts, statutes, and provisions, at national as well as international levels, designed to help people allegedly “constrained” to counteract this “constraint” by legally enforced devices, privileges, grants, immunities, etc.

      Thus, a confusion of words causes a confusion of feelings, and both react reciprocally on each other to confound matters even more.

      I am not so naive as Leibniz, who supposed that many political or economic questions could be settled, not by disputes (clamoribus), but by a sort of reckoning (calculemus) through which it would be possible for all people concerned to agree at least in principle about the issues at stake. But I do maintain that semantic clarification is likely to be more useful than is commonly believed, if only people were put in a condition to benefit from it.