Congress Moves Toward Fascism

For years it has been explicit in the laws as well as the pronouncements of Federal officials that the U.S. government's goal is the central one of a fascist economy: to manipulate a nominally capitalist economy to accomplish the government's will. This approach dominates the Federal government's omnipresent statutory controls over American finance, commerce, industry, agriculture, and transportation.

A marked acceleration of America's fascist economic policies began during 1973 and 1974 with the passage of legislation that portends increasingly overt subordination of citizens' voluntary choices to the government's will. Vastly expanding the scope of Federal economic surveillance, newly enacted legislation explicitly asserts the government's power to monitor the entire production process and to issue reports specifying the "proper" supply and price of any commodity. Recent legislation also reveals unprecedented government aggressiveness in seizing an active role in the management and operation of traditionally private businesses. This article examines the laws that create this newly swollen governmental authority to formulate the economic ends toward which "private enterprise" is envisioned as the means.

GOVERNMENT AS MARKET SURROGATE

The Supplies and Shortages Act of 1974 is a short, unnervingly comprehensive statute that authorizes the government to monitor and report on the production, employment, and business practices of any American industry. A new Federal agency, the National Commission on Supplies and Shortages, was created to perform this function.

Deft use of the scareword "shortage" provided a transparent pretext for Congress' unparalleled assertion of government power to oversee the economy. Insinuations of economic crisis permeate the congressional "findings" that preface the law:

Shortages of resources and commodities are becoming increasingly frequent in the United States, and such shortages cause undue inconvenience and expense to consumers.…

Existing institutions do not adequately identify and anticipate such shortages and do not adequately monitor, study, and analyze other market adversities involving specific industries and specific sectors of the economy.

Behind this self-serving rhetoric, the lawmakers' wish for centralized power to identify "shortages" represents an ill-concealed desire to substitute government decrees concerning price or output levels for those signalled by consumers' voluntary actions in a free market.

Counting on scare tactics to disarm rational opposition and to convince the skeptical that shortages of nonrenewable natural resources are the exclusive object of the government's attention, Congress produced additional "findings":

(1) The United States is increasingly dependent on the importation from foreign nations of certain natural resources vital to commerce and the national defense.

(2) Nations that export such resources can alone or in association with other nations arbitrarily raise the prices of such resources to levels which are unreasonable and disruptive of domestic and foreign economies.

Then, in the passage previously quoted, the public is informed of the "shortages" that allegedly plague America, instructed that existing institutions do not adequately anticipate such shortages, and told that existing government data collection on these matters is too diffuse for current congressional tastes—"not systematically coordinated and disseminated."

Such is the initial rhetoric of the statute. Upon rereading it, one becomes disturbingly aware that even in these opening passages the statute subtly shifts from voicing dismay at shortages of foreign-supplied natural resources to decrying shortages of resources and commodities. Similarly, the statute augments its stated concern about anticipating shortages with wistful longing for government power to "monitor, study, and analyze other market adversities involving specific industries and specific sectors of the economy." (Emphasis added in all citations.) Thus at the outset the law clearly hints that the government's interests include not only nonrenewable natural resources but also all "commodities" that attract its attention, not only "shortages" but also any "other market adversities" it wants to scrutinize, and not only mere anticipation of shortages but also efforts to "monitor, study, and analyze" any economic phenomenon that displeases government officials.

The accuracy of these early hints is fully verified by the remainder of the statute. The Commission is authorized to investigate not only shortages of natural resources but also business practices and pricing policies pertaining to virtually any commodity, specifically including manufactured products. Giving the Commission unlimited power to scrutinize private economic activity, the statute empowers it to report on:

(1) the existence or possibility of any long- or short-term shortages; employment, price or business practices; or market adversities affecting the supply of any natural resources, raw agriculture [sic] commodities, materials, manufactured products…;

(2) the adverse impact or possible adverse impact of such shortages, practices, or adversities upon consumers.…

Thus the government assumes the role, so far only through reports, of functioning as a surrogate market, interjecting its judgments concerning the type, quantity, and price of economic output most beneficial to citizens, whose voluntary choices Federal officials would supersede.

SENATORIAL FINAGLING

A most interesting feature of the Supplies and Shortages Act is the technique used to secure its passage. Although it authorizes government perusal of private economic activity on a scale unparalleled in U.S. history, this law was quietly slipped through as part of the Defense Production Act Amendments of 1974, which amended the Defense Production Act of 1950. It is particularly odd that such a radical alteration of the government's economic function was incorporated into a defense law, both because the subject matter of the two statutes is so incongruous, and because the supplies-and-shortages legislation originally passed by the Senate was in no way associated with the Defense Act Amendments.

The Congressional Record reveals the political maneuvering that led to this strange legislative amalgamation. Senators Mansfield, Scott, Byrd, Griffin, Brock, and Javits, the original sponsors of the Supplies and Shortages Act passed by the Senate, initially were thwarted when the House of Representatives refused to act on the Senate-approved bill. Undaunted, the frustrated Senators sought more circumspect means of working their will on the American people. Taking the initiative, Mansfield tacked the entire text of the original Senate bill onto the Defense Production Act Amendments passed by the House, facetiously remarking that this would "facilitate the consideration and disposal of this issue by the other body." Mansfield then underscored the basic thrust of the Act by entering into the Congressional Record an interview in which economist Wassily Leontief explicitly advocated national economic planning. After a supportive speech by Senator Magnuson, Mansfield was congratulated by Senator Hugh Scott for the devious technique used to circumvent House opposition to the Supplies and Shortages Act. The House, desirous of implementing the Defense Production Act Amendments, subsequently acquiesced to the Senate version that contained Mansfield's prized Supplies and Shortages Act.

Perhaps the most ominous aspect of the Supplies and Shortages Act is a provision authorizing the Commission to report on "the advisability of establishing an independent agency to provide for a comprehensive data collection and storage system, to aid in examination and analysis of the supplies and shortages in the economy of the United States and in relation to the rest of the world." This superficially innocuous proposal, if implemented, would provide precisely the comprehensive economic data collection system that is the sine qua non of all advanced collectivist economies, be they fascist, socialist, or communist. Only by compelling detailed disclosure of people's economic activities can a collectivist system achieve the control it desires. Actual establishment of such a centralized economic data collection agency should serve as a bellwether heralding far broader government efforts to dictate the constraints within which the "private sector" is forced to operate than America has yet known.

Although the Supplies and Shortages Act enables Federal officials to assimilate economic information on a scale that facilitates detailed government manipulation of people's economic activities, the government as yet lacks comprehensive power to enforce its economic preferences. Certain legislators are moving toward that final step in the eradication of economic freedom, however. Senators Humphrey and Javits, under the tutelage of economist Wassily Leontief, have introduced legislation proposing a national Economic Planning Board that would empower Federal officials to issue "guidelines" to redirect the uncoerced choices of private individuals in all economic spheres. Economic plans—specifying, for example, the amount of wheat, automobiles, houses, paper, and other products the nation "should" consume during a specified time—would be given an aura of statutory authority through periodic approval by Congress. It is a tribute to lawmakers' mastery of the fascist art of controlling the private economy, while suppressing telltale evidence of coercion, that these production "guidelines" would be nominally voluntary, though their enforcement would be assured by indirect forms of government coercion.

TAKEOVER OF THE ENERGY INDUSTRY

While government-preferred output and price patterns identified under the Supplies and Shortages Act as yet remain devoid of direct coercive enforcement power, the government's now unlimited authority to control energy production and distribution is backed by a full arsenal of legal sanctions and financial inducements. The three primary statutes that created this plenary authority are the Federal Energy Administration Act of 1974, the Federal Nonnuclear Energy Research and Development Act of 1974, and the Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act of 1973 (now augmented by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975).

Amidst typical fascist rhetoric lauding competition, free enterprise, and cooperation among large interest groups, the Federal Energy Administration Act gives the government sweeping powers to control the supply, price, distribution, and use of energy. As in the Supplies and Shortages Act, here too the battle cry used to justify burgeoning Federal power is "scarcity," with Congress voicing its commitment to "positive and effective action to conserve scarce energy supplies." Yet, despite the colorful language, it is apparent that the cry of scarcity is a response more to politically contrived high prices and supply restrictions—largely provoked by U.S. intervention in foreign nations—than to absolute resource limitations.

Without addressing the source of the scarcity, Congress minces no words in stating its intent that government officials dictate to whom and at what price energy will be available—in Congress' more appealing phraseology, "to insure fair and efficient distribution of, and the maintenance of fair and reasonable consumer prices for, such [energy] supplies." To ensure that these fine-sounding abstractions are translated into tangible government decrees, the Federal Energy Administration (FEA), created by the Act, is authorized to fix prices and wages in energy industries and to allocate petroleum products.

The predominant collectivist view of energy production is everywhere apparent in the Federal Energy Administration Act. The FEA is instructed to prepare and maintain a "comprehensive plan to alleviate the energy shortage," while advising the President and Congress on the formulation of a "comprehensive national energy policy." Congress repeatedly proclaims the government's right "to assure that adequate provision is made to meet the energy needs of the Nation," clearly implying that satisfaction of the central government rather than satisfaction of consumers is the proper goal of energy producers. Making explicit the fact that the "nation's needs" are something very different from the wishes of the people who compose the nation, and that to exalt this collective need is often to subjugate the individuals who compose the collective, the Act further instructs the FEA to "assure that energy programs are designed and implemented in a fair and efficient manner so as to minimize hardship and inequity while assuring that the priority needs of the Nation are met."

"PROMOTING" FREE ENTERPRISE

The Federal Energy Administration Act illuminates the extent to which Congress envisions the government as superior to uncoerced market forces and the economic choices of free individuals. Insofar as such powers are assigned to the FEA by statute or by the President, the agency is authorized to "assess the adequacy of energy resources to meet demands," to "develop plans and programs for dealing with energy production shortages," to "promote stability in energy prices," and to "prevent unreasonable profits" within the energy industry. True to the facile self-contradictions of fascist economic jargon, such government activity—which amounts to absolute government control over the supply and price of energy—is to be carried out in a manner that promotes "free enterprise" and "free and open competition."

In addition to its authority to manipulate the supply and fix the price of energy, the FEA is empowered, where so ordered by Congress or the President, to conduct programs to control the "distribution, rationing, and allocation of all forms of energy." Finally, the Act empowers the FEA to develop mandatory energy conservation programs as it sees fit.

But all this power would be unwieldy for government overseers directing America's energy production without corollary power to compel disclosure of private economic information. Predictably, statutory authority to extract such data accompanies Federal power to dominate the industry, allowing government perusal of the private records of energy consumers as well as of producers:

All persons owning or operating facilities or business premises who are engaged in any phase of energy supply or major energy consumption shall make available to the Administrator such information and periodic reports, records, documents, and other data…as the Administrator may prescribe.…

Such are the general powers over existing energy production technology that are vested in the FEA. But the government's control over petroleum products is both more extensive and more concrete than the Federal Energy Administration Act suggests.

The Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act of 1973 was the vehicle Congress used to extend and particularize government power over petroleum-related industries. The emotional pitch of the law's introductory rhetoric was an apt indicator of the severity of the measures that followed. Before enunciating the government's new powers, Congress carefully denounced shortages of oil and petroleum products, bewailed the "severe economic dislocations and hardships" allegedly caused by such shortages, and announced the existence of "a national energy crisis." This fearful state of affairs prompted Congress to assert, totally without supporting evidence, that this "crisis" is a "threat" that "can be averted or minimized most efficiently and effectively through prompt action by the Executive branch of Government."

Relying on the emotional fervor thus raised to eliminate opposition to its program, Congress proceeded to accord unconstrained power to the President to divvy up America's crude oil, residual fuel oil, and refined petroleum products. Also given power to fix the prices of these commodities, the President was required to "promulgate a regulation providing for the mandatory allocation of crude oil, residual fuel oil, and each refined petroleum product, in amounts specified in…and at prices specified in…such regulation." The President not only was accorded power to dictate which users could acquire petroleum products, how much each might purchase, and the prices purchasers must pay; he also could forcibly prevent owners of domestically produced or refined petroleum products from exporting them.

CONTROL: NOT WHETHER, BUT HOW

To tailor these broad powers to current political perceptions of how best to manipulate the supply and price of petroleum, Congress recently enacted the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, signed into law by President Ford on Dec. 22, 1975. The new law maintains controls over petroleum production and distribution as sweeping as those contained in the original Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act. Passed by votes of 58-40 in the Senate and 236-160 in the House, the new law continues mandatory oil price controls, expands the President's authority to allocate energy supplies and to dictate domestic oil and gas production levels, preserves his unlimited authority to bar energy exports, and paves the way for the government to become the sole and exclusive importer of foreign oil. Moreover, the statute gives the President standby authority to impose gasoline rationing, creates broad government power to audit persons compelled to disclose energy-related information, and imposes a variety of oil "conservation" measures. Through this law, Congress has again decreed which form of government regulation of petroleum producers and consumers is, temporarily, "best" for the citizens whose market preferences lawmakers so universally disparage.

Despite the pervasiveness of government power over energy supply, price, and distribution achieved by the foregoing statutes, this power pales in comparison with the new Federal controls authorized by the Federal Nonnuclear Energy Research and Development Act of 1974 (the "Nonnuclear Energy Act"). With this statute, the Federal government seized political control of the development of nonnuclear energy technology, effectively preventing economic considerations from directing the optimal form of future energy production.

To implement its provisions, this Act uses a Federal agency called the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), created by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974. Although ERDA also manages nuclear energy, a function previously performed by the Atomic Energy Commission, it is its broadened power over nonnuclear energy industries that represents a significant expansion of government power and hence is the focal point of this discussion.

Groping for "findings" to justify its actions, Congress introduces the Nonnuclear Energy Act with standard denunciations of the "energy shortage" that allegedly prevails. Embracing at the outset the fascist economic theme that permeates the Act, Congress states its desire, however massive the Federal controls that follow, to take "full advantage…of the existing technical and managerial expertise in the various energy fields within Federal agencies and particularly in the private sector."

ERDA's primary function under the Nonnuclear Energy Act is to "formulate and carry out a comprehensive Federal nonnuclear energy research, development, and demonstration program." The Act empowers the government to design, construct, and even operate energy production facilities in order "to demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of utilizing various forms of nonnuclear energy." All forms of nonnuclear energy are included within ERDA's jurisdiction.

To implement this authority, the agency is given unrestricted power to subsidize energy research, development, and demonstration programs. Loaded with tax- or inflation-generated dollars, the government has authority not only to finance the research and development it favors, but also to provide price supports for the output of pet demonstration projects whose "economic feasibility" the government is determined to prove. Thus Federal officials henceforth will determine the specific types of nonnuclear energy production to be developed, for private businesses will be both unwilling and financially unable to compete with massively subsidized government-sponsored projects.

DISGUISED NATIONALIZATION

However extensive, the Federal intervention under the Nonnuclear Energy Act so far described at least has the dubious virtue of being relatively overt. The quite unprecedented and much more disturbing form of Federal intervention into the production of nonnuclear energy is a distinctively fascist economic creation that enables the government to maintain a facade of private enterprise while securing absolute power to control "private" business activity. The Act authorizes ERDA to create, upon obtaining congressional approval, "joint Federal-industry experimental, demonstration, or commercial corporations" to produce nonnuclear energy. Each such joint government-industry corporation is to be controlled by a board of directors composed of political appointees selected by the President.

The statute's efforts to perpetrate the illusion of preserving private enterprise do not end with the establishment of political control over these "mixed" corporations. The real coup, the provision that guarantees the ultimate elimination of all truly private nonnuclear energy production, is yet to come. The reader first is informed that the government's "participation" in any joint corporation must terminate within 12 years of the corporation's creation. When government participation allegedly ceases, the corporation is officially dissolved, and the board of directors is required to dispose of the corporation's physical facilities as it sees fit. Lulled by this explicit promise of Federal withdrawal, the casual reader's attention is diverted from subsequent statutory provisions that transform this professed government withdrawal into exactly the opposite of what it purports to be.

Although the destruction of the joint corporation suggests a phasing out of government control, the procedure is but a carefully concocted charade. In fact, the dissolution signals a net gain in Federal control over nonnuclear energy production, for when the joint corporation is terminated, ERDA takes over ownership of all patent rights held by the joint corporation on the date of its dissolution. Not content with Federal seizure of the fruits of government-industry corporations, Congress also authorized the government to take patent rights in every invention whose creation is in any way supported by Federal funds. As a result of these patent seizures, any "private" business that subsequently desires to use the technology is reduced to the status of a government licensee, utterly dependent on government patent licenses for its economic viability.

The legal authority to license users of government-held patents will provide a potent technique for maintaining political control over future nonnuclear energy production. With full statutory power to decide who will be allowed to use the patented technology and to restrict its licenses by any conditions it wishes to impose, the government will hold an effective political/economic lever over "independent" energy producers.

Thus, in combination with its subsidy provisions, the patent policy of the Nonnuclear Energy Act portends gradual but ultimately total government usurpation of the technology by which nonnuclear energy is produced. Nonnuclear energy industries will remain privately operated, but the government will possess absolute power to manipulate and control the industries' activities. It is a tribute to the legislative finesse of modern advocates of fascist economics that the Nonnuclear Energy Act enables this total transformation to occur so discreetly that the average citizen is not even made aware of the process.

OPEN-ENDED "CRISIS" LAWS

Finally, as if to dispel any lingering illusions concerning the government's willingness to eliminate private economic decisionmaking entirely if unable to bribe or otherwise manipulate producers into compliance with its wishes, the statute explicitly authorizes the government to ration any product allegedly "essential" to the production of nonnuclear energy. Using the predictable rhetoric of crisis while granting powers susceptible of implementation with or without a crisis, the Act provides:

The President may…require the allocation of…supplies of materials and equipment if he finds that—

(1) such supplies are scarce, critical, and essential to carry out the purposes of this Act; and

(2) such supplies cannot reasonably be obtained without exercising the authority granted by this section.

While it typifies the economics of fascism, this overt readiness to intervene in market operations when indirect attempts to manipulate the "private sector" fail represents a quantum jump in the level of economic activism the U.S. government is willing to acknowledge openly.

Unfortunately, responsibility for the curtailment of economic freedom represented by these laws does not rest with a small group of activists. While certain prominent individuals such as Senator Jackson have been particularly instrumental in sponsoring the energy takeover legislation, the most striking political fact concerning these new laws is the near unanimity with which Congress has endorsed them. The vote on the Nonnuclear Energy Act was typical. The House of Representatives approved that statute by an overwhelming majority of 378-5, while only one Senator (Senator Long) opposed the Act when the Senate vote was tallied (91-1). Similarly, the Senate vote approving the Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act was 83-3, and House passage was 348-46. Only nine Representatives voted against the Federal Energy Administration Act (356-9), while the Senate vote approving the bill whose language later was incorporated into the final Act was 86-2. The largest opposition ever registered to the energy takeover laws was the previously discussed vote on the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975. This widespread congressional support for laws authorizing government control over energy production attests to the massive educational effort that must precede any redirection of America's current collectivist predilections.

MOVING IN ON THE RAILROADS

The energy industries are not alone in having been earmarked for government takeover. In 1970 Congress, through the Rail Passenger Service Act, authorized Federal takeover of passenger train service. More recently, dissatisfied with increasing railroad bankruptcies and unwilling to relinquish the Interstate Commerce Commission regulatory power largely responsible for the railroads' problems, Congress passed the Regional Rail Reorganization Act of 1973 to enable the government to dictate which railroads were to survive and to pump taxpayers' dollars into those railroads to make their survival possible. Through this statute, the core of another major American industry has fallen victim to the government's recent hair trigger willingness to usurp the functions of the market.

Apart from providing financial support for railroad workers whose jobs are destroyed by the government's activities, the Rail Reorganization Act performs three basic functions: (1) it empowers the government to take over all bankrupt railroads in the Midwest and the Northeast, picking and choosing which railroads will be preserved and which scrapped; (2) it establishes a government-controlled "corporation" called the Consolidated Rail Corporation to operate the railroads selected for preservation; and (3) it creates permanent conduits through which government tax- or inflation-generated money can be funneled into any bankrupt railroad in the Midwest or Northeast that the government feels like preserving.

Beyond these specific functions, the act explicitly substitutes the judgments of Federal officials for the judgments of the public expressed through private economic decisionmaking. Through the Rail Reorganization Act, the government asserts the right and seizes the power to impose on an impotent citizenry that combination of rail services which government bureaucrats deem "adequate" to fulfill the public's "needs."

Displaying a remarkably low estimate of the average citizen's mentality, Congress finds self-serving, undocumented assertions—that the railroad service it will force taxpayers to subsidize is "essential," that this railroad service is "threatened," and that both the "national interest" and "public convenience and necessity" require government-sponsored maintenance of "adequate and efficient rail service"—sufficient pretext to give it a blank check to "reorganize" the railroads as it pleases. Without pausing to prove or justify this heady rhetoric, Congress swiftly reaches its foregone conclusion: "These needs cannot be met without substantial action by the Federal Government."

If this highly transferable statutory formula is an acceptable justification for government takeover of an industry, any economic activity is vulnerable to similarly massive government control, provided only that the political climate is right. If the political climate would tolerate government takeover ("reorganization") of the clothing industry, for example, a statutory preamble modeled after the rail Reorganization Act would "justify" that move as well as it justifies government takeover of the midwestern and the northeastern railroads. It only remains for Congress to assert that it desires economic takeover ("substantial action by the Federal Government") and for the people to accept it.

IMPLEMENTING THE TAKEOVER

The tool Congress created to make the initial determination of which bankrupt railroads to preserve is a nonprofit government corporation called the U.S. Railway Association. The first task of the Association was to prepare the "final system plan," the government's blueprint for restructuring the region's railroads. This plan designated which railroads were to be subsidized, which sold to profitable railroads, and which used for other "public" purposes. Meticulously following the fascist pattern, the Act claimed that this overt government economic intervention should strive for "the retention and promotion of competition in the provision of rail and other transportation services.…"

The other primary function of the U.S. Railway Association is to spend "government" money. The Act authorizes the Association to issue and have outstanding up to $1.5 billion in government debt at any one time. Two-thirds of this expenditure ($1 billion) may be channeled to the Consolidated Rail Corporation for the operation of bankrupt railroads, and half of this ($500 million) is earmarked solely for railroad modernization and rehabilitation. Exhibiting the exquisite subterfuge of much modern legislation, the statute specifically exempts the Association's expenditures from the government's published budget (and debt limitations) and hence from public scrutiny. This overt effort to conceal a major subsidy makes it increasingly difficult to sustain faith in the benevolent intent of supporters of such legislation.

Once the favored bankrupt railroads are bought and paid for by the U.S. Railway Association, they are turned over to the Consolidated Rail Corporation ("ConRail"), whose function is to operate the railroads preserved under the "final system plan" and to "improve" the railroad properties it holds. Although the statute insists that ConRail is a "for-profit" corporation that is not an instrumentality of the Federal government, it is not likely to be either profitable or independent of government control. The prognosis is for ever-greater Federal subsidies to the bankrupt railroads, and as long as more than half of ConRail's debts remain owed to or guaranteed by the U.S. government, at least 7 (and potentially 8) of the Corporation's 15-member board of directors must be Presidential appointees. Such is the prevailing notion of "for-profit" nongovernmental economic activity. It is, however, comforting to note that, like the U.S. Railway Association, ConRail will see to it that "adequate and efficient rail services" are maintained.

In addition to the enormous sums expended through the Railway Association, the Rail Reorganization Act authorizes a broad program of subsidies to be administered by the Secretary of Transportation. The Act authorizes loans as well as direct grants (appealingly called "rail service continuation subsidies") to states or to local or regional transportation authorities. These subsidies are not limited to railroads preserved under the final system plan, but also may be channeled into certain state-supported railroads and railroads whose abandonment is authorized by the ICC. All the incentives established by the Act thus encourage the preservation of local rail service that, while appealing to a few direct beneficiaries, is economically inefficient and extremely costly to taxpayers forced to finance the venture.

Thus it is that the government has taken over the bankrupt railroads of the Northeast and Midwest, compelling taxpayers to finance economic activity that paternalistic government officials deem "essential." Still maintaining characteristic fascist deference to the private enterprise it now controls, the government in the Regional Rail Reorganization Act again reveals its current unprecedented willingness to intervene actively when frustrated in indirect efforts to manipulate the economy.

All of this recent legislation represents attempts by lawmakers in a fascist economic system to tie up loose ends, consolidating existing economic power and acquiring authority previously beyond the government's reach. It is mute testimony to the inadequacy of public knowledge of congressional machinations and their economic consequences that these latest legislative intrusions have not provoked massive resistance to the government's increasingly cavalier disregard for citizens' economic freedom, civil liberty, and material well-being.

Ms. Twight, who received her J.D. from the University of Washington School of Law, is a Seattle attorney and a lecturer in the School of Business Administration at the University of Washington. She is the author of America's Emerging Fascist Economy (Arlington House, 1975), from which this article is excerpted. Copyright © 1975 by Charlotte Twight. An earlier version of this article appeared as Chapter 10 of America's Emerging Fascist Economy (New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1975). Used with permission.