Why Tyrants Are Invariably Attracted To Socialism

 

            RADICAL socialists/communists frequently espouse the idea that they are the moral Übermenschen of human politics/philosophy. Anyone who does not endorse their noble, egalitarian, collectivist ways are evil greedy bourgeois; yes, even if you are a poor proletarian yourself.⁽¹⁾ However, in practice we see that socialism (which is what I will use hereafter as an umbrella) invariably leads to the formation of a tyrannical state. Socialism and capitalism, invariably tied into the political system, contrast greatly in terms of their democidal propensities.

The toll of democide under socialist regimes since the 20^th century has been nearly 150,000,000⁽²⁾ (considering the age of my source, additional violence against Uyghurs, civilians, and Hong Kongers by communist states could have pushed the number up somewhat). As for capitalist or non-socialist regimes (this includes America, Kuomintang China, the UK, Mexico during its Revolution, Turkey, etc.), their incidents of democide add up to only around fifty million at the most.⁽³⁾ So, while tyrannies with market economics (the PC way of putting it, I suppose) were responsible for only about 25% of recorded state-sponsored fatalities, tyrannies without market economics can be held responsible for up to 75%.

            The importance of noting democide is this: a federal employee can go out and randomly shoot a civilian whenever, but that is not official policy. In the regimes that have committed democide, it became government policy for reasons of securing a revolution or creating ethnic purity to exterminate natural citizens en masse. Wars kill people haphazardly and cannot and should not be used for composing these statistics (especially because their significance can become subjective), while democides represent a systematic and purposeful intent to kill. What these statistics show is that from a little over 20 given regimes half were socialist and took the lion’s share of culpability in that century’s democide, while only two “capitalist” regimes surpassed a million: Kuomintang China (ten million) and Imperial Japan (five million).

While capitalism was baked in the classical liberal principles of John Locke and Adam Smith, and its later thinkers (Friedman, Rothbard, Hayek, etc.) were born in republics and were libertarian themselves, socialism stands in stark difference. Socialism was born of the staunch repudiation of Western “capitalist” philosophy and empiricism by Marx, a “dictatorship of the proletariat” literally becoming a central principle of the ideology, sprouted later thinkers such as Stalin and Mao, its later-later thinkers still espousing covertly totalitarian concepts such as Critical Theory, and its so-called “more libertarian” thinkers espousing nothing close to what Marx intended (and so fundamentally not Marxist). The majority of purely socialist regimes (mostly established in the first half of the 20^th century) delved into tyranny. Countries like the United Kingdom and Germany are not socialist countries (to the chagrin of both socialists and capitalists alike), they are welfare states, but they are being increasingly dominated by gradualist socialists who are becoming quite successful.⁽⁴⁾

But why is this? How is that the Universe’s most egalitarian and libre ideology gives way to such degrees of elitism and despotism time and time again? The answer is mostly twofold: first, it has to do with subjectivism and the more philosophical roots of socialism; second, it is the political dynamic the system promotes that allures tyrants. I will not simply be a vitriolic capitalist regurgitating anti-communist talking points for a number of paragraphs, but I will endeavor to construct a logical argument that shows how Point A (socialism) inexorably transforms into Point D (tyranny). Once people can be enlightened of this issue, we can focus on the real way to achieve prosperity: abolishing elitism and reforming capitalism. 

Subjectivism is a very important tool for the tyrant. From the days of Ancient Rome’s deification of its emperors, to the present,⁽⁵⁾ tyrants use subjectivity to solidify their grandeur and infallibility in the eyes of the ruled. The North Korean people are led to believe that Kim Jong-Il was a master athlete, incapable of getting anything besides a perfect score, so of course they should be loyal to such a magnificent man and his dynasty no matter how hungry they are! Another example is the Duetsche Physik that was very popular during Nazi Germany; under the belief that German identity and science was being suppressed by Zionist academia, German ultranationalists adopted the subjectivist view that “Jewish physics” was fallacious and superior German/Aryan physics was grounded in reality, and would prove the viewpoints of these people (such as the descent of man from Aryans, that Aryans were in fact White and not archaic Indians, and that Hyperborea was a real place and humanity’s White homeland).

This was the role “science” played under the Third Reich, employing malleable empiricism and subjective interpretation to validate the State’s dogma. By rejecting objectivity (which “Jewish” physics represented) and accepting subjectivity (which the methodology of German physics represented), tyrannies can create whatever reality they want, especially one that validates their regime. “Science” would show that Nazi totalitarianism was right, and everything else was subversive fiction (which explains why authors such as Orwell, Adam Smith, Rousseau, and others were banned). This paradigm of subjectivity is built into Marxist philosophy, under the name “dialectics”.

In its primal form, dialectics believes in the synthesis of a truth through the interaction between a thesis and antithesis, the “combination of the opposing assertions”. The idea that one truth can be taken from two contradictions is absurd. Are we to believe through “dialectical analysis” that the belief carbonated water can power a diesel motor and the belief diesel can power a diesel motor can “dialecticize” into the belief that a solution of carbonated diesel-water can power a motor? Marxian dialectics, sometimes called “historical materialism”, believes that history and society has been influenced by matter, not “ideals”, which led to materialists rejecting the concept of rights as espoused by liberals, as “rights” are ideals.

The understanding of dialectics’ danger is absolute among its critics. Mario Bunge called the concept “fuzzy and remote from science”.⁽⁶⁾ Esteemed philosopher Karl Popper stated in his well-known treatise The Open Society and Its Enemies that “[dialectics] played a major role in the downfall of the liberal movement in Germany…by contributing to historicism and to an identification of might and right, [encouraging] totalitarian modes of thought”.⁽⁷⁾ Even Walter Benjamin, a Marxist himself, stated in his work Theses on the Philosophy of History, that historical materialism is designed to “win all the time” and, in synonymous terms, refers to it as quasi-religious.

By making the fabric of reality malleable, by subjecting contradicting thoughts to “synthesis”, and by rejecting any universal or absolute paradigms, this is how Marxian philosophy promotes subjective thought. Orwell’s magnum opus gives a looksie as to how this works in a socialist regime in the chapter five passage that reads, “It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grammes a week.” In the same way that President Biden is hailed for “cleaning up” Trump’s mistakes by passing dozens of diktats despite raising insulin prices⁽⁸⁾ and weakening national security⁽⁹⁾ by doing so, the subjectivist tyrants of history and novels turn everything into objective positives about their regimes. The subjective dialectic philosophy of Marxism is thereby alluring to tyrants because it provides them with a means to create the subjective interpretations they need to prolong their regime.

Socialism also relies on a political, not just philosophical, paradigm as its desire to “abolish the state of things”⁽¹⁰⁾ requires a manual for the new state of things. This political paradigm that socialism has conceived is an attractive ideal to tyrants because of one simple reason: the political power which it grants to the completed, post-revolutionary socialist state is excessive. As esteemed statesmen and political scholar Alexander Hamilton stated in The Federalist No. 51, “In framing a government…you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place, oblige it to control itself.”⁽¹¹⁾ Socialism frames its ideal civil society with far too much authority and too little control.

Besides the violent and psychotic imagery of “revolutionary terror” and “murderous death agonies” employed by Marx in his texts, Marx conceives of a “dictatorship of the proletariat” as “a transition…to a classless society.”⁽¹²⁾ Marx’s economic concepts aren’t too hard to digest, as he believed that the “proceeds of labor” should be apportioned first according to the State’s needs, and then on a basis of merit across the laborers who produced said proceeds.⁽¹³⁾ This is not too far from capitalist value theory, where more valuable and industrious work is paid higher than others. No, I am not calling Marx a crypto-capitalist, just keep reading.

The problem with Marx’s paradigm, however, is that the apportionment is dealt by the proletarian dictatorship. This is the basis of later socialist regimes’ planned economies; precalculated labor, precalculated supply and demand, and precalculated distribution dictates economic performance. The issue with all this is, as I stated before, the amount of political power that must be dealt to do this. Soviet bureaucracy was infamous, insomuch that its primary opponents, the Trotskyists, rightfully referred to it as “bureaucratic collectivism”, and that bureaucracy stemmed from the socialist concept of the state-guided apportionment of labor to the proletariat.

Capitalism and classical liberalism are inherently about minimizing political power. While the State is given authority over the military, the taxes, the bullion, the borders, and all these basic duties, everything else is apportioned to market forces. Private industry ensures public health, satisfactory education, sturdy infrastructure, and all these other things. Had the State been involved, political filibustering and bureaucratic lag would – and does – lead to well-known consequences such as constantly worn-out roads, understaffed facilities, delayed public utilities, et cetera. Besides the matter of efficiency, there is also the matter of abuse.

When the State is in control of, say, education, the State is in control of the mind. In America alone, millions of kids pass through the rungs of the school system, proceeding towards graduation, filtering through incremental curricula that builds in complexity and significance. However, due to the State handling over 90% of students, virtually all of our nation’s future is subject to the shifting mood of the State. When the mood drifts towards ideological enforcement, nationalized education becomes an instrument of indoctrination.⁽¹⁴⁾

So, when Marx suggests that the means of labor be managed by the bureaucracy of the proletarian dictatorship, and that the proceeds of labor be apportioned by the bureaucracy of the proletarian dictatorship, what he is in effect calling for is the overextension of the State to comical degrees. While the performance of socialism has collapsed into disarray every time it is tested out⁽¹⁵⁾ and further ruins the socioeconomic conditions it is supposed to improve,⁽¹⁶⁾ the free market – which continually self-corrects naturally to allocate labor and capital in the most efficient manner – is free of such bureaucratic slag and rigidity⁽¹⁷⁾ and tends to better impact the socioeconomic conditions of the related society.⁽¹⁸⁾ The socialist system is unfeasibly and doctrinally bureaucratic, doomed to collapse under the political square-cube law.

Now, this is not to say the Marxian paradigm is purposively despotic, it is a simple matter of the political system being proposed inextricably creating a good environment for tyranny. Marx's own Critique of the Gotha Programme condones gradualist socialism if the present institutions permit a democratic transition towards socialism, but whether gradualist or revolutionary, both strategies of socialism have the same goal: the abolition of property, the market, and “class". The increasing statism of the United Kingdom⁽¹⁹⁾ and Germany⁽²⁰⁾ shows how even democratically imbued socialism will cause tyrannical conditions to arise. It is why Robert Minor, an early-20^th century American socialist, drew a cartoon of Marx being welcomed by America's esteemed industrialists;⁽²¹⁾ he could tell the Marxian doctrine was far more appeasing to the bourgeois aristocracy than the proletariat.

            Man is not an inherently good being, as Alexander Hamilton says in The Federalist No. 51, and as such in order to prevent our acclimations towards aggrandizing power in the government, we must have a limited government.⁽²²⁾ There is no such thing as a State that reasonably uses the power that is given to it, and only by minimizing that power does it seem – in the grand scheme of things – that the State is doing a good job. Give the State the ability to say what you are to earn, and it will cheat you out of bed and board if you do not live up to its standards. It is not like this isn’t becoming the status quo in other contemporary communist states!⁽²³⁾

            No matter how it is proposed, the socialist system needs the government to have absurd power granted to it. John Locke wrote in chapter 11 of his Second Treatise of Civil Government that the extent of the State’s power, being the collective sum of authority delegated from each civilian of the commonwealth, can be no more than the power an individual would grant to another over himself.⁽²⁴⁾ A man most certainly would not grant someone else the power to murder him, nor the power to remove him from his home by force. These measures of excessive authority are necessary to the instruments of authority required for the proper function of a socialist regime. As such, the system is doomed to fall into tyranny.

            Despite having made it this far, I am certain a number of socialists will still be grasping at straws to validate their system. “Oh, but please, critical things like water and housing are too important to leave up to the market!” they cry, “the State must take care of these things, or people will die!” Such an argument produces two points that we can examine. The first of them is that such a reality wherein the State can take care all of all problems, where problems can be solved by the enforcement of positive laws, and where a Harmonious Society can be maintained is nothing more than utopianism.

In the next article, we will examine how socialism is a utopian system, the quasi-religion Walter Benjamin talked about.

           

NOTES

1. Zito, Salena. “Why Liberal Elites Are So Resentful of Middle America.” New York Post, 12 Jan. 2017, https://nypost.com/2017/01/11/why-liberal-elites-are-so-resentful-of-middle-america/.

2. Manning, Scott. “Communist Body Count.” Historian on the Warpath, 4 Dec. 2006, https://scottmanning.com/content/communist-body-count/.

3. Many of my statistics for democide come from Rudolph Rummel’s Statistics of Democide, and being the creator of the term “democide”, he is most certainly authoritative.

4. “The State of Britain.” YouTube, 20 Mar. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgqGDsL_Drw.

5. Hoffman, Trey. “Leftist Hypocrisy and Biden’s Cult of Personality.” The Citizen, 2 Feb. 2021, https://thecitizen.com/2021/02/02/leftist-hypocrisy-and-bidens-cult-of-personality/.

6. Bunge, Mario. Scientific Materialism. D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1981, p. 41.

7. Karl Popper. The Open Society and Its Enemies. 5th rev. ed., vol. 2, Princeton University Press, 1966, p. 395.

8. Pollak, Joel B. “Joe Biden Suspends Trump Executive Order to Lower Insulin, Epinephrine Prices.” Breitbart, 24 Jan. 2021, https://www.breitbart.com/health/2021/01/24/joe-biden-suspends-trump-executive-order-to-lower-insulin-epinephrine-prices/.

9. Miller, Matthew. “Biden Removes Trump Order Protecting US Power Grid from China.” The Conservative Review, 24 Jan. 2021, https://www.conservativereview.com/biden-removes-trump-order-protecting-us-power-grid-from-china-2650122150.html.

10. “The German Ideology - Idealism and Materialism  .” Marxists Internet Archive, 1845, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm#:~:text=Communism.

11. Hamilton, Alexander. "Federalist No. 51" in The Federalist Papers, edited by R.B. Bernstein. Arcturus Publishing, 2016, p. 89.

12. “Marx to J. Weydemeyer in New York.” Marxists Internet Archive, 5 Mar. 1852, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/letters/52_03_05-ab.htm.

13. “Critique of the Gotha Programme - Chapter One.” Marxists Internet Archive, May 1875, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm.

14. Somin, Ilya. “Public Education as Public Indoctrination.” Reason, 12 Jan. 2020, https://reason.com/volokh/2020/01/12/public-education-as-public-indoctrination/.

15. Perry, Mark J. “Why Socialism Failed.” Foundation for Economic Education, 31 May 1995, https://fee.org/articles/why-socialism-failed/.

16. Jacobs, Sam. “Black America Before LBJ’s ‘Great Society’: How the Welfare State Helped Ruin Black Communities.” Ammo, 5 May 2020, https://ammo.com/articles/lbj-great-society-war-on-poverty-welfare-state-helped-ruin-black-communities.

17. Mitchell, Daniel. “Why the Private Sector Does a Better Job than the Government.” People’s Pundit Daily, 29 July 2017, https://www.peoplespunditdaily.com/policy/2017/07/29/private-sector-better-job-government/.

18. McMaken, Ryan. “How Truly Free Markets Help the Poor.” Mises Institute, 14 Feb. 2015, https://mises.org/library/how-truly-free-markets-help-poor.

19. Prowle, Malcom. “Are We Sleepwalking Into a Totalitarian Society?” The Huffington Post, 2 Apr. 2013, https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/malcolm-prowle/are-we-sleepwalking-into-totalitarian-society_b_2996968.html.

20. Geller, Pamela. “Merkel, Hell-Bent on Destroying Germany.” Breitbart, 18 June 2016, https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/06/18/pamela-geller-merkel-hell-bent-destroying-germany/.

21. “‘Dee-Lighted’ by Robert Minor.” Wikimedia Commons, 1911, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Robert-Minor-Dee-Lighted-1911.png.

22. Boaz, David. “What Big Government Is All About.” Foundation for Economic Education, 1 Apr. 1997, https://fee.org/articles/what-big-government-is-all-about/.

23. Betz, Bradford. “What Is China’s Social Credit System?” Fox News, 3 May 2020, https://www.foxnews.com/world/what-is-china-social-credit-system.

24. Locke, John. The Second Treatise of Civil Government, edited by Andrew Bailey. Broadview Press, 2015, p. 95.