MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘Marx’

« Previous Entries

Leftists Still Want to Abolish the Family

Posted by M. C. on August 12, 2025

The reduction of individuals to impotent, isolated units—who interact primarily with state agents—is the ultimate outcome of the Left’s efforts, regardless of what its stated goals may be. Instead of independent family groups, bonded by biology and ancient, natural modes of human affection and loyalty, we are instead to have, as the “norm,” state-regulated sex workers and state-apportioned children, conceived by IVF and grown in surrogate wombs. This, the left tells us, will free us from the “slavery” of marriage and family,…

“The only real difference between marriage and prostitution is the price and the duration of the contract.” 

https://mises.org/mises-wire/leftists-still-want-abolish-family?utm_source=MI+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=6bae37b408-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_03_01_07_02_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-fb69bb184c-592102341

08/07/2025 • Mises Wire •Ryan McMaken

Early last month, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)sponsored a panel on the family at the organization’s Socialism Conference 2025. The organization described the topic this way: “How should the left relate to the family? Socialist analysis makes clear that the nuclear family form is an inherently repressive, racist, and hetero-sexist institution that functionally reinforces and reproduces capitalism.”

The roundtable featured Olivia Katbi, the co chair of Portland DSA;  Eman Abdelhadi, an assistant professor and sociologist at the University of Chicago; and Katie Gibson, a Teaching Fellow at the University of Chicago. 

Key observations from the panelists included: 

  • “When we talk about family abolition, we’re talking about the abolition of the economic unit… all of our material needs taken care of by the collective.”
  • “We argue for abolition of the family in general… the institution of the family acts as part of the carceral system.”

Naturally, these leftists partly want to abolish the family because they agree with Marx that the family is a “bourgeois” institution that must be destroyed in order to clear the way for the socialist utopia. Another element of opposition to the family comes from the Left’s bizarre preoccupation with commodifying sex. It is ironic that these “anti-capitalists” seek so vehemently to turn sex into an economic commodity, but this appears to be a key tenet of leftist thinking in recent decades. Thus, they seek to normalize sex work. This is partly because the Left views marriage as a type of sex work itself. After all, the family is “inherently repressive,” and all sex within marriage is essentially rape. It is therefore “progress” to abolish marital sex and replace it with “sex work.” 

A couple of quotations from the roundtable that capture this attitude include: 

  • “Sex work and marriage can’t exist without each other—they’re two sides of the same coin.”
  • “The only real difference between marriage and prostitution is the price and the duration of the contract.” 

These leftists also believe that the rearing of children ought to be managed and controlled by the state. That is, the raising of children should be collectivized and the parent-child bond replaced with the child-collective relationship. 

This idea is certainly familiar to Sophie Lewis, another presenter at the conference, who has written a book pushing for the widespread use of surrogacy in the birthing of children. Specifically, Lewis contends that surrogacy is a helpful tool in breaking the biological bond between parents and children, and destroying traditional notions of gender and family. 

(Lewis is partly correct. Surrogacy does indeed undermine the family as an institution and widespread surrogacy will prove to be a key building block for the post-humanist dystopian nightmare that people like Elon Musk are trying to build.)  

At the core of all of this is opposition to the family as an independent institution, and the leftist contention that the family must be placed totally under the control of the state. 

Whatever the Left might have to say about the economic mechanisms supposedly underlying the family, the fact is the Left’s hatred for the family mostly stems from the fact that the family is an obstacle to state power. 

As I noted in this lecture last year, the family is an institution that predates all states and which is natural to the human condition and to all human societies. 

Leftists such as those at the DSA conference seek to abolish any remaining vestiges of non-state independent governance. Although they deny it, “democratic socialists” are at the forefront of pushing for untrammeled state power, to be administered by an “enlightened” ruling oligarchy. The democratic socialists, therefore, seek to refocus all human loyalties toward the state, creating a direct state-citizen relationship for all, and setting up the state as the institution that meets all human needs. Unlike every particular family, which is relatively weak in its exercise of power, and is always temporary, the state’s power, in the Left’s vision, is to be overwhelming and permanent.  

This idea of the family as an obstacle was central to advocates of state-building throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Marxists, being extreme advocates for state power, also saw the “problem” of the family.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

“Class” Analysis: Marx’s Shell Game

Posted by M. C. on January 21, 2025

“Unnecessary conflicts between different ill-defined “classes” of people benefit the state. Bastiat called the state “the great fiction” by which everyone tries to use the state to plunder everyone else. This simultaneously enriches and empowers the political caste and its beneficiaries and gets the people to conflict with each other rather than the political caste.“

https://mises.org/mises-wire/class-analysis-marxs-shell-game

Mises Wire•Joshua Mawhorter

Though it is full of fallacies, so-called Marxian “class” analysis still pervades much popular and political discourse. This divisive worldview unnecessarily exacerbates conflicts between groups (so-called “classes”) and is a convenient worldview for the political state because it empowers it to treat all differences between groups as moral inequities and “problems” to be solved by treating groups unequally in the name of equity, justice, and fairness.

Previously, I have written about Marx’s “class analysis” and what I call the “ideological fallacy”—if all argumentation is necessarily biased special pleading on behalf of one’s “class,” then Marxism itself is admitting non-objectivity as just another class-biased ideology. In that case, Marxism cannot be an objective science; or, if it claims that objective truth and persuasion through argument is possible between “classes,” class consciousness and analysis are bogus.

Whenever someone claims, “All people are slaves of ideological bias,” then they have two options—either their statement does apply to them (and is not to be trusted as objective), or it does not apply to them (and the theory is not true). The consistent arguer of ideological bias and Marxist class warfare is inviting you not to believe him either way! Additionally, if the Marxist arguer of ideological bias and class conflict truly believes what they argue—that no one can be convinced against their class interest and no one can objectively stand outside their ideology, then the logical conclusion is clear, “Shut up!” This is the error of polylogism, that is, the self-defeating argument that different groups of people (“classes”) have fundamentally different different logics.

Marx’s Sleight of Hand: “Class”

This article attempts to expose another fallacy within Marx’s theory—his sleight of hand regarding class conflict. Marx engages in a form of the fallacy of equivocation, that is, he argues with one definition, but then switches the definition, or what it designates, in the conclusion. His shell game is subtle, especially because it actually begins with a statement that is largely true historically,

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another…

So far, this is true. These were state-imposed legal castes. They involved the creation of legal categories imposed by the state. Ralph Raico distinguished, however, that “these opposed pairs turn out to be, either wholly or in part, not economic, but legal, categories.” In short, Marx borrowed the coherent libertarian class-caste analysis—that various groups attempt to use state power to privilege themselves and/or to restrict others. This was used to establish his point only to quickly smuggle in a voluntary-contractual relationship as if it was also obviously one of class-caste conflict: capitalists and workers.

Class versus Caste Analysis

“Marx obfuscated the problem by confusing the notion of caste and class.”—Mises, Theory and History

Libertarianism has a rich tradition of class-caste analysis, in fact—focusing on the key distinction between political elites and state-connected cronies on the one side (the “few”), and the productive public on the other (the “many”)—caste analysis is key to libertarianism. Furthermore, Marx simply borrowed these concepts and wording from classical liberals (though he equivocated on the definition). Marx even admitted in an 1852 letter,

…no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the classes.

But Marx took a voluntary-contractual, intertemporal exchange—that between the capitalist-entrepreneur and the wage-earner—and placed it into the category of exploitation with other exploitative relationships (land-owner/serf, slaveholder/slave, etc.), applying the slippery concept of “class conflict” to both. This is akin to creating two categories with accepted definitions—squares and triangles—followed by a list of square-shaped things only to include a triangle-shaped item in the square category.

Because of this confusion and ambiguity in the concept of “class,” we are now treated to a seemingly-endless, ever-growing list of neo-Marxist “classes” in conflict—race, sex, gender, religion, sexual orientation, etc. For example, see the Intersectionality Wheel of Privilege and Power. Virtually every perceived and actual difference between peoples puts them into some sort of intersectional “class.” These differences are patent evidence of injustice and require the political state elites—in actuality, the most privileged class!—to treat unequal peoples unequally in order to achieve “equity.”

“Class” Categories

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

The Philosophy of the Pseudoprogressives

Posted by M. C. on August 19, 2022

pseudointellectual

Let us quote one of Anderson’s observations. In commenting upon America’s abandonment of the gold standard he remarks:

There is no need in human life so great as that men should trust one another and should trust their government, should believe in promises, and should keep promises in order that future promises may be believed in and in order that confident cooperation may be possible. Good faith—personal, national, and international—the first prerequisite of decent living, of the steady going on of industry, of governmental financial strength, and of international peace. (pp. 317–318)

Such were the ideas that prompted the self-styled progressives to depreciate Anderson as “orthodox,” “old-fashioned,” “reactionary” and “Victorian.” Sir Stafford Cripps, who twelve times solemnly denied that he would ever change the official relation of the pound against dollars and then, when he had done so, protested that he naturally could not admit such intention, is more to their liking.

https://mises.org/library/philosophy-pseudoprogressives

Ludwig von Mises

1. The Two Lines of Marxian Thought and Policies

In all countries which have not openly adopted a policy of outright and all-around socialization the conduct of government affairs has been for many decades in the hands of statesmen and parties who style themselves “progressives” and scorn their opponents as “reactionaries.” These progressives become sometimes (but not always) very angry if somebody calls them Marxians. In this protest they are right in so far as their tenets and policies are contrary to some of the Marxian doctrines and their application to political action. But they are wrong in so far as they unreservedly endorse the fundamental dogmas of the Marxian creed and act accordingly. While calling in question the ideas of Marx, the champion of integral revolution, they subscribe to piecemeal revolution.

There are in the writings of Marx two distinct sets of theorems incompatible with each other: the line of the integral revolution, as upheld in earlier days by Kautsky and later by Lenin, and the “reformist” line of revolution by installments as vindicated by Sombart in Germany and the Fabians in England.

Common to both lines is the unconditional damnation of capitalism and its political “superstructure,” representative government. Capitalism is described as a ghastly system of exploitation. It heaps riches upon a constantly diminishing number of “expropriators” and condemns the masses to increasing misery, oppression, slavery and degradation. But it is precisely this awkward system which “with the inexorability of a law of nature” finally brings about salvation. The coming of socialism is inevitable. It will appear as the result of the actions of the class-conscious proletarians. The “people” will finally triumph. All machinations of the wicked “bourgeois” are doomed to failure.

But here the two lines diverge.

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels designed a plan for the step-by-step transformation of capitalism into socialism. The proletarians should “win the battle of democracy” and thus raise themselves to the position of the ruling class. Then they should use their political supremacy to wrest, “by degrees,” all capital from the bourgeoisie. Marx and Engels give rather detailed instructions for the various measures to be resorted to. It is unnecessary to quote in extenso their battle plan. Its diverse items are familiar to all Americans who have lived through the years of the New Deal and the Fair Deal.

It is more important to remember that the fathers of Marxism themselves characterized the measures they recommended as “despotic inroads on the rights of property and the conditions of bourgeois production” and as “measures which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which in the course of the movement outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.”1

It is obvious that all the “reformers” of the last one hundred years were dedicated to the execution of the scheme drafted by the authors of the Communist Manifesto in 1848. In this sense Bismarck’s Sozialpolitik as well as Roosevelt’s New Deal have a fair claim to the epithet Marxian.

But on the other hand, Marx also conceived a doctrine radically different from that expounded in the Manifesto and absolutely incompatible with it. According to this second doctrine

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Rousseau, Guevara, Marx and More: The Moral and Intellectual Bankruptcy of the Left | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on December 26, 2021

The revolutionary intellectual has no title to boast of any personal superiority nor to set himself up as the master of society. On the contrary, with his rambling ideologies and his bad human example, which has corrupted the minds and behavior of millions of young people, the revolutionary intellectual is undoubtedly the most pernicious figure of our times.

https://mises.org/wire/rousseau-guevara-marx-and-more-moral-and-intellectual-bankruptcy-left

Guglielmo Piombini Bernardo Ferrero

A brief look at the lives of Rousseau, Marx, Guevara, Brecht, and Sartre suggests that many of the Left’s most celebrated heroes built their philosophies on a foundation of the most repugnant narcissism, violence, and inhumanity. 

Introduction

In editing David Hume’s 1766 pamphlet titled About Rousseau, Lorenzo Infantino has drawn attention to a dispute between the two philosophers that at the time caused much discussion throughout Europe. At the core of that contrast were not only two different world views, David Hume’s classical liberal and individualist weltanschauung versus Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s egalitarian and collectivist one, but also two very different personalities: the Scottish thinker was mild mannered, humble, and reserved, while the philosopher from Geneva was megalomaniacal, paranoid, and quarrelsome.1

The relationship between the two represents an interesting historical episode. When Rousseau became wanted by the police in Continental Europe for his subversive writings, Hume, who empathized with the precarious situation in which the Swiss philosopher found himself, generously offered to host him in his house in England. In addition, he also made an effort with the authorities to get him a living and a pension. However, following a hoax organized by Horace Walpole against Rousseau (specifically a fake letter which was published in the newspapers), the latter was convinced, wrongly, that Hume was the head of a “clique” of enemies who had conspired against him. Hence the irreparable break between the two, in which Hume, unwillingly and only on the insistence of his friends, answered to Rousseau’s unpleasant public accusations.

The Moral Credentials of the Committed Intellectual

In the story of the stormy relationship between Hume and Rousseau there appears a figure that has become typical of contemporary times, the socially engaged intellectual, who emerged precisely in this period and of whom Rousseau was probably the original prototype. Indeed, in the eighteenth century, with the decline of the power of the church, a new character emerged, the lay intellectual, whose influence has continually grown over the last two hundred years. From the beginning the lay intellectual proclaimed himself consecrated to the interests of humanity and invested with the mission of redeeming it through his wisdom and teaching.

The progressive intellectual no longer feels bound by everything that belonged to the past, such as customs, traditions, religious beliefs: for him all the wisdom accumulated by humanity over the centuries is to be thrown away. In his boundless presumption, the socially engaged intellectual claims to be able to diagnose all of society’s ills and to be able to cure them with the strength of his intellect alone. In other words, he claims to have devised and to possess the formulas thanks to which it is possible to transform the structures of society, as well as the ways of life of human beings, for the better.

But what moral credentials do committed intellectuals like Rousseau and his many heirs, who claim to dictate standards of behavior for all of humanity, have? In fact, if we look at their lives, we often find a constant: the more they proclaimed their moral superiority, their dedication to the common good, and their selfless love for humanity, the more despicably and unworthily they behaved with the people they dealt with in everyday life, with family members, friends, and colleagues.2

The Distorted Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for instance, opposed all aspects of civilization, starting from the arts and the sciences. As he wrote in his famous 1750 Discours sur les sciences et les artes, which gave him overnight fame: “When there is no effect, there is no cause to seek. But here the effect is certain, the depravity real, and our souls have been corrupted in proportion to the advancement of our Sciences and Arts to perfection.”3

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Why Marx Loved Central Banks | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on October 20, 2021

The fiat money system, the creation of money through circulation credit expansion, has brought about a new kind of debt slavery on a grand scale. Consumers, corporations and, of course, governments, too, have become highly dependent on central banks continuously churning out ever greater amounts of credit and money, provided at ever lower interest rates. In numerous countries, central banks have de facto become the real centers of power: Their monetary policy decisions effectively determine the weal and woe of economies and whole societies.

https://mises.org/wire/why-marx-loved-central-banks

Thorsten Polleit

In his “Manifesto of the Communist Party” (1848), published together with Frederick Engels, Karl Marx calls for “measures” — by which he means “despotic inroads on the rights of property” –, which would be “unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production,” that is, bringing about socialism-communism. Marx’s measure number five reads: “Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.” This is a rather perspicacious postulation, especially as at the time when Marx formulated it, precious metals — gold and silver in particular — served as money.

As is well known, the quantity of gold and silver cannot be increased at will. As a result, the quantity of credit (in terms of lending and borrowing money balances) cannot easily be expanded according to political expediency. However, Marx might have fantasized already, what would be possible once the state is put in a position where it can create money through credit expansion; where it has usurped and monopolized the production of money. Long before Marx, the English churchman and historian Thomas Fuller had elaborately expressed the power of money: “Money is the sinew of love as well as war.”

The Origins of Modern Central Banking

The idea of central banking has a long history. For instance, the Swedish central bank, the Sveriges Riksbank, was founded in 1668, and the English central bank, the Bank of England, was formed in 1694. The fraudulent operations of such institutions came to light soon, at the latest with the writing of the British economist David Ricardo. In his 1809 essay “The High Price of Bullion” he pointed out that it was the increase in the quantity of money — in the form of banknotes not backed by gold — that caused a general rise in prices, an effect we know as (price) inflation.

Unfortunately, however, the political-economic insight that central banks holding the money production monopoly would misuse their power time and again, engage in cronyism, and cause an anti-social debasement of the currency has not — to this very day — sufficed to discredit the monstrous idea of central banking. It seems that as far as monetary affairs are concerned, Marx’s concept of Dialectical Materialism has made quite an impression: What is appears to form peoples’ consciousness (not vice versa). This has certainly helped in creating central bank Marxism on a world-wide scale.

Cutting the Last Ties with Commodity Money

On 15 August 1971 Marx’s vision became true: The US administration single-handedly terminated the redeemability of the US dollar into physical gold – and so gold, the currency of the civilized world, was officially demonetized. Through this coup de main, in the United States of America, as well as all other countries in this world, an unbacked paper money — or fiat money system was established. Since then, all currencies around the globe represent fiat currencies: representing money creation by circulation credit expansion, not backed by real savings or deposits, monopolized by central banks.

The fiat money system, the creation of money through circulation credit expansion, has brought about a new kind of debt slavery on a grand scale. Consumers, corporations and, of course, governments, too, have become highly dependent on central banks continuously churning out ever greater amounts of credit and money, provided at ever lower interest rates. In numerous countries, central banks have de facto become the real centers of power: Their monetary policy decisions effectively determine the weal and woe of economies and whole societies.

By issuing fiat currencies, created out of thin air, a rather small clique of central bankers, together with their staffers, causes — to borrow from Friedrich Nietzsche — a “revaluation of values.” Chronic monetary inflation, for instance, discourages savings; running into ever greater amounts of debt gets cultivated; by central banks’ downward manipulation of the interest rate, the future needs get debased compared to present needs; the favoring of a sort of monetary “Deep State” comes at the expense of demolishing civil and entrepreneurial liberties.

A Supranational Central Bank

In Europe, central bank Marxism has accomplished a rather astounding feat: 19 nation states with a total of around 337 million people have given up their right to self-determination in monetary affairs, submitting to the monetary policy dictate of a supra-national central bank entirely beyond effective Parliamentary control that issues a single fiat currency, the euro. While central bank Marxism has been reasonably successful in Europe, however, its true spearhead has always been the US central bank: The Federal Reserve (Fed).

Today’s world depends on the fiat US dollar issued by the Fed more than ever. Effectively all other major currencies are built upon the Greenback, and it is the Fed that determines the credit and liquidity conditions in international financial markets. It effectively presides over a world central bank cartel which, if it is allowed to continue unimpededly, will eventually steer and control the world economy through its unassailable money production monopoly, effectively removing one of the most critical roadblocks against unrestricted state tyranny.

Ideas Have Consequences

So those favoring a free society can only hope that something will get in the way of central bank Marxism. This is by no means impossible. Socialism-communism is not the inevitable destiny of social life and historical evolution, as Marxists would like to make us believe. What truly matters are ideas or theories, if you will, as ideas — whatever their specific content, wherever they come from, whether they are right or wrong — underlie and drive human action.1Ludwig von Mises was acutely aware of this indisputable insight:

Human society is an issue of the mind. Social co-operation must first be conceived, then willed, then realized in action. It is ideas that make history, not the “material productive forces”, those nebulous and mystical schemata of the materialist conception of history. If we could overcome the idea of Socialism, if humanity could be brought to recognize the social necessity of private ownership of the means of production, then Socialism would have to leave the stage. That is the only thing that counts.2

Against the backdrop of Mises’s words one may add: Once people understand that Marxism (and all its particular forms of socialism) does not guarantee a higher living standard and that it does make a better or more just and reasonable world, it would usher in the end of central banking and fiat money. In other words: whether or not central bank Marxism and fiat money will prevail or be thrown out of the window (or flushed down the drain) will be determined by the outcome of the “battle of ideas.” So there remains reason for hope!

  • 1. For a detailed explanation see Mises, L. v. (1957), Theory and History, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, US Alabama, Part Two, esp. Chapter 7, pp. 102 – 158.
  • 2. Mises, L. v. (1981), Socialism. An Economic and Sociological Analysis, Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, p. 461.

Author:

Thorsten Polleit

Dr. Thorsten Polleit is Chief Economist of Degussa and Honorary Professor at the University of Bayreuth. He also acts as an investment advisor.

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

The Roots of “Anticapitalism” | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on July 21, 2021

In this process he incurs various expenses, such as for tools, and a part of the costs of marketing. He hopes to make a profit from these transactions in order to render his efforts worth while. Curiously enough, his responsibility toward the enterprise is of far greater scope than that of many workers. No wonder that the interest, once centered on accidents in the factories, is shifting more and more to the manager diseases. The entrepreneur sacrifices not only his “nerves” but also his peace of mind. If he fails, he fails not himself alone; the bread of dozens, of hundreds, of thousands of families hangs in the balance.

https://mises.org/wire/roots-anticapitalism

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

In many minds, “capitalism” has come to be a bad word, nor does “free enterprise” sound much better. I remember seeing posters in Russia in the early nineteen-thirties depicting capitalists as Frankenstein monsters, as men with yellow-green faces, crocodile teeth, dressed in cutaways and adorned by top hats. What is the reason for this widespread hatred for capitalists and capitalism despite the overwhelming evidence that the system has truly “delivered the goods”? In its mature stage it indeed is providing, not just for a select few but for the masses, a standard of living cordially envied by those bound under other politico-economic arrangements. There are historic, psychological and moral reasons for this state of affairs. Once we recognize them, we might come to better understanding the largely irrational resentment and desire to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

In Europe there still survives a considerable conservative opposition against capitalism. The leaders of conservative thought and action, more often than not, came from the nobility which believed in an agrarian-patriarchal order. They thought workers should be treated by manufacturers as noblemen treated their agricultural employees and household servants, providing them with total security for their old age, care in the case of illness, and so forth. They also disliked the new business leaders who emerged from the middle classes: the grand bourgeois was their social competitor, the banker their disagreeable creditor, not their friend. The big cities with their smoking chimneys were viewed as calamities and destroyers of the good old life.

We know that Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto furiously attacked the aristocratic social movement as a potential threat to their own program. Actually, most of the leading minds of Christian anticapitalist thought (equally opposed to socialism) were aristocrats: Villeneuve-Bargemont, de Mun, Liechtenstein, Vogelsang, Ketteler.

Bias against Capitalism Not of Worker Origin

Armin Mohler, the brilliant Swiss-German neo-conservative, has recently explained that one of the weakest points of contemporary conservative thought, still wrapped in the threads of its own obsolete agrarian romanticism, is its hostility against modern technology. How right he is! The exception might have been Italy with its tradition of urban nobility and of patricians who, even before the Reformation, engaged in trade and manufacture. Capitalism, indeed, is of North-Italian origin. It was a Franciscan, Fra Luigi di Pacioli, who invented double-entry bookkeeping. Calvinism gave a new impetus to capitalism but did not invent it. (Aristocratic entrepreneurs in Italy? Count Marzotto with his highly diversified business empire of textile plants, paper mills, hotel chains and fisheries is a typical example. His labor relations are of a patriarchal nature involving substantial fringe benefits which also characterize Japanese business practice.)

The real animosity against free enterprise did not originate with the laborers. Bear in mind that in the early nineteenth century the working class was miserably paid, and this for two reasons: (1) the income from manufacturing was quite limited (true mass production came later) and (2) the lion’s share of the profits went into reinvestments while the typical manufacturers lived rather modestly. It is this ascetic policy of early European capitalism which made possible the phenomenal rise of working class standards. Seeing that the manufacturers did not live a life of splendor (as did the big landowners) the workers at first viewed their lot with surprising equanimity. The Socialist impetus came from middle class intellectuals, eccentric industrialists (like Robert Owen and Engels) and impoverished noblemen with a feeling of resentment against the existing order.

As one can imagine, the artificially created ire then was turned first against the manufacturer who, after all, is nothing but some sort of broker between the worker and the public. He enables the worker to transform his work into goods. In this process he incurs various expenses, such as for tools, and a part of the costs of marketing. He hopes to make a profit from these transactions in order to render his efforts worth while. Curiously enough, his responsibility toward the enterprise is of far greater scope than that of many workers. No wonder that the interest, once centered on accidents in the factories, is shifting more and more to the manager diseases. The entrepreneur sacrifices not only his “nerves” but also his peace of mind. If he fails, he fails not himself alone; the bread of dozens, of hundreds, of thousands of families hangs in the balance. The situation is not very different in a stock company. There, the stockholders sometimes make profits in the form of dividends—and sometimes they do not. The worker always expects to be paid. The bigger risks are thus at the top, not at the bottom.

See the rest here

Author:

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909-1999) was an Austrian nobleman and socio-political theorist who described himself as an enemy of all forms of totalitarianism and as an “extreme conservative arch-liberal” or “liberal of the extreme right.” Described as “A Walking Book of Knowledge,” Kuehnelt-Leddihn had an encyclopedic knowledge of the humanities and was a polyglot, able to speak eight languages and read seventeen others. 

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

10 Ways the Communist Manifesto has Infiltrated the USA

Posted by M. C. on August 13, 2020

Did you ever think about property tax like in No. 1?

I suspect 2, 3, 5, 8 & 9 will make themselves obvious depending on how the election pans out. Obvious as in they are already here but they will get worse.

https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/news-analysis/top-10-goals-in-the-communist-manifesto-accomplished-in-america/

By Joe Jarvis

If you can’t handle one little arbitrary political abduction at the hands of secret government police, socialism may not be for you.

Socialists protesting in Portland are learning that “The worst thing that can happen to a socialist is to have his country ruled by socialists who are not his friends.” -Ludwig von Mises

See, you might not realize it, but the USA is already heavily influenced by the socialist/ communist philosophy of Karl Marx.

Socialism is more of an umbrella term, meaning centralized control of the means of production– like factories and farming– in the hands of the state.

Communism is more extreme, with complete abolishment of private property, and a dictatorial government that allegedly attempts to distribute wealth “to each according to his need,” and extract labor “from each according to his ability.”

The two are related enough to use them interchangeably for our purposes.

Karl Marx was born over 200 years ago. And despite the utter failure of his communist philosophy in practice, the cult lives on. Still people want to try again… this time they will get it right.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels originally published The Communist Manifesto in 1848. It laid out the beliefs and action plan of the Communist Party. The goal was to get communists of every nationality to rise up and unite to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors.”

Little did they know their words would be used by the likes of Stalin and Mao as justification for over 100 million murders all in the name of a great leap forward for society.

In America, the goals of the communists have crept their way into society with little fanfare. Many people have no idea that public schools, the graduated income tax, and even a central state-controlled bank (like the Federal Reserve) were tenets of the Communist Manifesto.

In one section The Communist Manifesto boils down to a list of ten main goals.

Here are those goals, in Marx and Engels’ own words, followed by some discussion about of how deeply they have seeped into the United States government.

“1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.”

Also known as property taxes.

Can you really say you own land if you must pay the government every year in order to keep it? Fail to pay your rent, and they will eventually confiscate “your” land. This money is then used for “public purposes” like public schools (just wait for #10) and police, who will remove you from the government’s land if you fail to pay your rent.

And if the local government can fine you for keeping a front yard garden, or backyard chickens, do you really own the land anyway? The proletariat simply trades capitalist oppressors for government oppressors.

The federal government owns outright 28% of all land in the United States, 640 million acres. This includes the Bureau of Land Management’s 248 million-acre turf used to control and oppress political dissidents like Cliven Bundy.

“The BLM is also responsible for subsurface mineral resources in areas totaling 700 million acres.” That means they control almost three times as much land as they own.

Each state government owns an average of 8.7% of its state’s land. Another source claims the feds own over 31% of the U.S. landmass, which brings the combined state and federal total ownership to almost 40% of all land in the USA.

And let’s not forget about eminent domain, where the government can just take your land for “public use” (or public benefit) with “just compensation.”

If you don’t feel that the compensation was fair, simply take the most powerful government on Earth to court– courts that they own. I’m sure you will be treated fairly.

“2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.”

Even after the latest tax cuts, the federal income tax rates range from 10% to 37%. You pay more if you earn more. That’s what a graduated income tax means.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the top 20% of income earners in the U.S. paid 87% of all income taxes in 2018. These people who earn $150,000 or more account for 52% of the income earned in the USA, but will pay almost all of the income taxes.

The top 1% of earners– the evil bourgeoisie making over $730,000 per year–actually paid over 43% of all income taxes in 2018.

So 1% of earners who make 16% of the country’s total income will pay 43% of the total income tax.

It sounds like way more than their “fair share” to me. But the communists won’t be satisfied until everything is owned by the state.

“3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.”

They want to fleece the rich one more time when they die, even though all that wealth was taxed already as income or capital gains.

There is a hefty exemption to the estate tax (AKA death tax)–the first $11 million or so is not taxed. But every dollar over that is taxed at 40%. (State-level estate taxes add additional costs, often with lower exemptions.)

When you think about it, $11 million is not so much money when you are talking about a business that might be passed down through inheritance.

If a business is worth $15 million, the family of the deceased would owe $1.4 million. If they don’t have $1.4 million in cash hanging around, they could have to dismantle the business in order to pay the taxes. That could mean a loss of good proletariat jobs and a hit to the economy.

The same could happen to a piece of land or estate that has been in the family for generations.

The socialists would say, “Aww boo-hoo, screw the rich,” because they are hateful and greedy for other people’s wealth. But understand that they never stop with the rich.

Eventually the middle-class is gutted by the socialists, when they realize all the confiscated wealth of the rich won’t last a year in government spending.

“4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.”

Let’s start with the Exit Tax.

Why don’t you just move out of America if you don’t like the taxes?

Well, America taxes its citizens worldwide, even if they do not live or work in the USA.

Why not renounce your citizenship then?

That is one option. But it’s actually not free. In fact, the U.S. confiscates a serious percentage of property from emigrants.

It is called the Exit Tax. It gets complicated, but basically, the government is going to tax you on your net worth, as if you just sold all your assets.

If you don’t have the liquid cash to cover that, you would actually have to start selling assets–property, stocks, etc.–in order to pay the Exit Tax. Of course, you would be taxed on the income or capital gains first, and then have to pay the exit tax with what is left over.

But again, a big part of being a communist is hating rich people. People with a net worth of less than $2 million are much less affected by the exit tax, and only have to pay a few thousand dollars to divorce Uncle Sam.

So let’s turn to confiscation of rebels’ property that affects the poorest proletariat… civil asset forfeiture.

This is often used against poor people who cannot afford to defend themselves in court. The police simply steal property or cash that they “suspect” was involved in some type of crime, without having to prove anything.

They don’t even have to charge you with a crime, let alone convict you. And you have to prove your innocence if you want your car, house, or cash back.

For example, police seized over $50,000 from a Christian Rock band that had collected donations for an orphanage, because they couldn’t prove they got the money through legal means.

Between 2001 and 2016, “more than $2.5 billion in cash seizures had occurred on the nation’s highways without either a search warrant or an indictment.”

And that’s not even counting the more than $3.2 billion the DEA has seized since 2007 without filing civil or criminal charges.

Just having cash is a pretty low bar to be considered a rebel. Then again, what should we expect from a communist doctrine?

“5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.”

I wonder if today’s communists are aware of this one. They can’t possibly think the Federal Reserve helps the proletariat, yet that is exactly what the manifesto describes.

Some people might disagree that the Federal Reserve is state-owned. Technically it has a private board, although board members are appointed by politicians.

But the government granted the Federal Reserve dictatorial control over the economy. The government refuses to audit it, and the government protects its monopoly. It is without a doubt a feature of a centralized state.

The Fed sets the interest rates, prints money, and finances much of the debt of the United States government.

It centralizes capital, and lets the government decide how to use it. They usually use it to bail out banks, wage wars, and steal more value from the people through inflation.

The Federal Reserve also makes it easier for the state to confiscate rebel property. With a government monopoly, it can simply freeze accounts at home, and bully banks abroad into accepting the will of the US government.

“6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.”

FCC, FTC, DOT, FAA, TSA, CBP–oh it’s an alphabet soup of communications and transport regulators.

They regulate the phone lines, the roadways, air traffic, rails, mail and package delivery.

This is nothing new.

Around the same time Karl Marx was writing The Communist Manifesto, Lysander Spooner was doing something productive with his time.

Spooner started the American Letter Mail Company to compete with the U.S. Postal Service. He undercut their prices and provided better customer service, but was fined and cited for breaking laws which protected the government monopoly. He was forced out of business in 1851.

The government doesn’t quite have control over the internet, but they did create the conditions to allow a handful of companies to control access to the internet.

The NSA monitors every communication. Customs and Border Protection performs unconstitutional searches at the border, whether you are an American or foreign.

There is even a bill in Congress that would outlaw encrypted communications, so the government could know absolutely everything you communicate via text, call, or online messaging.

And of course, you can’t go out in public without running the risk of being harassed by local, state, and federal police. You don’t have the right to travel without justifying every action to a police officer.

“7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.”

The state has certainly dabbled in factory ownership, like the GM bailout. They control utilities like water and power. And they have certainly subsidized their fair share of business from oil and solar panels to sugar and corn.

We can refer back to #1 to see how much land the government controls, often under the auspices of improving soil and protecting wastelands.

Then there are plenty of government contractors which are basically the same thing as a government-owned company. If 100% of their revenue comes from the government, they are not a private company. This is especially prominent in the defense industry, which is where the term military-industrial-complex comes from.

The government spends about 34% of the GDP every year— in 2020 it will be closer to 50%. That is a significant percentage of the economy which the government owns or controls.

And let’s not forget about everyone’s favorite socialist, Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal programs like the Tennessee Valley Authority did just this.

Of course this power means sometimes the government poisons an entire river for thousands of miles, like the EPA did to the Colorado River in 2015.

“8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.”

Yes, the Communist Manifesto proposes enslaving all those unwilling to work.

Now, it might not seem like the U.S. government forces people to work. But you have to make money just to park your ass on a plot of land. Local governments want property taxes, which means you must make a certain amount of money just to have a place to live.

People bitch about landlords, but at least they are providing a place to live. Try building yourself a little cottage on government land and they’ll throw you in prison. (So in that sense, they will provide a home to anyone.)

Without the socialist government, you could settle an unused a piece of land, and make your own way in the world.

And the fact that the government claims the authority to tax you on everything you earn basically means you have a liability to labor for the government if you want to labor at all.

This is the antithesis of right to the pursuit of happiness the founders of the USA talked about. That was synonymous with property rights, because working, building, and creating is how most people pursue a fulfilled life.

In fact, they are required for life itself. You can’t stay alive without someone working to feed you, for example.

Therefore, most of us cannot go through life without earning something to pay for necessities. But we can’t just earn what we need, we must earn way more than we need because the government will take a huge chunk of our income.

We tend to think about taxes as a percentage of our income. But what about as a percentage of our time?

The government forces you to work as its slave from about January through April every year. In a typical career, you will spend in total more than 14 full years working as a slave for the government.

“9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.”

The government helped create factory farming by regulating all the small-scale producers out of business.

Reason reports that USDA regulations have forced small slaughterhouses to close in favor of large factory-style slaughterhouses. This might sound like a good idea at first. But consider that when one infected animal makes its way to a slaughterhouse, it can contaminate so much more meat.

Having many slaughterhouses distributed across the U.S. meant that any infections were localized, and affected far fewer people. Plus when the slaughterhouse is local, it is easier to know the owners and see the conditions for yourself.

The animals are raised closer to home, requiring less logistics and a more secure supply chain from farm to table.

The U.S. government has long subsidized large crop producers centralizing them, and making it that much harder for small farms to compete.

It started with the Farm Bill in 1933 and continues to this day.

What we get is cheap, but unhealthy products. And even though the products on the shelf look cheap, we already paid for them with our tax dollars through subsidies.

You may not want to buy unhealthy foods loaded with high fructose corn syrup. But your money will pay for that crap whether you like it or not.

As for the second part, the US federal government does all it can to destroy the autonomy of towns and states across the USA. It does this with the carrot– giving money to governments that do its bidding; and the stick– using federal money and agents to enforce its laws, however unjust.

“10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.”

This may be tenth on the list, but it is number one in ensuring all the rest fall into place.

American communists got this goal in place just four years after the Communist Manifesto was published, with Massachusetts enacting the first compulsory public education law in 1852. After that, it was only a matter of time until the population was indoctrinated to believe whatever the government taught them.

The book Teen 2.0: Saving Our Children and Families from the Torment of Adolescence delves in depth into the history and injustice of compulsory schooling.

It was designed so that the state and corporations could work together to train an obedient workforce, with the public footing the bill.

The point was not open minds and a desire to learn. The aim of the education was setting students up for whatever mediocre to low paying jobs the industrialists wanted them to fill.

The communists succeeded in getting exactly what they wanted out of American schools. And today we see the growing gap between what people learn in school, and what skills they actually need for good jobs. The communists have got the American education system stuck in a stagnant philosophy of industrial labor.

Of course, they did it with supposedly the best intentions. Sounds like a good idea to save kids from dangerous work. But in the process, they also robbed children and young adults of their autonomy and choice. They forced kids against their will into a government institution and set the course for their entire lives.

With childhood education infiltrated by the communists, it was only a matter of time until the US became a socialist country.

And I’d say we are basically there.

That’s why it is so absurd that people think “socialism” would be a radical change for the US. It would be more of the same, a doubling down on every failure you can think of from the last century.

What the socialists being arrested in Portland by other socialists might not realize is that Obama signed the NDAA which is now being used by Trump/ federal troops to kidnap protesters in Portland.

The Republicans and Democrats are different heads of the same beast, just like Socialists versus the National Socialists. The labels hardly matter.

They are authoritarians first, and then break down into factions of communist, socialist, fascist, etc. Each grows the power of the federal government, and hands that power off to the next faction when the tides turn.

A truly radical experiment would actually be trying a real free market for once.

Never let a good crisis go to waste is the mantra of the elites.

In tumultuous times, their tactics have extra potency. They reach for more power.

But this is also when the elite are most vulnerable.

By studying their tactics, you will be more prepared to guard against, and counter-attack the enemy.

The current crisis is being used to exploit the masses. But it also presents tremendous opportunity to take the power back, and reshape this world.

Society is entering a new period of transition, a struggle that will reveal the elites of the next generation.

Now is the time to seize your power if you intend to be among their ranks.

Subscribe to THE DAILY BELL and immediately receive TWO FREE BLACKPAPERS:

1. Four Ways The Elite Control You in a Crisis

     And how to flip the script to seize their power now

2. The Trojan Horse: How (and Why) to Join the Ranks of the Elite

Be seeing you

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Why Marxist Organizations Like BLM Seek to Dismantle the “Western Nuclear Family” | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on July 28, 2020

What would this new social arrangement look like, according to Engels?

The care and education of children becomes a public matter. Society cares equally well for all children, legal or illegal. This removes the care about the “consequences” which now forms the essential social factor – moral and economic – hindering a girl to surrender unconditionally to the beloved man.

In this we see early echoes of the modern left’s current refrain attacking “patriarchy” and the nuclear family as essentially capitalist and private property–based institutions.

https://mises.org/wire/why-marxist-organizations-blm-seek-dismantle-western-nuclear-family

One of the most oft-cited and criticized goals of the Black Lives Matter organization is its stated desire to abolish the family as we know it. Specifically, BLM’s official website states:

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

This idea isn’t unique to BLM, of course. “Disrupting” the “nuclear family” is a commonly stated goal among Maxist organizations. Given that BLM’s founders have specifically claimed to be “trained Marxists,” we should not be surprised that the organization’s leadership has embraced a Marxian view of the family.

But where does this hostility toward the family originate? Partly, it comes from the theories of Marx and Engels themselves, and their views that an earlier, matriarchal version of the family rejected private property as an organizing principle of society. It was only later that this older tribal model of the family gave way to the modern “patriarchal” family, which promotes and sustains private property.

Clearly, in the Marxian view, this “new” type of family must be opposed, since the destruction of this family model will make it easier to abolish private property as well.

Early Family Units in Tribal Life

Frederick Engels’s 1884 book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State provides a historical perspective of the Marxian view of the development of the modern Western family unit and its relation to property rights. (Engels, of course, was the longtime benefactor of and collaborator with Marx.)

In reconstructing the origins of the family within a Marxian framework, Engels traces back to the “savage” primeval stage of humanity that, according to his research, revealed a condition in which “unrestricted sexual intercourse existed within a tribe, so that every woman belonged to every man, and vice versa.”

Under such conditions, Engels explained, “it is uncertain who is the father of the child, but certain, who is its mother.” Only female lineage could be acknowledged. “[B]eing the only well known parents of younger generations,” Engels explained, women as mothers “received a high tribute of respect and deference, amounting to a complete women’s rule [gynaicocracy].”

Furthermore, Engels wrote, tribes were subdivided into smaller groups called “gentes,” a primitive form of an extended family of sorts.

These gens were consanguineous (i.e., included people descended from the same ancestor) on the mother’s side, within which intermarrying was strictly forbidden. “The men of certain ‘gens,’ therefore, could choose their wives within the tribe, and did so as a rule, but had to choose them outside of their ‘gens,’” Engels explained. And “marriage” at this stage was a “communal” affair, meaning that multiple partnerships between men and women was closer to the rule than the exception.

Because mothers were the only parents who could be determined with certainty, and the smaller gentes were arranged around the mother’s relatives, early family units were very maternal in nature and maternal law regarding rights and duties for childrearing and inheritance were the custom.

Transition to the “Pairing Family”

This was the state of affairs for thousands of years, according to Engels. Over time, however, there emerged what Engels referred to as the “pairing family,” in which “A man had his principal wife…among many women, and he was to her the principal husband among others.” This was in no small part due to the “gentes” within tribes developing more and more classes of relatives not allowed to marry one another. Due to these increasing restrictions, group marriage became increasingly impossible and ever more replaced by the pairing family structure.

Under this structure, however, the role of mothers was still dominant. Quoting Arthur Wright, a missionary among the Seneca Iroquois tribe, Engels notes, “The female part generally ruled the house….The women were the dominating power in the clans [gentes] and everywhere else.”

The fact that women all belonged to the same gens, while husbands came from separate gentes “was the cause and foundation of the general and widespread supremacy of women in primeval times,” Engels wrote.

“In the ancient communistic household comprising many married couples and their children, the administration of the household entrusted to women was just as much a public function, a socially necessary industry, as the procuring of food by men,” he added.

As society evolved, as Engels described it, from “savagery” to “barbarism,” an important evolution was man’s development of weapons and knowledge that enabled them to better domesticate and breed animals.

Cattle and livestock became a source of wealth, a store of milk and meat. “But who was the owner of this new wealth?” asked Engels. “Doubtless it was originally the gens,” he answered, referring to a collective, or group ownership over the sources of wealth. “However, private ownership of flocks must have had an early beginning.”

“Procuring the means of existence had always been the man’s business. The tools of production were manufactured and owned by him. The herds were the new tools of production, and their taming and tending was his work. Hence he owned the cattle and the commodities and slaves obtained in exchange for them,” Engels explained. This transition marked an early passage from “collective” property to “private” ownership over property—particularly property in productive resources.

Such a transformation, Engels noted, “brought about a revolution in the family.”

Part of that revolution involved a shift in the power dynamics of the household.

“All the surplus now resulting from production fell to the share of the man. The woman shared in its fruition, but she could not claim its ownership,” wrote Engels.

The domestic status of the woman in the house, which had previously involved control and distribution of the means of sustenance, had been reversed.

“Man’s advent to practical supremacy in the household marked the removal to his universal supremacy,” and further ushered in “the gradual transition from the pairing family to the monogamic family” (what we would consider the nuclear family).

With the superior status acquired, Engels wrote, men were able to overthrow the maternal right to inheritance, a move he described as “the historic defeat of the female sex.”

The family unit’s transition to a male-centered patriarchy was complete, according to Engels. Much of the blame for this can be attributed to the emergence of private property and men’s claim over it.

How to Overcome the Patriarchy?

In the Marxian view, therefore, the modern nuclear family runs counter to the ancient “communistic” household Engels had earlier described. It is patriarchal and centered on private property.

“In the great majority of cases the man has to earn a living and to support his family, at least among the possessing classes. He thereby obtains a superior position that has no need of any legal special privilege. In the family, he is the bourgeois, the woman represents the proletariat.” The family unit, rather than the collective tribe, had become the “industrial unit of society.”

The overthrow of this patriarchic dominance can only come, according to Engels, by abolishing private property in the means of production—which he and those steeped in Marxist ideology blame for the patriarchy.

“The impending [communist] revolution will reduce this whole care of inheritance to a minimum by changing at least the overwhelming part of permanent and inheritable wealth – the means of production – into social property,” he concluded.

What would this new social arrangement look like, according to Engels?

The care and education of children becomes a public matter. Society cares equally well for all children, legal or illegal. This removes the care about the “consequences” which now forms the essential social factor – moral and economic – hindering a girl to surrender unconditionally to the beloved man.

In this we see early echoes of the modern left’s current refrain attacking “patriarchy” and the nuclear family as essentially capitalist and private property–based institutions.

In this, BLM is no different from other Marxist groups. The organization’s goals extend far beyond police abuse and police brutality. The ultimate goal is the abolition of a society based upon private property in the means of production.

Author:

Bradley Thomas

Bradley Thomas is creator of the website EraseTheState.com, and is a libertarian activist and writer with nearly fifteen years of experience researching and writing on political philosophy and economics.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Why Marx Was Against Individual Rights | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on December 28, 2019

Marx’s comments do contain one valuable idea. Today, we are inundated by propaganda from the left that justifies high taxes and redistribution of wealth on the ground that the well-off would have gotten nowhere without the help of “society”. Isn’t the government, acting in the name of “society,” entitled to take away some of this wealth?

https://mises.org/wire/why-marx-was-against-individual-rights

People are unequal in abilities and circumstances, and because of this, attempts to make them equal by force will inevitably violate their rights to live in freedom. If people have rights, unequal outcomes will result and trying to impose equality will violate their rights. It is as simple as that.

Murray Rothbard in Egalitarianism As a Revolt Against Nature states the point in this way: “An egalitarian society can only hope to achieve its goals by totalitarian methods of coercion; and, even here, we all believe and hope the human spirit of individual man will rise up and thwart any such attempts to achieve an ant-heap world. In short, the portrayal of an egalitarian society is horror fiction because, when the implications of such a world are fully spelled out, we recognize that such a world and such attempts are profoundly antihuman; being antihuman in the deepest sense, the egalitarian goal is, therefore, evil and any attempts in the direction of such a goal must be considered evil as well.”

Karl Marx agreed with Rothbard that individual rights lead to inequality. For him, though, this was an argument against rights. Because he believed that capitalists exploit labor, you might have expected that, for a socialist society, he would support the equal right of all laborers to the product of labor. In fact, he did not. In comments written in 1875 sent to Wilhelm Bracke, who had asked his opinion on the draft program of the United Workers Party of Germany, meeting at a Congress in Gotha, Marx made clear his opposition to rights. His comments were not published at the time but only after his death.

The key to Marx’s argument against individual rights is in this passage from his “Critique of the Gotha Programme.” “The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor. But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only — for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.”

What does Marx mean in this rather dense passage? His fundamental thought is this. If each person has an equal right to what he produces by his labor, this will lead to unequal outcomes. My labor may not be worth as much as your labor. This fact sets people against each other. People look at society from the viewpoint of their own interest and the interests of their family. This is a bourgeois idea. In a true socialist society, people are devoted to each other’s welfare and do not view each other as rivals. Rights accordingly are “obsolete verbal rubbish.”

In a famous passage, Marx tells us what a society without such antagonisms between people would be like: “In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly — only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” In other words, once the division of labor is abolished and production is planned, abundance will arise. Then, people will regard themselves as members of one happy family. It is more than a little strange that someone in the grip of this fantasy had the nerve to denounce many of his rivals as utopian socialists.

Marx’s comments do contain one valuable idea. Today, we are inundated by propaganda from the left that justifies high taxes and redistribution of wealth on the ground that the well-off would have gotten nowhere without the help of “society”. Isn’t the government, acting in the name of “society,” entitled to take away some of this wealth?

Marx of course supported high taxes on the wealthy, but he had no truck for this nonsense. He said “A fine conclusion! If useful labor is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labor belong to society — and only so much therefrom accrues to the individual worker as is not required to maintain the ‘condition’ of labor, society. In fact, this proposition has at all times been made use of by the champions of the state of society prevailing at any given time. First comes the claims of the government and everything that sticks to it, since it is the social organ for the maintenance of the social order; then comes the claims of the various kinds of private property, for the various kinds of private property are the foundations of society, etc. One sees that such hollow phrases are the foundations of society, etc. One sees that such hollow phrases can be twisted and turned as desired.”

Marx had a keen eye for nonsense, except when he himself was writing it.

Be seeing you

?u=https2.bp.blogspot.com-DJzAlO4WR34XGgaQng9vhIAAAAAAAAAIge9Hx09iabKYN60UDTS8Kif8ymw7qaG-QwCEwYBhgLw1200-h630-p-k-no-nuaoc2.jpg&f=1&nofb=1

Individual Rights!

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Socialist motivation defined by Henry Hazlitt via Marx.

Posted by M. C. on October 26, 2019

Henry Hazlitt Quotes. QuotesGram

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

« Previous Entries