ABSTRACT
For more than fifty years the influential thinkers of the western world have been deeply critical of the existing social order. The real question is why they turned away from liberalism and embraced collectivism as a method of ordering affairs and of realizing men's hopes. The liberals turned to writing metaphysical treatises on the assumption that laissez-faire is a principle of public policy. Not only did their social science fail them as a guide to public policy because of their preoccupation with the false problem of laissez-faire; but they fell into a complementary fallacy which was equally destructive to the development of liberal science. In separating the production of wealth from the distribution of wealth, Ricardo thought he was eliminating from economic science those things about which "no law can be laid down" and was directing it to the field where "a tolerably correct one can be laid down respecting proportions".
