The fundamental flaw in every variation of socialism — and this includes the watered-down versions we enjoy today (i.e. progressivism or welfare statism) — is the idea that human survival is or should be assured.

Therefore, says the theory, it follows that the legitimate function of government is to ensure everyone’s survival.

This is achieved through massive applications of expropriation and other forms of force.

The flaw is in the premise, and it’s both obvious and fatal:  survival by definition is not assured or guaranteed — not for any living thing — because life by definition is effort.

Life is work.

Survival — even human survival, which unique among the animals is both physical and epistemological — requires effort.

Survival requires effort, which is also known as work.

For human-beings, this effort is an effort that can ultimately be made and maintained only by each individual

No one person can think for another person — which is to say: no one person can perform for another, across the long arc of a lifetime, the moment-by-moment act of focus — the act of focusing the attention against the constant strain of inattention — which is the act of will responsible for all thought, which is the human method of survival.

We can and properly should help others if we choose, but it must always be a free and voluntary choice.

If you come down on the side of socialism — any form of it, no matter its mutation — you necessarily come down on the side of force, whether you want to or not, whether you mean to or not. Socialism is by definition an ideology of force.

Force is why from a purely moral standpoint socialism is fatally flawed.

From a practical standpoint — which is to say, an economic standpoint — it’s fatally flawed on any number of different levels.

It cannot work. It is doomed by the calculation problem most fundamentally of all.

If you come down on this side of the issue, you’ve come down on the wrong side — the side of force, non-consent, expropriation, non-autonomy — and no amount of equivocation, rationalization, circumlocution, or permutation will change that.

Egalitarianism

Egalitarianism is the foundation of all forms of socialism and virtually all leftist political theory. It is the bedrock upon which leftist ideology as we know it today is built — the primary thing all leftists have in common.

Egalitarian means even or equal.

Egalitarianism is the belief in total equality — not equality before the law, which is the only legitimate meaning of that term in a political context) but metaphysically equal: in personal attributes, including those attributes most important in determining skill, mastery, growth, success, fulfillment, and happiness — i.e. desire, persistence, motivation, patience, persistence, determination, drive, persistence, focus, persistence, persistence, persistence. Et cetera.

The crucial thing to note is this: humans don’t possess the same attributes — not even close — nor are humans born into the same circumstances, nor does any human possess the same attributes in the same proportion at all times across the long arc of her life. Do you know the fundamental reason for this?

Answer: Because most human attributes can be willed and developed. They can therefore grow or diminish, depending on what the person wants to focus his mind and time upon.

Because humans don’t remotely possess the same attributes or desires or values, implementing egalitarianism — which is the goal of leftist ideology — by definition requires force.

Humans when left alone naturally stratify, as several experiments have demonstrated.

Egalitarianism is essentially the view that all humans must be made equal and even. Whether they like it or not, this must be so. For this precise reason, egalitarianism requires massive and continual applications of both expropriation and also physical force and of course the bureaus who enforce these applications of force.

Morally speaking, egalitarianism is an absolute injustice.

Practically speaking — because human are limitlessly varied — it’s an impossibility.

It’s impossible to implement full egalitarianism, though Pol Pot’s homicidal, genocidal Khmer Rouge, which is responsible for murdering one-quarter of the entire Cambodian population in less than four years, and which was downplayed by leftists like Noam Chomsky, until it couldn’t be downplayed any longer, is one of the nearest egalitarian successes in modern times.

This is egalitarianism:

A woman who has worked hard to become a great runner — and who has succeeded — goes to the doctor to have her injured ankle mended, but instead of mending it, the doctor breaks the ankles of twenty other women and tells them all that this will make the patient feel better. When everyone has broken ankles, the doctor advocates for laws making it mandatory that everyone has broken ankles at all times, so that everyone is slightly crippled, and in this way the “unfairness” of nature is to that extent equalized.

Do you think that’s an exaggeration?

I recommend you read about Pol Pot’s socialist Cambodian regime (circa 1975). You’ll discover, among other things, the following:

As an example of the kind of strategies necessary for the implementation of egalitarianism: Pol Pot’s murderous regime frequently and without warning hacked off the right arms of people working side-by-side with left-handed people — particularly when soldiers observed that the right-handed were at an advantage and therefore getting more work done than left-handed.

(Link)

Anarchism: anarcho-syndicalism and anarcho-capitalism

Despite the fact that both ideologies nominally (and only nominally) reject all forms of government, there’s a significant ideological difference between left-wing anarchism and right-wing anarchism — most commonly, anarcho-syndicalism and anarcho-capitalism — and that difference reduces down to egalitarianism, which in turn hinges upon the principle of private property.

Anarcho-syndicalism, which is leftist and Marxist (or Neo-Marxist) in the extreme, is the anarchist theory that believes industrial unions or some similar collective will control the property and thus the economy.

Anarcho-capitalism is the anarchist theory that private property is just and therefore all things should be privatized — so that even national defense, police, and courts to adjudicate honest disagreements are, says the theory, privatized.

Both forms of anarchism — indeed, anarchism in general — will amount to mob rule or a de-facto government: e.g. the private firms that hold the nuclear weapons for national defense.

The real paradox of anarchism-versus-laissez-faire is from my perspective that true laissez faire is actually much closer to true anarchism — certainly more so than the brand of anarchism most stated anarchists I know espouse: a kind of non-conformists variety of conformity, albeit one that takes the longer way around to get there.

Get where?

The place at which all governments eventually meet.

A lang of authoritarianism.

Which, I think, is why ninety-nine percent of self-described anarchists I know vote unswervingly and unhesitatingly for whichever left-wing pundit, no matter how gigantic (and corrupt) the government programs said pundit explicitly calls for.

Everything is complicated until it’s reduced.

Reducing is often the most complicated part.

But once it’s reduced, it becomes simple:

Fundamentally, there are only two forms of government: a government that protects individual freedom and nothing but this; and a government that tries to provide for all people in the name of equality, without any regard for the importance protecting individual freedom.

Freedom is in a political context has only one meaning: freedom is the absence of state coercion. It simply means that government leaves people alone and is involved only when a threat or an act of violence or violation occurs.

Most governments are a mix — but one must always remember the iron-clad law:

Bad principles drive out good.

This is a variation on Gresham’s law.

The fight is always a fight for principles.

Thus, when people — even good people — accept doctrines the premises of which they do not know and do not seek to fully understand, they’ve instantly come a long way in conceding the principle.

And that is the process whereby bad governments, whether rightwing or left, come gradually to control the land.

And neither cronyism nor colonialism nor corporatism is laissez-faire but just the opposite.

Read more

Click-click