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COMRADE STALIN DOESN’T KNOW
We are in favour of
the state withering away and at the same time we stand for the
dictatorship of the proletariat . . . .Is it “contradictory”? Yes,
it is “contradictory.” But this contradiction is a living thing,
and completely reflects Marxist dialectic.
-- Joseph Stalin,
1942
In The Gulag
Archipelago Alexandr Solzhenitsyn recounts the first time he was
arrested for political crimes. While serving in the Soviet Army and
fighting the Germans some casual comment got him arrested. A
convinced communist then, he spent his entire sentence in a labour
camp consoling himself with one thought: “Comrade Stalin doesn’t
know.” Later, when he was arrested a second time for political
offenses he hadn’t committed, and was tried, convicted, and again
sentenced to camp, he still clung to this consolation: “Comrade
Stalin doesn’t know.” After the third conviction, he abandoned
it. He only observed that the first and second time offenders
around him still employed it.
In 1972 and 1973 I
attended the Free University of Berlin. That was the time of great
student unrest in Europe. Berlin, even West Berlin, was no
exception. Almost everyone was a socialist, and many were rabid
Marxists. I naively concluded that living right next to East
Germany must embarrass them somewhat, ideologically speaking.
Almost daily the socialist heroes of the Volksarmee at the
Wall were shooting people trying to escape the Workers’ Paradise.
Very few were shot trying to escape from West Berlin into the
East.
At the time I was a
red-hot capitalist and blind devotee of Ayn Rand. When I got into
discussions with fellow students, I had the bad taste to mention the
East German skeleton in socialism’s closet. Ahh, but they were not
at all ashamed. “That,” they explained to me, “is the perversion
of socialism. So is Russia. Now if you want real socialism,
the way it really ought to be practised, you have to go to
China.” China,
of course, was several thousand convenient miles away and hidden
from view.
On February 19, 2002 an
article by Ilana Mercer appeared on WorldNetDaily.com entitled
“Lincoln’s Legacy of Corruption.” She writes, “So why mention Enron
in the same breath [as Abraham Lincoln]? Well, the system of
subsidies and corporate welfare exemplified by the government-Enron
incest is one of the pillars of policy that Lincoln – whose birth
was celebrated yesterday by some – dedicated his life to realising.
Cretinous commentary in the media notwithstanding, Enron's
entanglement with the state has nothing to do with genuine
capitalism. True capitalism ropes entrepreneurs into the service of
only one master: the consumer. It allows no grants of government
privilege, and it banishes corrupting interference from the
political class.” [emphasis added]
Rogue communists? Rogue
Capitalists? By now you have gleaned what these three anecdotes
have in common. All exemplify an ideological blindness to the true
nature of the system they espouse. All alibi for their system.
Why? They seek to reconcile the horrifying fact screaming at us:
injustice is not an aberration of their system but its
essence. This conclusion creates an unsettling cognitive
dissonance. It won’t fit into the pigeonholes of their ideology.
For them, the lens of ideology brings the world into focus so that
it makes sense. This fact, however, won’t come into focus. By
definition and presupposition they cannot question the lens, so they
must throw out the fact.
THE ANTI-GOD OF
COMMUNISM
By the time the 20th
Century dawned the rising tide of socialism had already alarmed
Americans. When the Russian Revolution turned the tide blood red in
1917, Americans reacted. Striving to defend their society
intellectually, they fell into the trap of ideology. With the red
enemy knocking at the gates, they abandoned Christianity and adopted
dualistic Manichaeism. “Capitalism” became the “good” god to answer
the menacing anti-god of Communism. That continued throughout the
Cold War, and in the process they replaced theology with
ideology. It cemented the transition begun with Lincoln’s
election.
Before you jump to any
conclusions, be aware that I have not become a “communist.” In
fact, I am probably the only person in Tennessee who is
not a communist, and knows why. Problem is, I am no longer a
“capitalist” either. It’s not what it claims to be. In the end I
can only find a sure foundation for property and liberty in
theology, not ideology.
As capitalist ideology
has developed, the free market has become more than a tool. It has
become a god. Oh, no, you may object, they never say
that. Maybe not, but the free market certainly operates as
god in their theory, the substitute for God that eventually
dispenses sure justice and brings all things right at last. It is
Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” remember? In any event, “free”
markets are the very last thing industrial capitalism
offers. Not “free” but “managed” trade is its goal. Not freedom of
entry, but licensing is its reality.
That said, we still
ought to question the “invisible hand’s” benevolence. As I
understand that, you take large groups of fallen men, unrestrained
by anything but their own selfish interests, and somehow their
varied machinations will bring out a good result. Oddly enough,
this comes from the same man who complained that no group of men in
the same business ever meets without hatching a conspiracy against
the public.
Here we meet Miss Mercer
again. “Government-Enron incest” is not (as she complains)
capitalism gone loco, but capitalism as it is. “Enron’s
entanglement with the state” has everything to do with true
capitalism. Rather than promoting genuine entrepreneurs, it
promotes what I call “government entrepreneurs” (Miss Mercer calls
them “the political class”) – men like Enron’s Ken Lay or Ross
Perot who become billionaires by feeding at the government trough or
trading astutely – on influence. “Subsidies and corporate
welfare” form the bone and sinew of this system.
THE AMERICAN SYSTEM
A bit further down in
her article Miss Mercer quotes Tom DiLorenzo, the author of a
soon-to-be-published book on Lincoln. I heard Professor DiLorenzo
several times at last summer’s League of the South’s Summer
Institute, “Total War & Reconstruction.” During his presentation I
remember him saying words to the effect that “after careful study it
was hard to avoid the conclusion that the Republican Party was
founded and run as a shill for railroad interests.” (Mr. DiLorenzo
might not have stated it quite as inelegantly as I have, but then,
I’m from Tennessee where we call a hog a hog.) Lincoln had been and
remained a Whig, pushing Clay’s three fold “American System” of
internal improvements (subsidies to railroads and canals), a
national bank, and high protective tariffs. A not very careful
examination of this program quickly reveals the same recipe used for
today’s Babylonian government: rule to benefit the “political
class.” Special interests and the law merchant have crowded out the
constitution and the common law, and with them, all our rights and
property.
Miss Mercer’s comments
betray her selective naïveté. She hits the nail square on the head
and then denies there is a nail. “[T]he system of subsidies and
corporate welfare exemplified by the government-Enron incest is one
of the pillars of policy that Lincoln … dedicated his life to
realising.” She might have added that only Lincoln’s war made
possible the huge aggregations of wealth that became the heart of
industrial capitalism. The War created the Robber Barons. Before
the War – that millennial occasion for graft – such fortunes hardly
existed. DuPont, for example, was a sleepy little 50 year old
gunpowder manufacturer when the war began. Thanks to the war, by
the first decade of the 20th century DuPont and Imperial Chemical
were powerful enough to divide the whole world’s munitions customers
between themselves. Like Pope Alexander VI in 1493 divvying up the
world between Spain & Portugal, no one seemed embarrassed.
NOT
AN ABERRATION
The present system
ruling us is not an aberration of capitalism. It is
industrial capitalism, its heart and essence and purpose. Big
business – holders of unthinkably huge fortunes -- forms a symbiosis
with government to exploit the nation, the same way moss and fungus
merge to form lichens and digest rocks. Or choose some other
metaphor, like “Siamese twins” or “leech & leech.” Just don’t miss
the point, that unbridled capitalism, exactly like socialism,
works to create a state where all political and economic power are
concentrated in a few hands. They must exploit not only the
labourer, but also the smallholder, that sturdy backbone of the
nation who owns his own little plot or business and values his
independence. In fact, this capitalist system must always swallow
up all smallholders and convert them to employees. There can only
be one boss, you know.
THE SMALLHOLDER VERSUS
THE ROBBER BARON
What distinguishes the
smallholder? Not his smallness but his independence
and self-reliance. Whether he is a farmer on 50 acres or a
manufacturer with 500 employees, he glories in his independence.
Without him, no free republic can survive, nor can property rights.
Why are property rights so important? Precisely to protect the
smallholder. Indeed, the concentration of wealth itself
endangers and will eventually destroy any republic or democracy.
Although its particular
and limited application has passed, an ongoing general equity
remains in the Jubilee laws (Leviticus 25:1-55). Every seven years,
all Israelites who had fallen into slavery for debt were freed.
Every week of seven years -- every 49th year -- all land returned to
the families to whom it had been originally parcelled out when
Israel entered the Promised Land. The relicts of those laws persist
in the laws of many states today, especially in “homestead
exemptions” and “right of redemption.” Under the Jubilee laws
colossal fortunes could not persist forever, and most men would live
and die standing on their own feet on their own dirt.
I am not
recommending that we adopt those exact Jubilee laws today, because
we are not Israel. However, we must observe their general equity or
find even the possibility of independence and freedom perished
forever. And when I speak of “freedom” here, I do not mean some
trite “financial freedom” of the mutual fund ads, where a generic
well-dressed Grandpa smiles at generic Grandma while both smile
smugly at their mutual fund statement that guarantees ease for their
“twilight years.” I mean genuine operating freedom,
although, yes, freedom without cash is dead. What good is
freedom of the press if you don’t own one? What good is the right
to keep and bear arms if you can’t afford one? What good is freedom
of education if the government owns all the schools? What good is
the right to property when it remains forever out of your reach, or
government at any time on any pretext can seize it?
The whole institutional
mechanism of industrial capitalism -- The Symbiosis – works to keep
wealth concentrated and to prevent any challenge to entrenched
power. The tax code (especially the tax code), the laws, the
monetary system, the legal incapacity to hold corporations liable
(or more precisely, the people who own the corporations), property
taxes, licensing, the educational system – all of these represent
bribes or barriers. They are bribes to the shortsighted, to prevent
their opposing the system, or they are barriers to the challengers,
to prevent their succeeding. In other cases, they are merely
outright subsidies to big business.
That is the American
System. That was the system of Clay and Lincoln. That was the
system of Roosevelt and Reagan. That is the system of Bush and
Greenspan. It dooms your hopes, and your children’s. What is
worse, it buys them off with beer and dope and TV, the modern
equivalents of bread and circuses.
SOLUTIONS?
Does the present system
offer a solution for a just and secure society? No, nor is it meant
to offer anything but stability for those in power. It is a
mechanism for managing the problem. The problem, from the
Establishment’s standpoint, is not economic justice or independence
for the masses. The goal for industrial capitalism is not and never
has been to preserve, maintain, or promote freedom. Its purpose is
to extinguish freedom, and economic freedom heads up that list. Its
success may be measured by the extent to which it has camouflaged
itself and bought off or stifled dissent.
Fred Reed stated it
succinctly. “[T]he principle that comfort trumps democracy
underlies society today. We have the trappings of elections, … [b]ut
what real influence do we have? Can we divert the remotely chosen
path of our children’s education, alter or even speak against the
flow of immigrants across our borders, question racial preferences?
No. These things are decided for us. We can lose our jobs for
speaking of them. The more things matter, the less we can say. …
“We can exercise any
freedom that doesn’t endanger the status quo. We can live where we
want, change jobs, watch pornography, read seditious books and even
write them (provided we don’t seek wide circulation), and buy
endless things we don’t need or much want. But we can’t speak our
minds. …
“Two things allow the
appearance of democracy without the substance. The unanimity of the
media permits the inculcation of appropriate values … The other is
the satisfaction of the drives for food, comfort, sex, and
entertainment. Satiety breeds indifference.
“Things could be worse.
If you want to read the classics, or teach them to your children,
you can. You just can’t get the schools to teach them. Any book you
want, any music, any vacation, any sport from golf to hang gliding,
you can easily find. Existence is as secure as it is likely to get.
Software gets better. Cable sometimes offers five hundred channels,
I hear, or will soon. Life is good.
“It is only the
important things that are decided quietly, far away, by the
political classes who know where the country should go, who know
what is right and will, gradually, without any jackboots at all,
make us what we should be. (Fred Reed, 1/21/02,
http://www.fredoneverything.net/ColMenu.html).
NOT UTOPIA
If neither capitalism
nor communism can usher in the millennium, the utopia where history
ends, where can we go? The cure begins with admitting the disease.
Whether we speak of capitalism or communism, the problem is not that
Comrade Stalin doesn’t know. The problem is that Comrade Stalin
intends to run things this way, because Comrade Stalin is an
unrestrained sinner in a fallen world.
Face it:
this will never be a world of perfect justice. “Utopia” in Greek
means “nowhere.” We will always have to live with the frustration
of the not yet and not fast enough. Without losing hope we
have to push for God’s justice as fast as we can, while recognising
that we cannot yet accomplish some things. First, however, we must
abandon those diseased ideologies that only camouflage tyranny and
guarantee injustice.
LIKE IS NOT SAME
It is true that
capitalism embraces some elements of Christianity, but that is true
of socialism as well. Neither ideology is the same as Christianity,
however their advocates may exalt them. Besides, both are
necessarily materialistic. Both concern themselves only with the
material world, so neither can answer all the questions man asks –
and certainly not the most important questions. They may tell us
how to clone animals most efficiently, but they can’t tell us
whether we should clone anything. Since man is a creature
made of both matter and spirit, any system that claims to be
all-embracing but addresses only one side of man is bound to come up
short. When we succumb and pretend that these ideologies do
offer sufficient answers, we abandon our Christian duty to conform
ourselves and our society to the image of Christ.
As a friend of mine
says, these ideologies solve no problems. They all aim at
managing problems, not solving them. Only Christianity aims to
solve them.
-- F. Sanders
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