One of the things that gave me reassurance about the likely development of Free to Choose
was the quality and character of the people who were intimately involved in bringing it
to birth. Starting with Bob Chitester, who was the originating idea, who originated the
idea and was a driving force behind it throughout. But going on, especially at this stage to
Mike Latham, who was the director, who seemed to be ideologically very compatible and to
have a genius for figuring out ways to develop those ideas. Going on the people at Video
Arts, like Antony Jay and the others. So that I don't think that I ever had any doubts that
what would come out would be what my personal view was. And would not be in anyway distorted
by the people who were doing it. Program five of the series, Created Equal,
seems to be separated in a sense from the rest in terms of the issue that it deals with.
What led you to include that?
I don't know. I suppose that fact that the
major argument presented by people who are opposed to capitalism and the free markets
is that it produces inequality, and that egalitarianism is the alternative belief, the alternative
set of values that drives most people on the left. So that to leave it out would have been
not to face up to the major issue that we are facing. I don't see how you could have
done a program like this without dealing with the problem of equality.
I certainly agree. Now however, that program is different from
the rest in a very important sense. That in the main it rests on appealing to principles
and ideology and not to facts. There is no evidence- no attempt, if I remember in that
program to introduce any factual data on what's happened to equality, what hasn't happened
to equality. The argument is almost entirely philosophical, logical and ethical.
Yes that's true. Was the series successful? Oh, I think the series was enormously successful.
It was successful in the sense that in 1980, when it first appeared, it had what was a
very large audience for PBS. We got thousands and thousands of letters in response of it,
and the number of positive letters outnumbered the number of negative letters by oh, ten
to one, twenty to one I no longer remember how. We still have, of course, all of those
letters in our archives. And I had up, 'til that time, I had always followed the practice
of trying to answer personal letters with a personal letter, but I couldn't do it. And
so I sent out a form letter to everybody explaining that I couldn't do it. Beyond the immediate
thing, I think it undoubtedly played a positive role in the presidential campaign that year.
That was the year in which Reagan was running for president, although he won handily at
the early stages of the year it did not look that way at all. He was really I think in the minority.
So I think it contributed to that. But much more important from a longer run point of view-
I cannot tell you how many people have come up to me in the course of
the years since then, or written letters to me saying that Free to Choose was what changed
their views about the appropriate social organization of the economy. It must be in the hundreds.
The Free to Choose videos have been shown in classes and have been used in many university
courses, have served as a source of development. It still goes on today. There's no doubt about
it. I just, within the last week, got a manuscript from somebody who had been stimulated to write
the manuscript by Free to Choose. So I think there's no question it had a very significant
influence- and not only in this country. Free to Choose was shown in Asia in Hong Kong,
in Singapore. When we were in China in 1980, this was within of a few months after Free
to Choose had appeared on TV and had been replayed in Hong Kong, I was recognized more
in the hotel lobbies and so on by people who would come up to me from Hong Kong or Singapore,
out of mainland China- Chinese who would recognize me because of that program. Similarly the
program has been shown in every country in Europe except France there was a real attempt
made by some industrialists to get it shown in France. But the French television was very
ideological and absolutely refused to show it. But it was shown in Britain in Italy,
in Sweden, in Norway- it was shown in well, you name it- you can find it, Israel, it's
very hard to find a country where it was not shown. In countries behind the Iron Curtain
at that time, places like Poland- even there where it wasn't shown, the book, there were
underground translations of the book that were circulating, so I feel that no question
whatsoever that it had a very significant influence. And still continues to do so.
Why did you do it? Why, what motivated you? I really can't answer that question. The opportunity
arose, I was asked to do it and I suppose I enjoyed doing it. I shouldn't say I suppose-
I did enjoy doing it. Ah obviously you got reinforcements reactions
from people you were talking to. Obviously, the reaction of the groups I talked
to was very positive. It was a time, of course, as you realize when there was a lot of discussion
and controversy about these matters among students. It was mostly in a collectivist
direction but the interesting thing was, that's where I got involved really, was that the
aims were individualistic while the means proposed were socialist. And so, I would repeatedly,
again and again, before one of these groups say you and I have exactly the same objectives,
but I know how to achieve them, and you don't. And that was sort of the theme of many of
the talks I gave to many such groups.