The characteristic confusion of freedom with power, which we shall meet again and again throughout this discussion, is too big a subject to be thoroughly examined here. As old as socialism itself, it is so closely allied with it that almost seventy years ago a French scholar, discussing its Saint-Simonian origins, was led to say that this theory of liberty “est à elle seule tout le socialisme” (Paul Janet, Saint-Simon et le Saint-Simonisme [Paris: G. Baillière et cie., 1878], p. 26 n.). The most explicit defender of this confusion is, significantly, the leading philosopher of American
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