In case you haven’t
noticed, there is something of a split in modern society. On the one hand are those who believe that
you only deserve what you work for, and if you don’t have something, it’s
because you didn’t work for it. You are
lazy, shiftless, and worthless.
On the other
hand, there are those who believe that people should get what they need simply
because they need it. If you don’t have
something, it’s because someone is selfishly withholding it from you.
In (very) general
terms, these two beliefs are loosely grouped as “capitalism” and “socialism,”
with gradations between them ranging from “democratic capitalism” to “democratic
socialism.” These are usually some form
of the Welfare or Servile State.
Not considered is
a state of society characterized by widespread ownership of capital. In many cases it’s not even on the radar.
Of course, the
question that comes to mind (or that should come to mind) is how this state of
affairs developed. Not surprisingly, we
find its origin in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when advancing technology and methods of finance restricted ownership
of the new forms of productive capital to relatively few people.
As more and more
people became alienated from production, they were cut off from the ordinary
means of personal empowerment. They
began seeking ways beyond traditional beliefs in politics, religion, and even
marriage and family. This was the birth
of “the democratic religion,” socialism, that was intended to reintegrate
people back into society by changing human nature and reinterpreting or
abolishing traditional belief systems in civil, religious, and domestic society.
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| Karl Marx |
It surprises many
people today who tend to equate all forms of “real” socialism with the Marxist
version, but even Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels acknowledged that there were
two fundamental types of socialism. In
their opinion, naturally enough, their version of “scientific socialism” that
they called “communism” was better as all the others made some kind of
compromise with traditional forms of society.
This was the point of Engels’s essay, Socialism: Utopian and
Scientific.
All forms of
socialism, however, embodied an assumption directly at odds with the
institution of private property. Although
the idea was hardly new, this was the idea that people have a right to receive
what they need, rather than a right to the means to acquire what they need —
equality or equity of results, rather than equality or equity of opportunity. As Marx put it in his Critique of the
Gotha Program, “From each according to his ability, to each according to
his needs.”
Private property,
however, is based on the assumption that what anyone receives is commensurate
with what he or she contributes to a common endeavor; “From each according to
his abilities, to each according to his inputs”: classic distributive justice. Any lack was traditionally made up by charity
or, in emergency situations, by a temporary redistribution by duly constituted authority.
Obviously, this
shift in the principle of distribution from proportionality of inputs to need required
either the abolition or revision of all institutions based on the old
assumption of distributive justice, or that put themselves above or beyond the
State in any way. Civil society was
founded on the principle inherent in private property, so it had to be
completely reshaped.
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| The most organized church. |
Distribution in religious society,
especially the most organized one of the Catholic Church, was based on charity,
but acknowledged the primacy of the State in civil society, and thus had an
inherent respect for private property.
Distribution in domestic society, the Family, was based on paternal or domestic justice
that distributes on the basis of need in common with the religious principle of
charity, but also respects private property in the civil realm and relations
with other families, and usually internally in relations with family members.
Further, both domestic society
and religious society, although they embody a form of the socialist principle
of distribution on the basis of need, embodied two fatal flaws as far as the
socialists were concerned. One, they acknowledged
the primacy of the State — and thus the sanctity of private property — in
matters outside of their own purview.
For example, a
family member or religious adherent who commits a crime against another family
member or co-religionist is generally regarded as subject to civil penalties,
not domestic or religious, even though the offense occurred within a family or
church. This meant that even though
domestic and religious society had the “right” socialist view of distributive
justice as being based on need, it was useless as it could not be extended to
civil society given traditional forms of society. Purely domestic or religious principles could
not legitimately be applied outside of a specific family or religion.
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| The State supreme over all society. |
Two, traditional
forms of domestic and religious society did not acknowledge the primacy of the
State in purely domestic or religious matters.
For example, if parents discipline their children or a church denies a
purely religious good or ceremony to a member or adherent, the civil
authorities have no business intervening. A child who is forbidden a piece of cake for
mouthing off to his mother, or a pro-abortion politician who is denied the
Eucharist has no legitimate civil complaint.
This is why all
forms of socialism can be said to summarize the whole of their message or
program as did Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto: “The
abolition of private property.”
Different forms of socialism may permit something that they call “private
property,” but while it retains the form, it loses the substance. This is because in order to apply the
fundamental principle of socialist distributive justice — distribution on the
basis of need — the private property principle of distribution on the basis of
relative inputs had to go.
In order to
accomplish this, the distributive principle of domestic and religious society
had to be applied beyond the purview of families and churches. At the same time, in order to ensure that traditional
domestic or religious authority could not control the State, marriage and
family as well as organized religion had to be undermined, even destroyed if
found necessary or expedient.
All forms of socialism
are, in fact, a way in which those who control the State can have their cake
and eat it, too. Socialism requires the
application of domestic and religious principles beyond families and churches,
respectively, but cannot permit families or churches to have any authority or
power, even within their traditional areas.
Perhaps the best
example of the inherent paradox of socialism can be seen in the
almost incoherent “supernatural imaginary” (non-scientific myths) that
developed in the Third Reich, and which continues to baffle historians and sociologists
who try to synthesize a consistent body of Nazi beliefs. In his paper, “Hitler’s Monsters,” Eric
Kurlander noted,
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| Inherent contradictions |
Nazi leaders were clearly
ambivalent about the degree to which they should appeal to specific occult
doctrine, folklore and mythology, or eastern and pagan religions, in fashioning
their Third Reich. Nevertheless, as
Himmler suggests, it was the very malleability, the pragmatic avoidance of a
particular political or religious worldview, that made the “supernatural
imaginary” so useful in propagating Nazi ideology. “It was not a matter of reactivating
mythical-magical thinking”, writes Wolfgang Emmerich,
. . . and even less so the various contents of myths, it
was rather a refunctionalizing of the mythical in the sense of fascist
rule. In order to be useful, the
mythical presentation had to choose a middle road between vagueness and specificity,
for either the intent of the mythos is too dark to be useful or it is too clear
to be believed. (Heinrich Himmler, as quoted in Wolfgang Emmerich, “The Mythos
of German Continuity”, in James R. Dow and Hannjost Lixfeld, The
Nazification of an Academic Discipline: Folklore in the Third Reich. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University
Press, 1994, 37.)
National Socialism’s inherently
contradictory social and political message — attacking the forces of capital
while vilifying the Left; nationalizing industry and protecting private
property’; encouraging religious freedom and denouncing the Jews; advocating
social welfare and universal health care while eliminating the biologically
inferior — was only possible through the widespread inculcation of a
supernatural, quasi-mythical vision of the world that accused Jews, communists,
freemasons, foreigners and any other scapegoats of monstrous powers and
intentions. (Eric Kurlander, “Hitler’s
Monsters: The Occult Roots of Nazism and the Emergence of the Nazi ‘Supernatural
Imaginary’,” German History, Vol. 30, No. 4, 2012, 539-540.)
How such contradictions
could be taken as fundamental assumptions of society will be continued when we
post again on this subject.
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