Good-Bad Advice for East Europeans Now Entering the World Marketplace : Freedom: What makes free markets so attractive is the opportunity to cultivate individualism--but the bad news is that people lose all sense of belonging to a group.

During the past few months, we have witnessed the most unexpected change in political life that any member of my generation could have imagined. Those of us who fought in World War II--when the Western democracies were “allied” with the world’s largest communist country--assumed that the price to be paid for helping democratic institutions survive was a recognition that Soviet-dominated countries would survive in like manner. That is to say: forever.

But political science is no more a science than economics is, and no one in the world has come forward to claim that he or she predicted the downfall of dictatorial regimes in Eastern Europe, even as recently as two days before any one of them collapsed. And no one has come forward with new information sheets, guidebooks, directions or instructions as a briefing on what to expect of a free economy. So I offer a few notes.

In my Western, democratic, free-market country, worldly wisdom consists in understanding that there is no good news without attendant (simultaneous or resultant) bad news. For example, so many of our advanced medications eliminate pain but cause insomnia.

The essence of what makes political freedom so attractive is the opportunity to cultivate one’s individualism. This is usually achieved at a cost of losing all sense of being a member of a group. What goes first is responsibility for supporting your nation civically, militarily or financially. What goes next is participation in fraternal social groups: political parties, philanthropic organizations, religious bodies.

Professional organizations might be the last to be abjured and abandoned, because they contribute to the possibility of enhancing income. The smallest and most intimate group, the nuclear family, survives despite the fact that much of the population confuses it with a catastrophic stage of war.

In the old days, there was at least the possibility of some social relationship established by talking with a person at a bar. A bar was a public house where one could reasonably expect to engage in conversation with another human being and come away somewhat revived or enriched. All that ended when television was introduced. Once that set was suspended above the head of the bartender--every pair of eyes of every person seated on a bar stool was riveted to it--the possibility of spontaneous social intercourse died. Most people have become inarticulate (dumb), except in their workplace.

On the other hand, if it hadn’t been for television, this great change taking place in response to popular uprisings throughout Eastern Europe would not yet have come about; the regimes would probably have machine-gunned to death every protester. But only six months earlier, for every night, every week, adding up to the months during which all those Chinese youths yearned for a little bit of participatory democracy, what was seen on television was the way a senile, entrenched totalitarian communist regime murdered its own children.

Never before in the history of the rise and fall of governments has the whole world been able to watch such disasters unfold and see how the refusal to share power makes self-justifying rejection possible--and deadly.

The good news about political freedom combined with a market economy is that you have the chance of doing something you like to do--and do it well enough to make a decent or reasonable living. That achievement gives not only the material satisfaction of making a better living than you made before, but it also has the psychological reward that comes with doing something worthwhile. The bad news is that even more money can be earned by doing things that are not worthwhile. Thus, the opportunities may come about for riches of such magnitude as constitute an indecent and unreasonable living.

Although economics is not a science, business administration is a practical skill; our graduate schools of business have so evolved that they can instruct people unable to produce any object or perform any service to make more money than people who can carry out either task. The key is to treat all resources abstractly. For example, think of a factory that produces automobiles merely as a mechanical operation that results in a profit.

By eliminating any thought of the well-being of the people who pay for and drive automobiles, and similarly abstracting any concern about the quality of the automobile produced, an executive may concentrate exclusively on the financial relationship between costs, sales and income to maximize profit for the longest period of time. Then he can move off to the retirement homes of the rich and famous.

Who wants to work hard to make movies when you can sell movie studios much more easily--and for a great deal more money?

In other words, for all the good news of the chance to improve your life financially through actions in a free-market economy, the bad news is that the practical consequences of conditions that allow the free-market economy to be what it is ultimately result in individualism at its worst. The successful manipulator abstracts himself from all care about what his activities produce other than financial bounties.

If that is not bad enough, a concomitant decay in the quality of life comes about because of treating other people impersonally. The hidden side of the shiny coin of individualism is the bleak refusal to consider questions of the humanity of others, let alone questions of social justice. To put it bluntly: There is no evidence that anywhere in the Western democracies where political theories justify the cultivation of individualism is there any instance where the vigorous freedom of a market economy is compatible with giving a damn about anyone else.

On the contrary, treating everyone else in an impersonal way--as a functionary, i.e., as a means of performing some work function--rather than as a complex whole human being relieves the politically free and enterprising consumer-producer-manipulator from all concerns about the well-being of others.

If you new free marketeers come into the West with your eyes open to the human dangers and drawbacks of the long run as well as to the personal advantages and satisfactions of the short, then the new blood you bring with you could even help us reorder our good and bad news.