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Chodorov explains the popular appeal of socialism.

Excerpt from Chodorov's 'Socialism By Default', from his One is a Crowd:

If the run-of-the-mill American is as gullible as this literature assumes, and there is reason to believe that he is, there are nevertheless the lessons of experience which even infantilism cannot dull. Imagine feeding rags-to-riches syrup to the sharecropper who remembers being dispossessed onto the highway, or to his children who learned to hold out the hand of beggary. Then, there's the glorious tale of the penniless immigrant who rose to affluence; what can be the effect of this pap on the fellow who lived by the grace of the W. P. A. when bank bankruptcy wiped out his lifetime savings? What goes on in the mind of the mechanic who, on reading about the "overall picture" of national prosperity, or the tables of comparative wages, recalls the ten years of wage-less nightmare, until the war brought hypodermic relief? Even now, dulling the enjoyment of his inflationary comfort is the spectre of impending depression.

All this experience the anti-socialistic literature passes over lightly with figures, carried out to three percentage points. The inference is plain that the "poor ye have always"--and nothing can be done about it. It's fine solace to be labeled an "unemployable" or to be put among the "surplus population."

But somehow the lowliest of the species resents being a statistic. He flatters himself that he is a man. Whatever his intellectual deficiencies, his sense perceptions are keen; recorded in the memory of his belly is data the economists cannot get to. And that memory tells him that there is a lie somewhere in the pollyannish picture of America being presented to him.

...

Sure, the "average" wage in this country is a princely income compared to that of the Chinese coolie. What of it? The "average" American worker--whatever that is--produces more; well, if he produces more he is entitled to more, and why give credit to a "system" for the labor he puts out? According to the figures in this anti-socialistic literature he absorbs in wages about all he produces, and yet his eyes tell him that there are a lot of fellows who produce nothing, or very little, and they seem to get along quite well. Who produces what they have? He's envious, to be sure, but he's also sensitive to a wrong he cannot locate.

The socialists locate it for him. He never will understand their many-worded fable about surplus-value and the class struggle and the glories of controlled economy. No matter. These fellows at least come clean; they admit the poverty-amidst-plenty incongruity, and in so doing they gain the confidence of the mass-man. Having gained his confidence, they find it easy to "teach" him the mysteries of their solution. Their shibboleths are plausible; they "explain" and they promise. He accepts their leadership.

...

This fact the socialistic tacticians have been wise enough to recognize. From Marx and Engels to Attlee and Wallace, due homage was always given to the "will of the people," although the shaping and direction of that will has ever been the private prerogative of the intelligentsia, the leadership. They won the mass-man by appealing to the intelligence they knew he did not have; in the name of education they filled him with phrases which served him well enough for understanding. But--and this is of utmost importance--he became a willing "student" because they told him what he knew only too well: that the world as is is NOT the best of all possible worlds.

...

The current slogan of this effort to forestall Socialism is "free enterprise." Now, enterprise consists of nothing else, in the economic field, than the production and exchange of goods and services, by individuals acting in their own interests, and it is free only when the process is rid of legal interventions. The ultimate object is to provide an abundance of the things men want, to flood the marketplace. That means low prices, or prices determined by the equation of supply and demand without restrictions on supply. If that is what the "free enterprisers" were really for, they would concentrate on the rescinding of laws making for scarcities--and they would inform the mass-man that the cause for his lack (admitting first that there is an unwarranted lack) are these laws and the practices that have grown up under them.

First of all, they would direct attention to the scarcities resulting from tariffs, quotas, the manipulation of money, fictitious quarantine laws and other devices for preventing foreign goods from reaching our market. You see nothing about that in their literature. The inference is that free trade is not included in their concept of free enterprise. Why? Is it because of a concern for the higher prices which this limitation on competition affords them?

Taxation is a major interference with enterprise, simply because what is taken by the State is production which was intended for the market. Taxes on commodities are added to price and therefore decrease the purchasing power of wages; taxes on incomes and inheritances discourage production. These facts are rarely mentioned in any of the "free enterprise" literature; when it does touch on taxation the comment is limited to "equitable" distribution, which, on examination, simmers down to the shifting of the burden from one class of citizens to another. The reason is clear. You cannot expect the holders of government bonds to attack the income tax (which is the necessary precursor of State capitalism), because the prime security behind these bonds is the power of the State to levy on incomes. Nor can you expect liquor interests to oppose liquor taxes because if these were abolished every farmer could open a distillery.

You read in this "free enterprise" literature about government extravagances. But, what about particulars? Subsidies to railroads, airplane and shipping companies (via the post office) are clearly extravagances, supporting and encouraging inefficiency; but, the values of the stocks and bonds issued by these companies are enhanced thereby and hence the subject is taboo; subsidies which cannot be capitalized, like handouts to veterans and unemployed, can be attacked. Parity prices provide a cushion for the commodity market, and also hold up the value of agricultural land; the "free enterprisers" avoid the subject. Militarism is undoubtedly the greatest waste of all, besides being the greatest threat to freedom of the individual, and yet it is rather condoned than opposed by those whose hearts bleed for freedom, according to their literature.

One could go on paragraph after paragraph with instances of State interferences with enterprise which the "free enterprise" bilge skirts around or ignores. One is driven to the conclusion that the sponsors are not at all in favor of what they preach. They are rather for the status quo, for the legal into favored position. They are for privilege, as is, and not for the sanctity of private property.

Is it any wonder that the only following this kind of leadership can muster is what it can buy? Is it any wonder that the socialists have the mass-field to themselves?

Nock: 'the State' is a mere perversion of 'the government'

Excerpt from Nock's Our Enemy, the State:

As far back as one can follow the run of civilization, it presents two fundamentally different types of political organization. This difference is not one of degree, but of kind. It does not do to take the one type as merely marking a lower order of civilization and the other a higher; they are commonly so taken, but erroneously. Still less does it do to classify both as species of the same genus -- to classify both under the generic name of "government," though this also, until very lately, has been done, and has always led to confusion and misunderstanding.

A good understanding of this error and its effects is supplied by Thomas Paine. At the outset of his pamphlet called Common Sense, Paine draws a distinction between society and government. While society in any state is a blessing, he says, "government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." In another place, he speaks of government as "a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world." He proceeds then to show how and why government comes into being. Its origin is in the common understanding and common agreement of society; and "the design and end of government," he says, is "freedom and security." Teleologically, government implements the common desire of society, first, for freedom, and second, for security. Beyond this it does not go; it contemplates no positive intervention upon the individual, but only a negative intervention. It would seem that in Paine's view the code of government should be that of the legendary king Pausole, who prescribed but two laws for his subjects, the first being, Hurt no man, and the second, Then do as you please; and that the whole business of government should be the purely negative one of seeing that this code is carried out.

So far, Paine is sound as he is simple. He goes on, however, to attack the British political organization in terms that are logically inconclusive. There should be no complaint of this, for he was writing as a pamphleteer, a special pleader with an ad captandum argument to make, and as everyone knows, he did it most successfully. Nevertheless, the point remains that when he talks about the British system he is talking about a type of political organization essentially different from the type that he has just been describing; different in origin, in intention, in primary function, in the order of interest that it reflects. It did not originate in the common understanding and agreement of society; it originated in conquest and confiscation.

Its intention, far from contemplating "freedom and security," contemplated nothing of the kind. It contemplated primarily the continuous economic exploitation of one class by another, and it concerned itself with only so much freedom and security as was consistent with this primary intention; and this was, in fact, very little. Its primary function or exercise was not by way of Paine's purely negative interventions upon the individual, but by way of innumerable and most onerous positive interventions, all of which were for the purpose of maintaining the stratification of society into an owning and exploiting class, and a property-less dependent class. The order of interest that it reflected was not social, but purely anti-social; and those who administered it, judged by the common standard of ethics, or even the common standard of law as applied to private persons, were indistinguishable from a professional-criminal class. Clearly, then, we have two distinct types of political organization to take into account; and clearly, too, when their origins are considered, it is impossible to make out that the one is a mere perversion of the other. Therefore when we include both types under a general term like government, we get into logical difficulties; difficulties of which most writers on the subject have been more or less vaguely aware, but which, until within the last half-century, none of them has tried to resolve.

Mr. Jefferson, for example, remarked that the hunting tribes of Indians, with which he had a good deal to do in his early days, had a highly organized and admirable social order, but were "without government." Commenting on this, he wrote Madison that "it is a problem not clear in my mind that [this] condition is not the best," but he suspected that it was "inconsistent with any great degree of population." Schoolcraft observes that the Chippewas, though living in a highly- organized social order, had no "regular" government. Herbert Spencer, speaking of the Bechuanas, Araucanians and Koranna Hottentots, says they have no "definite" government; while Parkman, in his introduction to The Conspiracy of Pontiac, reports the same phenomenon, and is frankly puzzled by its apparent anomalies.

Paine's theory of government agrees exactly with the theory set forth by Mr. Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. The doctrine of natural rights, which is explicit in the Declaration, is implicit in Common Sense; and Paine's view of the "design and end of government" is precisely the Declaration's view, that "to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men"; and further, Paine's view of the origin of government is that it "derives its just powers from the consent of the governed." Now, if we apply Paine's formulas or the Declaration's formulas, it is abundantly clear that the Virginian Indians had government; Mr. Jefferson's own observations show that they had it. Their political organization, simple as it was, answered its purpose. Their code-apparatus sufficed for assuring freedom and security to the individual, and for dealing with such trespasses as in that state of society the individual might encounter -- fraud, theft, assault, adultery, murder. The same is clearly true of the various peoples cited by Parkman, Schoolcraft and Spencer. Assuredly, if the language of the Declaration amounts to anything, all these peoples had government; and all these reporters make it appear as a government quite competent to its purpose.

Therefore when Mr. Jefferson says his Indians were "without government," he must be taken to mean that they did not have a type of government like the one he knew; and when Schoolcraft and Spencer speak of "regular" and "definite" government, their qualifying words must be taken in the same way. This type of government, nevertheless, has always existed and still exists, answering perfectly to Paine's formulas and the Declaration's formulas; though it is a type which we also, most of us, have seldom had the chance to observe. It may not be put down as the mark of an inferior race, for institutional simplicity is in itself by no means a mark of backwardness or inferiority; and it has been sufficiently shown that in certain essential respects the peoples who have this type of government are, by comparison, in a position to say a good deal for themselves on the score of a civilized character. Mr. Jefferson's own testimony on this point is worth notice, and so is Parkman's. This type, however, even though documented by the Declaration, is fundamentally so different from the type that has always prevailed in history, and is still prevailing in the world at the moment, that for the sake of clearness the two types should be set apart by name, as they are by nature. They are so different in theory that drawing a sharp distinction between them is now probably the most important duty that civilization owes to its own safety. Hence it is by no means either an arbitrary or academic proceeding to give the one type the name of government, and to call the second type simply the State.

To "turn away from good-faith discourse", first make use of pseudopsychiatry.

If pseudopsychiatry has canons, one must be Argument by Description (With Prejudicial Terms). To see this canon a'firing, read this piece by TokyoTom, wherein he observes -- with spooky language, taken as its own argument -- that Walter Block always seems to refer us to anti-global-warming articles. TokyoTom makes no argument about the articles themselves (here's a simple one: anti-GW articles have missed the shift in discussion, towards 'climate change' and 'global weirding', which makes increased snowfall a data point rather than a refutation), and only suggests that Block should have referred us to three other articles in their stead. TokyoTom does not tell us more broadly what Block should do instead of posting his anti-GW articles -- probably because the alternatives-in-bias are ridiculous:

1. Block should shut up, not being permitted, as a non-climatologist, to express a view on the climate that is contrary to the view of mainstream climatology.
2. Block should post on all articles on climate change -- making blog.mises.org now an indiscriminate climatology RSS feed, and Block its human feeder. This is a noisy equivalent to 'Block should shut up': he no longer has any human contribution to the discussion.
3. Block should only post articles that oppose his own preferences. This is again a noisy equivalent to 'Block should shut up', as you can get this exact bias (hype humanity-annihilating climate change; deep-six adverse articles) from mainstream news services.

I don't have a problem with Walter Block's bias, to use that term without prejudice, but TokyoTom's sneers annoy me. So, for TokyoTom: if you have interesting links on a subject, and blog.mises.org sees a rare post about this subject, please share the links. If you wish that interested parties follow these links, you probably shouldn't hide them in an unrelated, offensive attack on the original poster. Please refrain even in your offensive attacks from pseudopsychiatric language. Or do you have a mental problem that drives you to childishly imitate this misfeature of American political discourse? You've got to be crazy to think that you improve your argument by hiding unanalyzed description behind clinical language!

Anyway, the real lesson with anti-GW literature is this: when you emit a pattern of policy proposals, the enemies of these proposals will not restrict themselves to attacking your successive emissions: they will strike also at the consistent logical foundation for these proposals. Or: when 'greens' get giddy and say that the real solution is a massive reduction in living standards and in human population, horrified people of the pro-human tendency are also going to attack the given problem.

The way in which a dealer bought a pig from a peasant.

Excerpt from Reimann's The Vampire Economy: Doing Business Under Fascism:

How cunning ingenuity and "private initiative" circumvent official rules in a country under totalitarian rule can be illustrated by the way in which a dealer bought a pig from a peasant in Nazi Germany.

A peasant was arrested and put on trial for having repeatedly sold his old dog together with a pig. When a private buyer of pigs came to him, a sale was staged according to the official rules. The buyer would ask the peasant: "How much is the pig?" The cunning peasant would answer: "I cannot ask you for more than the official price. But how much will you pay for my dog which I also want to sell?" Then the peasant and the buyer of the pig would no longer discuss the price of the pig, but only the price of the dog. They would come to an understanding about the price of the dog, and when an agreement was reached, the buyer got the pig too. The price for the pig was quite correct, strictly according to the rules, but the buyer had paid a high price for the dog. Afterward, the buyer, wanting to get rid of the useless dog, released him, and he ran back to his old master for whom he was indeed a treasure.

These "combination deals" have an interesting economic aspect. The supplementary article which is sold in order to make the whole transaction as legal as possible is not always an old dog, but, in most cases, an article which may have a certain usefulness in itself, though not necessarily for the buyer. The purchase of these supplementary articles therefore largely amounts to waste of money, made necessary to facilitate the purchase of other more urgently needed articles. Private initiative was wont to seek economies which would increase profits and the productivity of labor. Today, in a society which is laboring under great hardships as the result of scarcity of many essentials, the same goal can be achieved only by purposely arranged waste.