Anything That’s Peaceful

• CHAPTER 5 •

HOW SOCIALISM HARMS
THE INDIVIDUAL

THE PROGRESSIVE income tax, federal urban renewal, federal aid to education, and a host of other welfare and unemployment measures are precisely what Karl Marx had in mind with his ideal for the Communist Party, “… from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

However, we must not discard the practices of this social leveling principle simply because it had a sponsor we do not esteem or because it is the very essence of communism, a system we claim to despise. We must never reason from a premise as shallow as prejudice.

Let us reason from the premise set forth in the first chapter, the emergence of the individual. Keeping this in mind as our objective—the point of reference from which our conclusions are reasoned—what effect has the practice of this social leveling principle? Is the individual harmed or helped? That is the question!

A high school teacher of history and economics made an interesting attempt to explain how this principle would work should he apply it to his class.1 It went something like this:

John, you received a grade of 95. Dick, you received a grade of 55. I shall take 20 from you, John, and give the 20 to you, Dick. By doing this, each of you will have a grade of 75, adequate for passing.

Now, how will this Marxist principle work in practice? You, John, will cease to work because I have removed your incentive. And, you, Dick, will give up work altogether because work is no longer the condition for a passing grade.

Thus, you see, we have a workless class. In the grown-up world people cannot live without work any more than you can learn without work. How, then, is work to be induced? The answer is simple: get ourselves an authoritarian, one who forces us to do what he thinks we ought to be doing.

Mentioned in the teacher’s explanation to his class are the three distinct classifications of persons involved in the social leveling process, the archetypes of which are: (1) the person with “ability,” that is, the one from whom is taken, (2) the person with “need,” that is, the one to whom someone else’s property is given, and (3) the person who does the taking and giving, the political Robin Hood, the authoritarian.

The Person with Ability

If my contention is correct that all persons, in all three categories, are harmed by social leveling, then it must follow that the whole caboodle of what are called “social gains” not only fail to benefit anyone but, rather, have a deteriorating effect on everyone. Let’s examine these archetypes in their taken-from, given-to, dictator order.

At the outset, we must not assume common agreement that harm is visited only on the person from whom is taken. There are many well-to-do individuals, sensitive to the plight or suffering of others, who gladly turn over to government the responsibility of caring for all afflicted people and, along with this shifting of responsibility from themselves to the state, a willingness for the government to draw on (tax) their ability to pay. They, not I, should be the judge of the harm such shifting of responsibility does to them. I can only question their judgment.

Division of labor—me to my speciality, you to yours—is essential to an expanding wealth. But there are several aspects of life we cannot turn over to others without harm to our individual expansion. Religion cannot be shifted to others, and we are well advised not to leave our liberty in someone else’s hands. Further, I would suggest that charity is a distinctly personal, not a collective, matter.

President Cleveland vetoed a $10,000 appropriation to purchase seed wheat for Texans who had suffered a drought. Included in his message was the point I wish to emphasize:

Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct whìch strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.

Can any person relieve himself of charitable concerns without losing a priceless ingredient of individual emergence? Does not a growth of the spirit and soul of man require that a concern for others be retained for strictly personal attention? President Cleveland gave an affirmative answer to these questions, as do I.

There are, however, millions with “ability” who wish to make their own decisions as to how the fruits of their own labor should be expended. They have judgments concerning people in their own orbits, based on intimate experiences and relationships, a knowledge which no agency—governmental or private—can possibly possess. Are these persons to be deprived of their own funds and the practice of personal charity denied to them because some others wish the government to pre-empt the welfare activity?

You, for instance, wish to practice an act of charity. But this voluntary act—one of the highest expressions of a common brotherhood—is thwarted when your honestly acquired income is taken by government. What was yours has been arbitrarily declared not yours; a “social” claim on your labor has been decreed. Indeed, government now operates on the theory that it has a first lien on your income and capital; your freedom of choice is severely restricted. As a consequence, you are restrained from practicing your own religion should your religion call for a personal charity toward others. The state will practice charity for you. A common brotherhood, by some quirk of reasoning, is to become a collective act of compulsion!

Then again, you may want to save that part of your income over and above your requirements for current living. Perhaps you may wish to “stash it under the mattress”! Who has any moral right to forbid it? Do strangers who didn’t earn it have any right, in logic and justice, to what you have earned?

More than likely, however, you will not act like King Midas but, rather, will invest your savings with the hope of some returns. This, beyond doubt, is one of the best ways to become a benefactor of mankind; for this is how capital formation is brought about. The capital is turned into tools and factories and power machinery—aids which help workers to produce more with their labor.2 This increased production can, in turn, be put to savings and family security.

It isn’t possible to see other than harm done to the person with “ability” by the compulsory taking of his income.

The Person in Need

Now, to the second archetype: Does any able adult person “in need” really benefit by living on the confiscated income of others? Does this ever improve his character or his mental and physical faculties? His growth? Does anyone ever benefit by the removal of self-responsibility?

The something-for-nothing idea appears to flourish wherever there is a failure to grasp the purpose behind the struggle for existence. The fullest possible employment of one’s faculties is what makes for strength of body, of character, of spirit, of intellect. Non-use of faculties leads to atrophy. The story of the wild duck that joined the domestic ducks, was fed, but later couldn’t fly above the barnyard fence; of the gulls that fattened up at a shrimp plant but starved when it shut down; of the cattle that became accustomed to pen feeding and died rather than forage any more; of the hand-fed squirrels that laid up no nuts for the winter but bit the hands that fed them when the hands no longer held food—these and other stories of nature attest to principles of biology which are as applicable to persons who cannot use reason as to animals which lack the faculty of reason.

Life’s problems—obstacles—are not without purpose. They aid the processes of self-development, as well as of selection and evolution. They demand of the individual that he gather new strength to hurdle each new obstacle. The art of becoming is composed of acts of overcoming.

It is no accident that the vast majority of top-ranking Americans, whatever their walk of life, are men whose careers have been associated with hardship and struggle. Rewards not associated with one’s own effort tend to weaken the sinews which make for growth. Such rewards—handouts—remove the necessity for production and invite potential producers to remain nonproducers. In short, there is an ever-present danger that they may encourage a person to become a parasite, living off what others produce. Parasitism is not associated with man’s upgrading.

Only casual reflection on the principles of organization will make clear that responsibility and authority should always be commensurate; they are meant to go hand-in-hand. When the responsibility for one’s own welfare is surrendered to government, it follows that the authority to conduct one’s life goes where the responsibility is reposed. This is a matter over which we have no choice; it is a law of organization.

The idea set forth in the Declaration of Independence that each person has an inherent and inalienable right to life becomes meaningless when a person loses the authority for his own decisions and must act according to someone else’s dictates. Unless an individual is self-controlling, his life is not truly his own. Before a life can be valued for its own sake—not simply a means to someone else’s goal—that life must retain its own power to choose, along with its own quality, its own dignity. Without self-power, there is no basis for love, respect, and friendship, in short, a common brotherhood; the powerless person becomes either a puppet or an unwanted burden. Even a mother’s love for an invalid child cannot exist unless it is voluntarily bestowed. Aged persons and others who depend on the income of others, confiscated by government, become mere numbers in the confused statistics of political bureaus. Neither bureaus nor statistics have the capacity for charity or a common brotherhood.

Keeping in mind Emerson’s accurate observation that the end pre-exists in the means, it should be plain that the evil means of confiscating income must lead to an evil end to those who live on it.

Actually, we are dealing here with a problem arising from a double standard of morality. Comparatively few persons will take private property without the owner’s consent. We think of that as stealing and frown on the practice. Yet we will form a collective—politically group ourselves—and take billions in income without consent; we thoughtlessly call it “doing good.”

Doing politically what we reject doing individually in no manner alters the immorality of the act; it merely legalizes the wrong and, thus, gains social absolution for the criminal; giving it the political twist keeps one from being tossed into jail! But to anyone who rejects the authoritarianism of a majority as much as that of a Stalin—to anyone who believes in the right to life and to one’s honestly acquired property—no moral absolution is gained by legislation.

Those who think only materialistically may argue that the stealing of a loaf of bread is a loss to the person from whom it is taken but a gain to the thief, if the thief “gets away with it.” This is an incorrect view. The person from whom the loaf is taken loses only the loaf. But the one who takes the loaf without the owner’s consent loses not only the respect of all who know him but loses also his integrity! Man can never realize his creative potentialities without integrity. This virtue lies at the root of emergence. To live on loot appears to be no further removed from evil than to take the loot.

Unless one believes in authoritarianism—that men should lord it over men, that some fallible humans should cast the rest of us in their little images—it is not possible to see anything but harm done to the person in “need” who is “aided” by taking the income of others without their consent.

The Authoritarian

And last, the third archetype: Of the three classifications of persons involved in social leveling by compulsion, the authoritarian—the one who administers the taking and the giving—has been too little diagnosed. It is not difficult to understand the discouragement and the destruction that come to the person from whom honest income is confiscated. Nor is it difficult to perceive the eroding of the moral fiber of those who become the “beneficiaries” of confiscated property. But what about “the humanitarian with the guillotine”—the well-meaning social reformer at the top of the political heap who uses the police force as his means of persuasion? Is harm done to him? Yes, though what happens to him may be difficult to portray.

The person who attempts by force to direct or rearrange the creative activities of others is in a very real sense a slave-master. And here is the crux of it: A slave-master becomes a slave himself when he enslaves others. If another has me on my back, holding me down, he is as permanently fastened on top of me as I am under him. Both of us are enslaved. True, he can, by force, keep me from being creative; but in so doing, his own energies must be diverted from creative to destructive actions. He cannot upgrade himself while he is employing his energies to downgrade. One who only destroys is himself destroyed. This is the same as saying that he who practices only evil is himself evil. Man’s usefulness to himself, to other men, to Creation’s purpose is to be achieved only by personal upgrading. If I reason logically from my premise, it follows that I cannot be helpful to others except as others find in me something of a creative nature that is available to them—in a voluntary relationship.

Materialistically, the valuable person is the one who has money or tools to use or to lend, or goods or skills to exchange. Intellectually, the valuable person is the one who has knowledge and understanding which are available to others in search of knowledge and understanding. Spiritually, the valuable person is the one who, by reason of a love of righteousness, discovers some of the divine principles of the universe and becomes able to impart to others that which he has perceived—by deed as well as by word.

All aspects of upgrading are creative in character. Necessarily they first demand an attention to self—that is, to self-cultivation. Nothing creative is induced by compulsion. With the possible exception of a low form of imitation, compulsion has only the power to restrain, repress, suppress, penalize, destroy. By the use of sufficient force, I can keep you from acting creatively; but no amount of force can compel you to think, to invent, to discover, to attune yourself to the Infinite, the source of all knowledge and understanding. Compulsion is antagonistic to creativeness.

The point under discussion is this: I cannot indulge in my own upgrading at the same time I am inhibiting someone else’s creative action. Therefore, to the extent that one’s life is spent in using force to coerce others, to that extent is one’s life destroyed, its higher purpose frustrated.

In a reference to political authority, Lord Acton observed, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This warning is not to be taken lightly, for the evidence is all about us and the reason plain to see.

Observe the profound change that comes over men when they are given power over others. When acting as responsible, self-controlled human beings—when attending to their own affairs—they were admirable both in their thinking and in their behavior. Now let power over others be vested in them. In due course—usually soon—they begin to think like authoritarians; they talk like authoritarians; they act like authoritarians; for, indeed, they are authoritarians. It is as if a chemical change had taken place in their persons.

Power or authority over the creative activities of others—that is, a responsibility for the creative behavior of others—is an assignment with an inevitably destructive consequence. Thus overburdened, a wielder of power eventually becomes intolerant, quick-tempered, irrational, disrespectful, and unrespected. How could he be expected to function as a strictly self-responsible individual under burdens which are not within his nature to shoulder?

Further, when in possession of political power over the creative actions of others, a fallible human being is almost certain to mistake this power for infallibility. The obeisance paid to a person in such authority, the drooling of the weak-willed who like to be led, the lies told by those who seek the favors he has the power to dispense—all these tend to aid and abet the process of his disintegration. It is not easy to reject flattery, regardless of its source. Indeed, the authoritarian loses his capacity to discriminate among sources. The mentality for directing others cannot simultaneously attend to the art of discrimination, the latter being a purely personal, introspective accomplishment of the intellect. This is why it is often said of authoritarians: “They surround themselves with ‘yes men.’ ” They cannot abide dissenters; in running the lives of others, they must have helpers who agree. This process spells inferiority for the life that erroneously claims superiority.

Daily experience affords a clue as to what happens to the person who accepts dictatorship in any of its many forms. For example, observe two persons, with somewhat different views, rationally discussing some subject of common interest. Each offers the other his most intelligent ideas, thus encouraging friendship and mutual confidence. This setting, plus the privacy of the occasion, combine to elicit from each the best that he has to offer. The exchange of intellectual energies is mutually beneficial, and the awareness of this fact encourages thinking and understanding.

Now, place these same two individuals on a stage before a multitude, or place a microphone between them and announce that 50 million people are listening in. Instantly, their mental processes will change. Thoughtfulness and the desire to understand each other will all but cease. No longer will they function as receiving sets, drawing on the expansible capacities of their own and each other’s intellects. They will become only sending stations; outgoing will take the place of intaking. And what they say will be influenced by how they think they sound to their audience and by their competition for applause. In short, they will become different persons because their psychological directives have changed. Those who forego self-improvement for the sake of directing the lives of others experience changes in their drives no less profound than the above illustration. The authoritarian act is always directed outward at other persons.

The directing of, or the meddling in, the creative activities of others—the dictator role—is so compellingly corrupting that no person, interested in his own upgrading, should ever accept the role. If he has made the error of acceptance, abdication for his own mental and spiritual health would seem advisable. The likelihood of corruption is so great that any person is warranted in confessing, “Even I cannot assume this role without being corrupted.”

Each Man Plays Many Parts

The three classifications discussed above are merely archetypes. In our country, today, it is almost impossible to find a person who is strictly representative of but one of the three archetypes. By reason of the scope of social leveling by compulsion, and because of our general participation in power politics, most of us are more or less combinations of all three archetypes. No one of us is entirely one or the other; no one of us is entirely free of the ill effects.

In summary, all of us are, to some extent, in this socialistic arrangement together. And all of us are degraded to the extent that social leveling by compulsion is practiced, whether we are primarily the ones with “ability,” the ones with “need,” or the ones who act as the coercive do-gooders or levelers.

The only way, then, that we can avoid personal degradation is to avoid social leveling by compulsion. Not a single person is benefited; all are harmed by socialism.

A positive suggestion! Let government confine itself to defending the life, liberty, and property of each of us equally; in short, let government keep the peace! Leave all creative action to men acting freely, all creative energy flowing unrestrained and uninhibited. Only the release of creative energy can produce abundance, be it material, intellectual, or spiritual. Given these kinds of abundance, along with the unrestrained freedom to act creatively, and there will be as much good done by each for others as there is good within us to give.

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1 Thomas J. Shelly, when he taught at Yonkers High School.

2 The textile industry, by itself, uses 15 billion kilowatt-hours annually, electric power being only one of several forms. Bear in mind that the energy of one man working a whole year, on an eight-hour shift, is equivalent to 67 kilowatt-hours. This single industry, with this single form of power, adds the equivalent of 224,000,000 men—about triple the entire work force of the whole U.S.A.! It is this power in the hands of workers, in its numerous forms and extended into countless industries, brought about by savings, that has made American workers so prosperous. Thus, the saver, by pursuing his own interest, is led, regardless of intent, to equipping others for self-help. This is quite different from the Judeo-Christian concept of charity but, when it comes to helping others, savings have no equal.