For the past seventy years, the major US foundations have been the main drivers of socialism, even more so than the state bureaucracies. Something similar can be said about the Bertelsmann Foundation and other German foundations. They also apply a saw with great relish to the capitalist branch that carries us all.
If you want the $, do as you are told.
https://mises.org/library/new-socialism-public-private-partnership
In 1990, socialism seemed to be done once and for all, but the times have changed. In the last twenty years, socialism has again become fashionable beyond the academic fringes. The covid-19 crisis demonstrated how quickly and thoroughly the traditionally free societies of the West may be transformed by small groups of determined and well-coordinated decisionmakers. Top-down central planning of all aspects of human life is today not merely a theoretical possibility. It seems to be right around the corner.
Now, the renaissance of central planning is an intellectual and practical dead end, for the reasons that Ludwig von Mises explained one hundred years ago. But if Mises was right, then how can we explain the renaissance of socialism as a political ideal? To some extent, this might be explained by the fact that new generations are likely to forget the lessons that were learned, often the hard way, by their ancestors. However, there are also other issues at stake. In what follows, I shall highlight two institutional factors that have played a major role: state apparatuses and ownerless private foundations.
1. State Apparatuses
An important driving force of the socialist renaissance has been the constant growth of state organizations. This includes all organizations that are largely financed by the state or thanks to state violence. For example, the so-called public service media are state organizations in this sense. In contrast, the so-called social media networks are mixed forms. It is true that they have received significant state support (for their establishment and for the expansion of the internet infrastructure). But they are also financed through advertising.
Socialism is growing out of the already existing state organizations. The crucial importance of this connection has been emphasized again and again by liberal and conservative theorists. A ministry, an authority, or a state-subsidized television station do not fully belong to the competitive life of ordinary society. Special rules apply. They are funded by taxes and other compulsory contributions. They are literally living at the expense of others. This has two important consequences for the renaissance of socialism.
On the one hand, state organizations are constantly forced to justify their privileged existence and therefore have a special need for intellectual services. Good cobblers and good bakers do not need to convince their customers with verbose theories. Their services speak for themselves. But creating and maintaining a government monetary system or a government pension system requires a constant torrent of words to pacify taxpayers, retirees, and the whole gamut of money users.
On the other hand, these intellectual suppliers typically have a personal agenda. State organizations are irresistibly attractive to ideological do-gooders of all stripes. This becomes clear as soon as we realize what doing good things really means.
Every day private companies and private nonprofit organizations create new products and new services—thousands of attempts at improvements. But their achievements fit into the existing social network. They are contributions that take into account the objectives and individual sensitivities of all other people. Private organizations thrive in competition. By contrast, the ideological do-gooder does not want to care about the sensitivities of other people. But that is only possible if his own income does not depend on those others, and if his plans can also be carried out against the will of the others. And that is exactly what the state, especially the republican state, enables him to do.
From the classical liberal point of view, the republican state should not pursue its own agenda. It should not be private, but public, should only provide the framework for free social interaction. But this theory hurts itself with the horror vacui it provokes. Ownerless goods will sooner or later be homesteaded by someone. Even an abandoned “public” state will sooner or later be taken into possession. History over the past two hundred years has shown that this privatization of the public state does not necessarily have to occur by coup or conquest. It can also grow out of the bosom of the state itself. The domestic staff, the servants of the state, can make themselves its masters.
Abandoned goods hold a magical attraction for people. An abandoned state magically attracts ideological do-gooders into the civil service. They are trying to privatize public space, to transform it into an instrument for their agenda. At first there may not be a consensus among them, but at some point the best-organized and best-connected groups gain the upper hand. The sociologist Robert Michels called this process the iron law of oligarchy.
The bureaucratic oligarchy can influence personnel decisions in terms of its ideology. Their ministry becomes “their” ministry (or their school, their university, their broadcasting service, etc.). It becomes an ideological state apparatus as defined by the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser. Through commands and prohibitions, an ideological state apparatus can convey its ideology to the outside world.
Notice that the bureaucratic oligarchy is only a small minority. This explains why the oligarchic ideology is typically a socialist ideology. Only where there is private property is it possible for a minority to undertake anything that might displease other people. But the oligarchs of a republican state cannot assert property rights. The state does not belong to them—they just control it. In order to be able to direct it inexpensively, they must avoid inciting the majority to resist them. The easiest way to do this is through a socialist ideology. Slogans like “We govern ourselves” cover up the real power relations.
A classic case is the French ministry of education, which was appropriated by a coalition of Communists and Christian democrats after the Second World War. In those years, Professors Paul Langevin and Henri Wallon (both members of the French Communist Party) pursued a strategy of centralizing and homogenizing all secondary schools, along with a dumbing down of the entry requirements. With the help of their allies, Langevin and Wallon slowly but steadily filled all the key positions of the ministry with their people while greatly expanding it. Thus, they made “their” ministry resistant to reform. No bourgeois minister has ever dared to make it a “public” institution again. So it has remained in the Communist inheritance to this day. The supposed servants of the commonwealth have become the real rulers, against whom the elected representatives can only grind their teeth.
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