printUpdate I (June 29): I’m please to bring you a piece by BAB A-Lister, Tibor Machan. Tibor holds the R. C. Hoiles Chair in Business Ethics and Free Enterprise at Chapman University and is research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford, CA. He is editorial advisor for Freedom Communications, Inc., which includes the errant Orange County Register. Well, at least our Tibor still features on the editorial page. Tibor has also recommended my column, for which I am grateful (www.Tibormachan.com).
Update II: Tibor is on hand to answer your questions. Make the most of the opportunity.
MARX WAS PARTLY RIGHT
By Tibor Machan
Most literate people know that first on the list in Karl Marx & Frederick Engels’ Communist Manifesto of what needed changing to achieve socialism is the abolition of the right to private property. This follows, of course, from the very idea of socialism, which sees humanity or society as an organic body, akin to a termite colony. Individuals no longer exist in such a system, so privacy and private property must go, too.
Marx also made a prediction that in modern democracies there wouldn’t be a need for violent revolutions because the citizenry will get rid of the legal protection of private property through the electoral process. Too many people will get fed up with the volatility of freedom, including the free market place, and gradually achieve socialism by voting in politicians who will eliminate the obstacle of legally protected private property rights to central planning.
Marx thought that central planning would serve society well but he based this idea on his confidence that human nature will change. Instead of people wanting to achieve various goals of their own, they will in time come to aim only for the public good. He believed that once matured, “the human essence is the true collectivity of man.” The new man, then, will not be like you and me or anyone today.
This is an important element of socialism and central planning because only if it is true will the theory of public choice, which completely undermines confidence in central planning, be avoided. Public choice theory addresses human being as they are now, not as they would turn out to be in Marx’s vision of a socialist society. If Marx is wrong and human nature will not change, then public choice theory shows that central planners will make a mess of things, not help out at all. Central planners, being ordinary humans, will aim at fulfilling their own agendas, not some vague public purpose.
A unified, one-size-fits-all public purpose makes sense within the context of the Marxian idea of the new man, one who cares nothing for himself or herself, only for the whole society. This is like people in a team or orchestra who are not focused on their own private agendas but that of the group. It works fine in small organizations which human beings join voluntarily because they do in fact promise to fulfill their own goals, only with the aid of other people. But in Karl Marx’s picture no need for voluntary joining exists. People will be born as socialists, by their very nature.
Because the Marxian idea is myth—history is not driving us toward socialism and the new man—the socialism aimed for by Marx and his followers has to be brought about coercively, by brute force–see Stalin or Hugo Chavez, as examples. This is even so when people elect politicians whom they entrust with public service because those people, of course, haven’t a clue how to achieve some mythical comprehensive public good. So even when elected by majorities, as Max thought they would be in democracies, promoters of socialism will be thoroughly stymied by their own unavoidable ignorance of what really benefits us. We are not all the same; indeed humanity as it actually is consists of a huge variety of individuals with an equally huge variety of different ways of attaining their best interests. No central planners can achieve this, ever.
But Marx did have it right that in their impatience and frustration with the free market, people will attempt the impossible. (Marx, of course, didn’t think socialism was impossible.) Consider, for example, environmental issues. Many are panicked about how well protected private property rights leave much of the environment uncared for–e. g., rain forests, the polar bear, etc., etc. So they then wish to entrust the care to politicians and planners. They envision some kind of supreme plan that will bring about a healthy ecosystem. But no one really knows what that is and planners are just as prone to mismanage it all as individuals, only the scope of their mismanagement is far greater, so the damage they do is huge. (In fact most of the current environmental mess is due to government central planners who built ridiculously huge projects using government’s power to violate private property rights, as in the case of the TVA and the many humongous dams around the globe.)
Impatience is what produces all this. It is true that with a regime of legally protected private property rights no grand scheme is in the offing. Yet that impossible dream motivates too many people, however futile it is from the start. The only real prospect is the piecemeal, strict private property approach and that is what encourages—though it does not guarantee—the responsible use of the environment.
Just as the perfect is the enemy of the good, so the myth of guaranteed environmental health is the enemy of a reasonably healthy one. Too bad, but Marx did have a point about people’s impatience. Yet certainly it isn’t going to lead to any socialist utopia.
“But Marx did have it right that in their impatience and frustration with the free market, people will attempt the impossible.”
I don’t buy that people get tired of free markets. They get tired of the results of rigged markets. Then they decide they want what was stolen from them and they will use government in desperation to get it back.
I am speaking, as usual, about the government backed banking cartels in the US and other countries. How can one talk about free markets under these circumstances?
People aren’t always at their best, politically or otherwise, so their impatience can render them economically and otherwise dense. Marx may have overstated this point but given how often folks want to eat their cake and also have it handy for later consumption, they do foster bad policies and reject good ones. It may never happen that they are at their best for a long enough stretch to straighten out the system for the long haul.
As long as we are praising Marx, I would also speak in favor of Lenin’s observation that the last capitalist would sell the rope to hang the next-to-last capitalist. Unlike St. Ayn Rand and other “rightist” libertarians who see businessmen as inherent heroes of freedom, the businessmen are in it for money – as they should be. Hence, your typical Rockefeller has no problem doing business with Hu Jintao, Vlad Putin, George Bush, or any other corrupt authoritarian. What Ron Paul calls “soft fascism” is perfectly in harmony with business. In fact, the stockholders of Archer Daniels Midland should be passionately following their (un)enlightened self-interest and support Barack Obama and his Cornographic Ethanol Mandates. After all, why have competition and risk when you can steal a good profit with a well-placed bribe or kickback? This doesn’t make Nader or Marx libertarians, of course, but their warnings should not be tossed aside lightly.
Mr. Pauli’s comment about business and businessmen displays the for (left)libertarians all too typical incomprehension of the essence of business. In his assessment of the “moral” character of the businessmen, he conveniently fails to cite the facts that it’s business, particularly BIG business, which is the source of virtually all material wealth in our societies. While the rottenness of some businessmen is not inherent in them, as it isn’t inherent in any other group or profession, the essence of productivity and rationality, which are the essential prerequisites to produce a chair, not to speak to build and organize a major industry, IS! For evidence, see the wealth around you! Or, what do you think all that comes from?
I see big government as a spiked club. If one does not pick it up himself, he is in danger of someone else picking it up and using it on him.
The solution is to reduce government power to its proper functions. That way, the honest businessman need not fear it and the dishonest businessman would have nothing to gain from it.
I never said that business did not create efficiencies and hence wealth – just that the companies (and I own stock in some) that benefit from Bush’s Prescription Drug Benefit have their bottom line ahead of some libertarian notion of “freedom”. The banks want the Fed to print money at a low rate and then lend it at a high rate. Disney wants its copyrights to go on for a million years. Auto dealers want their monopolies protected by law….
I also notice that some of the largest companies in the world are now Chinese and Russian (just checked it out). I would not be suprised that most of these businssmen prefer a regulated climate that guarantees profit and suppresses competition over the uncertainties of an unregulated FREE market place. China and Russia are good examples of authoritarian market places and the US is somewhere between 40% – 60% regulated/controlled as well. Nice to have our phone companies spying on us! Looks like we can have a degree of prosperity AND a degree of repression – a gilded cage of sorts.
I tend to agree with Myron Pauli. In most cases, big business is not an ally to freedom, and the favors and special treatment they expect from government is as dangerous, if not more so, than the handouts that common people expect.
Myron,
It almost seems like a conspiracy.
1) Allow Muslims to immigrate to the US
2) Piss Muslims off via wars in Muslim countries.
3) Justify a police state because of 1) and 2).
Actually, it is probably just the insane logic of stupid politicians. May it further discredit the neo-cons.
We seem to be having a perfect storm of incompetence.
Incompetence & Termites? ! ?
When it comes to “abolishing” the right(S) to private property,
One must necessarily wonder where it could possibly, conceivably “Terminate”; i.e.: (end) …
The right to private property must necessarily extend to and include one’s own
person. ( i.e.: Your own personal “self.” )
DO YOU BELIEVE THAT THAT SHOULD BE
(ABSENT ANY ACTION AGAINST OTHER HUMANS) IN ANY WAY “CONSTRICTED” OR “CONTROLLED ?
I don’t think so… Not in my lifetime. Not in my Fathers; nor his.
It’s not in my heritage.
(I AM AN AMERICAN.) Therefor:
NOT ON THIS PLANET.
Szasz
[Guys, please write in normal sentences rather than in columns, or capitals, or else I have to try editing so that readers can get the flow.–IM]