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"The great issues of the contemporary world . . . have to do with the kind of collectivism, how it is to be established, in whose interests, by whom it is to be controlled, and for what end," said Walter Lippmann '10, in the second Godkin Lecture given before a capacity crowd in the New Lecture Hall yesterday afternoon.
Mr. Lippmann explained that, with the passing of the doctrine of lasses, faire, the state's obligations to its people had come to revolve about the maintenance of the standard of living, and that the new doctrine of collectivism was now generally accepted. He went on to say that present-day debate was centered on the kind of collectivism employed.
"The issues can be clarified. I believe, by the distinguishing of two radically different forms of collectivism, the system of Directed Economy and the system of Compensated Economy."
Bointing out that the Directed Economy could only be realized by the use of force, Mr. Lippmann said. "It is no accident that wherever and whenever planned collectivism has been instituted . . . it has required censorship, espionage, and terrorism to make it work."
Turning to Compensated Economy, which he defined as "the method being worked out among English speaking peoples, a method of social control which is not laisses faire, which is not communism, which is not Fascism, but the product of their own experience and their own genius.
"It has become necessary to create collective power, to mobilize technical resources, and to work out technical procedures by means of which the modern state can balance, equalize, neutralize, offset, correct the private judgments of masses of individuals. This is what I mean by a Compensated Economy and the method of free collectivism. . . . If is a conception which is not spun out of abstract theory . . . It is the method of freedom. The authority of the government is used to assist men in maintaining the security of an ordered life. The state, though it is powerful, is not the master of the people, but remains, as it must where there is liberty, their servant."
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