The Mainspring of Human Progress

Chapter 5

SOCIALISM AND/OR COMMUNISM

The nearest approach to the bee swarm is found in socialism or communism – whichever term you care to use. There is not much choice between the two; they both aim at world collectivism. The only difference is a variation of viewpoint as to what tactics and procedures should be used to bring it about.

Up to 1917, the words socialism and communism were used as synonymous and interchangeable terms. But incident to the Russian Revolution, they began to be used to distinguish between the Second International and the Third International.

Perhaps we had better go back a little and briefly review the events that led to the present-day confusion. In the middle of the 19th century, a German named Karl Heinrich Marx, with the support of the wealthy Friedrich Engels, presented the ancient will-of-the-swarm superstition in modern dress, embellished with pseudo-scientific theories. His voluminous writings include The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867).

This was during the period when the so-called Industrial Revolution was just beginning to make headway in lifting the burden of heavy labor from the back of mankind. But Marx misinterpreted the trend. He mistook the new tools of freedom as being tools of further oppression. He contended that capitalism, under the Machine Age, would devour an increasing share of the wealth and that the workingman would be reduced to pitiable destitution unless all the peoples of the world could be organized on a uniform, socialistic basis.

Frederic Bastiat

It is interesting to note that in the early 1840’s, a brilliant young French economist, Frederic Bastiat, had reached the opposite conclusion. He said:

“In proportion as capital is accumulated, the absolute share of the total production going to the capitalist increases, and the proportional share going to the capitalist decreases; both the absolute and proportional share of the total production going to the laborer increases. The reverse of this happens when capital is decreased.”

Here are some hypothetical figures to illustrate Bastiat’s theory. The figures are used merely to indicate the direction of a relationship that occurs when capital accumulation increases:

The trend Bastiat predicted in the division of the national product is just what happened under increased capital formation in the free market of the U.S.A.*

But Marx and his followers were laboring under the Old World delusion of a static economy. It was inconceivable to them that changes in the techniques of production would bring far-reaching changes in other directions.

They believed industrial capitalism to be the natural forerunner of socialism; that to bring about the world millenium they must concentrate, first of all, on highly developed capitalistic countries – using the processes of attrition, boring from within, fomenting dissension and class hatred, and promoting collectivist measures through existing governmental agencies. This is something like jujitsu, which has been described as the technique of defeating an opponent by turning his own strength against him.

In other words, it was a program of inducing capitalism to commit suicide, then stepping in and taking things over. The First International and the Second International Socialist parties were operated from that viewpoint.

Lenin

But at a London conference in 1903, just 20 years after the death of Marx, a young Russian named Vladimir Ilich Ulianov, who later became known as Lenin, split the Russian section of the Second International on a question of tactics. The process of obtaining power through political maneuvers and infiltration was too slow for him. Lenin insisted that, in the case of Russia, his professional terrorists could take over the government by force without waiting for that country to pass through the stage of modern capitalism.

Lenin and his followers set themselves up as the Third International, which came to be known as the Communist party. The shattered fragments of the Second International, including the British Labour party, continue to call themselves Socialists.

But there is really no distinction between the Socialists and the Communists, except from the standpoint of tactics in getting started; and that difference is less clearly defined than formerly because, outside of Russia, the Third International uses either force or intrigue, or a combination of the two – whichever seems propitious.

Socialism and communism, in fact all forms of collectivism, rest on the same will-of-the-swarm idea: The individual is nothing; the strength of the party is the only thing that matters!

Plutarch’s account of ancient Sparta (600 B.C.) is an apt description of communism as it is practiced today:

“Their discipline continued still after they were full-grown men. No one was allowed to live after his own fancy; but the city was a sort of [military] camp, in which every man had his share of provisions and business set out…. [Lycurgus] bred up his citizens in such a way that they neither would nor could live by themselves; they were to make themselves one with the public good, and, clustering like bees around their commander, be by their zeal and public spirit carried all but out of themselves.”2

The phrase “all but” is the obstinate difference between a man and a bee.

For a hundred years or more, the Spartans lived their Spartan lives in changeless routine. When King Agis IV tried to raise their standard of living, they killed him. Finally, their less communistic neighbors defeated them in war and ended the commune.

But the idea of the bee swarm still persists.

Law of Lek

After a visit to the Dinaric Alps in the 1920’s, Rose Wilder Lane reports:

“The Dukhagini in the Dinaric Alps were living in the same obedience to their Law of Lek. I tried for hours to convince some of them that a man can own a house.

“A dangerously radical woman of the village was demanding a house. She had helped her husband build it; now she was a childless widow, but she wanted to keep that house. It was an ordinary house; a small, stone-walled, stone-roofed hovel, without floor, window, or chimney.

“Obstinately anti-social, she doggedly repeated, ‘With these hands, my hands, I built up the walls. I laid the roof-stones with my hands. It is my house. I want my house.’

“The villagers said, ‘It is a madness. A spirit of the rocks, not human, has entered into her.’

“They were intelligent. My plea for the woman astounded them, but upon reflection they produced most of the sound arguments for communism: economic equality, economic security, social order.

“I said that in America a man owns a house. They could not believe it; they admired America. They had heard of its marvels; during the recent world war they had seen with their eyes the airplanes from that fabulous land.

Taxes

“They questioned me shrewdly. I staggered myself by mentioning taxes; I had to admit that an American pays the tribe for possession of a house. This seemed to concede that the American tribe does own the house. I was routed; their high opinion of my country was restored.

“They were unable to imagine that any security, order, or justice could exist among men who were not controlled by some intangible Authority, which could not permit an individual to own a house.”3

Collectivism versus Freedom

The practice of communism has not been confined to the Old World. The North American mound builders were probably communistic – certainly the American Indians were, and the Pilgrim Fathers established communism on the Mayflower and attempted to operate Plymouth as a commune.

But they found themselves up against the stern realities of a frontier wilderness. Their theories were overshadowed by the facts of the situation. Their lives depended on applying their individual energies to the providing of food and shelter. Half of them starved during the first winter, and the necessity for survival forced them to break up the commune and put each person on his own. They learned an important lesson; and from then on, they prospered.

But in later years, after the United States was formed, Americans and Europeans eagerly established communistic settlements from coast to coast.*

One after another, these experiments have failed, despite the fact that they were close-knit communities made up of fervent volunteers who, generally speaking, were bound together by a common religious faith. The founders died off. The younger generation couldn’t help but notice what was going on in surrounding communities. The result was discontent and dissension. When a communistic community is set up alongside a community with a free economy, the contrast is too great to be ignored.

Regardless of the theory of the thing, human energies simply do not function in the manner of the bee swarm, and any attempt to govern the actions of multitudes of men always results in oppressive power being placed in the hands of the few.

Under communism, everything is run by the “masses.” At least, that’s the theory of the thing. But in actual practice, it doesn’t work out that way. There must be some strong person or small group of persons to sit in the saddle and eliminate any ideas that are opposed to the so-called common good – as determined by the strong person or small group of persons.

Thus, in order to put the theories into practice, it is admittedly necessary to employ methods that are diametrically opposed to what communism is supposed to represent; and the necessity becomes increasingly obvious when the attempt is made to extend communism over a wide area.

In line with the teachings of Marx, the proponents admit the necessity but argue that it is merely a temporary measure – that the dictatorship will automatically “wither away” just as soon as things get going. They contend that history decrees this withering away, but the facts do not bear out the theory. In all history, there is no evidence of any dictatorship ever withering away. Dictatorship always feeds on itself. The ruthless tactics necessary to get it started become increasingly ruthless in the efforts to conceal the errors and defects of a scheme that can’t be made to work.

Inevitable Result

Human energy and individual initiative are put in a strait jacket, and the inevitable result is poverty and distress leading into war. It may be internal rebellion, or it may be war of aggression against other people. Those in power naturally prefer the latter course. It provides the opportunity to draw attention away from failures at home, with the alluring possibility of taking wealth from others – and getting away with it.

Since the aim of communism is economic equality and security, those in charge must, in line with the practice of Lycurgus, set things up as a military camp – every man having his share of provisions and his business laid out for him. Thereafter, no person can be permitted to live and work “after his own fancy” because that would not be communism.

If some individual, on his own initiative, tries to act in a new way, to change living conditions – if, like King Agis IV, he tries to introduce money or, like the woman in the Dukhagin, to have a whole hovel for himself when the commune is not planned on such a high economic level; or if, as happened in Amana, Iowa in 1900, he wants to invent a motorcar – he has to get the consent of his comrades. And the chances are that they will not give their consent. To let him have his way would endanger the faith that keeps the commune in existence.

Artificial Respiration

In establishing a communistic state, it is possible to take advantage of everything that has gone before and to borrow techniques and ideas from other countries. It is also possible to set up and maintain bureaus of scientists, research workers, and inventors, under the control of the state.

But even under such a policy, the communistic state will lag behind those countries in which the opportunity for free initiative extends to the entire population instead of to a chosen few.

It was the goal of the Soviet dictators to industrialize Russia by raising its production to the American level of 1917. The program has continually lagged behind expectations, despite the fact that it has been greatly aided by materials, techniques, and personal services furnished by American industrialists and engineers.

Communism, regardless of the trimmings, is an attempt to make a static world in a dynamic and changing universe. To whatever degree it succeeds partially – for a length of time – it will be at the expense of progress. The scale of living will tend to remain at the same or a lower level than when the commune was first established.

There is abundant historical evidence in support of that statement; underlying such evidence is the indisputable fact that nothing but new and better ways of using human energy can raise a scale of living. And since human energy is generated and controlled by individual persons, any new way of using it must come from the efforts of an individual person to make something that does not now exist. (In a later chapter, this will be discussed in considerable detail.)

Fact and Fallacy

In all fairness, it must be said that communism recognizes human equality and the brotherhood of man – in theory at least. But it fails to recognize the real nature of man.

The Communist has not yet seen the fallacy in the ancient, infantile assumption that individual persons are controlled by some superindividual authority. He does not question this pagan superstition. He takes it for granted. To him, individuals are merely cells of a larger organism – the tribe, the people, society, the mass. Spartans called it Sparta; the villagers of Dukhagin called it the Law of Lek; Hegel and Treitschke called it the State; Karl Marx called it Economic Necessity; Lenin called it the Dictatorship of the Proletariat; Mussolini called it Immortal Italy; Hitler, the German Race.

But regardless of what it may be called, it is the self-surrender of the individual to the will of pagan authority, which the collectivists believe to be “the common good.” And so, with a fanatic zeal and a deep-seated conviction that the end justifies the means, they revert to pre-Christian savagery and revive the practice of human sacrifice in order to purge or cleanse society of all persons, classes, and races that do not share their views.

There is some refuge from certain other forms of tyranny. Generally speaking, these are less thoroughly organized and not so remorselessly armed with the self-righteousness of the “humanitarian with the guillotine.” But the misguided benevolence of complete social and economic power always leads to ruthless suppression of religious freedom, personal freedom, freedom of expression, and even freedom of thought.

In contrast to Marx and Engels, he never forgot the spirit and soul of man; and, with hammer-blow logic brightened by a high sense of humor, he drove home the doctrine of liberation and attainment through individual effort. But Bastiat was no match for the highly organized proponents of class hatred, and he was defeated at the polls in 1848. Exhausted by overwork and robbed of his voice by tuberculosis, he continued to fight until his death in 1850, at the age of forty-nine.

Frederic Bastiat might be described as “the Tom Paine of economics.” To date, he has no successor; and the carrying on of his work should be a challenge to some freedom-loving American of the younger generation.

English translations of three of his brilliant and scintillating books are now available: Social Fallacies and Harmonies of Political Economy (Santa Ana, Calif.: Register Publishing Co., Ltd., 1944); The Law (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1950).