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To Alter Or To AbolishChapter 33Socialism and DemocracyWritten by Darrell Anderson. Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority . . . There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters. Often attributed to Daniel Webster Just as capitalism is based upon the root word capital, socialism is based upon the root word social. Humans recognize their lack of self-sufficiency and therefore necessarily depend upon one another for survival.[1] By nature, production is necessarily a social activity and exchange is a means through which consumption is fulfilled. Therefore, a straightforward definition of socialism is a process of mutual production and subsequent exchange. Like the straightforward meaning of capitalism, there is nothing antagonistic about the definition. The definition is neutral and apolitical. Expanding upon that concept, socialism as a philosophy means a voluntary communal ownership of various processes of production,[2] primarily land and some forms of capital. Pure socialism embraces voluntary communal ownership of such property and excludes the possibility of creating title through political privilege. Socialism has precursive roots to Old Testament and Greek philosophy times.[3] Survival of all members of the tribe or community depended greatly upon the individual foregoing specific individual desires for the benefit of everybody involved. Philosophical socialism still exists today — commonly known as the family. Generally, socialists do not think primarily in terms of property but usufruct. Usufruct is a concept of possessing rights or standing to use and enjoy certain resources without necessarily possessing title to those resources. Usufruct is commonly observed in families, where children are granted access to use and enjoy many of the resources possessed and titled in their parents’ name. Therefore, socialists often like to distinguish between possessions and private property. Within the philosophy of socialism, the former is recognized by what is created directly from production and exchange while the latter is created through legal and political systems.[4] The argument is straightforward in that there are limits to the usefulness of the concept of property. The concept of property exists to help avoid conflict, but when the concept is manipulated to create unnatural advantages and privileges, then the concept has lost meaning and social value. Once the concept of property is manipulated to create a social system of privilege, those who control that process benefit while everybody else suffers. Commonly needed resources no longer are easily available to all. The concept of property then becomes a means for coercively redirecting energy flows and becomes an avenue for slavery. Because humans are not self-sufficient, this privileged status denies the fundamental belief that every human possesses a right to survive and pursue happiness. The concepts of free association and voluntary exchange become meaningless. The goal of 19th century socialists was emancipating people from domination and exploitation, freeing people from the uncertainty and fear of the economic realm, restoring human dignity as a primary social goal, and creating a new sense of unity among humans and between humans and nature.[5] Socialism then, at the heart, is nothing more than a voluntary cooperative method of managing the means of production, rather than controlling production to the point of total exclusion.[6] Philosophical socialism has been known to succeed, but only on a small scale. Only on a small scale can participants maintain continuity in beliefs, common purpose, and goals.[7] As any group grows in size, more opinions appear and that natural process tends to oppose socialism because consensus opinion becomes challenging. As that group grows the challenge of limited knowledge magnifies. Small group socialism succeeds only through free association and voluntary exchange. Just as no individual today is self-sufficient, so too are small groups of people dependent upon the production of others. The small group maintains incentive to produce in order to exchange with other groups. In practice, however, the philosophy of socialism has been politicized as much as capitalism. Just as political capitalism today creates a system of privilege preventing free association and voluntary exchange, political socialism violates those same principles by coercing collective associations.[8] Political or state socialism is an institutionalized policy of redistributing wealth away from user-owners.[9] Political socialism renders meaningless the concepts of self and voluntary cooperative production. Like politicized capitalism, politicized socialism is statism. Politicized socialism denies the concepts of self, free association and voluntary exchange, and usufruct. As with politicized capitalism, with politicized socialism an elite minority of people benefit at the expense of the entire community. Democracy is a word often heard in today’s political discussions. The word typically is used to describe the concept of a collective social compact versus dictatorships and tyranny. The concept of democracy is built upon the concept that all people are created equal and that foundation is translated to mean an equal voice in mutually shared affairs. However, the concept of being created equal means only that every human has an equal right to survive and pursue happiness. The concept of property helps promote and protect the concept of equal survival. When democracy becomes a philosophy the concept often is distorted into meaning contrived “equal” opportunities or coerced “equal” results, and like political capitalism or political socialism, privilege is elevated above fundamental rights. Like capitalism and socialism, democracy is a process.[10] Theoretically, democracy is a process where people as a whole determine their own fate.[11] Democracy is sometimes defined as majority rule. This is especially true when individuals are deprived of liberty of action or resources through “a majority vote.” That process, however, is merely a majority of people realizing they can coercively transfer wealth from a minority — under the color of law — through “voting.” Proponents of political democracy embrace the concept of property ownership, but reject the idea that titles are absolute. Such boundaries can be voted out of existence by an alleged majority. Yet, without protecting property titles, political democracy, the “fraternal twin of [political] communism,”[12] “becomes an advanced auction of stolen goods.”[13] People trade their bullets for ballots and begin plundering one another.[14] Ballots are not necessarily more peaceful or acceptable than bullets, and often are just as violent as bullets because under the color of law, the threat of violence exists. Political democracy is best described as mob rule,[15] tyranny of the majority, or collective dictatorship. Or, in more light-hearted terms, political democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. Political democracy is theft by proxy. Today, voting schemes are conducted in secret, such that individual participants need not reveal how they choose to participate in the coerced wealth redistribution scheme, thereby escaping accountability. Secret ballots tend to create secret societies.[16] Secret ballots imply there is no meaningful meeting of the minds. Even if 100 percent of a population vote and those results are published, such numbers provide only some idea about the distribution of desire but reveal little about the intensity of that desire. When property titles are involved, dissenting voters might be willing to use violence to prohibit certain results. Voting always is a social or political privilege, not a right. A “civil right” is a group privilege and that privilege is granted by satisfying certain arbitrarily specified requirements. Voting never is an inalienable individual right — babies and convicted felons don’t vote.[17] Worse, most political voting today does not include a true majority of people, instead taking place with only a minority of “qualified” voters participating. Such schemes pervert the definition of the word democracy because through the threat of violence, a minority of people force the majority into transfer schemes they do not endorse. The concept of voluntary exchange by explicit consent is voided, as are the concepts of self and property. The concepts of social systems and mutual survival teach that participants do have a voice in how a specific society functions. Outside the philosophy of statism, the process of democracy functions well. Many societies, associations, and clubs operate using some form of democracy. However, the reason democracy succeeds in such environments is there are knowable boundaries and limits to various human actions.[18] A more critical difference is that every individual participating in those non-political associations has voluntarily provided consent to be bound by the rules of that specific society. Additionally, people are at liberty to voluntarily stop participating in those groups. Rarely are fundamental property rights or wealth at stake as with the political democracy practiced through statism. Majority consent is not the same as majority rule. The latter is a problem that many early Americans understood well.[19] Democracy does succeed but only when explicit consent is recognized and honored. More importantly, democracy succeeds only when rights are not being usurped under the color of law. Try to imagine in a small group of people where one individual attempts and succeeds in voting away the rights of another — and both individuals know each other. Snowballs have a better chance of surviving July in the Sahara desert. Consider how easy the process becomes when the size of the group grows and participants no longer know each other. Then add the insult of secret ballots — where nobody knows who is stealing from whom. Political democracy is statism — the political means of sustaining energy flows. Without coercive powers, coordinating consensus opinion for some group decisions usually requires much persuasive effort. However, when people know they do not have to fear a loss of property or wealth, they are more likely to participate and contribute to a democratic process — the reciprocity principle at play. James Madison understood this fatal flaw of political democracies:[20] From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions. Democratic-socialism is merely a merger of the two political philosophies. Like democracy, democratic-socialism accepts the concept of property and that property may be titled privately. However, political democratic-socialism rejects that such possession is exclusive. Political democratic-socialism believes some of the proceeds derived from production may be coercively confiscated to support various aspects of social systems, such as education, traffic and communication systems, central banking, police, and courts.[21] That redistribution is only a minimal list, and may be expanded as a majority of the people of that society so determine. Some individuals argue that what is witnessed today in America is not socialism or democracy but fascism. However, democratic-socialist-fascist politicized capitalism is probably the better fitting term. The American political and economic system contains elements of all statist philosophies and drawing a distinction is impossible. All such systems ultimately deny fundamental property rights, including the cornerstone of self. What should be obvious is the philosophy of political privilege rules the day, not free association and voluntary exchange. All such coercive political systems are designed to overrule customary foundational principles that determine how wealth is used and distributed. These worldviews are about the forced sharing and transfer of wealth and property — under color of law — from one class of people to another. All such systems coerce all people into permanent redistributive labor — slavery. Permanent slavery defies the basic foundations of human existence — to survive as efficiently and freely as possible. All such systems violate the fundamental principle that all people are creatures of free will and free to pursue their happiness. Slavery is captured labor and an attempt to create virtual perpetual motion. Coerced redistribution always fails because such systems attempt to create a one-size-fits-all definition of happiness — an impossibility. Conflict occurs the moment anybody tries to define happiness for others, and individual survival thereafter will begin to supercede a desire for mutual survival. Explicit consent is denied and enslavement begins — denying the concept of self. The ability to control resources is denied and thus, the concept of the right to survival is denied. Political capitalism, political socialism, and political democracy all are nothing more than philosophical systems of privilege, monopoly, and control. At one end of the spectrum the strong try to exploit the weak, and at the other end the weak try to exploit the strong.[22] Imperialism is nothing more than a desire to promote those philosophies globally. Such systems are collective desires to plunder and control others — a perversion of self-interest into greed. Monopolies and imperialism are natural outgrowths of greed — the willingness to usurp property boundaries to satisfy self-interests. At the core of this distortion of self-interest into greed is industrialization. Industrialization is a process. This distortion is not a result of any grand conspiracy, but merely the result of human interaction and social processes. No modern social system has escaped the effects of industrialization. Industrialization requires standardization of thinking and customs, specialization in skills and knowledge, coordination of efforts and energy flows, a concentration and monopoly of energy flows, high rates of efficiency and maximization, and a tremendous amount of centralization.[23] The entire industrialization process created a dramatic wedge between producing and consuming mentalities. As a producer, people try to maximize profit and gain in order to increase future exchange power. As a consumer, to prolong exchange power, people try to obtain as much as possible with as little effort as possible. The tension between the two desires often is traumatic. The entire 19th and 20th century witnessed the bloody effects of political capitalism, political socialism, massive industrialization, and attempting to “make the world safe for democracy.” Although enormously benefiting humans materially, industrialization was at the core of those upheavals. Yet, do not be led astray. Industrialization was not the cause of the turmoil, but merely provided the means through which political capitalism, political socialism, and political democracy could flourish. In the 19th century the industrial depression was a relatively new phenomenon in human history. Although hunger and devastation were possible by natural causes, depressions (and recessions) previously were unknown in a human world where people lived in self-sufficient communities and at subsistence levels. What changed to introduce that phenomenon after the Industrial Age was in full throttle? What caused those notorious booms and busts despite tremendous material progress? Modern industrialization became possible only through the advent of modern banking. That the rise of modern industrialization coincides with the rise of modern banking is no coincidence. Through the process of industrialization, and primarily through the process of capitalization through modern banking, many people sought and received political privileges that increased social disorder. As the Industrial Age unfolded and seemingly replaced the feudal social system, the serfs were freed but land titles remained in the hands of the politically privileged. Land ownership did not change. The same politically privileged class controlled all the land. As the land owners moved their desires and energies into industrialism, they no longer had any large scale need for the serfs and kicked the serfs off their land. The serfs theoretically were free but had no place to go and had no means of bootstrapping themselves in the Industrial Age because they owned no land, possessed no meaningful assets or capital, and had no access to bankers. People were willing to work, but the common person was out of the loop. The former serfs had little choice but to “work for the man” and pay rent to landlords. This lack of access was the basis for the argument that the working class (proletariat) had no access to the means of production and had no choice but to sell themselves to the title holders of land and capital. That the land was originally titled solely through political privilege provided 19th century philosophers standing in their arguments. The early 19th century socialists did not oppose material progress, they opposed the manner in which industrialism operated, which primarily was through political privilege. The rise of 19th century philosophical socialism primarily was a response to modern industrialization.[24] All statist political systems create the same outcome — shifting from a balance between production and consumption to emphasizing consumption without production — shifting from production to non-production. Consuming without production is the political means of survival. People produce only because they consume. All people try to produce as reasonably efficient as possible. Thus, any social system allowing consumption without production is by far a more efficient model of sustaining energy flows. Therefore, as such philosophical systems forcibly redistribute wealth through a society, people realize that consumption becomes easier not necessarily through improved and more efficient production, but by using the political means to sustain energy flows.[25] People begin exploiting one another — coercively redistributing energy flows — not as producers but as consumers. Many individuals believe only producers (those who control the means of production) are capable of exploitation. However, because all modern political systems provide avenues to forcibly redistribute wealth, people exploit others only through their desire for consumption. All of these political philosophies are systems, and like all systems possess unique boundaries, elements, and relational rules. Economic capitalism knows no political interference. Therefore, neither producer nor consumer can exploit the other because there always is only voluntary exchange. Political capitalism, however, allows for modifying the principles of free association and voluntary exchange under the color of law. People manipulate production processes only to maximize their own consumption and to increase personal exchange power. The problem is not producers exploiting consumers, but consumers exploiting consumers through political processes. Production is only a means to an end. The end is always consuming. The battle never has been producers versus consumers or rich versus poor, but always consumers versus consumers. This is necessarily so because life is primarily a process of sustaining energy flows. Sustaining energy flows is primarily a consumptive act, not productive. Production is merely a means that enables consumption. The great debate about socialism is caused by confusing socialism with statism. Philosophical socialism is a voluntary system recognizing no political interference. The goal of philosophical socialism is to create an environment where coercion disappears and people treat each other as “comrade, friend, and brother.”[26] The same distortion occurs in political socialism. Because some resources are centrally manipulated to benefit a few people, some consumers within those environments seek ways to coercively require other consumers produce more. The great debate about democracy is caused by confusing equality with the attempt to popularize and equalize virtual perpetual motion through voting. People try to out-consume one another through voting to coercively redistribute wealth while trying to avoid or minimize production. The concept of government is a natural outgrowth of all social systems. Theoretically, the concept of politics is merely an effort of persuading others to agree, but in modern practice is a desire to enslave people and avoid direct labor. Politics is a striving to share power or to influence the redirection of power.[27] In all such systems people learn to become politicians first, and producers and consumers second.[28] Through such philosophies coerced wealth redistribution is not only allowed but encouraged, and indicates that people are merely trying to create virtual perpetual motion machines to get something for nothing; and they do this by capturing the labor of other people — enslavement. Adversarial raw acquisition, that is, “might makes right,” rules the day. Finis. Next: Chapter 34 — Legal Plunder Endnotes [1] Proudhon, What is Property?, pp. 100–101. [2] Fried and Sanders, Socialist Thought, p. 127. [3] Fried and Sanders, Socialist Thought, p. 3. [4] Blanqui, Louis Auguste, “The Man Who Makes The Soup Should Get To Eat It,” Socialist Thought, pp. 193–195. [5] Fromm, The Sane Society, p. 267. [6] Webb, Sidney, “English Progress Toward Social Democracy,” Socialist Thought, p. 390. [7] Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom, p. 183. [8] Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, p. 37. [9] Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, p. 146. [10] Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions, p. 119. [11] Fromm, The Sane Society, p. 184. [12] Davidson and Rees-Mogg, The Sovereign Individual, p. 328–330. [13] Davidson and Rees-Mogg, The Sovereign Individual, p. 141, citing H.L. Mencken. [14] Spooner, The Lysander Spooner Reader, “No Treason No. II,” p. 67. [15] Tannehills, The Market for Liberty, p. 35. [16] Spooner, The Lysander Spooner Reader, “No Treason VI,” p. 97. [17] Barnard, Draining the Swamp, p. 84. [18] Spencer, “The Great Political Superstition,” The Man Versus The State, pp. 129–135. [19] For example, The Federalist Papers, No. 51; Calhoun, A Disquisition on Government. [20] The Federalist Papers, No. 10. [21] Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, p. 45. [22] Proudhon, What is Property?, p. 180. [23] Toffler, The Third Wave, pp. 46–50. [24] Fried and Sanders, Socialist Thought, p. 3. [25] Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, p. 51. [26] Berman, Law and Revolution, p. 33. [27] Weber, Essays in Sociology, p. 78. [28] Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, p. 55. |
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