Miketz: The Road to Serfdom

Parshat Miketz, which nearly always falls on Chanuka, the festival of religious freedom, also powerfully describes the fragility of economic and political freedom. 

Yosef, the newly appointed Prime Minister of Egypt, institutes a series of severe political and economic changes in response to the looming crisis of famine--higher taxes, export restrictions, and governmental regulation of internal agricultural commerce (cf. R. Hirsch on Gen. 41:48).  Further, when the crisis finally struck, the stores of grain were sold back to the people, enriching Pharaoh (Gen. 41:56); eventually, the people were forced to sell themselves into servitude to Pharaoh to survive (Gen. 47:25).

Now all of this can certainly be understood as the necessary response of government to an existential national crisis.  However, the key to understanding the full import of this story lies in next week's parsha, Vayigash, where it states (Gen. 47:26): And Yosef established a one-fifth fee on all Egypt's land as law unto this day; only the priests' land was not taken by Pharaoh.  The famine was over, the crisis successfully navigated, the country (and government) saved.  Yet the regulation and governmental machinery developed during the response to the crisis remained. The response of government to an existential environmental crisis was to ultimately enslave the people even as it saved their lives.

We are shown, thus, the risk to political freedom that loss of economic freedom ultimately entails. This can be contrasted with the ideal described by the prophets of each man under his own vine and fig tree, living in economic and political freedom.

The Torah warns in Parshat Miketz of one possible avenue for man's natural liberty to be taken from him without a fight--the route of national crisis.  The midrash (Yalkut Shimoni) in Parshat Shemot describes another road to serfdom, that of good intentions.  The midrash describes how Pharaoh got the Jews to willingly become his slaves--he appealed to their sense of civic pride, their desire to help society.  Pharaoh himself started digging and laying bricks, so of course the Jews rushed to help with the work.  Once this became the norm, however, that norm was enforced with increasingly harsh discipline.

The Torah warns us, therefore, of two paths that the statist may seek to lead us down the road to serfdom - the Road of National Crisis and the Road of Good Intentions.  While certain measures may be necessary in the short term, we must always be wary of what governmental powers we may thereby accept for the long term.