Socialism,
the problem
There are
many issues with Marxist-Socialism and I will not go into all of them. The
great quote by Margaret Thatcher, “The problem with Socialism is that at some
point we run out of other people’s money” while poignant is symptomatic of
deeper issues.
The real
problem is much more fundamental. The human species operates primarily based on
our DNA’s ability to determine what makes people look like, think, act, and
function the way we do. If you go back to the very beginnings of civilization
you will notice that, at some point humans started to live in larger groups,
primarily out of convenience and efficiency.
Coinciding
with this, humans gave up hunting and gathering for the efficiency of farming
and manufacturing. During those early times, one person began to make weapons
or grow barley, which they made mildly alcoholic barley water, or whatever.
Others saw these more functional items and said, “I see you have a cool knife, I’d
like one of those knives for myself.” They turned to the guy who made the
better knife and said, “I’ll give you something of value in exchange for one of
those knives.” Therefore, the market place was born. That is the beginning of
Capitalism. It was also the beginning of civilization.
The
marketplace is deeply embedded in our psyche, in our culture, and in our DNA.
It forms the basis of human interaction. No organization needs to encourage
people to exchange things of value in order to satisfy their needs, wants, and
desires. It happens naturally.
Socialism
refuses to acknowledge or recognize this basic aspect of human nature.
Socialists cannot bring themselves to believe that the marketplace responding
to the needs, wants, and desires of human beings is that unique mechanism that has
shaped all human interaction.
The
marketplace created civilization. It created the orderly and
civil interaction between people seeking to satisfy deep needs and desires
through the exchange of products and services for items or tokens of similar
value.
Out of the
marketplace came the very best of human ingenuity. Every innovation in every
area of life emerged as a result of the marketplace fostering creativity,
ingenuity, and innovation. If you prevent the marketplace from functioning,
innovation, creativity, and ingenuity will cease. We only need to look at
Socialist countries where the State owns a key industry and see how inefficient
it is.
By not grasping
the idea that the market is a basic component of human nature Socialism starts
out on the wrong foot. By completely misunderstanding human nature it is
impossible for Socialism to ever build a successful pattern for human activity.
Socialism postulates that human beings are not essentially market driven but
are instead motivated by a spirit of cooperation and a desire to subjugate
individual needs and desires to the group. Socialism says that human beings
have a natural propensity to satisfy needs and desires of others based on the
inherent goodness and altruism of humans towards one another. This is a false
premise.
Socialism
contends that humans are motivated by a desire to share equally with one
another and are inclined to submit to a system that regulates that egalitarian
sharing. Socialists further believe that social factors and the inherent evils
of the marketplace have conspired to discourage us from naturally migrating to
that egalitarian, altruistic, and collective way of thinking. They believe that
the marketplace is responsible for all of civilizations evils, everything from
wars, religions, even epidemics can ultimately be traced back to human
infatuation with the marketplace.
Socialists
often talk about creating a level playing
field. What they mean by this is finding the lowest common denominator of
human needs and wants and requiring everyone to play (function) at that level.
Trying to create greater wealth or accumulate more than others is
counterproductive. It will only lead to strife and envy.
When one
person accumulates greater wealth those who don’t have as much (the downtrodden),
Socialist contend that the downtrodden should be given some of what the wealthy
person has accumulated. This is called wealth re-distribution. Socialists
believe that this wealth re-distribution is good for the society.
The reality
is that it is giving into a base human trait; envy. Envy leads to jealousy and
eventually to violence. If the wealthy won’t willingly part with their wealth
the downtrodden masses must take it forcefully. Ill-gotten gain is hollow.
Taking something from someone else, someone who has worked hard to get it is a
form of theft. The idea of taking something you didn’t work for from someone
who did violates the very foundation of human nature and jeopardizes the
ultimate success of civilization. Collective sanctioned thievery is the
hallmark of Socialism.
In reality
the marketplace naturally creates an opportunity for anyone to accumulate
wealth for themselves. The purpose of wealth is not to beat the downtrodden but
to satisfy our needs, wants, and desires. Capitalism is designed to create
wealth for the greatest number of people. This is real common good, the ability
to satisfy needs, wants, and desires for the greatest number of people.
Socialists
reject this idea. They see wealth opportunity as an evil. It must be expunged
from the minds of human beings. Socialists contend that people must be
“encouraged” to abandon the marketplace through social engineering. Socialist institutional
systems must arise that will generate this new and better cultural norm.
Schools, the family, the government all must cooperate to instill this new way
of thinking into the hearts and minds of citizens. This economic philosophy is
called State-ism or centralized
economic planning.
The State represents the highest order. The
State is managed for the good of us all by experts. These experts are
economically enlightened and are highly intelligent. This group of specialized
ruling elite is called an oligarchy.
The concepts
of individual liberty and personal freedom are viewed as impediments to Statist
approach. Socialists contend that individual liberties and personal freedoms
must always be subjugated to the more enlightened centralized system and
Socialist policies of the oligarchy.
When people
object to the centralized planning of the oligarchy and pursue the marketplace
they must be restrained and reconditioned until they see the light. Eventually
everyone will relinquish their desire for individual freedom and personal
liberty and all the people will live happily together, sharing, cooperating,
and willingly submitting to the State.
Do you see
the difference? Humans are naturally
market focused but must be coerced to
be Socialists. Socialism never happens naturally. There is no genetic pre-disposition
to desire Socialism.
Whenever you
try to force someone to do that which they aren’t naturally inclined to do you
run into problems. That is why Marxist-Socialism and Communism have never
succeeded. It is why the various Utopian communities throughout the world
always fail. The idea of giving up personal freedom and individual liberty for
the so-called common good can never
succeed. That’s because there is no such thing as the common good. The common good always degenerates into the common bad.
The founding
fathers referred to The Common Good
in their writings as the purpose of Government. Most of the founding fathers
understood that liberty and government don’t always go hand in hand. However,
the Government must protect the people from attacks both domestic and foreign.
The government exists to provide a stable platform for the nation to function.
They
referred to this stability as the common good. The founding fathers envisioned
the least government possible to keep the nation stable and operational. That
is why they wrote the Tenth amendment, powers not specifically stated in the
Constitution go to the states. They intended for the greatest power and
authority to be held and exercised by the individual citizens. The greatest
governmental power was to be held by the smallest and most localized
governmental institution, that being town councils and local, democratically
elected officials.
Beyond that,
the next level up of governmental entity was to be held by the individual
states. Some try to extrapolate Stat-ism
from a very broad definition of the common good but that was never the
intention of the founding fathers. Remember, they had just emerged from the
evils of an oppressive government so they wanted to create something as far
away from that as possible.
When a
political or economic system can only be widely adopted at the point of a gun
you know the system is inherently wrong. That is the case with Marxit-Socialism.
It sounds good, it sounds like it should work and make the world better but
when you try to institute it human nature gets in the way.
Humans are
so deeply motivated by the desire to be free and participate in the market that
they naturally resist Socialism’s best (or worst) efforts. Humans always go
back to what they do best, freely exchanging goods and services for items of
similar value.
Economists
refer to that idea as Capitalism, the
free and equitable exchange of goods and services for capital. As people began
to accumulate capital their lives changed dramatically. Capitalism is the
single greatest social welfare program in the history of the world. More people
have been delivered from poverty through Capitalism and a free-market than any
other social invention. All the well - intentioned government programs designed
to eradicate poverty and create upward mobility pale in comparison to the
positive impact of capitalism.
