PDA

View Full Version : The Supreme Issue: The Individual Versus the State




disorderlyvision
03-12-2010, 01:17 PM
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-supreme-issue-the-individual-versus-the-state/


May 1959 • Volume: 9 • Issue: 5

Mr. Chamberlin is author of the definitive two-volume history of the Russian Revolution and numerous other books and articles on world affairs.

Morally, politically, and economi*cally, the supreme issue of the twentieth century is whether the State is to be the master or the servant of its individual citizens. Liberty is integral. One form of freedom begets another, just as tyranny in one field breeds tyranny in others.

It is no accident that freedom of speech usually goes hand in hand with freedom of trade. And those who try to set “human rights” against “property rights” are committing a gross error. It is where there is no security for property that such human rights as freedom of speech and press and guaranties against arbitrary arrest, execution, and slave labor are most notably absent.

When the State goes beyond its proper functions of maintaining law and order at home and providing protection against foreign ag*gression, and starts to assume the role of a universal provider and regulator, it never knows when to stop. One arrogation of power leads to another, and the planned economy quickly develops into the totalitarian State.

It has been and still is fashion*able among the theorists of col*lectivism, whether of the com*munist or fascist type, to sneer at liberty and represent freedom as a luxury which only a rich society can afford. But this is contrary to all the teachings of experience, from early historical times to the present day. There was nothing inherently wealthy about the rough pioneer life of early Americans. Americans were not able to “afford” freedom be*cause they were rich. They be*came relatively prosperous because they were free, because their in*stitutions—at least, until the high-tax Welfare State became the rule at national and state levels—gave maximum scope for the natural human instinct of self-enrichment.

A Century of Progress

A striking proof of the prag*matic value of freedom is the record of the century that elapsed between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the outbreak of World War I. This was a century when political and economic liberalism (in the old-fashioned sense of that much abused word) marched hand-in-hand. The old fetters which absolute monarchy and feudalism placed on human initia*tive and enterprise were broken entirely in some countries and very much loosened in others.

And the material results were impressive. There was not a coun*try in the Western world where people were not better fed, better clothed, better schooled, better cared for medically in 1914 than they had been in 1814. This rising standard of living accompanied a very considerable growth of popu*lation. The three freedoms of movement that were characteris*tic of the nineteenth century—freedom for men, goods, and capi*tal to cross frontiers with mini*mum hindrance—did much to re*lieve population pressure and to assure the progress of undeveloped parts of the world.

Political institutions varied from country to country. But the trend everywhere was toward more popular participation and consent in the management of public affairs. There were vicissitudes and setbacks, and the swift de*velopment of the industrial system created new social problems, along with a vast increase in the wealth of nations. The tragic shots at Serajevo ushered in a new war, bigger and more terrible than those unleashed by the plebeian dictator who harnessed to his war chariot the energies released by the French Revolution; but by and large, the century following the fall of Napoleon was the most pro*gressive in human history.

The progress was evenly dis*tributed all along the line: more people’s participation in govern*ment, better assurance of basic human rights (this century wit*nessed the end of slavery in America, of serfdom in Russia), a much wider spread in education without deterioration in quality, and a tremendous display of crea*tive vitality in literature and music.

The Cross of War

World War I placed a bloody cross on the dream of perpetual progress which many in the United States and Europe had shared during the prosperous and rela*tively peaceful century that preceded 1914. (One could list many wars during the nineteenth cen*tury; but the total destruction of life and property during these was almost negligible compared with the carnage and destruction that went on from 1914 until 1918.)

Apart from the direct toll in human lives, the psychological effect of World War I was to smash old political and economic patterns to such a degree as to let down the dykes before the fanatic, the demagogue, the adventurer. It unloosed a revolt against liberty which took two forms. There was the outright dictatorship, most formidably developed in the Soviet Union. And in Nazi Germany, a dictator outlawed all political par*ties except one composed of his own followers, suppressed every voice of dissent, made use of the impact of unlimited propaganda and of the terror of an all-power*ful political police, and took over all responsibility for the well*being of his country.

The Age of the Welfare State

In countries with an older and stronger tradition of political liberty, representative institutions, and civil rights, this revolt took a different and subtler form in the creation of the so-called Wel*fare State. As this has developed in America and other Western countries, it has gone far beyond the provision of care for the in*digent and unfortunate. The State has undertaken functions for which it is inherently unsuited, such as protecting a vast variety of individuals and groups against the consequences of their own bad judgment or bad fortune.

Gone are the days when sturdy Grover Cleveland—rejecting a proposal to provide government compensation for farmers whose crops had been damaged by hail—remarked, in substance, that while the people should support the gov*ernment, the government should not support the people. Now, it is no exaggeration to say that gov*ernments in many fields do under*take to support the people, or certain groups of the people. This task is very expensive, requiring taxation on a scale that formerly would have been considered fan*tastically impossible. It also neces*sitates far-reaching controls. One is reminded of Alexis de Tocque*ville’s “immense and tutelary power, “which would rob the human race of all initiative and self-reliance, which would labor for their happiness, but choose to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness, which would “spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living."

In this age of the Welfare State the word liberalism has been distorted out of any recognizable similarity to the ideals of its Founding Fathers. The British Liberal Party, which gave Eng*land so many Prime Ministers be*fore World War I, has shrunk to a tiny remnant, no longer able to hold the balance between Laborites and Conservatives, even after a close election. And even this tiny remnant cannot find a clear solid basis of agreement, some members looking back a little wistfully to the days when liberalism was the creed of economic individualism and others following the new gods of state planning.

In the United States the good ship liberalism has suffered an even sadder fate. It has been boarded and captured by a pirate crew of state interventionists and near-socialists whose two favorite remedies are more state action and more public spending. No one who sympathizes heartily with old-fashioned liberalism could now call himself a liberal in America without inviting the gravest mis*understanding as to what he really believes in.

The “Soviet Experiment"

The Soviet Union, where the combination of political dictator*ship and economic collectivism has prevailed consistently despite minor shifts in tactics and policy, has been a false beacon light to leftwingers in America and West*ern Europe ever since it was established in November 1917. First, there was the view, sup*ported by the tall tales of return*ing conducted visitors and delega*tions, that Russia had achieved social advances beyond those of the leading Western countries. This despite the fact that prerevolu*tionary Russia was an economi*cally retarded country and that humanitarianism was not the characteristic of the Soviet com*munist leaders.

Gradually the gigantic crimes of Stalinism, the starving of millions of peasants, the slave labor camps, the undiscriminating purges that took the lives of many veteran communists, became better known. Stalin’s pact with Hitler was the final psychological blow to many radicals who had sympathized with the “Soviet experiment.” The color of the beacon light has changed, although it remains false.

Now, especially since the Soviet rulers tried to take the minds of their subjects off the drab and dreary lives which they lead on earth by hurling huge projectiles into the sky, there has been a widespread campaign to frighten us into believing that the Russians will catch us if we don’t watch out and that we must force our rate of industrial growth higher by all possible means, including reck*less inflationary spending. What is not realized is that Khrushchev, when he boasts of overtaking America by 1970, or any other spe*cific date, is playing an entirely de*ceptive numbers game.

Statistical vs. Physical Output

What Khrushchev and the gloom-and-doom American com*mentators who take him seriously are doing is to compare the growth rates of full-blown, highly devel*oped United States industries with those of new-fledged Soviet indus*tries, many of which are produc*ing at a rate which similar indus*tries in America passed in the twenties or earlier. Consider pas*senger car production, for in*stance. The last figure on Soviet output was 117,000. Normal American output is five or six mil*lion. Suppose the Soviet Union is able to sustain its projected rate of 8 per cent yearly increase, while we go along with about 3 per cent. It does not require much higher mathematics to figure out that no living Russian, or American, will see the day when Russians (apart from top bureaucrats) will be able to live on wheels as Americans do today.

Similar comparisons could be made for housing, plumbing fix*tures, and a host of other con*sumer goods too vast to enumer*ate. One must also place after Soviet figures of output an indefi*nite but very substantial discount for defective quality. This point was powerfully brought home to a personal acquaintance, a former journalist who returned to Moscow after an absence of almost twenty years and looked up his old apart*ment which had been built in the twenties. He discovered that it had simply crumbled to pieces and had been abandoned as uninhabitable—and this in a city where the housing shortage is so desperate that the condemnation of any liv*ing space is not rashly undertaken.

Monetary Manipulations

A survey of a few key points in the Soviet economic system shows that the individual is treated as a ward or serf of the omnipotent State, without any of the guaran*ties of comfort and well-being which are implicit in a free econ*omy. The Soviet ruble, for in*stance, is simply funny money out*side the Soviet frontier; it has no value in international exchange, and will buy nothing, although there is an official rate of four rubles to the dollar, with foreign tourists, as a special concession, getting ten rubles. Both rates are completely arbitrary and have nothing to do with the real value of the ruble.

Not long ago the Soviet government calmly repudiated its whole internal national debt on the somewhat naive ground that in*terest payments were getting too heavy. By one stroke of the pen, Soviet citizens were robbed of bil*lions of rubles which might have helped them considerably in their years of retirement. But so com*plete is the Soviet control of all means of public expression that this act was represented as being “at the desire of the people."

On three occasions the Soviet government has completely wiped out or greatly depreciated the value of its currency. The Revolu*tion did for the Russian ruble what the aftermath of World War I did for the German mark: re*duced it to worthless paper. The Soviet government next launched a new currency at the nominal value of the prewar ruble, a little less than two to the dollar. This soon became shaky, and collapsed altogether under the inflationary impact of the First Five Year Plan. The ruble was then assigned the new value of five to the dollar; and the dollar itself during this period had been devalued by 40 per cent. After World War II, the Soviet government carried out an*other currency slash, issuing a brand new ruble that was forcibly exchanged, in many cases, for ten old ones. In view of what has hap*pened to the currency and to the bonds, incentives to save in Rus*sia are, to put it mildly, not strong.

Nor is the individual allowed to buy land or to invest in real prop*erty. The Soviet design is to keep him working hard all his life, get*ting what wages the State, the owner of all sources of employment, may wish to pay and paying prices which the State, the producer of all goods, may wish to charge.

A Modified Form of Slavery

From the cradle to the grave the Soviet citizen is conditioned by propaganda and, through a rigidly authoritarian school system, is as*signed or directed or channeled into the work the State thinks he should take up. The horrors of forced labor under Stalin, the worst kind of slavery, have abated. This is not because his successors are more humane than the de*ceased dictator. But they realize that the former system of over*working and half-starving millions of people in Arctic slave labor camps is too wasteful in manpower for a country that is feeling the effects of tremendous war losses in its present low birth rate. How*ever, large numbers of people, if not actually kept behind barbed wire, are forcibly detained in re*mote places where they are forced to work at the tasks assigned to them.

It is a great pity and irony that just when the strength of the United States lies in being as dif*ferent from the Soviet Union as possible, in adhering firmly to the principles of the free market, con*sumer free choice, maximum op*portunity for the individual, there are voices in this country that use a mistaken fear of Soviet economic competition as an argument for driving us further along the path toward economic statism.

Apart from the threat of military attack, which is a question in itself, the only thing we need fear from the Soviet economic pattern is that we should imitate or adopt it, even in part. Only if and as we maintain in our own lives the his*toric American principles of in*dividualist opportunity in econom*ics and other fields shall we worthily fill our historic destiny as champions of the principle that the State should be the servant of its citizens, not the master of its sub*jects.

Uncle Emanuel Watkins
03-12-2010, 02:02 PM
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-supreme-issue-the-individual-versus-the-state/

While the Truth will never be approached by anything well written, the Truth itself is well written. We know this because our Founding Fathers declared the ultimate political Truth as a self evident and unalienable natural law and nothing outside of the bible itsef has ever been written matching its simple significance.
When Martin Luther King ventured west into India researching Gandhi and eastern philosophy, did he ever find a new social contract theory to challenge our American Founding Fathers? Nope.
So, why do we choose to celebrate the former heritages that we inherited from tyranny rather than celebrate the new formal-culture that we inherited from our Founding Fathers?
This is why I take five minutes out of every year to celebrate my American Culture. By the way, believe it or not, it is already that time of year again when we will be celebrating our American culture by serving delicious peanut butter crackers washed down with cool, fresh kool-aide.

BuddyRey
03-12-2010, 11:57 PM
While the Truth will never be approached by anything well written, the Truth itself is well written. We know this because our Founding Fathers declared the ultimate political Truth as a self evident and unalienable natural law and nothing outside of the bible itsef has ever been written matching its simple significance.
When Martin Luther King ventured west into India researching Gandhi and eastern philosophy, did he ever find a new social contract theory to challenge our American Founding Fathers? Nope.
So, why do we choose to celebrate the former heritages that we inherited from tyranny rather than celebrate the new formal-culture that we inherited from our Founding Fathers?
This is why I take five minutes out of every year to celebrate my American Culture. By the way, believe it or not, it is already that time of year again when we will be celebrating our American culture by serving delicious peanut butter crackers washed down with cool, fresh kool-aide.

Peanut butter crackers and kool-aide? I've never heard of that holiday.

Uncle Emanuel Watkins
03-13-2010, 02:38 PM
Peanut butter crackers and kool-aide? I've never heard of that holiday.
Indeed! The radiation from the sun during those five minutes of celebration can be downright excruciating, so make sure that you wear a hat as well as apply a lot of sun tan lotion. Many new to celebrating the true American heritage will make the mistake of buying fancy crackers to spread their peanut butter on, but these foreign baked products tend to get soggy really fast in the hot humidity. Aside from their value in being unleathened though, nothing beats American made saltine crackers, the dryer the better.
After just a few moments of celebrating our American heritage last year, a lot of youngsters went running by knocking over our kool-aid causing us to totally restart the five minute celebration all over again. Nothing beats having endless numbers of children running around mindlessly as this wonderful infection will one day grow up to also have an endless number of children.
After our celebration was restarted, a hostile Native American man spent four minutes explaining to us how he was THE true indigenous American actually threatening us with an authentic tomahawk to make his point. I must admit that he made a really good argument. Just as I had begun to challenge his contention with the American argument that our true indigenous culture is based on a natural law, a self evident and unalienable Truth declared by our Founding Fathers, the damned bell went off signaling the end to our celebration.
Shrugging was all that I could do as that poor Indian bastard just stood there, with all those feathers around his head and water moccasins on his feet, just begging us for further explanation.
"Sorry," I told him while hastily packing up the refreshments and folding up the coffee table, "as the true indigenous Americans, we don't have time to celebrate. You see, there is lots of work to be done!"